Working Groups

John Stewart, University of Oklahoma
John Stewart is Assistant Director of the Office of Digital Learning at the University of Oklahoma. An expert in all things digital (and a founding co-organizer of the Digital History Working Group!), John will lead a discussion on the sudden rise of ChatGPT and its implications for historians of science. 

Pete Soland, “A Bird’s Eye View of Latin America: Aviation Technology and High Modernism in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru”

Katja Bruisch, “More-than-human histories of extraction: Labour at the margins of Russia’s fossil economy.”

In this session, we will read Kit Coppard, Paddy Whannel, Raymond Williams, and Tony Higgins's “Television Supplement” (New Left Review, 1961) and Susan Douglas's draft chapters “Introduction” and “What Is Culture?”

"Competent From Personal Experience": Networks of Engineers and Decision Making behind South Korea's Mungyong Cement Plant
 

A work-in-progress by Juyoung Lee, PhD candidate in history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University (USA). This is a chapter draft from Juyoung's forthcoming dissertation.
 
Chapter draft will be available for download by 10 February 2023.

Guest: Jorge Quetzal Argueta Prado, México. 
 
Title of the presentation: El cultivo del maíz en México en la primera mitad del siglo XX: modernizaciones contenciosas y reflexividades ambientales.
 
Reading: Text will be attached soon.
Previous Works:

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.

"Elizabeth Agassiz's Stenography and the Preservation of Professional Science"
Allison Fulton

We will discuss a recent article that was awarded the Rainger prize (for early career scholarship in the history of the earth and environmental sciences) at last November's History of Science Society meeting:
Claire Isabel Webb, "Gaze-Scaling: Planets as Islands in Exobiologists' Imaginaries," Science as Culture 30, no. 3 (2021): 391-415.

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 1: Mónica Salas Landa, Lafayette College, “A Postcard View of Progress:” Pemex’s Visual Propaganda and the Aesthetics of Mexico’s Technological Nationalism, 1950”

Nathan N. Kapoor, "The Coal Answer: The Huntly Power Station and New Zealand's Energy Regime."

Kelli Smith-Biwer
Dissertation chapter - TBA

CHANGE IN PROGRAM
Speaker: Dr Lisa Brooks
Topic:  tba

Jesse Smith, Science History Institute

"Engineering on Trial: The 1920 Nile Projects Controversy and Epistemologies of Measurement”
Anthony Greco, University of California, Santa Barbara
This work-in-progress explores how medieval Arabic literary traditions, Egyptian nationalist engineers, and British physical scientists shaped the methods of hydraulic science in the Nile Valley of 1920. The physical and social networks which produced and circulated hydraulic data on the Nile reflected the complex relationship between science, colonialism, and national liberation. 
 

Natalia Gándara (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso). Title TBA

"Mother Hens: Women and the social reproduction of medical illustration"
Drew Danielle Belsky

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.

Presenter 1: Vanessa Freije, University of Washington, "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.”

Dominik Hünniger, Universität Hamburg, "The museum at sea - collecting ecologies of marine micro-fauna at the Museum Godeffroy (ca. 1861-1885)"

Noah Kahrs
dissertation chapter - details and draft TBA

"Imagining A ‘Peatlandian Humanities’ for the ‘Lungs of Humanity’: An African Carbon Sink in the Congo Basin and the Climate Emergency"
Frank Blibo, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 

During this meeting, we will discuss the "Museums & Archives" section of the planned volume, featuring the following essays: 

• Melissa Grafe, "Specimens"
• Aisling Shalvey, "Human Remains"
• Katrina Jirik, "Disability"
• Amanda Mahoney, "Stewardship"
• Shelley Saggar, "Decolonizing Archives and Museums"
• Aparna Nair, "Commercialization of Remains and Records"

The essay drafts will be uploaded on April 27. 

“Being Natural”: Science, Environment, Sexuality and the Life of Marston Bates"
Megan Raby

TBD

Title tbc
Wee-Siang Margaret Ng (College of Wooster)
Response: tbc

Speaker: Dr Vijaya Deshpande
Title: TBA (on a Sanskrit work on alchemy.  See the BORI publication launch: https://youtu.be/jKJJaIJPOEA )
Abstract: TBA

Patrick McCray, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Who Is a Maker? Artisan Knowledge in Medieval India."
Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt)
Response: (tbc)
 

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.”
 

Title tbc
Stephanie O'Rourke (St Andrews)
Response: tbc