Events for February 2013
February 2, 2013 - June 9, 2013
Drawn to Dinosaurs: Hadrosaurus foulkii
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
February 2–June 9, 2013
Art of Science Gallery
The Academy of Natural Sciences was the first in the world to create a mounted dinosaur skeleton for display, and to this day the Academy is known as “the dinosaur museum.” Drawn to Dinosaurs: Hadrosaurus foulkii is an intimate exhibit that reveals the science and art of visualizing a living animal based on fragmentary fossils. The centerpiece is a full cast of the plant-eating duckbill dinosaur Hadrosaurus foulkii, discovered in 1858 in Haddonfield, N.J., by an Academy member and later reconstructed by the artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins based on Academy research. Free with museum admission.
February 4, 2013
Daud Ali, University of Pennsylvania
Garden Automata and the Production of Wonder Across the Indian Ocean
Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
Time: 3:30pm
Location: 337 Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
This paper explores the circulation of technological practices pertaining to automata between the Eastern Mediterranean and South Asia at the turn of the first millennium CE. By the tenth century, automata, particularly those in garden contexts, formed an important part of a newly emergent cosmopolitan world of objects which created wonder among men as geographically dispersed as the Ottonian Bishop Luit Prand of Cremona and the contemporaneous west Indian savant Somadevasuri, writing under a satellite of the mighty Rastrakuta court. At the center of this world stood the Abbasid court, from where the greatest interest and most intimate knowledge regarding these devices was produced. Looking at these devices from the periphery of this world, from the Western coastal regions of the South Asian Subcontinent, this paper will explore several questions regarding the transmission and reception of these automata as a both technological and cultural practice—how was knowledge of these machines transmitted between and within specific cultural contexts?; how should we best understand the domestic and garden environments which seem to have inevitably formed places where these machines functioned?; and relatedly, in a world without the supposed disenchantment of the modern, where far more miraculous beings and events were not unknown, why did these machines elicit such a particular fascination?
February 5, 2013
Networks of Exchange: Common Readings
RCHA Tuesday Morning Seminar Series, Rutgers University
Time: 11:00am, lunch to follow at 12:30pm
Location: RCHA Seminar Room, 88 College Avenue
Dear Colleagues,
Please read for next Tuesday: David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (Palgrave, 2001), chapter 2: “Current Directions in Exchange Theory” (pp. 23-47); and Simon Schaffer, “Golden Means: Assay Instruments and the Geography of Precision in the Guinea Trade,” in Marie-Noelle Bourguet, et al, eds., Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the 17th to 20th Centuries (Routledge, 2002), pp. 20-44.
They are not long, but are slightly dense. They make handy theoretical and case-study discussions of the themes of exchange and value. I encourage everyone to think about how these themes can be useful in their own ongoing research. So in addition to theoretical reflection and empirical discussion, let’s consider these readings a springboard for an open forum. Let’s share and compare what might be practically useful about the themes of exchange and value in our own work, what methods and sources we might use to tackle them, and what is to be gained by thinking across different disciplines. So please come prepared to discuss.
Many thanks and see you next Tuesday!
James D
If you are planning to attend the seminar, copies of the paper can be requested by email: rcha@rci.rutgers.edu
February 5, 2013
Ann Robinson
Early Periodic Tables of the Elements: Classification, Visualization, and the Periodic Law
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12pm
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
The periodic table of the elements is a visual representation of the periodic law, the classification scheme that lies at the heart of chemistry. The table we are all familiar with did not assume its shape until the early to mid-20th century. In the decade before the 1869 discovery of the periodic law by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev and in the decades following, scientists created (and are still creating) their own visual representations of the periodic law. This talk will look at some of these early tables, including Mendeleev’s own, exploring why different forms were thought to be better than others for visually representing the classification of the elements.
Ann Robinson is a former academic librarian and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has a B.A. in history from the University of California, San Diego; an M.L.I.S. from San Jose State University; and an A.L.M. in the history of science from Harvard University’s Extension School. She is writing a dissertation currently titled “Creating a Symbol of Science: The Standard Periodic Table of the Elements” that explores chemical pedagogy, visualization and graphic representation, classification and organization, and the role of national and international scientific organizations in relation to the periodic table of the elements.
