Working Groups
The Consortium invites scholars to join our topical working groups for challenging and collegial discussion of interesting publications in their fields and of each others’ works-in-progress.
Each group meets monthly. All interested scholars are welcome to participate via online video conferencing.
To join a group:
- Log in, or create an account
- Click on a group below
- Click on the "Membership" tab and select "Request Group Membership"
Submit a discussion paper for one of the working groups.
Upcoming Meetings
Please set your timezone.
Double Book Launch and Celebration
Claire Burridge (University of Oslo) and Melissa Reynolds (Texas Christian University) will join us for an informal discussion of their new books "Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c. 775-900" (Brill) and "Reading Practice. The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print" (Chicago).
Surgical Instruments of Indian “oculists”
Meet and greet
This will be an informal meeting. The conveners will explain how this group came together and what their goals are. This will also be a time for the participants to introduce themselves and explain what they would like to get out of these meetings.
Looking Over the Over Looked - Lesser-known Colour Photography Processes with Janine Freeston
Lynn Nyhart, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Popular Evolution Meets the Ottoman Empire: Situating Ernst Haeckel's Arabian Corals (1875)."
In this session, we will read and discuss Jülide Etem's working paper, “Physics Film Experiments in the United States and Turkey, 1956–1978.”
For September, we will be reading and discussing Emily Martin's "The egg and the sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles." Signs: journal of women in culture and society 16, no. 3 (1991): 485-501. and Rene Almeling's “What Biological Stories are Americans Telling About the Egg and the Sperm? A Study Inspired by Emily Martin 30 Years Later.” Gender & Society 37: 750-773.
To kick off our first working group meeting of the 2024/2025 year, we will explore the implications of ectogenesis—reproduction outside the body.
In advance of the discussion, we encourage participants take a look at the following three pieces--each of which grapples with history and politics of artificial womb technology:
Speaker:
Dr. Guilherme Prado Roitberg (Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Minas Gerais (IFMG), Brazil
Postdoctoral Researcher in the History of Science at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz (COC/Fiocruz), Brazil
Presentation:
Dr. Gene Kritsky (University of Illinois Professor Emeritus of Biology and former Dean of the School of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University) will present on his book A Tale of Two Broods: the 2024 emergence of Broods XIII and XIV (Ohio Biological Survey, 2024), followed by a discussion. His talk will also discuss some of findings from 2024 emergence, and some of the cultural impacts that occured. Here is the abstract:
SHOT REDUX!
Join us for the popular review of the annual SHOT meeting, MC'd by our own Ben Gross. SHOt (Society for the History of Technology) held its annual meeting this past July in Vina del Mar, Chile; usually it meets during the fall. Come prepared to tell us what you found interesting, controversial, problematic, eye-opening.
If you were not able to attend the meeting, this is a great way to learn what went on and to get some of the vibe.
Hoping to see you soon!
Victoria Dickenson and Anna Winterbottom (McGill), "Hidden hands in colonial natural histories: lessons from four case studies at McGill"
Questing Excellence in Academia
A discussion with Knut H. Sørensen and Sharon Traweek about their recently published open-access book, Questing Excellence in Academia: A Tale of Two Universities (London: Routledge, 2022).
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND TIME*
Optional reading will be announced shortly!
We are looking forward to discussing the draft paper, "Writing History into the Economy of Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and Lars Montin (1723-1793) on the Reindeer Warble Fly (Hypoderma tarandi L.)," with Staffan Müller-Wille (Cambridge).
Kirke Elsass, "Getting Comfortable in the Basement: Children’s Health, Women’s Work, and Respectability in the Domestic Subterranean, 1850-1930"
Jesse Smith (Science History Institute)
Giora Hon and Bernard Goldstein (2022): Interpretation in Electrodynamics, Atomic Theory, and Quantum Mechanics
J.C. Maxwell (1873): Faraday
E. Schrödinger (1926). On the relation between the quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan, and that of Schrödinger.
Guest expert : Giora Hon
"The Trouble with Simples: A Professor's Unfinished Pharmacopeia in Enlightenment Venice"
Mackenzie Cooley (Hamilton College)
Commentator: tbc
Max Chervin Bridge, Brown University, "Hearing Sperm Whales"
Yingchen Kwok "The Gender Politics of Sexual Reproduction as a Source of Hereditary Variation"
Vaccines and Society Unit - University of Oxford
Panelists: TBA
Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
Topic: The Jōdo Shinshū Embrace of Science in Late Meiji and Taishō Japan: Science, Secularism, and Buddhism in the Thought of Ishikawa Seishō and Fujikawa Yū
Presenters: Tomoko Yoshida and Stephen Weldon
If you are able, please read the attached article that we will be discussing during this session.
Alexander Blum - Sharing Plans and Ideas for the 2025 Quantum Centenary
Ranee Prakash (Natural History Museum, London), "Ethnobotanical evidence from herbarium collections"
Kristen Frederick-Frost (Smithsonian)
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE*
"Translating, Trying and Modifying: Early Modern Ottoman Pharmacopeias"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee)
Commentator: tbc
We are delighted to welcome Margarita Valdovinos (Inst. Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM, Mexico), who will share a paper on "The Study of Amerindian Languages. The Maya Case."
