Working Groups
Active 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"
Upcoming Meetings
Please set your timezone.
Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University, "Over London at Night": Gasworks, Ballooning and Seeing the Thames
A. J. Misra, Marie Curie Fellow, University of Copenhagen (URL)
Penelope K. Hardy, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, seeks your input on her new project: a four-volume edited primary source collection tentatively titled Knowing the Oceans, 1790-1914: A Global Documentary History.
Welcome to the History and Politics of Immunity working group! We'll use our first meeting to get to know each other and briefly discuss the introductions of two influential texts that offer compelling methodological arguments for how we might think about immunity, disease, and health across disciplinary divides: Cristobal Silva's Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative (2011) and Paul Ramírez's Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason (2018).
Zachary M. Mann, University of Southern California.
"Reading Note G: Ada Lovelace and the Secretarial Labor of Codework."
Aversion Therapy
Agenda (updated 9/5/21)
1:00pm-1:15pm Introductions
1:15pm-1:20pm Race & Tech. Announcement
1:20pm-1:50pm - Speaker (Yovanna) presentation + QA/comments
1:50pm 2:20pm - Speaker (Dafne) presentation + QA/comments
2:20pm-2:30pm: Discussion: "What is your idea of aesthetics and design?"
A discussion with Jessica M. Smith of her forthcoming book in the Engineering Studies Series of MIT Press, Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021). Comments from Rider Foley (University of Virginia) and Thomas De Pree (University of New Mexico and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute).
Please read chapter 3 for the discussion (attached).
Hanin Hannouch (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz / Max-Planck-Institut), "Gustav Fritsch ca. 1900: Doing Racial Science Through Three-Color Photography"
Readings attached:
Annette Lewerentz, "Der Mediziner Gustav Fritsch als Fotograf"
Michael Hagner, "Aspects of Brain Localization in Late 19th Century Germany"
Liat Spiro, College of the Holy Cross, "Patentability and Experience: Work, Class, and Risk in the Political Economy of Intellectual Property in Imperial Germany," on patenting as a domain of social politics and workplace political economy in Imperial Germany.
Global contexts: Jain medical recipes in early Hindi
Dr Adrian Plau
Nushelle de Silva, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Conditioning Art, Air, and Action: Exhibition Conservation in the Art Museum"
Trish Kahle, Georgetown University Qatar, "'Confidence in Our System': How an Electric Utility Reconfigured Production and Consumption in a Deindustrializing Energy System."
Ben Lee, "Compounded Mediation: A Data Archaeology of the Newspaper Navigator Dataset"
In this paper, Ben Lee examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Newspaper Navigator dataset that he developed while recently serving as Innovator-in-Residence at the Library of Congress. The attached paper has been accepted by Digital Humanities Quarterly and is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue. You can also access a pre-print on the Humanities Commons.
Title: Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Disability in the American South
Abstract:
Georges Farhat, "Louis Savot’s (ca. 1579-1640) Galenic Perspective on the Art of Building"
Elisabeth Hsu, University of Oxford, work in progress, “The Yijin jing (Canon for supple sinews) of 1882, 1956 and 2003: the texts of tu- illustrations.”
Prof. Emeritus K. G. Zysk, University of Copenhagen (URL)
Topic: Mesopotamian and Indian Bird Omens
Abstract
Judy Johns Schloegel, Independent Scholar, "Instituting Biology in the Great Lakes: Scientific Survey Work and Inland Seas Maritime Culture, 1893-1903."
Aparna Nair (Assistant Professor, History of Science, University of Oklahoma-Norman), "Paper Trails and Poxes: A Global History of Vaccination Certificates and Passports"
Comment by Sanjoy Bhattacharya (Professor in the History of Medicine, Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories, and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories, University of York)
Sam Schirvar, University of Pennsylvania
"The Politics of Stress: Human Factors Engineering, Occupational Health, and Air Traffic Control, 1968-1981"
Yang Li (Princeton University), "Antibiotics, Atomic Bomb, and the Nationalization of Scientific Expertise in Early Socialist China, 1949-1966"
Edna Bonhomme, Title TBA
Evan Hepler-Smith, Duke University, "Handbook chemistry" from his ms. Compound Words: Chemical Information and the Molecular World, on the 19th century emergence of the chemical handbook and the chemical abstract journal.
