Call for papers: An International Conference The Archival Impulse: Knowledge Production, Record Keeping, and Imperial Governance (15th-19th Centuries).

Call for papers: An International Conference The Archival Impulse: Knowledge Production, Record Keeping, and Imperial Governance (15th-19th Centuries). Vienna - March, 19-20 2026

While the examination of European imperial expansion has long been a focal point of historical inquiry, it is only two decades that scholars have begun to systematically question how knowledge production imbricated the vectors of colonialism and to rethink bureaucracy as an instrument of governance. When one looks at archives as subjects, anthropologist Laura Stoler has argued, archives can be more fruitfully conceptualized as a knowledge field where regimes of credibility are constructed. On the one hand, studies that view archives as agents endowed with epistemic force have gained much traction: a consensus among historians of empire and colonialism seems to be emerging around the notion of archives as loci of scribal power. On the other, recent studies have shown that archives are also sites of nescience or unknowing: empires, past and present, were often built on ignorance as much as on knowledge.

This scholarly trend, commonly known as “the archival turn,” thus leaves historians of imperial expansion and colonialism with a conceptual impasse. Once we have established that starting from the sixteenth century state formations made substantial investments in the production of knowledge resulting in new archival regimes, how can we explain that this knowledge was often not put to governmental service, was never exploited, or was simply ignored? In other words, is there a way for historians to explain the accumulation of documents in the archives beyond the “knowledge = power” equation? This conceptual impasse invites us to pursue further our engagement with the archival turn and at the same time encourages us to move beyond conventional approaches to the preservation of records.

This conference aims at examining how archives have grown along with imperial expansion from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. It invites proposals that engage with the history of empires, knowledge production, record keeping, and governance across different geographies. We especially encourage papers on documentary cultures across Eurasia, including contributions from scholars specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, East, South, and Southeast Asia. The goal is to historicize archival impulses globally by linking practices of record-keeping with the history of books and readership, scholarship, and education across Eurasian imperial formations. Looking at processes of knowledge production and circulation linked to colonial conquests from the early modern era through the nineteenth century, we aim at dissecting the multifaceted contexts and dynamics that have historically shaped archives. This exploration will consider the evolution of these processes over time and their intricate entanglements with concepts of power, governance, and authority. Furthermore, we will interrogate how archival transformations have mirrored and influenced local and global political realignments.

Within the framework of this conference, we anticipate stimulating papers and academic conversations along the following thematic lines:

The Imperial Machine. Exploring archives at the nexus of power and ambiguity and the role of archives as both facilitator of governance and sites of unexploited knowledge, inefficiencies, and contestation.

Political Curiosity. Investigating the role of intellectual and diplomatic inquiries in shaping imperial policies, and how curiosity-driven knowledge production influenced governance and expansion strategies.

Archival Nescience.Exploring practices of silencing, concealment, and selective memory in imperial archives, and their implications for historical knowledge and erasure.

Forging Historical Insight. Examining the emergence of archives as primary venues for historical and historiographical knowledge production.

Epistemologies of Access. Reflecting on how the (in-)accessibility of archives in today’s changing world impacts the historiography of the archival turn.

Between Imperial Arcana and Publicité. Analyzing the tension between secrecy and public access in archival policies during the eighteenth century and beyond, and its impact on governance and transparency.

Archivist Persona. Delving into the cultural and social history of archival personnel, their roles, identities, and contributions to the shaping of archival knowledge.

We invite colleagues to send a short CV and a 300-word abstract for a thirty-minute paper, addressing the questions above. The deadline for submission is 30 March 2025. Please send these documents to sice(at)oeaw.ac.at. Applicants will be notified of the acceptance of their proposal by April 18, 2025. The conference is jointly organized by the FWF-Project “Central Asia in Russian Diplomatic Archives”, the Committee for the Study of Islam in Central Eurasia (SICE) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Austrian Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations”. The conference will take place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. Some support for travel costs will be available. Accommodation in Vienna will be provided for the duration of the conference.

Ulfat Abdurasulov (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Jan Hennings (Central European University)

Paolo Sartori (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Mirosław Ossowski: Max Toeppen (1822–1893). Historyk, filolog, dyrektor gimnazjalny [Max Toeppen (1822–1893). Historian, Philologist, a Gymnasium Director].

