Working Groups

Reading seminar with Erin Griffey (University of Auckland) on her book Facing Decay: Beauty, Aging and Cosmetics in Early Modern Europe (Penn State University Press, 2025)

Due to illness, we've had to postpone Gabriela Rădulescu's session related to Soviet and Armenian astronomy for a future date.  Instead we will have a session following up on the recent History of Science Society meeting, with a couple presenters sharing their talks and those who attended discussing what topics and themes they found interesting at the conference. 

Presenting Talks (list will be updated as we get confirmations): 

We are excited to announce that Caleb Shelburne (Harvard University) will join us in December to discuss "Teaching Resources at the History of Anthropology Review." Teaching Resources at the History of Anthropology Review." 

Speaker: Thomas Biskup 

Researcher, leader of the project "A testimony to ecclesiastical natural history and an archive of historical biodiversity. 
The Herbarium Ruperti (1700) of the Herzog August Bibliothek" (Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany)

Amy Malventano, "Urban Environmentalism and Waste Management Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Louisville"

Hello all, for this meeting, we will read the following two articles on the theme of embodied and tacit knowledge. Hope to see many of you at the discussion. 

Bertucci P. Spinners' Hands, Imperial Minds: Migrant Labor, Embodied Expertise, and the Failed Transfer of Silk Technology across the Atlantic. Technol Cult. 2021;62(4):1003-1031. 

Eyferth, Jacob. “Craft Knowledge at the Interface of Written and Oral Cultures.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 4, no. 2 (2010): 185–205.

NOTE SPECIAL DATE

A Roundtable Discussion to Launch: 

Tillmann Taape, Crafting Medicine: Artisans, Knowledge, and the Common Man in Hieronymus Brunschwig's Books on Surgery and Distillation (Chicago: 2025)

and

Jack Hartnell, Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image (Princeton: 2025)

moderated by

Pamela H. Smith (Columbia) 

HSS 2025 Debrief and Discussion

Leon Garcia Garagarza

Flesh and Blood of Huitzilopochtli: The Izcahuitli Larva and the Imperial Rise of Mexico-Tenochtitlan

New Approaches in Mining Studies

Timothy James LeCain (Montana): Do Coal and Oil Drive History? The New Materialism and the Question of Mineral Agency

Bernhard Hurch (Graz)

The Hugo Schuchardt Archive:  overview of an emblematic figure of the 19th century.

Join us to discuss Working Group member Minji Lee's recent book, The Medieval Womb Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Rep

Paper: Christoph Lehner, Jos Uffink, "Schrödinger, Szilard, and the emergence of the EPR argument" (forthcoming)

Primary Source: Schrödinger, "The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics" (1935)

Guests: Christoph Lehner, Jos Uffink

Presenter: Guillermo Pupo, "Annatto as Indigenous Matter: A Rhizomatic Reading of Its Use and Meaning in Colonial Context" 

Mistura Allison (Villa Romana) and Helena Uambembe (Berlin): tbc

Michael Adamson, “Lewis Stone and the “Destruction of Venice Beach”: Contesting Petroleum Extraction as a Beneficial Use of the Southern California Shoreline

Sonia Wigh (University of Cambridge)

The Lone Pregnant Body: Illustrating Feminine Forms in Manṣūr’s Anatomy

SaeHim Park, Chinese University of Hong Kong, "Oceanic Gaze in Contemporary South Korean Art"

**NOTE: SPECIAL TIME! 8-9:30 PM EST!*

Speaker: Laurence Totelin, Cardiff University. 

Talk: Beyond medical pluralism: Interactions between physician-pharmacists and other craftspeople in the Graeco-Roman world

Cassius Adair, Media Studies, New School, "Lynn Conway's Stealth Work, 1983-1985"