The Department II Colloquium occurs twice per month. The format is 30 minutes of commentary and response by the paper's author, followed by 90 minutes of general discussion. Attendees must read the precirculated paper, sent out a week in advance.
Academic Year 2018–19
| 2018 | Author | Paper Title | Commentator |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 10 | All-Day Departmental Workshop | ||
| September 19 | Karine Chemla | Writing Abstractly in Mathematical Texts from Early Imperial China | Philip Kitcher |
| October 10 | Ion Mihailescu | Charting the Weather: Graphical Representations in Late Eighteenth-Century Meteorology | Daniel Rosenberg |
| October 17 | Suzanne Marchand | In the Footsteps of Herodotus: Fact-Checking the "Father of History" in the Nineteenth Century | Lorraine Daston |
| November 7 | Hansun Hsiung | The Problem of the Solution (Manual): Episodes in the History of Copyright and Creativity | Marius Buning |
| November 21 | Jenny Rampling | Reconstructing English Alchemy in Image and Practice | Sophie Roux |
| December 5 | Katja Krause | Envisioning the Usefulness of Science in the Middle Ages | Katharine Park |
| December 19 | Sebastian Felten and Christine von Oertzen | The History of Bureaucratic Knowledge | Dagmar Schäfer |
Previous Years
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Academic Year 2017–18
2017 Author Paper Title Commentator September 4 All-Day Departmental Workshop September 20 Gadi Algazi Rationalizing Habits Christian Flow October 4 Andreas Mayer The Science of Walking: The Study of Locomotion in the 19th Century Brooke Penaloza-Patzak October 18 Barbara Tramelli Giovanni Lomazzo and Alchemy: Hints, Criticism and New Perspectives Sebastian Felten November 6 Andrew Mendelsohn Good Doctors: A Story of Governing and Knowing from Medieval to Modern Europe Hansun Hsiung November 15 John Carson Performing Mental Medicine Expertise in the Nineteenth-Century English Courtroom Andrew Mendelsohn November 29 Elaine Leong and Christine von Oertzen Introduction: Paper, Gender, and the History of Knowledge Anna-Maria Meister December 13 Dror Weil Islamic Medical Texts in China Mårten Söderblom Saarela 2018 Author Paper Title Commentator January 10 Projit Mukharji Kindred Spirits: Parapsychology in India and South Africa, c. 1950-1980 Meera Nanda January 24 Lino Camprubi The Modern Mediterranean: Ocean Science, Environmental Monitoring, and Technological Borders Annette Vogt February 14 Montserrat Cabré Blood, Milk and Breastbleeding: The Humoral Economy of Women's Bodies in Medieval Medicine Sandra Cavallo February 21 Javier Moscoso The History of Swing Andreas Mayer March 7 Orit Halpern The Smartness Mandate Xiaochang Li March 21 Sandra Cavallo Early Vernacular Medical Advice Books and their Life Course: Makers, Users, Uses Elaine Leong May 9 Cathy Gere Bourgeois Psychology and the Limits of Nature Laura Stark May 30 Stephanie Dick Ten Thousand Mathematical Facts Norton Wise June 6 Colin King Dialectic and Authority in Ancient Science: Aristotle, Metaphysics A Lorraine Daston June 27 Caroline Jones and Peter Galison Invisibilities: or, Seeing and Unseeing the Anthropocene David Sepkoski -
Academic Year 2016–17
2016 Author Paper Title Commentator September 7 All-Day Departmental Workshop September 21 Dan Bouk Thinking the Baby Boomer Christine von Oertzen October 5 Geert Somsen The Princess at the Conference. Bertha von Suttner and the Aristocratic Roots of Scientific Internationalism Annette Vogt October 12 Jung Lee Provincially Globalizing Modern Botany: Japanese Botanizing in Colonial Korea Masato Hasegawa November 16 Hansun Hsiung Serial (Mis)understandings: Loss and the Logic of Global Reading Lily Huang November 30 Lydia Barnett Faith, Philosophy, and Global Catastrophe in the Early Enlightenment Lino Camprubi December 14 Matthew Eddy The Dynamic Picture: Children and the Graphic Origins of Reason during the Scottish Enlightenment Carla Bittel 2017 Author Paper Title Commentator January 11 Jaya Remond Nature's Imprint: Pictorializing
