Conecta

Two PhD Positions in Philosophy at Durham University

2013-02-01T18:30:00.002+01:00

Two PhD Positions in Philosophy at Durham University
The Department of Philosophy at Durham University and Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) are inviting applications for two full-time, three-year PhD positions in philosophy of the natural, social and policy sciences, starting in October, 2013. Suitable candidates should have a Masters degree (with merit or distinction) or equivalent, an interest in ʻscience and policyʼ and are expected to work in one of the six areas below. We are especially interested in work on these topics that interfaces with climate science, medicine, economics and other social sciences, and social policy.
1. Evidence, conviction, endeavour
2. The nature of scientific evidence; evidence-based medicine; evidence-based social policy; hierarchies of evidence; non-randomised and randomised experiments; theory and practice of measurement.
3. Expertise
4. The nature of scientific expertise; problems of legitimacy and extension; experts in democracy; experts versus mechanical objectivity; the nature of tacit knowledge.
5. Moral and social order
6. Visions of well-ordered and disordered, decent and indecent societies; strategies of creating and maintaining order in society; the nature and role of institutions; justifying economic systems; studies of specific cases
7. Narratives, modelling and representation
8. Models and representation in science; representation in art versus representation in the sciences; literary methods and thought experiments in the sciences and humanities; narratives as evidence; understanding and narratives.
9. Modality and power
10. Causality and causal powers; theories of causation; causal inference; counterfactuals.
11. Values in science and policy
12. What role values play and why; whose values and who decides; well-ordered science; areas of special concern, e.g. genetic engineering, human subject research, politically sensitive issues where scientific results matter.

Primary supervisors of PhD dissertations will be CHESS directors Professors Nancy Cartwright, Julian Reiss or associate director Dr Wendy Parker. Successful candidates are expected to contribute to the research environment at the Centre. There is no formal closing date for these posts, but we will review applications as they come in and applications coming in after 11 March cannot be guaranteed full consideration.

Ahead of applying for a post through the university online system (available at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply/) candidates should discuss their research proposal with a member of CHESS. Please send a CV, grade average and two-page research proposal to Nicola Craigs at n.j.craigs@durham.ac.uk

--

Anna Alexandrova

Lecturer

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Cambridge University

Free School Lane

Cambridge CB2 3RH

Doctoral studentships in Science, Technology & Innovation Studies

2013-02-01T17:49:00.001+01:00

We are delighted to be able to advertise a number of doctoral studentships in Science, Technology & Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Eligibility is

These include

- at least two UK Economic and Social Research Council studentships

- a University of Edinburgh studentship for our collaborative doctoral programme with the STS cluster at the National University of Singapore

Applications in all areas of science, technology and innovation studies, including historical as well as contemporary studies, will be considered.

In addition, we can offer a University of Edinburgh studentship linked to our new IT-SAFE Fire Safety research programme (see http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/research_projects/it-safe).

The closing date for applications is 12th February 2013. Full details and application process can be found here: http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/news/2013/doctoral_awards_in_stis

Given the impending deadline we hope you can draw these opportunities to the attention of potential candidates.

Yours,

Steve

Dr Steve Sturdy

Head of Subject, Science Technology and Innovation Studies University of Edinburgh, Old Surgeons' Hall High School Yards, Edinburgh EH1 1LZ

email: s.sturdy@ed.ac.uk

tel: 44 (0) 131 651 4741

http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/staff_profiles/sturdy_steve

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations

2013-02-01T14:05:00.003+01:00

Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations http://medievalmap.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do

Created at Harvard University, the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization (DARMC) makes the best available materials for a geographic information systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds. The DARMC draws on the cartographic achievements of previous researchers, including the "Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World" by Richard J.A. Talbert. By using this site, visitors can trace Roman road networks, bridges, aqueducts, the cities and settlements of the empire, Roman military installations, and so on. Visitors can read the introduction, and then click on over to the Maps area. Here they can toggle data layers on and off to explore. Some of the themes here include Cluniac Houses, British Monasteries, and Universities. Visitors can also use the Data Sources section to delve into the particularities on each theme and map layer. [KMG]

Dynamis 2013; 33(1)

2013-02-01T12:57:00.001+01:00

DYNAMIS

Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam

VOLUMEN 33 (1) 2013

SUMARIO

DOSSIER

CIENCIA, MEDICINA Y ORDEN SOCIAL EN ESPAÑA. LAS DINÁMICAS DE INCLUSIÓN-EXCLUSIÓN SOCIAL A TRAVÉS DE LOS DISCURSOS Y PRÁCTICAS SANITARIAS

Editado por Jorge Molero-Mesa e Isabel Jiménez-Lucena

(Des)legitimando jerarquías sociales, profesionales y cognitivas. Conocimiento y prácticas científicas en los procesos de inclusión-exclusión

Jorge Molero-Mesa e Isabel Jiménez-Lucena

«Brazo y cerebro»: Las dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión en torno a la profesión médica y el anarcosindicalismo español en el primer tercio del siglo XX

Jorge Molero-Mesa e Isabel Jiménez-Lucena

1.—Inclusión y exclusión de los técnicos e intelectuales en el anarcosindicalismo. 2.—Los Sindicatos Únicos de Sanidad de la Confederación Nacional del Trabajo. 3.—Inclusión-exclusión de los médicos en el anarcosindicalismo. Estrategias, resistencias y limitaciones. 4.—Epílogo.

Movimiento libertario y autogestión del conocimiento en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX: la sección «Preguntas y respuestas» (1930-1937) de la revista Estudios

Carlos Tabernero Holgado, Isabel Jiménez Lucena y Jorge Molero Mesa

1.—Las secciones de preguntas y respuestas en la prensa escrita. 2.—La gestión libertaria de la participación de los no-expertos en la construcción y gestión de conocimiento. 3.—La participación de los no-expertos en la construcción de conocimiento científico-médico.

Ciencia y exclusión social: el desplazamiento de los albéitares de la veterinaria a través de la prensa especializada en el cuidado animal (1853-1855)

José Manuel Gutiérrez García

1.—Introducción. 2.—Albéitares y veterinarios en la década de 1850. 3.—Boletín de Veterinaria, El Eco de la Veterinaria y El Albéitar, tres revistas al servicio de diferentes intereses. 4.—¿Qué son la veterinaria y la albeitería? ¿Qué relación existe entre ellas? 5.—Albéitar vs veterinario: percepción pública de cada uno de ellos. 6.— Actuación de los poderes públicos ante ambas titulaciones. 7.—Una ley recuperada del olvido convierte a la veterinaria en hegemónica. 8. Conclusiones.

Una perspectiva heterodoxa de la historia de los medicamentos. Dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión de los sueros antituberculosos Ravetllat-Pla en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX

Sara Lugo-Márquez

1.—Introducción. 2.—Exclusión del Instituto Ravetllat-Pla de la oficialidad científica catalana y española. 3.—Un nuevo espacio de inclusión para legitimar una teoría científica heterodoxa. 4.—Reconfiguración de los medicamentos desde el «estigma social» de la tuberculosis en Brasil. 5.—Conclusiones.

ARTÍCULOS

La Historia, la Ciencia y la Nación. Un estudio de caso en el México decimonónico

Frida Gorbach

1.—Porfirio Parra, el caso. 2.—La Ciencia. 3.—La Historia. 4.—La Nación.

Las ilustraciones del cuerpo femenino en el Tratado de ginecología de Miquel A. Fargas Roca (1910)

Sara Fajula Colom

1.—Introducción. 2.—El Tratado de ginecología de Fargas en su contexto. 3.—Análisis de las ilustraciones. 3.1.—El papel de las ilustraciones en los tratados ginecológicos. 3.2.—Las ilustraciones del tratado de Fargas (1910). 3.3.—La producción de conocimiento a través de las ilustraciones. 3.4.—La construcción del cuerpo femenino. 4.—Conclusiones.