 Mirosław Ossowski: Max Toeppen (1822–1893). Historyk, filolog, dyrektor gimnazjalny [Max Toeppen (1822–1893). Historian, Philologist, a Gymnasium Director]. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 2025. ISBN: 978-83-8206-697-5

Wybór postaci Maxa Toeppena i jego dokonań naukowych jako przedmiotu badań wydaje się jak najbardziej celowy. Napisałem „postaci”, gdyż praca profesora Mirosława Ossowskiego nie przynosi jedynie analizy twórczości pruskiego historyka. Dorobek naukowy został bowiem przedstawiony w szerokim kontekście całego życia Toeppena. Można stwierdzić, że jest to analityczne studium działalności przedstawiciela pruskiej klasy średniej w ówczesnym systemie naukowym i oświatowym. Do tej pory zajmowano się Toeppenem głównie jako naukowcem, nie omawiano bardziej szczegółowo jego pracy pedagogicznej. W książce zaprezentowano biografię autora Historii Mazur, od rozpoczęcia nauki w szkole średniej po kolejne etapy życia zawodowego, aż do emerytury. Na tym tle został ukazany jego dorobek naukowy. Takie ujęcie tematyki uważam za istotny walor recenzowanej monografii, ponieważ jej autor nie ograniczył się do analizy dzieł twórcy, a przedstawił go jako człowieka. Z tekstu wyłania się dość szczegółowy obraz pewnego fragmentu epoki, gdyż profesor Ossowski przybliża nam działanie ówczesnego systemu oświaty na szczeblu wyższym, funkcjonowanie gimnazjów, stosowane wówczas metody dydaktyczne, a także nastroje i stosunki panujące w gronie pedagogicznym, jego reakcje (w tym oczywiście i naszego bohatera) na rozgrywające się wtedy wydarzenia.

Z recenzji wydawniczej prof. dr. hab. Grzegorza Jasińskiego

📷

HSS 2025 Annual Meeting: Call for Proposals

 2025 Annual Meeting: Call for Proposals

New Orleans, LA, USA

13-16 November 2025

New Orleans Sheraton Hotel

 

Deadline for Proposals: Friday 11 April 2025 11:59 pm PDT

Submission site: https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/hss/hss25/

 The History of Science Society (HSS) will hold its 2025 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The meeting will be in-person. We invite submissions on any topic in the history of science. 

We look forward to your submissions! The following guidelines explain the available options for proposals in more detail.

Guidelines

You may appear only once on the program as a presenter in a regular session or roundtable—i.e., as a speaker or commentator. However, you may appear as a presenter and organizer or chair (or both organizer and chair).

Anyone who appears on the program must register. Failure to pay the registration fee by 1 October will result in removal from the program.

All abstracts must be 2,000 characters or fewer (about 250 words).

We encourage submission of proposals for sessions, roundtables, and individual papers.

Proposals for individual 20-minute papers, alone or as part of an organized session, should be focused on original, unpublished work. If you wish to present on a published book, please submit a proposal to join an “Author Roundtable” (see below). 

To facilitate an inclusive environment and promote international participation, we encourage submissions in languages other than English, accompanied by a translated English version. 

The Program Chairs will make decisions on proposals accepted for the program using the following criteria: intellectual merit and quality, distinctiveness (to ensure balance in the program), sponsorship by Forums or Caucuses (sponsorship requests should be noted in the “Special Request” field when submitting), non-duplication of speaking roles, frequency of speakers’ past acceptances in recent programs (2023 and 2024), and inclusion of diversity of participants in terms of demographics that include, career stage/track, geographical location, and institutional affiliation. The Program Chairs strive to accept as many proposals that meet the review criteria as can be accommodated given space and scheduling constraints.

 

Demographic Data

Driven by our mission “to foster interest in the history of science,” the HSS collects demographic information to understand the composition of its submitting proposers, members, and meeting attendees; anonymized demographic data to its members and the public. We are cautious of the exploitation made possible by demographic data collection. Therefore, we are committed to collecting information in a manner that is voluntary, allows for self-description, and is purposeful. The information will be kept confidential, and any reporting of it will be in the aggregate and anonymized. The Program Chairs will take into consideration certain demographics in making decisions about the program, in an effort to achieve balance in the program.  

Respectful Behavior Policy

All participants and attendees of the HSS Annual Meeting, whether participating in-person or virtually, are expected to act in accordance with the Respectful Behavior Policy, which can be read here.

Accessibility and Inclusivity 

The History of Science Society is committed to making our meeting accessible. Presenters should be aware of the guidelines for accessible presentations, which includes verbal description of all images presented on the slides, as they develop their presentations. Please make sure to review the guidelines for best practices for accessibility and inclusion available here. Additional guidelines will be available to accepted presenters. 

