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.
A Metaphor for Contagion in Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Book on Contagion - Shahrzad Irannejad (GRK 1876, JGU Mainz)
Ali Sipahi joins us from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Özyeğin University, Istanbul, to workshop his paper, "How to be a good guest? American ethnographers in Cold War Turkey."
- Presenter 1: Diana Montaño, Washington University in St. Louis, "Set-in-Stone Technologies: Metate & Gender in Twentieth Century Mexico"
- Presenter 2: Yovanna Pineda, University of Central Florida, "The techno-aesthetics of gender, farm machine repair, and climate in rural Argentina, 19th & 20th centuries"
- Moderator: Mikael Wolfe, Stanford University
Meredith Gamer (Columbia University)
“Bodies of Instruction"
Comment by Mary Fissell (John Hopkins University)
Jennifer Eaglin, “Brazilian Nuclear Ambitions, Hydroelectricity, and Water Resources.”
“Ronald Reagan, Frank Lanterman, and the Shape(ing) of Deinstitutionalization in California”
Please find here Albert Einstein's two papers on Teleparallelism from 1928, "Riemann-Geometrie mit Aufrechterhaltung des Begriffes des Fernparallelismus" and "Neue Möglichkeit für eine einheitliche Feldtheorie von Gravitation und Elektrizität" (both published in Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, p.217-221, p.224-227 resp.), as translated to English by David Delphenich (self-published at https://www.neo-classical-physics.info/spacetime-structure.html).
James Freeman and project team, 'Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries'
We'll be discussing
McCray, Patrick. 2020. Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Technocratic Visions: Engineers, Technology, and Society in Mexico
A discussion with J. Justin Castro and James A. Garza of their recently published edited volume, Technocratic Visions: Engineers, Technology, and Society in Mexico (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022).
Teaching History of Medicine to Future and Current Medical Professionals
Guest: Henrique Caldeira, PhD candidate, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Title of the presentation: "The Creation-Evolution Controversy in Brazil (1960-1990)"
Reading: Text will be attached soon.
Speaker: Dr Vitus Angermeier, PI at the FWF Project "Epidemics and Crisis Management in Pre-modern South Asia", University of Vienna
Topic: Epidemiology in the Bhelasaṃhitā – the chapter on distinctions according to land and people
HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Focus Sessions, Q&A, & Social Gathering!
In order to kiss 2022 goodbye and to go into the new year filled with optimism, joy, and color photography inspiration, Janine and Hanin have prepared December special just for you! This informal session will be organized as follows:
1. Janine Freeston: "Women Making Color Photographs" (15 minutes)
The working group will not meet this month.
Hannah Conway, Harvard University, “Petroleum Sovereignty: Native Land & Life at the End of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin
since 1927”
In this session, we will read Michael J. Apter's “Cybernetics: A Case Study of a Scientific Subject-Complex” (1970) and Alexander Soytek's “Foucault’s Reception of the Information Discourse, 1948-1971.”
No session will be held this week. Happy New Year!
Join us for a conversation with historian of medicine Christina Ramos about her newly published book Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment.
Discussants:
Adam Warren, University of Washington
Elizabeth O'Brien, John Hopkins University
Introduction available at https://uncpress.org/book/9781469666570/bedlam-in-the-new-world/
"Bringing the History of Mathematics Home: Entangled Practices of Domesticity, Gender, and Mathematical Work"
David E. Dunning and Brigitte Stenhouse
Justin Madron, University of Richmond
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
- Presenter 1: Francisco G. Tijerina Martínez, Washington University at St. Louis, "From the Cosmopolitan to the Planetary: Ecological Aesthetics in Contemporary Mexican Haikus"
- Ritam Sengupta, “The Laws of Electricity and the Laws of Men: Governing technical conduct in colonial India.”
- Matthew Shutzer, “Machines of Development: Ecology and Energy at the End of Empire.”
Speaker: Dr Andrey Klebanov
Title: TBA
Whether Mechanical Mimesis: A Sensitometric look at Colour Photography in the 19th century.
Presenter: Rahul Sharma
Rahul Sharma is a graduate of the program in photograph conservation from University of Amsterdam, and the conservation program of the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, specializing in technical imaging. In addition to his conservation practice, Sharma is a practicing darkroom printer.
Lino Camprubí, Universidad de Sevilla
Marjan Wardaki (Yale), "The Birth of Modern ‘ilm : Between Indo-German Theosophy and Islamicate Philosophy"
History of Informatics in Latin America. Marcelo Vianna, Lucas de Almeida Pereira & Colette Perold
Nuala Caomhanach (New York University), "From Unique to Ubiquitous: The Conflict of Endemism in Conservation Law"
"The Lovely Bones: Dissection, Aesthetics, and Desire in Japan, 1879-1930"
Kandra Polatis
Cholera in Late Ottoman Provincial Capital, Damascus - Benan Grams (Georgetown University, Washington DC.)
Lauren Tilton and Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
- Presenter 1: Dafne Cruz Porchini, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), “The artist Fermín Revueltas and the Visual Imaginaries of Technology in Mexico: the mural Allegory of Productivity (1934)”
Katja Bruisch, “More-than-human histories of extraction: Labour at the margins of Russia’s fossil economy.”
