News of the Consortium

• Apply for Research Fellowships
• New Research Fellowships for Scholars from Brazil, India & South Africa
• 2018-19 Incoming Fellows
• Working Groups Update
• New Public Events Program Launched with Immortal Life
• Fellows Update
• Collections Spotlight: Adler Planetarium
• Newly Acquired or Processed Collections

George Aumoithe, 2016-2017 Research Fellow
George Consortium will be a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton.


Nicole Belolan, 2014-2015 Research Fellow, 2017-2018 Fellow in Residence
Nicole has accepted a position as Co-Editor of The Public Historian, Digital Media Editor for the National Council on Public History, and Public Historian in Residence at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers-Camden. Nicole also recently  published “Over-the-hill canes and ideal bodies: teaching disability history as public history,” History@Work blog, National Council on Public History, February 7, 2018.

Abraham Gibson, 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow
Abe has co-authored a book chapter, titled "Swamp Things: Invasive Species as Environmental Disaster," in an edited volume titled Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018). Abe is currently working on a book about pythons in the Everglades, under advance contract with University Press of Florida.

Kate Grauvogel, 2017-2018 Research Fellow
Kate has received an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant and a dissertation completion fellowship from the Science History Institute.


Christopher Heaney, 2011-2012 Research Fellow
Christopher has recently published  "How to Make an Inca Mummy: Andean Embalming, Peruvian Science, and the Collection of Empire," Isis 109, no. 1 (March 2018): 1-27.


Lawrence Kessler, 2015-2016 Dissertation Fellow, 2016-2018 Fellow In Residence
Lawrence has recently published with Andrew Isenberg, "Settler Colonialism and the Environmental History of the North American West," Journal of the West 56, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 57-66.

Julia Mansfield, Dissertation Fellow 2013-14
Julia was recently awarded the 58th annual Allan Nevins Prize by the Society of American Historians for her dissertation, The Disease of Commerce: Yellow Fever in the Atlantic World, 1793-1805. The prize recognizes the best written dissertation on an American topic.

Joseph Martin, 2011-2012 Dissertation Fellow; 2016-2017 NSF Scholar/Fellow in Residence
Joe recently published "Prestige Asymmetry in American Physics: Aspirations, Applications, and the Purloined Letter Effect," Science in Context 30, no. 4 (2017): 475-506. His book Solid State Insurrection: How the Science of Substance Made American Physics Matter appears this fall with the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Taylor Moore, 2017-2018 Fellow in ResidenceTaylor Moo
Taylor recently delivered a talk, "Living Fossils: Pelviic Bones and Fertile Wombs as Objects of Natural History in Semicolonial Egypt," to Stanford's History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium.

Alicia Puglionesi, 2016-2017 NEH Postdoctoral Fellow
Alicia has a contract with Stanford University Press for her monograph, Republic of Experience: Citizen Science at the Limits of the Mind.


James Risk, 2015-2016 Research Fellow
James has an article forthcoming: "Seven Flags over the Cooper: James M. Elford and the Quest for a Universal Maritime Signal Code," in South Carolina Historical Magazine.


Whitney Barlow Robles, 2015-2016 Research Fellow
Whitney recently published "Natural History in Two Dimensions," an essay on reconstructing historical specimen preservation techniques in Common-place: The Journal of Early American Life. A version of this essay received Harvard University's Bowdoin Prize in the Natural Sciences.

Lauren Rosati, 2017-2018 Research Fellow
Lauren has accepted a position as Assistant Curator in the Modern & Contemporary Art department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.


Daniel Vandersommers, 2017-2018 NEH Postdoctoral Fellow
Daniel has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the Indiana Academy, Ball State University. Dan also has an edited volume, Zoo Studies: A New Humanities, under contract with McGill-Queens University Press, as well as an article, "Sectionalism, Animal Symbols, and the Controversy of the National Zoo, 1887-1891," forthcoming in Environmental History. Daniel also delivered an address, “The Historical Ironies of Zoo Conservation, or How to Capture Bighorn Sheep in 1900," to the Centre for Evolutionary Ecology and Ethical Conservation at Laurentian University.