Strategies for Organizing Sessions and Roundtables

To encourage and aid the creation of sessions and roundtables with strong thematic coherence that draw upon historians of science across institutions and ranks, the HSS has created a collaboration form to submit proposals in need of panelists and a spreadsheet to review submitted proposals. Anyone with a session, presentation, or roundtable idea seeking collaborators should post and consult the postings on the spreadsheet to round out a prospective session. Submitting your presentation as part of a session increases the chances for it to be accepted.

 Grants Opportunities 

Travel Grants 

To defray travel costs, the HSS will make available several grant opportunities.

We offer National Science Foundation travel grants to graduate students, independent scholars, and recent PhDs (degree in the past 5 years) who are participating in the meeting. Only US citizens or those studying at US institutions are eligible for NSF grants. More information will be available closer to the conference date. In accordance with NSF's aims, we encourage applications from individuals in groups underrepresented in our community, and from those without access to additional funds for whom conference attendance would be financially difficult without the NSF travel grant.

HSS will offer a limited number of travel grants for students, independent scholars, and recent PhDs who are participating in the meeting, but who are ineligible for NSF grants

Dependent care grants (up to US$250) will be offered for those who need such assistance. These grants are available to defray the costs of care either at home or at the meeting site

For information on these grants, please contact us via email.

HSS Gerjuoy/Michel Award

Thanks to a generous gift by an anonymous member, the Society will offer an award of US$500 for the best abstract submitted by an independent scholar. Those scholars who are part of an organized session or who submit a contributed paper, and whose institutions do not consider these scholars to be working historians are eligible. If you meet this criteria and would like to be considered, please inform your organizer or select this option in All Academic.

Submission Types      

Contributed Paper

A standalone presentation no longer than 20 minutes. Accepted contributed papers will be assigned to a session with other contributed papers with similar themes. 

 

Organized Session

A panel about a common theme, consisting of an organizer, chair, and presenters: presenters may include three or four speakers, who will present in a ninety-minute session, ensuring that at least ten of those minutes are given over to audience questions. The session organizer submits all abstracts, and each presenter must provide their personal profile information individually. As a session organizer, please make sure that all of your presenters submit the required information accordingly, as the organized session submission will only be accepted by the system once all this information is complete.

Roundtables

Roundtables are panels that facilitate dialogue on topical issues related to professional practice, historiographical themes, or broader social/political/cultural impacts of science and/or historical practice. Roundtables may include up to six speakers who speak for short periods (typically five minutes), leaving ample time for exchanges with the audience. Roundtable participants may not present in another session or roundtable. Roundtables organized around themes of teaching, futures, or authors should be submitted separately for consideration by the Organizing Committee (see below).

Teaching Roundtables

Roundtable proposals that intend to engage participants and attendees in conversations on pedagogy, syllabi, key works, archives, and mentorship can be submitted as a “Teaching” proposal, for consideration in the program. Only a limited number of such roundtables will be designated as “Teaching” events. 

“Futures” Roundtables

Roundtable proposals that intend to engage participants and attendees in conversations concerning the “future of the field,” “future of the profession,” “future of the Society,” “future of ... ” (etc.), of broad interest to our community can be identified as “Futures” proposals, for consideration of designation as such in the program. Only a limited number of such roundtables will be designated as “Futures” events. Any submissions that are not accepted as “Futures” roundtables will still be considered for inclusion in the program as regular roundtables. 

Authors Roundtables 

We invite authors of monographs and editors of collective volumes published in the history of science, technology, and medicine in 2024 and 2025 to promote their work in the community. These roundtables will be opportunities for authors of new books to chat about their process and challenges in researching, writing, and publishing their books and discuss the future directions of their research and the field. Authors submit individually; the program chairs will organize the roundtables. Preference will be given to first book authors, junior scholars, and independent scholars. 

HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology - Call for a thematic dossier to be published in 2026

HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology  - Call for a thematic dossier to be published in 2026

HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology

Call for a thematic dossier to be published in 2026

Deadline: 31 March 2025

HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology, recently indexed by Scopus, is an open access, on-line peer-reviewed international journal devoted to the History of Science and Technology, published in English by a group of Portuguese research institutions and De Gruyter Brill/Sciendo. HoST encourages submissions of original historical research exploring the cultural, social and political dimensions of science, technology, and medicine (STM), both from a local and a global perspective.

