CFP for a symposium on “Teaching science with light projection: regimes of vision in the classroom, 1880-1940” at the ESHS in Bologna, 31 August-3 September 2020

Dear all,


Here is a call for contributions for a symposium on “Teaching science with light projection: regimes of vision in the classroom, 1880-1940” at the ESHS in Bologna, 31 August-3 September 2020.



Organizers: Nelleke Teughels and Wouter Egelmeers


In the early 19th century, the ideas of reform pedagogues such as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) gave rise to a didactic turn towards the visual that criticized an exclusive textual mediation of knowledge through books and lectures (Depaepe 1999). The pedagogues and policymakers who strove for a more child-centred approach to teaching were soon joined by media producers and marketers in their aim to transform the classroom into a multimodal space for learning.

By the late 19th century, photographic images had taken up an important role in facilitating this visual turn in educational theory and practice. They were seen as direct representations of reality, ‘evidence of a novel kind’ and, above all, as visual ‘facts’. (Nelson 2000: 427). From the turn of the 20th century onwards, teachers were increasingly pressured to incorporate high-profile media technologies such as stereoscopes, lantern projectors, epi(dia)scopes and film projectors into their lessons (Cuban 1986). The accuracy of photographic images and the flawless projections enabled by these new technologies inaugurated new regimes of vision and sensoriality that equated light with truth and vision with knowledge (Eisenhower 2006). At the same time, projection-aided lessons provided powerful commentaries on what was shown, conditioning pupils’ practices of looking and giving rise to particular ways they were supposed to understand the world (Good 2019).

We propose a symposium engaging with educational uses of light projection from diverse perspectives. We aim to explore this topic in relation to the material and practical aspects of visual teaching and the various regimes of vision that are engendered by the use of visual media like stereographic photographs, lantern projection, the episcope or film projection. Papers could center on a variety of aspects of projection media in educational contexts, ranging from topics like entertaining uses of the magic lantern to the specific modes of scientific vision (Daston & Galison 2007), taught in educational contexts varying from pre-school to secondary or higher education.


Please send your abstract (max. 300 words including possible references) and a short biographical note of the author(s) (max. 150 words) to Nelleke Teughels (nelleke.teughels@kuleuven.be<mailto:nelleke.teughels@kuleuven.be> ) no later than 11 December 2019.



References

Cuban, Larry. Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920. New York: Columbia universityTeachers college press, 1986.

Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books; Distributed by the MIT Press.
Depaepe, Marc. Order in Progress: Everyday Educational Practice in Primary Schools, Belgium, 1880 - 1970. Studia Paedagogica. N. S. 29. Leuven: university press, 2000.

Eisenhauer, Jennifer F. (2006) Next Slide Please: The Magical, Scientific, and Corporate Discourses of Visual Projection Technologies, Studies in Art Education, 47:3, 198-214, DOI: 10.1080/00393541.2006.11650082
Nelson, Robert S. “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Critical Inquiry 26, nr. 3 (2000): 414–434.

CfP ESHS 2020 Bologna, Hybrid Scientific Objects (Deadline 12.12)

Hybrid scientific objects: stories of visual cultures, gender and
transnational expert communities

A proposal for a symposium for the 2020 ESHS Meeting, Bologna
María J. Santesmases, org.
mariaj.santesmases@cchs.csic.es

Many materialities in the history of contemporary science has
circulated between the industry, the clinic and the laboratory.This
session proposal is aimed at studying hybrid objects for a plural
epistemology that is composed of shared styles of representations such
as images and facilities as components of a material culture of
science and technology in which gender participates. Chromosomes are
an example of such hybrid scientific objects, that circulated between
biology and the clinic, the cytological laboratory and the clinical
practice; and there would be many others, such as minerals that travel
from mining to technological devices in the atomic era.
Provided by the conceptual framework of the histories of scientific
objects, this session proposal aims at focusing on the circulation of
knowledge between different places; between the invention setting and
those where they were used, between the laboratory and the clinic, the
consulting room, the pilot plant, the factory. In so doing, the
history of the sciences would include those who, by adopting and using
experiments and knowledge invented somewhere else, became integrated
in transnational expert communities articulated around hybrid
scientific objects, that is objects that belonged to different
professional and cultural spaces. By historizing their shifts and
travels, a collective of people and materials would be involved:
women, men, medical and technological institutions, gender as well as
knowledge represented in images, materials and new dispositifs, either
apparatuses or methods.
We call for contributions that take into consideration two or more of
such agents so as to provide stories of the circulation of knowledge
between political geographies, professional spaces and domains of
authority in the gendered contemporary era.