El cometa de Halley y la imagen pública de la astronomía en la prensa diaria española de principios del siglo XX

Pedro Ruiz-Castell, Ignacio Suay-Matallana y Juan Marcos Bonet Safont

1.—Introducción. 2.—Los cometas y su controversia. 3.— La prensa ante los temores. 4.— El cometa y las crónicas de sucesos. 5.— Noticias desde Madrid. 6.— Comas i Solà y La Vanguardia. 7.—Consideraciones finales: política y demandas.

En el umbral de lo desconocido: Un caso de visión extraordinaria en la España de Primo de Rivera

Annette Mülberger y Mònica Balltondre

1.—Introducción. 2.—El caso en la prensa. 3.—Explicaciones del caso. 4.— Conclusión.

RESEÑAS

Victor Navarro Brotons, ed. Vicenç Mut Armengol (1614-1687) i l’astronomia

Antoni Roca i Rossell

Elaine Leong, Alisha Rankin, eds. Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800

María Luz López Terrada

Enrique Perdiguero-Gil, Josep Miquel Vidal Hernández, eds., La ciudadela de los fantasmas. Lazaretos y protección sanitaria en el mundo mediterráneo

Armando Alberola Romà

José Antonio Díaz Rojo, ed., La circulación del saber científico en los siglos XIX y XX.

Rafael Huertas García-Alejo

Francisco Javier Martínez Antonio, Irene González González, eds. Regenerar España y Marruecos. Ciencia y educación en las relaciones hispano-marroquíes a finales del siglo XIX

Francisco Franco-Sánchez

Josep Bernabeu-Mestre, Josep Lluís Barona, eds. Nutrición, Salud y Sociedad. España y Europa en los siglos XIX y XX

Josep Lluís Barona. The Problem of Nutrition. Experimental Science, Public Health and Economy in Europe 1914-1945

Francisco Muñoz Pradas

Diego Armus. The ailing city. Health, tuberculosis and culture in Buenos Aires, 1870-1950

Jorge Molero Mesa

Jean-Louis Guereña, ed. La sexualidad en la España contemporánea (1800-1950)

Geoffroy Huard

Aitor Anduaga Egaña. Geofísica, Economía y Sociedad en la España Contemporánea

Néstor Herrán

Luis Enrique Otero Carvajal, José María López Sánchez, La lucha por la modernidad. Las ciencias naturales y la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios

Josep Lluís Barona

Arón Cohen, ed. El trabajo y sus riesgos en la época contemporánea. Conocimiento, codificación, intervención y gestión

Javier Silvestre

Christopher Sellers, Joseph Melling, eds. Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalising World

Arthur McIvor

NORMAS PARA LA PUBLICACIÓN DE ORIGINALES

Website launch: Contributions to the History of Concepts

2013-02-01T08:49:00.003+01:00

Dear colleagues,

We are very happy to announce that the new website has been launched at

http://www.historyofconcepts.org/. The website includes descriptions of

ongoing and future projects of conceptual history, an expansive Zotero-

based bibliographic database, event announcements and much more that would

appeal to anyone interested in the history of concepts, intellectual

history, and the history of ideas and political thought.

The website is the online home of *Contributions to the History of

Concepts*,

the international peer-reviewed journal of the History of Political and

Social Concepts Group <http://www.hpscg.org/> (HPSCG). It is hosted and

Rare Book School courses

2013-02-01T08:48:00.001+01:00

Greetings from Rare Book School!

RBS provides five-day, intensive courses for students from all disciplines and levels to study the history of manuscript, printed, and born-digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field.

Our 2013 online application is now available at the Rare Book School website, http://www.rarebookschool.org/.

This year, we are pleased to present more than thirty courses on the history of books and printing. The following four courses may be of particular interest to those whose work involves issues of Science, Technology, and Medicine:

*I-40 The Illustrated Scientific Book to 1800,* taking place *July 29â€“August 2 in Charlottesville, VA. *Taught by Roger Gaskell (Roger Gaskell Rare Books). This new course will consider the production, formal qualities, and function of images in scientific books, focusing on how and why images were made. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of scientific, medical, technical, and architectural books from the earliest years of printing to 1800. Topics will include: the roles of authors and artists; the interrelationships of images and verbal texts; and the operation of diagrams, representational illustrations, and graphic displays of data in scientific communication. The course will be of value not only to librarians and historians who work with scientific materials, but also to other researchers with an interest in the material aspects of illustrated books. For more information:

http://www.rarebookschool.org/courses/illustration/i40/

*C-60 Examining the Medical Book: History & Connoisseurship*, taking place*June 17Ââ€“21 in Charlottesville, VA *. Taught by Stephen Greenberg (National Library of Medicine). Medical literature has always pushed the boundaries of technology: in production, in distribution, in its use of illustration processes, and in indexing.

This new course will examine the medical book from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the present. Students will be introduced to the standard bibliographical resources in the field, both in print and online, for purposes of scholarship, connoisseurship, and collection development. This exciting new course will be of particular interest to scholars who study the history of science and medicine. For more information:

http://www.rarebookschool.org/courses/collecting/c60/

*C-85 Law Books: History & Connoisseurship*, taking place* June 17â€“21 in New Haven, CT*. Taught by Mike Widener (Yale Law School). Aimed at individuals and librarians who collect or research historical legal materials, the course will survey printed and manuscript legal materials in Anglo-American, European, and Latin American Law. Topics include: the history of the production and distribution of law books; catalogs and reference books; philosophy and techniques of collecting; and acquiring books, manuscripts, and ephemera in the antiquarian book trade. This year the course will take place at Yaleâ€™s Lillian Goldman Law Library, taking advantage of the premier collections available in the Paskus-Danziger Rare Book Room. For more information:

http://www.rarebookschool.org/courses/collecting/c85/

For a full course schedule, additional course descriptions, and our online course application, be sure to visit the RBS website at http://rarebookschool.org/.

Kind regards,

Emma Whittington

Programs Assistant

Rare Book School

Cambridge Digital Library : launch of Board of Longitude manuscripts

2013-01-31T20:17:00.002+01:00

The Cambridge Digital Library now hosts some samples of manuscript materials digitized under the JISC-supported project 'Navigating Eighteenth Century Science and Technology: the Board of Longitude', developed in collaboration with the AHRC project 'The Board of Longitude 1714-1828:

science, innovation and empire in the Georgian world'.

Visit:

http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/longitude

Early release of this sample set is in part designed to get user feedback for the main launch at the end of July 2013. It's expected changes will be made in response to user experience: email comments to Huw Jones at the Cambridge University Library on hej23@cam.ac.uk

The Cambridge Digital Library will release further important materials soon, including the Darwin-Hooker correspondence. To keep updated with additions to the Digital Library, click on the "Keep me informed" link on the top left of the page.

Notes and Records at 75

2013-01-31T16:23:00.003+01:00

This year, Notes and Records celebrates the 75th anniversary of its launch.

The first issue of Notes and Records appeared in April 1938. Early on, it began to include ‘information of historical interest’. Gradually, historical contributions came to outweigh announcements of meetings and news of elections and other Society business, and for some years now the journal has welcomed articles on all aspects and all periods of the history of science, including the history of technology and medicine, whether or not the Royal Society and its Fellows have been involved.

As part of the celebrations, editorial board members will be selecting their favourite articles from Notes and Records.

