This group will focus on the overlapping histories of the sciences of nature and culture at the turn of the twentieth century, at a time when the human senses became central objects of investigation for anthropologists, linguists, physiologists, psychologists, technicians, and instrument makers. It will explore scientific attempts to produce knowledge through and about the senses as a way of restoring authentic continuities among disciplinary entities in flux, and producing scientific knowledge about human nature and culture.

 

 

 

Past Meetings

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Gabriel Coren, "Composition by Field" (work in progress). 

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Emilie Skulberg (with Martin Sparre), "A Negative of a Black Hole: Jean-Pierre Luminet and Perspective in Black Hole Imaging, c. 1978-2019" (work in progress). 

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Tina Gianquitto, "Roots of Consciousness: Darwin's Plant Movement Studies in the U.S" (work in progress). 

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For this session, there will be no pre-circulated reading. Instead, we invite you to bring an image, slide, or sound file from your current research to share and discuss. We’ll look and listen together, and talk about how we might analyze the things people bring. 
 

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Postponed. 
Gabriel Coren, "Sounding Ethnos: composition by field" (work in progress). 

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Cameron Brinitzer, "The Colour Sense: Between the Lab, Field, and Garden" (work in progress). 

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Laurel Waycott, "Taste and Civilization in 'The Yellow Wall-Paper'" (2019). 

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Etienne Benson, "Swimming in Data" (in prep.) & "Sensing a River" (in prep.). 
 

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Omar Nasim, "Ornamental Mind," (work in progress).  

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Postponed (COVID-19)
Omar Nasim, "Ornamental Mind" 

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Judith Kaplan, "Intelligible Pitch," (in prep.). 
Jonathan Sterne, "Hello!" (2003), in The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. 
 

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John Tresch, "The Prophet and the Pendulum; Sensational Science and Audiovisual Phantasmagoria around 1848" (2011) and "Introduction: Audio/Visual" (2011, with Mara Mills). 

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Richard Staley, "The Economic Explanation" (in prep.) and "Sensory Studies, or When Physics was Psychophysics: Ernst Mach and Physics Between Physiology and Psychology, 1860-71" (2018).  

Group Conveners

78 Members

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