Please, note that any proposal for a contribution to this symposium
should be sent by December 12th at latest to
mariaj.santesmases@cchs.csic.es and should include:
1. Title
2. Author(s) (full name(s), academic title, institution, address,
email and a short biographical note of max.150 words). In case of
multiple authors the first author should be the presenting and
corresponding author.
3. Abstract (max. 300 words, including possible references)
4. Keywords (3)

  --
María Jesús Santesmases
Departamento de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad
Instituto de Filosofía, CCHS
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
calle Albasanz, 26-28
28037 Madrid; España
Tel. +916022375

Subject: CFP: “Visual, Material and Sensory Cultures of Zoological Gardens” (for ESHS conference, Bologna, Aug/Sept 2020)

The European Society for the History of Science will meet in Bologna, 31 August - 3 September 2020. Given that the conference theme is “Visual, Material and Sensory Cultures of Science” we would like to propose a session on

 
“Visual, Material and Sensory Cultures of Zoological Gardens”

 
In the last twenty years or so, the history of zoological gardens has been the topic of a considerable number of innovate studies, including the history of science, cultural studies, human-animal-studies and adjoining fields. Nevertheless, many questions have only been addressed in a very tentative manner. Leaving behind a rather institutional historiography we would like to get to the nitty-gritty details of the zoo. This session would like to focus for example on issues such as the experiences of visitors in all its sensory richness. How are the exotic animals “seen” and how do the displays change over time? Yet it is also interested in the concrete make-up and functioning of the zoo: how it is run on a day-to-day basis, how are animal houses build and maintained, how animals are cared for (or nor) and by whom. This also leads on to questions of how the zoo is connected with the outer world. How do the living animals get into the zoo and what happens to them once they die? How are zoos connected with each other and how does knowledge on how to run a zoo circulate among them?

We would very much welcome proposals relating to these or similar questions. Case studies may deal with zoos from anywhere in the world from the nineteenth century to the present.

Please send your abstracts by December 13th to oliver.hochadel@imf.csic.es <mailto:oliver.hochadel@imf.csic.es>. Remember the submission requirements of the ESHS:

1. Title
2. Author(s) (full name(s), academic title, institution, address,
email and a short biographical note of max.150 words). In case of
multiple authors the first author should be the presenting and
corresponding author.
3. Abstract (max. 300 words, including possible references)
4. Keywords (3)

 
 Thank you very much

Oliver Hochadel and Miquel Carandell

Barcelona

Cfp ESHS 2020: Popular representation/misrepresentation of modern physical theories

The Commission for the History of Physics calls for contributions to a symposium at the ESHS conference, Bologna (31 August-3 September 2020).

 http://www.eshs.org/Bologna-ESHS-Conference.html <http://www.eshs.org/Bologna-ESHS-Conference.html>
Popular representation/misrepresentation of modern physical theories

The first decades of the twentieth century saw a plethora of reactions to the theories of relativity and the quanta. Much has been said about the reception of such theories in different cultural, philosophical and scientific geographies but more often than not, these have been presented in terms of the consistency of the theories and their philosophical implications. Earlier "reception" studies prioritized mostly professionals in the field, physicists and to some degree mathematicians and philosophers, but we want to expand the focus to the general public and media, and also to various other kinds of intellectuals in science, medicine, humanities, religious thinkers, artists, etc. beyond physics per se. In this session we suggest, thus, to pay attention to the “visual, material, and mathematical cultures of physics,” to paraphrase the general topic of the conference in the twentieth centuries, so as to broaden the scope of the ways new theories and cultures in physics used representation technologies: from visual models to gedankenexperiments, from cartoons and public exhibits to mathematical technologies, from practical future promises to contextual political interpretations.

Please send your expressions of interest by FRIDAY 13th December to:

Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque Country, Spain):  jaume.navarro@ehu.es <mailto:jaume.navarro@ehu.es>
Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia, Canada):   anikov@mail.ubc.ca <mailto:anikov@mail.ubc.ca>