"Theodosius Dobzhansky e os brasileiros"
Aldo Mellender de Araújo (Instituto de Biociências - UFRGS)
Gift-giving and Knowledge Exchange in Elite Medical Manuscripts
Prof Faith Willis
Diana Montaño, Washington University in St. Louis, "Development is Modernity + Rural Electrification: The Aesthetic of Latin American Electricscapes"
Daniel Rebouças, Universidade Federal da Bahia Brasil, “Aesthetics of Electricity in Bahia”
Jaimie Murdock, Sandia National Laboratories
Jesse Smith, Science History Institute: TBA
Ashoka Vardhan, “Mining the Landscapes: Coal in Hyderabad State, c. 1871-1890.”
Lorena Campuzano Duque, “Sick Mining Landscapes and the Quest of Healthy Miners,
1930-1958.”
Yijie Huang, "The pluralism of mechanism and the emergence of a pulse clocklike in late seventeenth-century England"
Guest: Dr. David Suisman (History, University of Delaware)
Reading TBA.
Guest sessions are (loosely) moderated, please reach out if you'd like to be in that role.
We'll briefly introduce the guest, begin with introductory remarks on the reading, and then discuss participants' questions.
All are welcome.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Copenhagen (URL)
Phañjikā: An Early Cruciform Game at a Late Medieval Indian Court
Elise A. Mitchell (PhD candidate in History, New York University), TBA
Comment by TBA
Madeline Williams, Harvard University
"Technological Ableism and Typewriters in United States History, 1843-1892"
November 17, 2021 - “Psiquiatria Genética na Eugenia alemã e no Brasil” - Pedro Muñoz (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro)
Marco Tamborini, Institute of Philosophy, Technical University of Darmstadt, ch. from ms. The Architecture of Evolution: The Science of Form in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology.
Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute London), Title TBA
Gustave Lester, PhD. Candidate, Harvard University.
Anna Guerrero, Marine Biological Laboratory and American Philosophical Society
Maura C. Flannery, Professor Emerita, St. John's University, NY/Research Associate, A.C. Moore Herbarium, University of South Carolina, Columbia: "Can Digital Collections Bridge the Gap between the Humanities and Science?"
Covell Meyskens, “Building a Hydraulic Engine for Mao’s China in the Three Gorges
Region.”
Daniella Russ, “Energy Balances and the Politics of Oil Substitution.”
Melissa B. Reynolds, "The Past and Future in Print"
Guest Visit: Dr. Viktoria Tkaczyk (Humboldt University)
Reading TBA
Guest sessions are moderated.
We'll briefly introduce the visitor, begin with introductory remarks on the reading, then discuss participants' questions as well as topics of interest to the visitor as appropriate.
All are welcome!
Alexis L. Boylan, Department of Art History, University of Connecticut, ch. from ms. on the art of the American Natural History Museum in New York.
Prof. Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta
Title: New findings from the Suśruta Project.
Don James McLaughlin (Assistant Professor of English, University of Tulsa) “The Muzzle: An Object Biography”
Comment by Cindy Patton (Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University)
Victor McFarland, “Breaking the Earth: The Story of Nuclear Fracking.”
Brian Leech, “The Fastest Limit in the West: Energy, Safety, and the American West’s Fight against the National Maximum Speed Limit in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Launch of working group and informal networking session
Madhusudan Rimal, PhD student, University of Alberta will present a selected research paper and chair discussion of its contribution to the historical understanding of science in early South Asia. Paper details TBA.
Luis Felipe Eguiarte Souza, University of Minnesota
"Julian Huxley: 'If I were a dictator', Technocracy in his popular writing and science fiction"
David Dalton, UNC Charlotte, “Eduardo Urzaiz's novel, Eugenia and the Interface of aesthetics and science in constructing eugenics in postrevolutionary Mexico”
Lucas Izquierdo, University of Central Florida, “Novel as technology: 19th and 20th century Peru”
Nicole Barnes (Duke University), "On Soil and Sustainability, Or, Who Cares about Shit?"
Ryan Jobson, “As a fire runs up a forest”: Counter-plantation futures and the Trinidad oil
strike of 1937.”
“Household, Reproductive, and Personal Technologies in Enlightenment Europe”, Margaret Carlyle (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Guest: Dr. Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University, Department of History)
Reading TBA
Guest sessions are moderated.
We'll briefly introduce the visitor, begin with opening remarks on the reading, then discuss participants' questions as well as topics of interest to the visitor as appropriate.