Botanical Knowledge in the Early Modern WorldMaria Avxentevskaya January 25 David Sepkoski Extinction in the Shadow of the Bomb Sébastian Dutreuil February 8 Donatella Germanese Science, Industry, and the Arts: A Formula for Progress Ina Heumann February 22 Tara Nummedal Sound and Vision: The Alchemical Epistemology of Michael Maier's Atalanta fugiens (1618) Elly Truitt March 8 Stefani Engelstein Love or Knowledge: Sexual Epistemology in Fichte and Kleist Ashley Clark March 22 Elly Truitt The Circulation of Invention: Roger Bacon's Technology in Early Modern Europe Ian Lawson May 10 Viktoria Tkaczyk Thinking with Sound, 1860–1930 Oriana Walker May 24 Paul White The Emotional Specimen: Darwin,
Duchenne, and the Display of ExpressionJamie Cohen-Cole June 14 Henry Cowles Scientific Habits circa 1900 Lorraine Daston June 28 Maria Avxentevskaya The Physician's album amicorum: Humanist Cultures of Knowledge Networking Clare Griffin -
Academic Year 2015–16
2015 Author Paper Title Commentator September 9 All-Day Departmental Workshop September 16 Gabriela Soto Laveaga Mexican Agronomists, Development Projects, and the Use of Science in Wheat Fields Lino Camprubi September 30 Elaine Leong Brewing Ale and Boiling Water in 1651 John Christie October 14 Helen Curry Agricultural Modernization and Genetic Conservation, 1935–75 Andrew Yang November 2 Jenny Bangham Human Genetics, Reform, and Race in the 1930s Erika Milam December 9 Jim Secord Knowledge in Transit Revisited Katherine Park December 16 Teri Chettiar The Psychiatric Family in Postwar Britain Jamie Cohen-Cole 2016 Author Paper Title Commentator January 13 Erika Milam Evolutionary Futures: Sexual Selection and the Modern Synthesis David Sepkoski January 27 Ben Wilson Who is the Defense Scientist? Secrecy and Objectivity in the Age of Reagan Lorraine Daston February 10 Jamie Cohen-Cole Post WWII Developmental Psychology and Psycholinguistics Judith Kaplan February 24 Clare Griffin Early Modern Russian Pharmacy Minakshi Menon March 9 Katharine Park and Ahmed Ragab Beyond Transmission: Rewriting the History of Arabic and Latin Science Katja Krause March 21 Minakshi Menon Of Sanskrit Dictionaries and Sylheti
Pharmacopoeias: Botanical Knowledge Making in East India Company Bengal, c. 1800Jaya Remond May 11 Jacob Gaboury Object qua Object: Computational Models for Graphical Simulation, 1972–76 Alma Steingart May 25 Sabine Arnaud Constructing Aspirations for the Abnormal: Pedology’s Challenge at the Turn of the 20th Century Christine Von Oertzen June 8 Michael Gordin Prague: A Scientific Biography Annette Vogt June 22 Sebastian Felten Earthly Metabolisms: The Science and Finance of Early Modern Mines Ursula Klein -
Academic Year 2014-15
2014 Author Paper Title Commentator September 8 All-Day Departmental Workshop September 17 Etienne Benson The Idea of the Environment Philipp Lehmann October 1 Lorraine Daston Rules of Iron, Rules of Lead: The Prehistory of an Indispensable and Impossible Genre Daniel Rosenberg October 15 Donatella Germanese "We Will Make Europe There." Italian Intellectuals Searching for Europe and America in Hitler's Germany Elena Aronova November 3 Dagmar Schäfer Archives of Capabilities: Materials and Skills in 17th-Century China Sonam Kachru November 19 Hallam Stevens Visualizing Biological Data Angela Creager December 3 Anna Echterhölter Standardizations in Metrology and the Emergence of the "Ancillary Sciences of History" in 19th-Century Germany Christine von Oertzen December 17 Judy Kaplan Prussian Archaeological and Epigraphic Research in Persia, 1875–81 Mirjam Brusius 2015 Author Paper Title Commentator January 7 Katja Krause Aristotle and Averroes on Psychology Lorraine Daston January 21 Kevin Chang The Practices of the Dissertation and Oral Defense in Today’s Academia David Sepkoski February 11 Susan Squier Epigenetic Landscape Architects Boris Jardine February 18 Philipp Lehmann Evidence, Data, and the Consolidation of Climatology, 1880–1910 Emily Brock March 4 Staffan Müller-Wille Names and Numbers—The Linnean Legacy Minakshi Menon March 18 Lino Camprubi Listening Below the Surface: Sonic Epistemology of Cold War Oceanography Annette Vogt May 4 Angela Creager Environmentalism Meets Scientific Uncertainty: Testing for Carcinogens in the 1970s and 1980s Sarah Blacker May 20 Laura Stark Contracting Health: A Shadow History of Human Experiment, 1950–80 Ohad Parnes June 10 Alistair Sponsel Underwater Listening Lino Camprubi June 24 Lukas Rieppel Accounting for Dinosaurs Sally Kohlstedt -