The first article has been selected by Robert Fox:

http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/RobertFoxFavourites.xhtml

If you have a favourite article from Notes and Records please let us know and we will highlight it! Here is a list to provide inspiration: http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/influential.xhtml

An editorial entitled ‘Notes and Records at 75’ has already been published: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2012.0069

Phil

Phil Hurst
Notes and Records

phil.hurst@royalsociety.org

Romantic Science and the Romantic Imagination

2013-01-31T11:27:00.002+01:00

2013 West Virginia University Summer Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies

Romantic Science and the Romantic Imagination

Seminar Leader: Richard C. Sha, American University

June 6-9, 2013

***

Romantic science and the Romantic imagination have long been understood as enemies. This seminar explores the reasons for the clash, and argues for a rethinking of both terms. Far from being objective, Romantic science reveled in the emotions and desires, so much so that matter was imagined as having feelings just like (and about) people. If the linkage of science and feeling gave science an ethics, however, it threatened to mire science in subjectivity. The Romantic imagination actually helped to develop the scientific method, forcing scientists to discipline their wayward speculations into something like knowledge. Figures to be covered include Coleridge, Kant, Keats, Byron, the Shelleys, and the Scottish novelist Elizabeth Hamilton; as well as the scientists Joseph Priestley, Humphry Davy, and Michael Faraday. Our aim will be to think about what has been gained and lost by pitting science against imagination.

Richard C. Sha is Professor of Literature at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author or (co-) editor of Romanticism and the Emotions (Cambridge, forthcoming); Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750-1830 (Johns Hopkins, 2009); and The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism (Penn, 1998). In addition, he has edited two journal volumes: Romanticism and Sexuality (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net) and Historicizing Romantic Sexuality (Romantic Praxis). He has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

***

FORMAT: The seminar will begin with a public lecture ("Imagining Romantic Emotion") at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 6th and conclude at noon on Sunday, June 9th. There are five, two-hour sessions during the seminar. By mid-May, registered participants will be provided with a list of readings to be completed before arrival at the seminar. Please scroll down to the end of this message for a tentative session plan.

SITE: West Virginia University is located in scenic north-central West Virginia about 75 miles south of Pittsburgh, PA and 200 miles west of Washington, DC. Housing will be available on campus, and one local hotel is close by for those who prefer non-dormitory housing.

FEES: Graduate students $280, faculty $380, non-academic $380

HOUSING: Housing for the seminar will be available in Stalnaker Hall, on WVU’s Downtown Campus. Single accommodations from Thursday evening through Sunday morning cost $156.21, and doubles cost $78.12 per person (excluding sales and occupancy tax). Parking is available for a fee of $7/day. Participants who would prefer to stay off campus may stay in one of several area hotels. Please contact Marsha Bissett at the e-mail address below for more information.

MEALS: Breakfast and snacks are included on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Stalnaker Hall is located near a number of casual restaurants for lunch and dinner.

CONTACT: A printable registration form is available at the seminar website, http://english.wvu.edu/centers-projects/summer-seminar. The seminar syllabus and other information will also be posted here as it becomes available. If you have any questions, please e-mail Marsha Bissett at marsha.bissett@mail.wvu.edu.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: FRIDAY 26 APRIL 2013.

***

TENTATIVE SESSION PLAN

Session 1: What Counts as Science in Romantic Science, and Why Does Science Matter?

Readings from Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison on objectivity; Jessica Riskin on science and sensibility; Peter Dear

Session 2: Theorizing Matter: Science and Imagination Readings from Kant, chemist Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, Coleridge

Session 3: What’s Wrong with the New Materialism?

Readings from Quentin Meillassoux; The Speculative Turn, eds. Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman; Jane Bennett, Vital Materialism; Percy Shelley

Session 4: Romantic Psychology: Elizabeth Hamilton and the Romantic Attentive Imagination Readings from Elizabeth Hamilton; Hunter and Macalpine, 300 Years of Psychology; Jan Goldstein

***

The 2013 West Virginia University Summer Seminar is sponsored by the Department of English, the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and West Virginia University

CfP: MEDIA ART HISTORIES 2013 - ReNew - Extended deadline

2013-01-31T11:26:00.005+01:00

MEDIA ART HISTORIES 2013: ReNew

The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology Riga, October 8 - 11, 2013

The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Renew, will be hosted by RIXC and held in Riga, Latvia, October 8 - 11, 2013, coinciding with the international festival for new media culture Art+Communication. It will host three days of keynotes, panels and poster sessions on the histories of networked digital, electronic and technological media arts.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

Prof. Dr. Peter WEIBEL, ZKM

Prof. Dr. Erkki HUHTAMO, UCLA

& t.b.a.

Besides general topics of the call, the theme of Renew, Media Art History 2013 addresses current tendencies in sustainability quests from various perspectives. As media art is based on increasingly out-dating technology and it is dependent on energy (electricity) the conference will discuss sustainable approaches towards the issues of producing, preserving and representing media artworks - how to 'renew' them through both - tools and histories. By focusing on networked media arts, the Renew conference will cover a broad range of topics to include early communication art (mail, fax, radio, satellite, etc.), net.art and net.radio, open source and network culture, locative media and wireless communities, hybrid networks and electromagnetic art, and last but not least - artistic investigations in sustainability, and future visions of art within the convergence of information and energy technologies.

Proposed topics:

* Histories of networked art and media technologies

* Archiving, preserving and representing new media art

* Media archaeology

* Paradigm shift - from new media to post-media conditions in art

* Writing histories of media art across Eastern Europe and the Baltics

* Revising the geospatial aspects - for writing comparative media art histories

* Resilient networks and emerging 'techno-ecological' art practices

* Multifarious potential of expression in media art - 'new imagery' of our times

* * *

EXTENDED DEADLINE for abstracts: February 15, 2013.

Notification of acceptance will be announced by March 25, 2013.

Individual proposals should consist of a 250-word abstract with title.

Proposals and inquiries regarding submissions should be made onwww.mediaarthistory.org web-site.

Call for papers SUBMISSION PAGE:

http://moodle.donau-uni.ac.at/renew/openconf.php

* * *

Selected papers from the conference will be published in Acoustic Space and other venues. Founded in 1998 by E-Lab as artistic journal for sound art, networked audio experiments and new media culture, since 2007 Acoustic Space comes out as peer-reviewed journal for transdisciplinary research on art, science, technology and society, published by RIXC & Art Research Lab of Liepaja University.

* * *

The conference will be complemented by a variety of affiliated events, including the Art+Communication festival, with a thematically related media art exhibition, experimental film and video screening programme, live performances, concerts and workshops.

* * *

MAH 2013 Renew Conference Chairs: Rasa SMITE and Raitis SMITS

Honorary Board: Jasia REICHARDT, Itsuo SAKANE, Peter WEIBEL, Douglas DAVIS, Robert ADRIAN

Renew Conference Advisory Board: Eric KLUITENBERG, Armin MEDOSCH, Inke ARNS, Andrey SMIRNOV, Jussi PARIKKA, Edwin van der HEIDE, Mark TRIBE, Gediminas URBONAS, Marko PELJHAN, Nishant SHAH, Edward SHANKEN, Darko FRITZ, Tatiana BAZZICHELLI, Frieder NAKE

MAH Conference Series Board: Erkki HUHTAMO, Tim LENOIR, Machiko KUSAHARA, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Oliver GRAU, Douglas KAHN, Linda HENDERSON, Sean CUBITT, Martin KEMP and Paul THOMAS

http://rixc.lv/2013

Diana K. Davis, Edmund Burke, eds. Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa. Athens Ohio University Press, 2011.

2013-01-31T11:26:00.002+01:00

Diana K. Davis, Edmund Burke, eds. Environmental Imaginaries of the

Middle East and North Africa. Athens Ohio University Press, 2011.

xiv + 286 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8214-1974-8.

Reviewed by Dan Tamir (University of Zurich)

Published on H-Environment (January, 2013)

Commissioned by Dolly JÃƒÂ¸rgensen

Imaginaries are not made of words and thoughts only, but out of very

practical, material things as well. As Edmund Burke III argues in the

preface to this book, "What made environmental orientalism and the

'rule of experts' possible were the new energetic conditions of

modern times. The production of environmental imaginaries (capitalism

and the modern state as well) grew out of this epochal transformation

in human energy regimes" (p. xi). Energy regimes--the old one, until

nineteenth century, which was based solely on the renewing annual

cycle of the sun, and the new one, which brought into the human

sphere the enormous wealth of fossil fuels--are the unseen thread

running through human history. This is an excellent beginning for

every history book.