Past thematic issues have dealt with topics as diverse as circulation, science communication, natural history, or the relation between science, technology and politics. Future issues might deal with both established and emerging areas of scholarship. The editors of HoST are looking for proposals for a thematic dossier to be published in 2026 (HoST volume 20, issue 2-December).

Each thematic dossier should be prepared by the guest editor(s) and include four research papers along with an introduction.

Submission guidelines

Proposals should include the following items:

  1.  An abstract describing the topic for the thematic dossier and its significance (500

words);

  2.  A list of the contributors along with the titles and abstracts (300 words) of the four

research papers;

  3.  Brief CVs (300 words) of the guest editor(s) and authors;

The guest editor(s) and the contributors must be prepared to meet HoST's publication schedule:

  *   Abstract and titles submission: 31 March 2025

  *   Submission of complete research papers: 30 February 2026

  *   Publication: December 2026 (Issue 20.2)

Proposals will be subject to approval by the Editorial Board and authors will be informed of the outcome by the end of April 2025. Submissions should be sent as an e-mail attachment (preferably in one single .doc, .docx, .rtf or .odt file), to the chief-editor: chiefeditor@johost.eu

call for papers: Between Hope and Reality. Modernization and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe

 call for papers: Between Hope and Reality. Modernization and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder, 22.05.2025 - 23.05.2025, deadline 23.02.2025

Full cfp: https://www.vcpu.europa-uni.de/en/research/conferences/index.html#00-conference0-153577005

The VCPU Annual Conference 2025 addresses current challenges in Polish and Ukrainian studies and is dedicated to the research project “Mod-Block-DDR.” Both areas are framed by the concepts of “modernization” and “transformation.” The presentation of research findings on socialist modernization in the German Democratic Republic and the People's Republic of Poland, including their achievements and obstacles, will serve as a stimulus for discussing the political, economic, social, and cultural transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. All researchers from disciplines such as (but not limited to) economic history, the history of science, or sociology are invited to participate. At the Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies, we aim to place special focus on Ukraine as a new sphere of modernization processes (e.g. migration, the opening to western Europe, and integration with the European Union) and socio-economic transformations initiated by the outbreak of Russia‘s War of Aggression. These focal points highlight the diverse theoretical and methodological potential of the Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies: interdisciplinarity that integrates historical, political, economic, and cultural studies and fosters transnational cooperation between scholars.

Topics of Interest We invite original and unpublished contributions on topics including, but not limited to: 

 Socialist modernization 

 Political, economic, and cultural transformations in Central and Eastern Europe (broadly defined) 

 Migration and integration with the EU 

 Theoretical and methodological approaches to Central and East European studies 

 Cross-border interdisciplinary collaborations 

We welcome contributions on topics related to these themes as well as on general themes in the history of Central and East European and neighboring fields. 

The format of proposals should be as follows: 

• Proposals for individual papers (title, abstract, affiliation, short biography of applicant) 

• Proposals for whole panels in traditional or alternative formats (panel title, theme description with max. 300 words, abstracts of papers with max. 150 words each, name, affiliation, short biography of participants. Please send a single document in pdf-format)

Submission Guidelines 1. Please name your file with your surname. 2. Authors are requested to submit the proposals by February 23, 2025. 3. Interested participants need to register by February 23, 2025. 4. The official language of the conference, including all presentations and discussions, will be English. 5. Please submit your abstracts and papers to Mr. Konrad Walerski: walerski@europa-uni.de.

Kontakt

Konrad Walerski, M.A.

walerski@europa-uni.de

Tel.: +49 335 5534 2645

 

Call for panelists, HSS 2025: From Trust to Crisis: Scientific Credibility and Institutional Legitimacy in the 20th Century

 From Trust to Crisis: Scientific Credibility and Institutional Legitimacy in the 20th Century 

Call for panelists for a section at HSS 2025 in New Orleans, November 13-16, 2025. 

Throughout the 20th century, science emerged as one of the most trusted social institutions, often supplanting religion as the primary source of epistemic authority. This trust, however, was neither static nor unchallenged. Institutions frequently appropriated the credibility of science to legitimize their policies, reinforce ideological agendas, or justify governance strategies. This strategic deployment of scientific authority took various forms, from the use of experts in decision-making processes to rhetorical claims of "scientific planning," "science-based modernization," and "scientific management.

