Bridging the History of Science and Art History with a Lifecycle Approach: Or, How to Remove a Racist Statue and Write About It Later

Allison Bigelow is an associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of 30-ish articles and book chapters on science, technology, gender, and Indigenous knowledges in colonial Latin America. In 2022, her book, Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2020), received the Philip J. Pauly prize from the History of Science Society. Since 2021 she has collaborated with faculty, students, and community members in and around the University of Virginia to remove the George Rogers Clark statue from the university's campus. She is now co-authoring a book about the statue with three consultants from the project: Teresa Pollak (Monacan), Beverly Payne (Occaneechi), and Shaleigh Howells (former cultural resources officer of the Pamunkey Nation).