February 7, 2013
Elena Conis, Emory University
Vaccine Risks and the American Media at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Time: 3:00pm
Location: East Baltimore - 3rd floor seminar room, Welch Medical Library
February 8, 2013
Peter Pringle
Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug
American Philosophical Society | Visit site »
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Benjamin Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street
Peter Pringle is the author of several nonfiction books, including The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov and Food, Inc., and co-author of the bestselling Those Are Real Bullets. A veteran British foreign correspondent, he has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The rift between eminent microbiologist Selman Waksman and his brilliant graduate student Albert Schatz was a spectacular fallout in the annals of science. In this riveting history of the discovery of one of the most important drugs of the last century—streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis—journalist Pringle (Food, Inc.) argues that the story of the co-discoverers of the antibiotic is a fascinating human as well as scientific drama. Pringle not only recaps the split between the Rutgers researchers but the part played by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, which Waksman consulted for and which filed the scientists’ patent application and then leased the rights from Rutgers to make the drug. Streptomycin led to countless happy endings, not least for Waksman, who claimed the spotlight for himself, leaving Schatz ignored and bitter. When Waksman worked out a deal to reap 20% of Rutgers’s take of the royalties, Schatz turned to the courts to reclaim his co-inventor status. Pringle skillfully relates an important tale of a life-saving scientific discovery tarnished by egotism and injustice.
February 11, 2013
Daniel Barber, University of Pennsylvania
Climatic Effects: Humanism, Environmentalism, and the Architecture of the Comfort Zone, c. 1957
Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
Time: 3:30pm
Location: 337 Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Right after World War II there was a flurry of interest – amongst architects, physicists, sociologists, and others – in the relationship between architecture and climate. In the US, innovations in the methods, materials, and technologies of building design were seen to be significant to alleviating the challenges of both suburban expansion and global economic development, and were the subject of numerous government, industry, and university research projects. This paper will summarize this interest through the work of Victor and Aladar Olgyay, twin Hungarian émigré architects whose research at MIT and Princeton culminated in the publication of Solar Control and Shading Devices in 1957. I will argue that interest in climatic design methods led to a reconceptualization of the human subject that architecture was seen to serve, while simultaneously outlining the relationship between design practices and the ecological conditions of the planet.
February 12, 2013
Cameron Strang, University of Texas at Austin
Star-Crossed Empires: Astronomy and United States Expansion into the Spanish American Borderlands, 1795-1810
RCHA Tuesday Morning Seminar Series, Rutgers University | Visit site »
Time: 11:00am, lunch to follow at 12:30pm
Location: RCHA Seminar Room, 88 College Avenue
If you are planning to attend the seminar, copies of the paper can be requested by email: rcha@rci.rutgers.edu
February 12, 2013
TL Hill and Ram Mudambi
Guilds and Organizational Change: Contested Logics in the Management of Innovation at Rohm and Haas
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
This talk will explore how the friction between scientists and “marketing” types played out at Rohm and Haas over its 100-year history. The historical case study provides insights into the informal, guild organization of firms and the ways in which the struggle for dominance can lead to organizational change. Perhaps politics, well managed, can be good for organizations?
The talk will combine institutional logics, narrative, social movements, and process theories of organization to interpret the history of the management of Rohm and Haas Company’s research-and-development function as the firm struggled to generate and maintain innovation during a century of scientific, competitive, and institutional evolution.The story that emerges highlights the collective, contested nature of the process of organization; provides insight into the subterranean tensions—especially between professional guilds—that animate organizational processes; and suggests a mechanism through which fundamental change in direction and organization can emerge from the ongoing friction between guilds.
TL Hill is an associate professor in strategic management and managing director of the Enterprise Management Consulting Practice, the capstone residency for all Fox School of Business M.B.A. students. Hill’s research interests include the governance of knowledge-intensive organizations and social ventures, the ways networks span organizational boundaries, the social and institutional context of entrepreneurship, and community economic development in urban settings. Before joining the Fox School at Temple University, Hill was a managing director for New Society Publishers, where he edited more than 30 books, and a strategic consultant for small and family-owned firms. He has earned a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. from Temple’s Fox School of Business and an A.B. in religious studies from Brown University.
Ram Mudambi is a professor and Perelman Senior Research Fellow at the Fox School of Business, Temple University. Previously he served on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University, the University of Reading (U.K.), and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a fellow of the Academy of International Business. He is a visiting professor at Henley Business School, University of Reading; an honorary professor at the Center of International Business, University of Leeds; and a member of the advisory council of the University of Bradford Centre in International Business. He has served as a visiting professor at a number of universities, including Bocconi (Italy), Uppsala (Sweden), Sydney (Australia), and the Copenhagen Business School.He holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. His current research projects focus on innovation and governance of knowledge-intensive processes. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles and has been a special-issue editor for the Journal of Economic Geography, the Journal of Management Studies, and the International Business Review. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of International Management, the Journal of World Business, Management International Review, the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, and Industry and Innovation.