All are welcome!
Claire Mayo, University of Tennessee
"Nineteenth Century Envirotechnical Regimes and the Great Flood of 1910: How Competing Ideas of Water Management Structured the Disaster"
Philipp A. Maas, Research Associate, University of Leipzig (URL)
Topic: TBA
Fabián Prieto-Nanez, Virginia Tech, “Taste, class, and popular design of technical devices in Bogota, Colombia”
Sonia Robles, University of Delaware, “Blueprints for Modernity: Public radio programming in Mexico”
Hasan Umut (Boğaziçi University), "The Confessional Turn in Early Modern Ottoman Cosmology"
Baasit Abubakr, “Currents of the Empire in South Asia: A History of Colonial Electrification in Jammu and Kashmir 1900-1947.”
Gina Surita, “The Mysterious Muscle Machine, 1900–1930.”
“Manufacturing and marketing medicines in Tokugawa Japan”, Daniel Trambaiolo (Hong Kong University, HK)
Liat Spiro, College of the Holy Cross
"Patentability and Experience: Work, Class, and Risk in the Political Economy of Intellectual Property in Imperial Germany"
Cristina Pecchia, Austrian Academy of Sciences (URL)
Topic: TBA
Mónica Salas Landa, Lafayette College, “Aesthetics of Oil Development in Mexico”
Peter Soland, Southeast Missouri State University, "Aerial Shots and Bomber Jackets: The Role of Aviation, Celebrity, and Cinema in Re-Imagining Latin America"
Jarrod Hore, “Reinventing a Supercontinent: Towards an Energy History of Gondwanaland.”
Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, “Data Driven: Clerical Work, Geophysics, and the Rise of Computing in the American Oil Industry.”
Molly Nebiolo, Northeastern University
“Scent from Afar: A Transcultural History of Aromatics in Medieval China”, Yan Liu (University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA
Guest: Dr. Peter Sachs Collopy (personal website)
Reading TBA
Guest sessions are moderated.
We'll briefly introduce the visitor, begin with introductory remarks on the reading, then discuss participants' questions as well as topics of interest to the visitor as appropriate.
All are welcome!
Eric Gurevitch, PhD candidate
South Asian Languages and Civilizations and
Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
University of Chicago
Title: Diseases of the eye: Debating the physiology of vision across medicine and philosophy in medieval India
Lucas Erichsen, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), "Under the Sun, between tropics: meat preservation technology in late 19th century Brazil"
Marisa Lerer, Manhattan College, “Technology and Memorial Design in the Southern Cone”
Energy History in Asia: Book Discussion
Victor Seow, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
On Barak, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (University of California Press, 2020)
Michaela Rife, “Capturing Petroleum Publics: The Visual Culture of Oil on the Dust Bowl Plains.”
Jordan Howell, Capital Be Dammed: Alcoa and the History of Hydroelectric Power in North America, 1890-1950.”
“Picturing the Dissected Female Body in the Middle Ages”, Taylor McCall (Medieval Academy of America, USA)
Guest visit: Dr. Mara Mills (Media, Culture and Communication, NYU / personal website)
Reading TBA
Guest sessions are moderated.
We'll briefly introduce the visitor, begin with introductory remarks on the reading, then discuss participants' questions as well as topics of interest to the visitor as appropriate.
All are welcome.
Madhu K. Parameswaran, Assistant Professor, Department of Dravyagunavijnanam, Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varier Ayurveda College (URL)
Topic: TBA
Thomas Zeller, University of Maryland, College Park
"Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters"
David Pretel, Pompeu Fabra University, “Green Gold Modernity: Machines, Peonage and Henequen in Yucatan’s Gilded Age”
Leida Fernandez-Prieto, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, “Mute Witnesses: Mapping the Meanings of the Images on the History of Cuban Agriculture”
Sayori Ghoshal (Columbia University), "Race in Nationalist Science: Making Anthropology an Indian Discipline through the Question of Origin, 1920-1950"
Agenda (Updated 9/5/21)
Final Session: Thursday, 6/23/22, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT
- Meeting with volume editor.
- Discussion of Next Steps
Elise Burton (University of Toronto), "A Lexicon of Science"
“Water Management and Public Health in Spanish Milan”, Lavinia Maddaluno (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, Italy)
“William Hunter's Bedside Manner”, Meredith Gamer (Columbia University, USA)