Diana K. Davis continues the opening of the volume by reminding us

that imperial environmental narratives shaped the discipline of

ecology as it was forming during the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, not only in Europe's colonies but in the

empires' cores too. Some of these narratives became so deeply rooted

and embedded in the ecological science, that environmental

orientalism in the Middle East and North Africa has hardly been

investigated systematically for "the hidden relations of power rooted

in its very specific forms of knowledge production" (p. 4). Still,

this book shows a more complex and elaborate image than the

"classical" (anti-)orientalistic paradigm juxtaposing cruel cunning

"Occidentals" against helpless native "Orientals."

The volume's first chapter, by Priya Satia, describes how Arabia--a

term which during the early decades of the twentieth century mostly

referred to today's Iraq--was imagined by British colonial officers

as a country out of space and out of time and therefore was

considered a perfect testing ground for new military technologies

(Satia focuses mostly on the airplane). New technologies were meant

to meet specific cultural needs of the modernizing British society,

through "development" of the newly conquered lands. Developmentalism,

therefore, was not a post-WWII invention implemented primarily in

Africa, but was already present in the politics and the

administration of interwar Iraq. The restoration of the cradle of

civilization in Iraq--which was perceived as a wild, barren,

devastated land, declined from its historic glory--provided the stage

for the birth of a British "new man," indeed a whole new humanity (p.

33). Altogether, then, interwar Iraq can be seen as the first in a

series of colonial modernization projects which were undertaken in so

many places in Asia and Africa during the twentieth century.

A somewhat different kind of restoration is presented by Diana Davis

in her chapter about French settlers in North Africa. For the French

living in Algeria, it took only a few decades during the nineteenth

century to perceive the restoration of the allegedly ruined

environment back to its ancient Roman prosperity and fertility as a

key element in their collective colonial identity. This environmental

mission was part of a wider narrative of the French settlers, in

which they saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Roman

Empire, and hence legitimate rulers of North Africa. This narrative,

in turn, supported the French in dispossessing local people in

Algeria (and later in Tunisia and Morocco, too) from their property,

confiscating their forests and pastures, changing centuries-old

agricultural methods and traditions. Altogether, Davis argues,

looking to Roman examples and claiming Roman heritage helped guide

the settlers in their war of conquest, in developing agricultural

improvement plans, in forcing nomads to become sedentary, and in

constructing their distinct colonial identity as "Latin Africans" (p.

75). This special feature made French colonialism in North Africa

unique: the belief that the "degraded" environment there could

relatively easily be brought back to its former productivity "sets

the French experience with nature there apart from the vast majority

of European colonial experience with nature around the globe" (p.

76). Rather than taming a new, wild environment, the French in North

Africa saw themselves as heirs and restorers of an ancient Roman

landscape.

Complementing this attitude to North Africa, George R. Trumbull

argues that geographic and economic representations of the

environment--especially water--operated as categories of knowledge.

This knowledge "ultimately served to open up the Sahara as a

reimagined, utilitarian space for new, technological forms of

empire": road paving, drilling, extraction, and irrigation. The

French colonists, however, "neither knew all, nor encompassed all,

nor permeated all" in what concerns the vast deserts of the region

(p. 88). While in more temperate regions misunderstanding the

environment may cause surmountable problems in the long run, in a

rocky desert such misunderstandings can become lethal very quickly.

Therefore, the French who strove to colonize the Sahara soon had to

deal with the great contradiction between the imagined desert they

had in their minds ("a pack of lies," Trumbull quotes Suzanne Normand

and Jean Acker's statement from 1957, p. 106) and the real desert

they met.

Similar problems in such an arid climate also occurred in Egypt. In

an article going back to records from the seventeenth century, Alan

Mikhail shows how "controlling, sharing and using water both

necessitated and fostered cooperation" between peasants, local

bureaucrats, and the central government of Egypt (p. 116). While

peasant and imperial interests were not always similar, the

"cooperative and contested negotiations over environmental resource

management" shaped a kind of environmental imaginary that included

"notions of community, responsibility, precedent and resource

allocation" (p. 116).

Precedents, it seems, were central to the Ottoman system, as "the

Ottoman state attempted to prevent environmental change from

dictating its imperial rule" (p. 127). Such reliance on tradition is

probably a central element in environmental systems rooted in the old

energy regime. In this aspect, Mikhail's article is unique, as it is

the only one in this volume investigating a society which functioned

totally within the old energy regime, lacking any fossil fuels.

This huge difference between the old, pre-fossil fuels energy regime,

and the new one, which is based on the burning of fossils with all

its benefits--becomes evident by reading the next chapter, in which

Jennifer Derr tells the story of the first Aswan Dam, built in 1902,

using novel techniques and new machinery, unavailable in the

seventeenth century. The 1902 dam, Derr argues, was a central element

in configuring Egypt as a British colony, shaping Egyptian

agricultural geography. Building and maintaining this great

technological structuret enabled the rulers to shape--largely in

their imagination, but to a certain extent also practically--an

agricultural geography "made of fixed and passive crops, water usage

patterns and irrigation infrastructure," devoid of any human actors.

Here is an early example of how people and their labor become

redundant within the new energy regime. In a similar vein, this

project, "intended as a demonstration of humankind's ability to

harness science to manipulate the environment," (p. 151) makes an

excellent example of the way modern colonialism was linked to new

methods of energy usage.

The 1902 Aswan dam was only the first in a series of attempts at

irrigating the Egyptian desert. After the construction of the much

larger Nasser dam in the mid-twentieth century, the Mubarak regime

initiated yet another project meant to make the Egyptian desert

bloom: the "New Valley" project. In her chapter about this grandiose

initiative, Jeannie Sowers shows how three different "story lines"

shape contemporary environmental discourse in Egypt: the first

official story line is one of ecologic-demographic crisis, seeing a

rapidly growing population in need of food and water supply; a second

is one of experts who see water scarcity and water pollution; and

last but not least is the fact that while the official stories are

governmental ones, most of the recent land reclamation was done by

private farmers and big agribusiness companies (pp. 160-161).

This is actually a particular case of a universal phenomenon:

Egyptian reliance on large-scale infrastructure and state-driven

development planning, Sowers argues, was based on the faith in

modernist development schemes which were prevalent during the

twentieth century across the world, including collective projects in

Stalin's USSR and the Zionist projects of irrigation in Israel (the

latter is discussed in one of the following chapters).Taken together,

the three chapters about Egypt give a good diachronic view of the

development of environmental perceptions in this country fed by the

Nile over the past four centuries until today, after the ousting of

Hosni Mubarak and the establishment of a new regime.

The environmental perceptions and the social impacts of another large

irrigation project are examined in the chapter written by Leila

Harris about the Harran plain in southeastern Turkey. In this

chapter, Harris shows how different environmental imaginaries do not

always diverge one from another, but may sometimes also converge.

Environmental actors--whether citizens, states, NGOs, or

businesses--do not act in a void, but rather in a changing, dynamic

sphere, influenced by various factors. Environmental narratives,

therefore, also "need to be assessed, evaluated and understood in

relation to key contextual issues," that is, not only as stable,

unchanging positions, but as evolving and changing with time (p.

194). Harris shows how both farmers' attitudes towards the irrigation

projects and their actions changed over time, not always

contradicting the views of central planners but also adopting parts

of it, in a "hybridized" manner (p. 204). Harris thus breaks the

simplistic (and too frequent) habit of framing

agricultural-environmental changes within the pattern of local

farmers versus a central government. Harris summarizes her chapter

arguing in favor of "a contextual approach, attentive to social,

cultural and economic processes as crucial for interpreting the

complex mapping of narratives and imaginaries" (p. 208).

Back to the south, the Jordan river and its rift--as Ze'eb Jabotinsky

justly claimed--is the axis and the connecting point of Palestine,

and a central environmental feature in the geography of the region.