February 13, 2013
Lauren Johnson
The History and Influence of Faith-based Organizations on the Delivery of Maternal Care in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1978-2000
Barbara Bates Center, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Room 2019, Floor 2U, Claire Fagin Hall
Abstract: Historically, Western medical missionaries have played an important role in healthcare service and training of medical professionals in rural Africa. Yet their contributions have been given little recognition. Their work particularly has been significant because they were key actors in primary care after the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978, the first international statement that underlined the importance of primary health care. According to the World Health Organization, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, comprising 56% of maternal deaths globally. Many sources suggest that these high rates are caused by a shortage of skilled professionals and medical infrastructure, especially in rural areas. While the rates of maternal mortality have decreased in the sub-Saharan region since 1990, progress toward reducing this rate by 75% by 2015 (Millennium Development Goal 5) is far from achievement. To reach this goal, it is important to examine, from an historical standpoint, previous strategies that worked and did not work. This research presents an historical examination of early successful partnerships between international organizations, traditional African midwives, and American missionary sister nurses, physicians, and midwives who practiced within the biomedical tradition.
February 14, 2013
Maria Portuondo, Johns Hopkins University
America and the Hermeneutics of Nature in Sixteenth-century Seville
Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Time: 3:00pm
Location: Homewood - 300 Gilman Hall
February 14, 2013
Chris Rorres, University of Pennsylvania
Correcting an Error in Book I of Archimedes’ “On Floating Bodies”
Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics, Villanova University
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Room 103, Mendel Science Center, Villanova University
Abstract: Archimedes is credited with quantifying the concept of the center of gravity of an object and in his works he determined the locations of the centers of gravity of many planar and solid bodies. His calculations, however, implicitly assumed that the body was immersed in a uniform gravitational field, so he was actually determining the location of the body’s center of mass (or centroid). He did not realize that the concept of a center of gravity is not applicable in a nonuniform gravitational field, a fact that many are not aware of even today. This led to his incorrectly proving an erroneous theorem at the end of Book 1 of his work “On Floating Bodies”. His theorem states that a truncated sphere floating in a body of water on a spherical earth that attracts objects to its center will float stably with its base horizontally under very general conditions. I’ll discuss his error and suggest an alternate proof of a similar correct result.
February 14, 2013
David Lucsko, Auburn University
Not in My Neighbor’s Backyard, Either: Junkyards, Automobile Enthusiasts, and Property Owners, 1965-2010
Hagley Museum and Library
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Copeland Room, Hagley Library Building
The seminar is open to the public and is based on a paper that is circulated in advance. Those planning to attend are encouraged to read the paper before coming to the seminar. Copies may be obtained by emailing Carol Lockman, clockman@Hagley.org.
February 18, 2013
Tiago Saraiva, Drexel University
Fascist Pigs and Genocidal Sheep: Genetics, Industrialized Organisms, and the History of Fascism
Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
Time: 3:30pm
Location: 337 Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
February 19, 2013
Tim Mitchell, Columbia University
Carbon Democracy: Sources of Energy and the Sources of Politics
RCHA Tuesday Morning Seminar Series, Rutgers University
Time: 11 am, lunch to follow at 12:30 pm
Place: RCHA Seminar Room, 88 College Avenue
February 19, 2013
Max Liboiron
Defining Pollution in the Early Twentieth Century: Allowable Limits and Natural Thresholds
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
How did a mid-19th-century concern with stench become a Progressive Era fight against smoke? Why did smoke transform from a symbol of civic pride and progress to the harbinger of a polluted atmosphere? This talk provides one answer to these questions by closely examining the connections between anti-stench and anti-smoke agitation. Rather than viewing the anti-smoke crusades as a departure from earlier complacency about industrial pollution, this talk situates the fight against smoke as a direct outgrowth of earlier worries about bad odors. The talk focuses on the significant role the graphic press played in the transition from smell to smoke. The demands of a visual medium mandated sensory translation; as artists tried to illustrate the New York City health concerns about Hunter’s Point, they sought an iconography for smell and found their answer in billows of smoke. By focusing on the interplay between the senses of smell and sight, this talk—and its many illustrations—explain the historically contingent reasons that visions of smoke, rather than stenches of industry, launched a widespread campaign for improved air quality.
Max Liboiron is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University with the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing. She is currently researching theories of scale in relation to environmental action. Her dissertation, “Redefining Pollution: Plastics in the Wild,” investigates scientific and advocate definitions of plastic pollution given that plastics are challenging centuries-old concepts of pollution as well as norms of pollution control, environmental advocacy, and concepts of contamination. Her work has been published in the Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest, and the Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage. She writes for the Discard Studies Blog and is a trash artist and activist. Visit www.maxliboiron.com.