Celestial Cartography Digitization at the Adler Planetarium

Plate from a hand-colored copy of Johannes Bayer’s Uranometria (1661 edition)
Adler collections QB65 .B29 1661 OVSZ

Beginning in 2014, Adler Planetarium staff have digitized a wide selection of items relating to celestial cartography in the Adler’s collections, including: more than 236 rare books and atlases; 97 works on paper; globes and other artifacts, amounting to 58 objects; and approximately 3,750 Carte du Ciel prints. This work has been carried out under the Celestial Cartography Digitization Project (CCDP), which is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

‘Hun T'ien Yi T'ung Hsing Hsiang Ch'uan T'u’
(General Map of the Stars Gathered in the Immense Sky)
China, c. 1826, Adler collections P-69

The list of items digitized under CCDP covers a historical period from the 15th to the 20th century. It comprises star atlases, charts, and globes by the most prominent authors and cartographers, as well as a wide array of celestial maps from popular and didactic publications. The list also includes some splendid examples of Chinese star charts and Islamic celestial globes. CCDP is thus a project with a wide cultural scope. The high-quality digital images resulting from this project will help further our understanding of how celestial cartography developed in a variety of historical contexts and geographical areas, and how celestial charts and globes were used in the past to teach and popularize astronomy.
 

Celestial globe (detail)
probably Lahore, c. 1650
Adler collections M-14

The resulting images are available through the Adler’s online collections catalog.

See more about the Adler on Google Arts & Culture.

APS Catalog of Duhamel du Monceau/Fougeroux de Bondaroy Papers Updated
American Philosophical Society Archivist Tracey deJong has finished cataloging to current standards the papers of Duhamel du Monceau and his nephew Fougeroux de Bondaroy, both important men of science in Enlightenment France.
 
Duhamel du Monceau and Fougeroux de Bondaroy corresponded or met with Collinson, Buffon, Franklin, Turgot, Condorcet, Cousineri, Crevecoeur, Gauthier, Louis XV, Louis XVI and many others during their life-times. Both were elected to the Academie Francaise and Duhamel was a member of the Royal Society. Duhamel was recognized in 1728 for his work on saffron blight and has been considered the founder of the science of agronomy. He also was a naval engineer, experimenting with wood to find the best timber for the king’s ships. Fougeroux de Bondaroy was recognized as an agronomist, architect, and natural scientist.

The manuscripts shed light on what botanists in America and Europe were studying and sending across the Atlantic to each other in the 18th century and even has drawings of botanical materials and seed packets. The collection also includes sketches of machinery; correspondence; notes relating to electricity, weather, forestry, ship building, commerce and industry. The manuscripts are in French and Latin and include notes in English that were possibly left by G. Chinard and J. Ewan, who examined the collection when it was acquired.

Hagley Patent Model Collection on Exhibition in China
“Spirit of Invention: Nineteenth-Century U.S. Patent Models from the Hagley Museum and Library” is an exhibition of American patent models that showcases remarkable stories of invention and chronicles the development of the U.S. patent and intellectual property system in the 1800s. The exhibition of patent models is expected to engage a projected audience of more than one million visitors in China.
 
 “Spirit of Invention” is comprised of sixty U.S. patent models, dating from 1836 to 1890. The models represent a broad spectrum of industries, consumer interests, and inventors. These artifacts will generate a rich visual discourse focused on the history of innovation and the role of intellectual property systems in catalyzing creativity and economic growth in the U.S. and China. Hagley and Tsinghua University will complement this presentation of patent models with opening receptions, academic symposia, and promotional campaigns connected to each exhibition venue.
 
"Spirit of Invention" has proven so popular that China’s National Museum has requested an extension of the exhibition, and Forbes has covered the exhibition's success here.

Rockefeller Archive Center Opens Collection on 1980s Ford Foundation AIDS Initiative
A collection of documents about the Ford Foundation's efforts to address the AIDS crisis in the 1980s is available to researchers. In June 1987, the Ford Foundation appointed a panel of experts to examine needs posed by the AIDS epidemic. The panel determined that private philanthropy could step in to provide social services, practical support to individuals with AIDS and their families, and design community education programs.
 
The Ford Foundation Board of Trustees established a National-Community AIDS Partnership (NCAP) to support community-based efforts to provide preventive education and social services for people with AIDS.
 
The Ford Foundation initially contributed $2 million to the Partnership, but ultimately contributed $15 million to strengthen philanthropic support for AIDS-related needs between 1988 and 1998. The Partnership, composed of private foundations and corporate donors, was housed at the National AIDS Network (NAN) in Washington, DC.
 
In 1988, the National-Community AIDS Partnership targeted locations included: Atlanta, Connecticut, Greater Cleveland, Minnesota, Northern California, New York/New Jersey, Southern California and Southwest Border States, and Washington, DC.
 
To view the Rockefeller Archive Center's finding aid for the collection, please click here.