Samer Alatout brings a comparative study of three plans for the

development and the usage of the Jordan river from the 1950s. These

three plans--the U.S. Johnston plan, the "Arab" plan, and the Israeli

plan--referred to more than merely irrigation. While officially all

were dealing with the question of water allocation, the three plans

were based on three different environmental perceptions. Johnston's

initial plan, based on "natural" gravity of the watershed, was aimed

at depoliticizing water management while granting legitimacy to

regional cooperation between Jordan, Syria, and Israel. The Arab plan

argued in favor of granting the right to use water originating in

"Arab" territories to states which are part of the primordial,

supraterritorial Arab nation--Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The Israeli

plan, in contrast, emphasized the importance of the state within its

international boundaries in distributing the waters within its

borders.

The volume's last chapter, written by Shaul Cohen, focuses on

national ideologies in the land west of the Jordan river. Cohen

argues that unfortunately for both Israeli and Palestinian

communities in this land, "there is only one question, and that is

the national one" (p. 246). Environmentalism, therefore, exists

publicly only within the particular national context. This is not to

say that environmental voices are not heard, but that they are

"measured against a metric of nationhood that can make them

significant in symbolic ways, but politically lacking in power" (pp.

246-247). As Palestinian and Israeli environmental attitudes are

subjected to competing national narratives, they almost automatically

become not only different but even contradictory. The reason for

that? "Neither community," Cohen concludes, "has attained the degree

of security necessary for there to be a meaningful environmentalism,

that is, a movement that engages environmental challenges without

defaulting to security or identity concerns along parochial lines"

(p. 259). With a bit of a hope for the future, he opines that perhaps

when concerns about security and identity are addressed for both

national communities, a shared imaginary of the environment can begin

to emerge.

"What is an environmental imaginary?," asks Timothy Mitchell in the

volume's afterword (p. 267). Such imaginaries, he claims, are

manifest not only by what people write or say, but by the things they

do and the ways in which they act. The great contribution of this

volume is probably exactly here, in examining not only writings or

abstract ideas but practical projects through which human perception

of the environment becomes manifest: irrigation systems, forests,

airfields, court decisions, and manual labor. Imaginaries, in this

sense, are very real.

Mitchell draws our attention to two important points. First, that we

should remember that environmental imaginaries are not stable things;

they can sometimes collapse quite suddenly, and give way to different

and even rival visions. Second, Mitchell questions the perceived

duality of "nature" versus "culture." The human methods and practices

of dealing with the physical environment can, in his opinion, be

referred to both as "natural construction" and as "cultural

construction" (p. 271). In other words, taking into account the

impact of humans on the environment, we should question the mere

distinction between "natural" and "cultural." A better question we

could ask is, what combination of human and nonhuman forces, "of the

planned and the unintentional, of the freely imagined and the

recalcitrant," makes the construction and strengthening of our

knowledge about the common world possible (p. 272)? It is therefore

not a coincidence that Mitchell chooses to conclude his afterword by

referring to petroleum: the natural resource which became, in the

hands of cultivated humans, the most important factor in shaping our

planet during the past century.

Altogether, this well-edited volume can be helpful both for scholars

who would like to focus on particular geographic areas of the Middle

East and North Africa, and for those interested in a wider view of

this region's history. By questioning dichotomies built by

"orientalist" and "postcolonial" scholars alike, the articles

gathered in this volume offer a fresh and unusual perception of the

region and its history during the past two hundred years. Taking into

account the fact that the environment is always a human one, these

questions should be asked not only by environmental historians, but

by sociologists, anthropologists, and--even more important--political

activists in this region as well. It is essential for understanding

what is going on there.

Citation: Dan Tamir. Review of Davis, Diana K.; Burke, Edmund, eds.,

_Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa_.

H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. January, 2013.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=36554

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States

License.

University of Oxford welcomes applications for Short Courses in Evidence-Based Health Care

2013-01-31T10:19:00.003+01:00

Now open for applications: University of Oxford Accredited Short Course: The History and Philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care: 17 – 21 June 2013

This unique course is delivered by expert historians, philosophers and leaders within the field of evidence-based health care.
Students will learn from experts how and why the EBHC movement arose, and examine whether it's philosophy of evidence is justified.
"History of science without philosophy of science is blind … philosophy of science without history of science is empty." – Norwood Russell Hanson.

Full details are on the course's webpage www.conted.ox.ac.uk/hpebhc or on The History and Philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care's flyer www.conted.ox.ac.uk/hpebhc_flyer

Seeking Evaluator for the European Project VOICES – Views, Opinions and Ideas of Citizens in Europe on Science

2013-01-31T10:16:00.002+01:00

Seeking Evaluator for the European Project VOICES – Views, Opinions and Ideas of Citizens in Europe on Science

Ref.: SiS.2013.1.2.1-1 - Citizen’s active participation in EU Research and Innovation policy-making (Coordination and Support Actions: Grants to Named Beneficiary)

VOICES is a EU funded project coordinated by Ecsite, the European Network of Science Centres and Museums.

VOICES is a Europe-wide public consultation process in the area of urban waste to pilot a methodology and process to involve European citizens in the definition of research priorities.

Members of the Ecsite network will host 99 focus groups, involving a total of 990 citizens in all 27 European countries to provide ideas, values, needs and expectations about the theme “Urban waste and innovation”. The results of the consultation will be used by the Consolidation group set up with call SiS.2013.1.2.1-2.

The methodology used for the public consultation adheres to the highest academic standards and will be validated by an advisory group.

The data from the consultations will be analyzed and aggregated at national and European level; citizens and stakeholders will be able to comment on the results before these are finalized.

A series of public events will disseminate the results of the consultations and will highlight the participatory process. Moreover, an on-line tool will document the entire process and will provide open data access to the results of the consultation.

The project will be externally evaluated with respect to process and outcomes.

An independent evaluation is required in order to corroborate the quality of the project and the participatory processes, and to provide suggestions for improvements in the future.

The subcontracted evaluator will utilize a coherent framework for evaluation that will clearly define participation and project quality.

While the evaluation might focus on the qualities of the focus groups (the main mechanisms through which citizens’ voices are to be collected), it is anticipated that the evaluation will appreciate that this phase is only one part of the broader project, and hence, that it will chart and analyze the stages of the processes that precede the focus groups (e.g. methodology development and assessment) and that follow from it (e.g. tracking the fair and efficient utilization of the outputs from the focus groups).

The external evaluator should be looking at the effectiveness of the project regarding its main objectives, namely:

A consultation process to involve around one thousand European citizens in discussing the European research priorities for the theme “Urban Waste and Innovation”; the consultations will take place in 33 locations across all 27 European countries; Develop a structured methodology for the consultation - covering training of future moderators, implementation of the consultation process and analysis - based on academic research; Create an online tool that supports the process and the methodology, and provides full transparency on the activity thanks to an open data approach; Provide input to a group of experts that will define the actual priorities for the next work programme on “Urban Waste” (call SiS.2013.1.2.1-2).

The evaluator will be responsible for:

Define the mechanisms for ensuring evaluator access to subsequent follow-up stages to this project (in which experts assess the results from this project and make recommendations for future research to the

EU: i.e. SiS.2013.1.2.1-2).

Gather information and feedback in various ways, for all relevant tasks of the project, such as: questionnaires for focus group participants, events and meetings observation, interviews, etc.

Indicate what methods will be used, how, when, and why, for each part of the evaluation process.

Attending relevant meetings of the project in Brussels, namely the Advisory Meeting of experts on 8 February and the Moderators’ Training Workshop on 6-8 March 2013. Attending at least some of the focus groups being held in EU countries during the month of March 2013.

Attending a Stakeholders Meeting during the month of May 2013.

The evaluation budget is €80,000 and includes all costs (such as travel, communication expenses, production and translation of materials and taxes if applicable).