Abstract:
Michael Holleran, "The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives"
Michel Janssen - "Drawing the line between kinematics and dynamics in special relativity"
Expert Guest: Michel Janssen
Paul Smith (University of Warwick) on Cezanne and autistic color perception
Organizer: Giulia Simonini
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
*NOTE SPECIAL TIME*
Susanna Ferguson (Smith College): tbc
November 14, 2024 (***RESCHEDULED***)
Dr Katherine Arnold, Lecturer in Environmental History at University of Liverpool (UK)
Title: The Will of Welwitsch: African Botanical Collections and Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century
Abstract:
Panel on Recent Books on the History of Global Health
A discussion with four authors on their recent books on the history of global health/ global health studies.
Panelists:
Yi-Tang Lin - Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan, and the World, 1917-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Carolina Matos - Gender, Communications, and Reproductive Health in International Health and Development (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023)
Exploring an Anti-Epidemic Protective Pill Recipe in the 15th Century Tibetan Medical Work, Relics of Countless Oral Instructions by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (1439-1475)
Barbara Gerke (University of Vienna)
Topic: Evolution, Strategy, and Nichiren Buddhism in Modern Japan.
Presenter: Clinton Godart
Anna Guasco, Oregon State University, "'Could do better to stick to his fish’: Knowledge, Power, and Authority in Gray Whale Science.”
Carlo Sariego "“Is Daddy Having a Baby?” Speculation and Race-Making in 20th-century Histories of Male Pregnancy""
Caleb Shelburne (Department of the History of Science, Harvard University) will present "Leeches for the ‘Sick Man of Europe’: Science and the Environment in the Ottoman Leech Industry, 1830-1870," followed by a discussion.
Wright, Aaron Sidney. “Nascent Pairs and Virtual Possibilities.” In More than Nothing: A History of the Vacuum in Theoretical Physics, 1925-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062804.003.0003.
Caroline Cornish (Kew), "Hidden hands and the development of economic botany"
Abstract:
We are delighted that in December we will host Michael Edwards, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney to discuss his work in progress:
Wheels Turning: Anthropological Solidarity, Engaged Buddhism, and a Return to the 1990s
Short Writings Roundtable
If you have a shorter piece--an abstract, a proposal, an op-ed, etc.--that you would like feedback on, this session is for you!
Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Expert Guests: Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer
Amy Woolf and Sarah Corbyn Woolf (Woolf Color and Design) on (color palettes) and creating and color schemes
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Oleksandr Polianichev (Södertörn University): tbc
Annotating the Bṛhatsaṃhitā in Persian? A Discussion
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
Topic: Jinshu Kairyо̄: The 'Race Improvement' Debate in Japan, 1870-1890
Presenter: Subo Wijeyeratne
DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Bellinda Widmann Kambili (Leuphana University): tbc
January 9, 2025
Dr Abbi Flint, Research Associate in History at Newcastle University (UK)
and
Dr Rose Ferraby, independent archaeologist and artist (UK)
Title: Fish Out of Water: Exploring the History, Meaning and Materiality of a Museum Mercreature
Abstract:
*Note Special Date*
The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
Katharine Anderson, York University
Anna Toledano (Stanford), "Black and native laborers at the Viceregal Botanical Garden in late 18th-century Mexico City"
Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
*Note Special Date*
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Tanne Bloks
Sowerby's Chromatometer of 1809
Learn how to use a paper tool devised by James Sowerby. (1757-1822). He published the chromaometert in A New Elucidation of Colours, Original, Prismatic, and Material (1809) to show how to visualise spectral colors and, in particular, the inverted spectrum (notoriously) discussed by Goethe in his Farbenlehre (1810)
Organizer: Giulia Simonini
David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"
Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"
Lieb Celnik (Johns Hopkins). Revisiting "Polemics" and "History" sections of Goethe's Farbenlehre.
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: tbc
TBD
Agathe Keller (CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
Derek Nelson, Everett Community College
UCLA Heat Lab
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)
Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"
Ian Dooley (UCL) and others "Materiality of Color Printing Ink"
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
April 10, 2025
Dr Nathan Bossoh, Research Fellow in History at Southampton University (UK)
"Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Space, Objects, and Bodies"
Marina Inì (University of Cambridge)
Commentator tbc
Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
Jovita Yesilyurt (Natural History Museum London) and Christina Welch (University of Winchester) "Unearthing the contribution of Indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems to the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden under Dr Anderson (1785-1811)"
Dr. Anna Toledano, Executive Director, Los Altos History Museum.
Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.
E. M. Nielsen, Brown University
Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Archival collections and specimens from German “Kamerun" in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
What is it about Prussian blue? [tentative]
Prussian blue has a winding history that includes a myth-like origin story, rapid international success, a range of adapted uses in art, industry & trade, medical uses, and contested efforts to understand its formation and structure.
I'm beginning to think about a meeting to discuss the multivalent nature of colors using Prussian blue as a reference point.
I would love to hear your recommendations (including your interest in contributing).
SL