February 20, 2013
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Columbia University
Outbreaks and Silences: The Politics of Epidemic and Endemic Plague
Barbara Bates Center, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Room 2019, Floor 2U, Claire Fagin Hall
Abstract: This seminar will explore the historical continuities and discontinuities in the plague and its environment, and reflect on the role of experts and changing agenda of tropical medicine and international health in India and beyond.
February 21, 2013
Anne Pollock, Georgia Institute of Technology
Places of Intellectual Property: Global Health, Postcolonial Science, and South African Drug Discovery
Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Time: 3:00pm
Location: East Baltimore - 3rd floor seminar room, Welch Medical Library
February 25, 2013
Emily Martin, NYU
Steps toward an anthropology of the human subject in experimental psychology
Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
Time: 3:30pm
Location: 337 Cohen Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract: Historians of psychology have described how the “introspection” of early Wundtian psychology largely came to be ruled out of experimental settings by the mid 20th century. In this talk I take a fresh look at the years before this process was complete—from the vantage point of early anthropological and psychological field expeditions. The psychological research conducted during and after the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits Islands (CAETS) in 1898 had a certain impact on Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, among other things, became an important commentator on experimental psychology. In his later writings, Wittgenstein frequently referred to “anthropological facts” and “anthropological phenomena.” He articulated some of the central tenets of cultural anthropological analysis. His efforts to move the ground of analysis from philosophy to anthropology take on greater force in the light of his acquaintance with the early history of anthropology. I will take this opportunity to reconsider the importance of the CAETS in the history of anthropology and to explore some possible ways of approaching experimental psychology ethnographically.
February 26, 2013
Donna Bilak
The Allegorical Laboratory: Michael Maier’s Alchemical Emblem Book Atalanta fugiens (1617), and the Art of Technology
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
CHF holds a 1618 edition of Michael Maier’s extraordinary alchemical emblem book, Atalanta fugiens, best known to historians of science for its 50 exquisite engravings of emblems that visually render the hermetic vocabulary. But Atalanta’s emblems are also paired with scored music for three voices—Atalanta, Hippomenes, and the Golden Apple, the three alchemical protagonists in Maier’s work who represent the elemental triad of Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt. Maier’s work has yet to be studied in its multimedial totality; moreover, scholarship has not advanced beyond considering Atalanta as a fantastical allegorical expression of hermetic philosophy. Drawing from the Othmer Library’s rich collection of rare alchemical treatises, this paper presents evidence demonstrating that Atalanta fugiens is an allegorically enciphered manual whose synthesis of music, image, and text fully articulates the alchemical system and delineates the laboratory procedure (and in certain emblems apparatus as well) used by adepts attempting to produce the philosophers’ stone, the great arcanum that would restore prelapsarian perfect health and longevity to humankind. Maier’s Atalanta fugiens thus exemplifies the intersection of alchemical theory and the technologies that defined early modern alchemical laboratory operations, and this investigation of Maier’s unique alchemical treatise opens up new dimensions to our understanding of premodern scientific practice.
Donna Bilak is a Ph.D. candidate at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City and is in the final writing stage of her dissertation, “The Chymical Cleric: Science, Theology, and the Praxis of John Allin, Puritan Alchemist in England and America (1623–1683).” Bilak’s research areas cover early modern history of science with a particular interest in alchemical laboratory process, as well as 19th- and early 20th-century history of jewelry design and technology. Her interest in Michael Maier’s unique alchemical emblem book, Atalanta fugiens, began at CHF in December 2011 while conducting research for her dissertation at the Othmer Library.
February 27, 2013
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Breeding Women: Reproduction and Maternalist Politics in Iran
Barbara Bates Center, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »
Time: 12:00pm
Location: Room 2019, Floor 2U, Claire Fagin Hall
Abstract: Birthing babies seems a mundane event. Yet even a cursory review of the history of maternity in Iran reveals the controversial culture of birthing. What women and men understood about reproduction shaped their choices about the type of care to seek during childbirth. Although specific rituals related to childbirth differed in form and spirit, and often changed with the times, their existence showed a desire to protect women in labor from some of the unknown dangers of childbirth and to assume control over a mystifying and momentous event in people’s lives. The accumulation of knowledge about procreation in Iran altered men’s relationships to female bodies and transformed maternal healthcare and nursing.
February 28, 2013
Jamil Ragep, McGill University
Continuity, Contiguity, Contingency: Islam and Copernicus Reconsidered
Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Time: 3:00pm
Location: Homewood - 300 Gilman Hall