Interested applicants should submit a description of the methodology they would use to evaluate the project (two pages maximum), as well as a CV (two pages maximum) by Wednesday 6 February 2013 at 5pm CET.

Candidate selection will take into consideration the following aspects:

Experience working in international projects.

Experience in science in society issues and in related consultation processes.

Experience in evaluating large complex projects, particularly those that are related to participatory processes.

Familiarity with the activities of science communication institutions.

Candidates must work in a EU country

To apply for this position, please contact Marzia Mazzonetto, VOICES

Coordinator: mmazzonetto@ecsite.eu

Marzia Mazzonetto, Senior Project Manager - Ecsite Executive Office, Avenue Louise 89/7, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Tel: +32 2 649 73 83 -

Mob: +32 479 855 631 - Fax: +32 2 647 50 98. mmazzonetto@ecsite.eu - www.ecsite.eu

**********************************************************************

Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html You may also change your settings and subscribe/unsubscribe to psci-com from the web site.

Psci-com is part of the National Academic Mailing List Service, known as 'JISCMail'. It adheres to the JISCMail Acceptable Use Policy:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html and to the JISCMail guidelines for etiquette:

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html

Email commands: 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:jiscmail@jiscmail.ac.uk with the following message:

set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens]

2. To resume email from the list, send an email to jiscmail@jiscmail.ac.uk with the message:

set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens]

3. To leave psci-com, send an email to jiscmail@jiscmail.ac.uk with the message:

leave psci-com -- [include hyphens]

Please allow up to 24 hours for these commands to activate. Remember that you will need to send commands using the same email address that you used to register on psci-com. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to: PSCI-COM-request@JISCMAIL.AC.UK

Dissertation Reviews - January 2013 Posts (Sci/Med/Tech)

2013-01-31T10:12:00.002+01:00

DISSERTATION REVIEWS

Dissertation Reviews ( http://dissertationreviews.org/ ) features friendly, non-critical overviews of recently defended and unpublished dissertations, as well as articles on archives and libraries around the world.

We are proud to announce that the following scholars currently sit on our Advisory Board for the Science Studies branch:

Jon Agar (University College London); Mario Biagioli (University of California, Davis); Adrian Johns (University of Chicago); Elizabeth Lunbeck (Vanderbilt University); Carla Nappi (University of British Columbia); Gregory Radick (University of Leeds); Suman Seth (Cornell University); Bruno Strasser (University of Geneva)

The following is a list of the posts related to Science, Medicine and Technology for January 2013.

[Archives Review, Science Studies] Review of the National Archives

at College Park, Maryland, by BILL RANKIN (Yale University)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2105

[Bioethics, Science Studies] TAMARA KAYALI, "The Real Me: Control,

Responsibility and the Self in Depression" (University of Cambridge, 2011), reviewed by Sarah Brown (University of Nottingham)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2317

[Science Studies] ELIZABETH RAMEY, "Agriculture and Class:

Contradictions of Midwestern Family Farms Across the Twentieth Century" (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2012), reviewed by Megan Birk (University of Texas Pan American)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2044

[Med Anthro, Science Studies] JENNIFER CUFFE, "An Empirical Study of

Scientists’ Reasoning in the Canadian Regulatory Evaluation of Traditional, Homeopathic, Herbal, and Other ‘Natural’ Medicines"

(McGill University, 2010), reviewed by Daniel Hollenberg (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2270

[Science Studies] STINE SLOT GRUMSEN, "Casting for Good Will:

Profession, Trade and Identity in American Dentistry, c. 1910-1950"

(Aarhus University, 2012), reviewed by Elizabeth Mertz (University of California, San Francisco)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/1943

[Print Media, Science Studies] FIONA PETTIT, "Freaks in Late

Nineteenth-Century British Media and Medicine" (University of Exeter, 2012), reviewed by Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Universität Siegen)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2300

[Bioethics] NICOLAE MORAR, "Biotechnologies and Human Nature:

Ethical and Political Challenges" (Purdue University, 2011), reviewed by Ryan Tonkens (Dalhousie University)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2387

[Science Studies, Japan] ELISHEVA PERELMAN, "The Exponent of Breath:

The Role of Foreign Evangelical Organizations in Combating Japan’s Tuberculosis Epidemic of the Early Twentieth Century" (University of California, Berkeley, 2011), reviewed by Ruselle Meade (University of

Manchester)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/1941

[Archives Review, Science Studies, Japan] "Science for God's Sake".

Review of The Salvation Army Research Room, Tokyo, Japan; Archives of the Episcopal Church, Austin TX; Salvation Army National Archives and Research Center, Alexandria VA, by ELISHEVA PERELMAN (Millikin

University)

http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/1947

---

From the "Dissertation Reviews" Editorial Board http://dissertationreviews.org/about-us/editorial-board

If you are interested in having your dissertation reviewed, reviewing a dissertation, contributing an article, or helping our team in some other way, please contact info@dissertationreviews.org or sciencestudies@dissertationreviews.org

XIV UNIVERSEUM Network Meeting - Second announcement and call for papers

2013-01-30T00:46:00.000+01:00

XIV UNIVERSEUM NETWORK MEETING
University heritage today: Beyond public engagement?
6–8 June 2013
University of Valencia, Spain

SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

The European Academic Heritage Network UNIVERSEUM announces its 14th annual meeting. UNIVERSEUM invites submissions of papers on academic heritage in its broadest sense, tangible and intangible, namely the preservation, study, access and promotion of university collections, museums, archives, libraries, botanical gardens, astronomical observatories, and university buildings of historical, artistic and scientific significance. The theme of the conference is ‘University heritage today: Beyond public engagement?’, though papers on other topics are welcomed too. Post-graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.

"University heritage today: Beyond public engagement?"

The creation, promotion and dissemination of knowledge in the arts, sciences and humanities are the ultimate goal of universities. No doubt, university heritage — in all its forms — exists to be accessible to diverse audiences both at local level and also to the broader scientific community and the general public. However, the complexity of university heritage encompasses a diversity of issues that rests beyond the public sphere. Twenty years ago, when the university heritage movement began, there was a sense of emergency, as many collections were abandoned and at risk. What are the main concerns today? Does that sense of emergency still persist? What are the issues that should be addressed in a Europe that is going through major social, political and cultural debates and in a university that is also changing? In this conference, we welcome experiences, case-studies and in-depth papers that help us identify more precisely the nature and specificity of these issues and concerns.

The conference language is English. Paper presentations will be 15 min or 20 min. A poster session will be also organized.

Please send abstract proposals of no more than 200 words to the email address below before 28 February 2013.
Please use abstract template at the conference website http://www.universeum.it/valencia2013/
Include a short biography highlighting main research interests (max. 50 words).

For proposals and inquiries, please contact:
Pedro Ruiz-Castell, UNIVERSEUM 2013 Chair
pedro.ruiz-castell@uv.es

Program Committee:
José Ramón Bertomeu, University of Valencia (Spain)
Marta Lourenço, University of Lisbon (Portugal)
Laetitia Maison-Soulard, University Michel de Montaigne (France)
Pedro Ruiz-Castell, University of Valencia (Spain)
Sébastien Soubiran, University of Strasbourg (France)
Sofia Talas, University of Padua (Italy)
Roland Wittje, University of Regensburg (Germany)

------------------------------------------

Roland Wittje
History of Science Unit
University of Regensburg
D-93040 Regensburg
Germany

Phone: +49-941-943-3642
e-mail: roland.wittje@psk.uni-regensburg.de

If your mail bounces back at this address you can also write to me at: roland.wittje@gmail.com

Exposición Homenaje Marie Curie URJC-Madrid

2013-01-30T00:41:00.000+01:00

El Instituto de Humanidades de la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos organiza
con la colaboración de las embajadas de Francia y Polonia una
"Exposición-homenaje a Marie Curie" en la sala de Presa del Edificio
de la Biblioteca del Campus de Madrid de la URJC.