Academic Year 2013–14
2013 Author Paper Title Commentator September 11 Departmental Workshop September 25 David Sepkoski Extinction and the Value of Diversity Jenny Bangham October 16 Cathy Gere Utilitarianism and the Sciences of Pain and Pleasure Naomi Beck October 30 John Carson Unsoundness of Mind in Anglo-American Jurisprudence Teri Chettiar November 13 Alexandra Hui First Re-Creations: Making a New Listening Culture at the Beginning of the 20th Century Axel Volmar November 27 James Delbourgo Empire of Curiosities: Hans Sloane, the British Museum and the Collection of the World Elaine Leong
December 11 Sabine Arnaud The Invention of the Abnormal in 19th-Century France and Italy Rebecca Lemov December 18 Caitlin Wylie "Invisible Technicians": Skill, Status, and Power in 21st-Century Laboratories David Sepkoski 2014 Author Paper Title Commentator January 8 Johan Östling The Humboldtian tradition and the Idea of the University in Postwar Germany Annette Vogt January 22 Claudia Swan Knowledge Networks and their Objects in Early Modern Holland Harun Küçük February 12 Anindita Nag "Subsistence, Sustenance and Productivity: Nutrition Science and Famine Relief in India, 1860–1920" Rohan Deb Roy February 26 Sabina Leonelli Data Journeys in the Life Sciences Elena Aronova March 5 Pamela Smith Material and Practices in Early Modern Eurasia Erling Sandmo March 19 Mechthild Fend 19th-Century Dermatological Wax Moulages Lorraine Daston May 7 Harun Küçük “I Told You I Was Sick": Political Naturalism and the Ottoman Decline Dagmar Schäfer May 21 Alisha Rankin Wonder Drugs in Early Modern Europe Samir Boumedienne June 11 Jessica Ratcliff The Company's Serpents: Archiving the Globe at East India House in the Nineteenth Century Kathleen Vongsathorn June 25 Elena Aronova Science and the Cultural Cold War: Thinking Science on the Opposite Sides of the Iron Curtain Judith Kaplan -
Academic Year 2012–13
2012 Author Paper Title Commentator September 11 Departmental Workshop September 25 Yvonne Wübben Emil Kraepelin’s Textbook of Psychiatry: Cognitive Practices and Textual Strategies Doris Kaufmann October 9 Kim Plofker Innovation, Tradition and Empirical Knowledge: Indian Astronomy and the History of Science Sonja Brentjes October 23 Andre Wakefield Leibniz in the Harz Annette Vogt November 6 Dominique Pestre Critique of Post-Modern Self-Satisfaction. Risk and Risk Society Over the Last Two Centuries Lorraine Daston November 20 Yulia Frumer Astronomical Timekeeping and the Changing Notion of Space in Early 19th-Century Japan Charlotte Bigg December 4 Francesco Paolo de Ceglia Neapolitan "Liquid Miracles" and 18th-Century Science Katherine Park December 18 Courtney Fullilove Turkey Red Wheat and the Management of Global Plant Genetic Resources Elena Aronova 2013 Author Paper Title Commentator January 8 Staffan Müller-Wille Linnaean Legacies: Annotation Practices in Natural History, 1753–1833 Elaine Leong January 22 Sven Dupré Jewels and the Transformation of Optics around 1500 Andre Wakefield February 5 Dan Bouk Risk and the Incorporation of American Statistics Etienne Benson February 19 Vanessa Agnew Overland to Lobito Bay: Bleek and Pocock's 1925 Collecting Expedition Mirjam Brusius March 5 Elaine Long Reading Medicine in the Early Modern English Household: The Notebooks of Elizabeth Freke and Margaret Boscawen Elena Serrano March 19 Katharine Park David Sepkoski May 7 Daniel Rosenberg Data Before the Fact Dan Bouk May 21 Elena Serrano Science for Women in the Spanish Country House (1780–1808) Claudia Stein June 11 Kathleen Vongsathorn Women and the Spread of Biomedical Knowledge in Colonial Uganda Christine von Oertzen