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.
#1-David Dalton, UNC Charlotte, “Eduardo Urzaiz's novel, Eugenia and the Interface of aesthetics and science in constructing eugenics in postrevolutionary Mexico”
#2-Lucas Izquierdo, Independent Scholar, “Analogue Technologies: the novel genre’s virtualization of Peru in Arguedas, Vargas Llosa & Roncagliolo”
Nicole Barnes (Duke University), "On Soil and Sustainability, Or, Who Cares about Shit?"
Comments by Gonçalo Santos (University of Coimbra)
How have historical methods supported the reconstruction of populations, community structures, and landscape features? Environmental baselines serve as reference points for restoration, conservation, and policy efforts, and our January session will call into question the best practices for historical research projects that stand to impact species survival, climate change resiliency, and the integrity of ecosystems. Our first speaker, Loren McClenachan, asks how historians can better partner with scientists to develop rigorous archival and applied methods to support understandings of env
Corpse Traffic, Plague, and Cholera in the Late Nineteenth Century Ottoman Iraq
(Zeinab Azerbadegan)
Multi-Species Anthropology: An Open Discussion
This session will discuss excerpts from two recent works of "multispecies anthropology": Anna Tsing's The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015), and Radhika Govindrajan's Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas (2018).
Katherine McLeod, New York University: "How to Display a Hoatzin: Ecology, Eugenics, and Zoology in the Early 20th Century United States"
Ryan Jobson, “As a fire runs up a forest”: Counter-plantation futures and the Trinidad oil
strike of 1937.”
Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, Cedars-Sinai, “Marketing Malaria Control: Nets, Neoliberalism, and a New Approach to Fighting Malaria.” Comment by Ted Brown, University of Rochester.
Title: QueerCrip History and the 1960s Spectacle of White Appalachian Poverty Tours, Ryan Lee Cartwright
Pamela H. Smith and Naomi Rosenkranz (Columbia University)
Richardson, The Maternal Imprint, Ch. 1-2
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln): The Coco-de-Mer in the 19th-Century Indian Ocean World: Connections, Conservation and Colonialism
Christine Guth, Craft Culture in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021), chapters 4-5.
Margaret Carlyle (University of British Columbia)
"Household, Reproductive, and Personal Technologies"
Guest: Dr. Alexandra Hui (Mississippi State University, Department of History)
Reading: Making Muzak Natural: The sounds of life, death, and the lyrebird in the built
environment, 1930–1970
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!
Juliet C. Larkin-Gilmore (ACLS Oscar Handlin Fellow, 2021–22, American Council of Learned Societies), title TBA
Comment by Maria John, Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, University of Massachusetts Boston
Beatriz Martínez-Rius, Sorbonne Université, "International science, salt domes, and oil: deep-sea drilling in the Mediterranean."
Claire Mayo, University of Tennessee
"Nineteenth Century Envirotechnical Regimes and the Great Flood of 1910: How Competing Ideas of Water Management Structured the Disaster"
Johannes Lenhard and Ann Johnson, "Systems Thinking and the Mainframe Culture of Prediction." Chapter five from their forthcoming book, Prediction as Practice and Culture.
Commentary from TBD.
Click the link below to download the book's table of contents, introduction, and fifth chapter.
Speaker: Dr Philipp A. Maas, Associate Professor, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (URL)
Title: TBA
Taylor Moore, University of California, Santa Barbara
#1-Fabián Prieto-Nanez, Virginia Tech, “Taste, class, and popular design of technical devices in Bogota, Colombia”
#2-Sonia Robles, University of Delaware, "Aural and material obstructions to technological development in Mexico"
#3-Third presenter TBA
Hasan Umut (PhD, McGill University), "The Confessional Turn in Early Modern Ottoman Cosmology"
Comments by Travis Zadeh (Yale University, Religious Studies)
Anna Szöke (Tieranatomisches Theater / Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Title TBA
Discussion with Anand Pandian, Professor and Department Chair of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
https://anthropology.jhu.edu/directory/anand-pandian/
Readings TBA
Stephen Weldon, University of Oklahoma
Andrea Marshall, Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies: "Zines as Nonbinary Objects and Questions of Privilege"
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.”
Patricio Simonetto, “The Body Where I was Born in: Embodiment Repertoires During the Sex Change Transition.” Comment by Beans Velocci, University of Pennsylvania.
George Elliott, "The House of Experiment": Gershom Bulkeley and Laboratory Life within Saltbox Science
Richardson, The Maternal Imprint, Ch. 3-4
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Aqsa Mengal (Lahore University), Dania Nasir (Lahore University), Kulsoom Din Malik (Lahore University) and Moiz Abdul Majid (Tufts University UEP): Nature in the City: Memory, Scandal and Leisure in Lahore's Urban Parks
Daniel Trambaiolo (Hong Kong University)
“Manufacturing and Marketing Medicines in Tokugawa Japan”,
Maria John (Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, University of Massachusetts Boston), title TBA
Comment by TBA
Alison Glassie, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University.