La Exposición estará operativa desde el martes 29 de enero hasta el
jueves 28 de febrero de 2013.

Para más información puede consultar:
http://institutohumanidadesurjc.blogspot.com.es/2012/12/exposicion-homenaje-marie-curie.html

Postdoctoral Research Assistant, London UK vacancy

2013-01-30T00:40:00.000+01:00

An opportunity to join our team. We are looking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Assistant.

For full details, and to apply, please follow the link immediately below.

http://bit.ly/116yDSG

Regards,

Alan Yabsley

Multimedia Manager, Makers of Modern Biomedicine project

School of History

Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS

a.yabsley@qmul.ac.uk

020 7882 3472

VIII Premio Internacional de Investigación Científica y Crítica Miguel de Cervantes

2013-01-29T16:22:00.002+01:00

Recibimos esta noticia para su difusión.

Premio Internacional Cervantino

Instituciones patrocinadoras

Editorial Academia del Hispanismo
Sociedad Cervantina de Madrid
Texas A&M University, Proyecto Cervantes

CONVOCATORIA

Este premio está destinado a la publicación de la obra galardonada en la colección Biblioteca Miguel de Cervantes de Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, aneja a la publicación del Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos.

El Jurado del Premio Internacional de Investigación Científica y Crítica ?Miguel de Cervantes? considerará los originales presentados con arreglo a las siguientes bases.

BASES

1. Las normas de presentación de originales pueden consultarse en la presente página de internet, a continuación de la exposición de las presentes bases.

2. La extensión máxima de los originales presentados será de 500.000 caracteres, incluidos espacios, notas, bibliografía y citas. Las notas irán a pie de página, la bibliografía al final, y las citas extensas en párrafos sangrados.

3. Los originales han de entregarse en formato pdf, por correo electrónico, en la siguiente dirección: hispanismo@academiaeditorial.com

4. Los originales han de ser inéditos, han de estar redactados en español, y su objeto de estudio estará relacionado explícitamente con la vida, la obra o la bibliografía de Miguel de Cervantes.

5. No se aceptarán originales fuera de plazo.

6. No se aceptarán originales que no cumplan con las normas de presentación establecidas en estas bases.

7. El premio podrá declararse desierto si el jurado así lo decide.

8. El fallo del Jurado se hará público el 29 de setiembre de cada año, y será inapelable.

9. La obra premiada será publicada por Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, y presentada en la Sociedad Cervantina de Madrid el 23 de abril del año siguiente al de su concesión.

10. No serán considerados objeto de esta convocatoria los trabajos presentados por personas asociadas institucionalmente a las entidades patrocinadoras.

11. La presentación de manuscritos al Premio Internacional de Investigación Científica y Crítica ?Miguel de Cervantes? implica la aceptación de estas bases.

MÁS INFORMACIÓN:

http://www.academiaeditorial.com/web/premio-internacional-%C2%ABmiguel-de-cervantes%C2%BB/

Crimes of Passion: Representing Sexual Pathology in the Early 20th Century

2013-01-29T10:18:00.002+01:00

Subject: Call for Papers: Crimes of Passion: Representing Sexual Pathology in the Early 20th Century
Date: 2013-01-26 19:10

http://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/en/alumni-worldwide/alumni-news/news-detail.html?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1397&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4175&cHash=693e3a9bbeb689dadb46cc48f9a868cd

Call for Papers: Crimes of Passion: Representing Sexual Pathology in the Early 20th Century

Conference dates: 24-26 July 2013, Münster, Germany

The discourse on sexual pathology claimed a central position in modern European culture almost as quickly as it began to establish itself as a scientific discipline. The bonds between science and culture seem all the more visible when it comes to the science of sexual deviance, as many sexual scientists were quick to point out in their works.

Without empirical or statistical material at hand, the scientists turned to other sources of knowledge in order to legitimize and systematize sexual pathology. Their earliest case studies came from literature. Indeed, certain authors found themselves under examination, as sexual themes in their books were treated as evidence of pathological fantasies. These literary perversions became the basis for sexual pathologists’ scientific interpretations and psychological analyses. As part of the formation and development of the discipline, the connection between sex and crime also played a central role in the scandals, injustices, and power struggles associated with sexual pathology in the early 20th century.

The popular reception of works by Richard Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, or Erich Wulffen, in addition to their contested scientific reception, attest to a wide interest in social deviation with sexual deviants being just one particularly scandalous branch of alterity.
Indeed, deviation is the Other to that which is socially accepted, legitimate, and institutionalized. Social deviance by definition breaks course from what is construed as “normal.” The deviant breaks with the social order and, depending on the particular historical and political configuration, might be dealt with as a criminal. The debate surrounding Paragraph 175 of the German penal code that made sexual relations between people of the same sex illegal highlights the virulent history of how sexual deviance and crime were yoked together. Paragraph 175—enacted in the 19th century, but which was not completely repealed until 1994—brought certain sexual relations with their own specific social and cultural sanctions into the juridical realm of penal codes and state regulation. A significant part of this new institutionalization of sexual deviance (both academically and in terms of the law) involved thematizing gender roles, especially questions of “the female.” The!
pathologization of femininity was famously and scandalously presented by Otto Weininger in his Geschlecht und Charakter, a work that marks another controversial episode in the history of sexual pathology and modernism.

The conference Crimes of Passion focuses on the triad of sexuality, criminology and literature during the early decades of the 20th century.
We invite contributions that deal with representations and theories of sexual deviance broadly conceived. Especially welcome are papers that look at the interchange between literature, philosophy, criminology, and sexology. We also encourage contributions that address questions of sexual pathology at the beginning of the 20th century from a variety of fields and disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, sociology, history, art history, gender studies, or musicology.

Paper topics might present historical discussions of:

--representing criminalized femininity/masculinity

--reception of sexual theories in literature and popular culture

--representing and theorizing perversion

--intersections of criminal, sexual and political/social discourses

--the politics of sexual crimes

--anthropological aspects of sexual pathology

--cultural criticism and sexual pathology

We plan on publishing a selection of essays based on the papers presented at the conference.

Please submit abstracts (250 words max.) and a short bio (50 words
max.) by 15 February 2013 to japhet.johnstone(at)uni-muenster.de and oliver.boeni(at)uni-muenster.de. We will inform you of our decision by 1 March 2013.

Registration for Scientiae 2013 (Warwick, 18-20 April 2013)

2013-01-28T12:13:00.002+01:00

Dear all,

REMINDER- registration is now open for Scientiae 2013: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World, a conference to be held at the University of Warwick on 18-20 April 2013. The deadline for registration has been extended to the 17th February. To download the programme and to register please go to http://go.warwick.ac.uk/scientiae

The premise of Scientiae, an annual conference series, is that the Scientific Revolution can be considered an interdisciplinary process involving Biblical exegesis, art theory, and literary humanism, as well as natural philosophy, alchemy, occult practices, and trade knowledge. As such, Scientiae 2013 will bring together scholars working in the diverse fields associated with early modern knowledge, all taking early-modern science as their common intellectual object. The conference will offer a forum both for the sharing of research and the sparking of new interdisciplinary investigations, and is open to scholars of all levels.

Our keynote speakers will be Sachiko Kusukawa (Tutor and Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science, Trinity College, Cambridge) and Stephen Clucas (Reader in Early-Modern Intellectual History at Birkbeck, University of London).

Other prominent speakers include: Constance Blackwell, Isabelle Charmantier, Penelope Gouk, Judy Hayden, Kevin Killeen, Sachiko Kusukawa, Vivian Nutton, Claire Preston, Jennifer Rampling, Anna Marie Roos.

The 2013 conference will be held in the Arts Centre at the University of Warwick, a campus university located in the heart of England on the Warwickshire border near the city of Coventry - only 20 minutes from Birmingham or an hour from London by train.

Registration is now open. The conference fee is £115, to include coffee breaks and lunches on all three days, as well as a conference banquet on the evening of Friday 19th April.