Title: “Carthorses, Jades, and Equine Disability”
Guest: Jorge Quetzal Argueta Prado, México. [Still to be confirmed]
Title of the presentation: The title will be announced soon.
Reading: Text will be attached soon.
Speaker: Anthony Cerulli, Professor of South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Topic: Prof. Cerulli will introduce his new monograph, The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India (University of California Press, 2022). The book is available as Open Access in several formats.
Kunyan Zheng, Trinity College Dublin, "Medical knowledge of marine fish in early modern England"
Histories of Science in Latin America and Asia: A Conversation Across Regions
Food, Science, and State in Latin America
Session Coordinator: Stefan Pohl (Universidad de Rosario, Colombia)
Presenters:
Sören Brinckman (University of Wrocław), author of Milk for the Tropics! Food Regulation and Nutrition Policy using the Example of Urban Milk Supply in Brazil (1889-1964) [written in German].
Joshua F. Frens-String (The University of Texas at Austin), author of Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile.
Ally Fulton (University of California-Davis), “Stenographic Specimens in the Preservation of American Science”
"Elizabeth Agassiz's Stenography and the Preservation of Professional Science"
Allison Fulton
Merits of the Plague by Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani: Reflections on a New Translation - Joel Blecher (George Washington University) and Mairaj Syed (University of California, Davis)
Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, University of Texas at San Antonio
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
- Presenter: Mónica Salas Landa, Lafayette College, "A Postcard View of Progress: Pemex Propaganda Apparatus and the Aesthetics of Mexico’s Technological Nationalism"
Nathan N. Kapoor, "The Coal Answer: The Huntly Power Station and New Zealand's Energy Regime."
Symptoms of Insurrection: Contagion, Disease, and Social Disorder in Maria Edgeworth's Ennui
Speaker: Dr Vitus Angermeier, PI at the FWF Project "Epidemics and Crisis Management in Pre-modern South Asia", University of Vienna
Topic: A contagion theory in the Hārītasaṃhita? The chapter on upasarga.
Nancy Ko, Columbia University
Alexander Statman (UCLA), “Canal: Cross-Cultural Encounters and the Control of Water"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee), "Coffee: Of Melancholic Turkish Bodies and Sensory Experiences"
Discussant: Ahmed Ragab (Johns Hopkins University)
Discussions on smallpox and smallpox vaccination according to Şanizade - Yasemin Akçagüner (Columbia University, New York)
Natalia Gándara (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso). Title TBA
Marta Lourenco (Universidade de Lisboa, Museu Nacional de Historia e da Cienca), Talk Title TBA
"Mother Hens: Women and the social reproduction of medical illustration"
Drew Danielle Belsky
Title: Alluring Stimulant: Poison, the Body, and a Reinterpretation of Side Effects
Roopika Risam, Dartmouth College
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
- Vanessa Freije, University of Washington, "UFO, Aliens, and other Imaginaries of Satellite Technology in Hidalgo, Mexico”
- Michiel Bron, “Uranium’s geographies: How the geographical properties of uranium determined the formation of an infamous cartel and the involvement of oil companies in the uranium market.”
- Hilary Blum, “The Public Need to Know: Public Relations, Public History, and Secrecy at the Hanford Nuclear Site.”
Speaker: Dr Cristina Pecchia, University of Vienna and Austrian Academy of Sciences
Topic: TBA
Dominik Hünniger, Universität Hamburg "The museum at sea - collecting ecologies of marine micro-fauna at the Museum Godeffroy (ca. 1861-1885)"
Paper Discussion: 'Revolutionary Vision: Myopia, Socialist Youth and Public Health Campaigns in China (1960-1976)’
Yixue Yang (University of California, San Diego)
Discussant: Dora Vargha (Humboldt University Berlin)
ANIMAL HISTORY
Pedro Raposo (Martha Hamilton and I. Wistar Morris III Executive Director, Library and Archives, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University) and Paul Callomon (Collections Manager, Malacology, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University), "People, Nature, and the Social Extension of Specimens"
“Being Natural”: Science, Environment, Sexuality and the Life of Marston Bates"
Megan Raby
Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity
- Presenter: Leida Fernandez
- Presenter: Sonia Robles
- Discussant: Mónica Salas Landa
- Moderator: Diana Montaño
Dr. Helge Wendt, “Building materials from coal-waste. An extension of the history of energy in the interwar period in France and Germany.”
Speaker: Dr Vijaya Deshpande
Title: TBA (on a Sanskrit work on alchemy. See the BORI publication launch: https://youtu.be/jKJJaIJPOEA )
Abstract: TBA
Natalia Gándara Chacana, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, Chile
Shireen Hamza (Harvard) and Eric Moses Gurevitch (Vanderbilt), "The Promise of Medieval Sciences, the Perils of Global History."
· Tobah Aukland-Peck, “Mineral landscapes: The Mine and British Modernism.”
· V. M. Roberts, “Grandpa Tallman’s Engine.”
Paper discussion
Siddhartha Mukherjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University), "Controlling the Currents: Electricity Crisis and State Response in Delhi during the Second World War"
Discussant: Victor Seow (Harvard University)
James Allison, “Seeing Coal: The Geologists, Local Actors, and Distant Capitalists that Industrialized Appalachia.”