Liat Spiro, College of the Holy Cross
"Patentability and Experience: Work, Class, and Risk in the Political Economy of Intellectual Property in Imperial Germany"
Katherine M. Reinhart, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Art & Empire: Circulating Visual Knowledge in the Global Early Modern World"
Speaker: Dr Cristina Pecchia, Austrian Academy of Sciences (URL)
Title: Gangadhar Ray Kaviraj and the Carakasaṃhitā.
Cyrus Mody, Maastricht University
#1-Lisa Munro, Independent Scholar. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2021.1977677
#2-Yohad Zacaria, University of Chile. "Urban, environmental, and technological impact of electrification in Chile, 19th and 20th centuries"
#3-Peter Soland, Southeast Missouri State University, "Aerial Shots and Bomber Jackets: The Role of Aviation, Celebrity, and Cinema in Re-Imagining Latin America"
Merging Environmental Conservation and Historic Preservation by Barry Stiefel, Associate Professor at the College of Charleston Historic Preservation & Community Planning Program.
Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute London), Title TBA
Katherine Arnold, London School of Economics: "Interpreting the Collector's Logic: The Pursuit of Desiderata in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa"
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.”
Discussion with John L. Jackson, Jr., Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/john-l-jackson-jr-phd
Readings TBA
Molly Nebiolo, Northeastern University
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!
Ángel Rodríguez (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School), “Ecology of Scientific Expeditions: A Harvard History of the Health and Human Sciences in the American Tropics, 1892–1937”
Comment by TBA
Tianna Uchacz (Texas A&M University)
"Reading Between the Lines: Ornament Prints and the Tacit Know-How of Material Translation"
Paper abstract:
Richardson, The Maternal Imprint, Ch. 5-6
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Cecylia Mgombele (University of Dar es Salaam), Sinyati Robinson Mark (University of Dar es Salaam) and Sarah Walshaw (Simon Fraser University): Human-Plant Relationships in Tanzania's Past: Changes, Choices, Challenges - and Specifically the Changes Brought with the Caravan Trade
Graylin Whitney Harrison (Stanford University)
Speaker: 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
David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Holy Mackerel: Fish, Science, and the Politics of Food Aid in Cold War Southeast Asia"
Evan Hepler-Smith, Duke University
"Chemical ciphers: war and peace"
Patricia Marcos, Doctoral Candidate, University of California, San Diego
#1-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"
#2-Marisa Lerer, Manhattan College, “Technology and Memorial Design in the Southern Cone”
#3-Third presenter TBA
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)
Discussion with Grant Arndt, Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies, Iowa State University
https://sites.google.com/site/gparndtwork/
Readings TBA
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.”
Richardson, The Maternal Imprint, Ch. 7-9
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Princeton University) in conversation with Annalee Davis: Sites of Healing: Plantation Histories and Histories of Care in the Work of Annalee Davis
Taylor McCall (Medieval Academy of America)
“Picturing the Dissected Female Body in Manuscripts c.1200-1500"
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.
Alexis Boylan, University of Conneticut, ch. “Artless Space” from ms. Not an Art Museum: The Visual Culture of the American Museum of Natural History, 1900-2017.
Speaker: Madhu K. Parameswaran, Assistant Professor, Department of Dravyagunavijnanam, Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varier Ayurveda College (URL)
Title: TBA
Katherine Sinclair, Rutgers University.
Thomas Zeller, University of Maryland, College Park
"Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters"
#1-David Pretel, Pompeu Fabra University, “Green Gold Modernity: Machines, Peonage and Henequen in Yucatan’s Gilded Age”
#2-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”
#3-Third presenter TBA
Sayori Ghoshal (Columbia University), "Race in Nationalist Science: Making Anthropology an Indian Discipline through the Question of Origin, 1920-1950"
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Melanie Boehi (University of the Witwatersrand), Phakamani m’Africa Xaba (Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden), and Luciano Concheiro San Vicente (The National Autonomous University of Mexico): Reimagining Botanical Gardens and Urban Parks in a Time of Crisis
Yan Liu (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
“Scent from Afar: A Transcultural History of Aromatics in Medieval China”
Guest: Dr. Sarah Fuchs. Assistant Professor of Music History and Cultures (Syracuse University)
Reading TBA!
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"
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Maxmillian J Chuhila (University of Dar es Salaam): Green Imperialism and Biomedical Campaigns in Colonial Tanganyika
Lavinia Maddaluno (Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice)
“Water Management and Public Health in Spanish Milan”
Ben Breen (University of California, Santa Cruz)
"Colonial Magic and Spaces of Healing in the Seventeenth Century"
Meredith Gamer (Columbia University)
“William Hunter's Bedside Manner”