Accommodation has been pre-booked in on-campus hotels on a bed and breakfast basis, and will be available to members of the conference party at a discounted rate of £73 per night from the 17th to 21st April on a first-come, first-served basis. I encourage early application as accommodation on-campus is strictly limited.

Further information is available from the conference website (http://go.warwick.ac.uk/scientiae) and from the conference convenor, David Beck (d.c.beck@warwick.ac.uk)

Cultures of Ancient Science (conference) 15-17 March 2013 at UCL - FIRST notice

2013-01-28T11:23:00.002+01:00

Cultures of Ancient Science (conference) 15-17 March 2013 at UCL

FIRST NOTICE

This academic conference will bring together the leading international scholars of the history science of many ancient cultures to discuss the content and methodology of the study of ancient science and prospects for future research.

The scope here is important and unique. While there are conferences on the science of individual ancient cultures, there are not conferences on ancient science across many cultures.

For more information:

contact Dr Andrew Gregory (e-mail <mailto:andrew.gregory@ucl.ac.uk>)

details: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/ancient Registration information will be posted in mid-February.

Speakers

Prof. Geoffrey Lloyd University of Cambridge Prof. Martin Bernal Cornell Prof. Heinrich von Staden Princeton Prof. Francesca Rochberg Berkeley Prof. Nathan Sivin Penn State Dr. Alexandra von Lieven Freie Universitat Berlin Dr. Eleanor Robson University of Cambridge (and soon, UCL) Prof. Charles Burnett Warburg Institute Prof. Vivian Nutton UCL Dr. Serafina Cuomo Birkbeck College London Prof. Sacha Stern UCL

This meeting is sponsored by UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies, Institute for Classical Studies, and the British Society for the History of Science.

Bohr 2013 history of science conference

2013-01-28T09:39:00.002+01:00

From Tuesday 11 to Friday 14 June 2013, the international history of science conference, "One hundred years of the Bohr atom, 1913–2013", organized by the Niels Bohr Archive, will be held at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen. Further information -- such as how to apply for attendance, as well as the preliminary programme and abstracts for the talks -- may be found at http://www.nba.nbi.dk/bohratom100yrs.html. As there are only a limited number of seats, a prompt reaction is highly recommended.

Call for Applications, Ischia Summer School 2013

2013-01-23T19:07:00.002+01:00

Call for applications

Creating Life: From Alchemy to Synthetic Biology

The Thirteenth Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences

‘Villa Dohrn’, Ischia, Italy, 29 June – 6 July 2013

Directors: Janet Browne (Harvard), Christiane Groeben (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples), Nick Hopwood (Cambridge), Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter)

Funding: Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

Applications are invited for this week-long summer school, which provides advanced training in history of the life sciences through lectures and seminars in a historically rich and naturally beautiful setting. The theme for 2013 is ‘Creating Life: From Alchemy to Synthetic Biology’. The faculty include Peter Murray Jones, Hiro Hirai, James E. Strick, Helen A. Curry, Luis Campos, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Stefan Helmreich, Wolfgang Schäffner and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger.
For more information on the school, and how to apply, please visit http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/egenis/events/title,26512,en.html.

CFP: Under construction, Stuttgart November 2013

2013-01-23T18:59:00.000+01:00

CFP: Under construction – Construction sites: Building the material and

the imaginary world, Stuttgart, 15-16 November 2013, Deadline March 1

2013

Under construction – Construction sites: Building the material and the

imaginary world

On construction sites the world is altered in a very solid, material

way. That’s not the whole story, of course: If someone builds a house, a

railroad or any other thing, there is more under construction than the

mere object itself. With spade and excavator contemporary imaginations,

visions and historical concepts are equally reshaped or renewed.

Interventions into the physical landscape are always accompanied by

interventions into the imaginary landscape. The conference will examine

the discursive alongside the performative construction of reality when

things are being built. Construction sites are ideal objects for a

cultural studies approach, as they show in a very literary sense, that

the world not so much has a certain state, but that the world is

constantly being rebuilt, reshaped and reimagined.

Some examples might illustrate this. The construction of railroads in

the middle of the 19th century was not simply the construction of a

section of track. The rails closed the gap between experiences and

expectations (Koselleck) as they became agents of progress or national

unity. Or take the construction of the Panama Canal, where more than a

waterway was built. Of course this canal would reduce the distances

between the oceans. But the construction site was at the same time

US-America’s “Seaway to the future”, forming a laboratory for the

establishments’ ideas of class, race and gender. Besides its military

and economic importance, the site was the place to establish an ideal

USA: On “the isthmus, the modern American nation was under

construction.”(1) Other examples are highway-projects during the Third

Reich. Here the Nazis build “Culturally altered landscape” alongside

“Physically altered landscapes.”(2)

Suez Canal, Hoover or Assuan Dam, Pacific Railroad, Eiffel Tower or

Crystal Palace on the World Fairs – these internationally recognized

projects used to be construction sites of world-interpretation as well.

Take the Gotthard Tunnel; its construction was orchestrated by the

construction of Swiss identity.(3) Historical, technological, artistic

or anthropologic museums bound facades and objects in contexts which

promoted national or imperial “Imagined Communities”.

The topic of the conference should by no means be reduced to such major

projects of the 19th or 20th century. Hopefully, important construction

sites on regional or local levels will find attention too. Contributions

from the classical antiquity to contemporary history are highly welcome,

including disciplines outside the narrower field of history. What have

anthropologists to say about construction sites? How were construction

sites represented in art and literature?

Contributors are asked to reflect two things. They should portray

construction sites as places where the landscape is altered physically,

as well as places that shape and change perceptions, ideas and knowledge

about the world. Central to the submissions should be, how a

construction site produces our material world as well as our concepts of

the world. The conference will take place in the vicinity of the major

works currently under way in Stuttgart. The major political dispute

about the city’s new main station illustrates how conflictive worlds

under construction can be.

The conference will be held in English. The contributions will be

published. Deadline for submissions (app. 300 words) is March 1 2013.

Expenses for accommodation and travels can be reimbursed.

The conference is organised by the Section for the History of the

Impact of Technology of Stuttgart University in cooperation with the

IZKT (Internationales Zentrum für Kultur- und Technikforschung),

University Stuttgart.

Contact:

Eike-Christian Heine MA

University Stuttgart Department of History

Section for the History of the Impact of Technology

Keplerstr. 17 D-70174 Stuttgart

Tel +49 711 685 84355

Mail eike-christian.heine@po.hi.uni-stuttgart.de

Literature

(1) Missal, Alexander: American Social Visions and the Construction of

the Panama Canal, Madison und London 2008, S. 8.

(2) Zeller, Thomas: Driving Germany, The landscape of the German

Autobahn, 1930-1970, NY, Oxford 2007.

(3) Schüler, Judith: Materialising identity, the co-construction of the

Gotthardt Railway and Swiss national identity, Amsterdam 2008.

4-yr postdoc in history of science publishing

2013-01-23T18:57:00.000+01:00

The School of History at St Andrews is seeking to appoint a postdoctoral researcher within the AHRC-funded ‘Publishing the Philosophical Transactions’ Project. You would have responsibility for that part of the project dealing with the social, cultural and economic history of the journal in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The successful candidate is likely to have experience working within the field of history of science and/or the history of publishing, and to have prior experience of working with archival materials. There are no teaching duties attached to this post, although opportunities to obtain teaching experience may be available by agreement with the Project Director.

Further information on the University and the School of History can be found at the University website (www.st-andrews.ac.uk). To discuss this post informally candidates may contact the director of the project, Dr Aileen Fyfe (akf@st-andrews.ac.uk).

School of History
Salary: £30,424-£32,267 per annum
Start: 1 May 2013 or as soon as possible thereafter
Fixed term for 4 years

Interview Date: around mid-March 2013
Ref No: SB1285
Closing Date: 20 February 2013
Further Particulars: SB1285AR FPs.doc