The intersection of science and institutional trust raises important historical questions. What mechanisms did institutions use to cultivate and maintain their association with scientific authority? To what extent did scientists themselves shape or contest these appropriations? How did moments of institutional crisis - whether political, environmental, or economic - affect public trust in science? Conversely, how did scientific controversies or failures, such as the Chernobyl disaster, affect the institutions that relied on science for legitimacy?

This panel seeks contributions that explore the evolving relationship between science and institutional trust in different historical contexts in the twentieth century. We invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following topics

• The role of trust in scientific expertise in state governance and policy-making
• The use of science as a legitimizing tool by international organizations
• The impact of ideological and political changes on the credibility of science
• Scientific crises and their impact on institutional trust
• The agency of scientists in shaping, resisting, or reinforcing institutional trust narratives

Case studies examining the appropriation of science and scientific credibility in industry, public health, or environmental policy.

By examining these dynamics, this panel aims to historicize the fluctuating nature of trust in science and interrogate its role in shaping modern institutions. We welcome contributions from scholars across disciplines, including history of science, political history, and intellectual history.

Please send abstracts of 2,000 characters or less, to surman@mua.cas.cz and doubravka.olsakova@fsv.cuni.cz by February 28, 2025. Please feel free to contact us with informal inquiries beforehand. 

CHORUS colloquium, dedicated to the legacy of the “dean of the history of Russian science” Loren R. Graham (1933-2024)

 Dear colleagues,

 

On Thursday, February 20, you are cordially invited to our next CHORUS online colloquium, dedicated to the legacy of the “dean of the history of Russian science” Loren R. Graham (1933-2024). The session will feature four of Loren’s major books, presented by his students and collaborators:

 

• Michael Gordin (Princeton University), on What Have We Learned about Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Stanford, 1998)
• Paul Josephson (Colby College), on The Ghost of the Executed Engineer (Harvard, 1993)
• Irina Dezhina (Gaidar Institute), on Science in the New Russia: Crisis, Aid, Reform (co-authored with Irina Dezhina, Johns Hopkins, 2008)
• Douglas Weiner (University of Arizona), on Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (MIT, 2013)

 

Each 15-min talk will be followed by a 15-min. discussion.

The meeting will be held on Thursday, February 20, at 8 am (Los Angeles) / 11 аm (New York) / 17:00 (CET) / 18:00 (Kyiv). For access please email Slava Gerovitch (https://math.mit.edu/directory/profile.html?pid=1160) 

About the speakers:

 

Michael D. Gordin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and Dean of the College at Princeton University. As a graduate student at Harvard, he studied under Loren Graham. Dr. Gordin specializes in the history of the modern physical sciences and Russian, European, and American history. He is the author of A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (2004), Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (2007), Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (2009), The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe (2012), Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English (2015), Einstein in Bohemia (2020), On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (2021), a co-author of How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (2013), and a co-editor of the four-volume Routledge History of the Modern Physical Sciences (2001), Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860-1960 (2008), Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility (2010), and The Age of Hiroshima (2020). He is currently working on a history of the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on science inside and outside of Russia.

https://history.princeton.edu/people/michael-d-gordin

 

Paul Josephson is Professor Emeritus of History at Colby College. As a graduate student at MIT, he studied under Loren Graham. Dr. Josephson is a specialist in the history of twentieth century science and technology.  He became interested in this subject through study of the Soviet philosophy of science, dialectical materialism, and its impact on the development of relativity theory and quantum mechanics within Soviet borders. He is the author of Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (1991), New Atlantis Revisited: The Siberian City of Science (1997), Industrialized Nature (2002), Red Atom (2005), Resources Under Regimes (2005), Totalitarian Science and Technology (2005), Motorized Obsessions: Life, Liberty and the Small Bore Engine (2007); Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? Technological Utopianism Under Socialism (2009), Lenin’s Laureate: A Life in Communist Science (2010), An Environmental History of Russia (2013), Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologies  (2015); Traffic (2017); Chicken (2020); Nuclear Russia: The Atom in Russian Politics and Culture (2022), and Hero Projects: The Russian Empire and Big Technology from Lenin to Putin (2024). He is currently working on two books, one on race, gender and technology in the internet age, the other a global environmental history of the nuclear age. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.

 

Irina Dezhina is a leading researcher at the Gaidar Institute of Economic Policy. She was a Fulbright Scholar at MIT (1997), a Fellow at the Kennan Institute (1994 and 2013), and a visiting scholar at Stanford (2024). She has published several books and more than 350 articles on the development of science and technology in Russia and the world. Her major monographs include Government Regulation of Science in Russia (2008), Science in the New Russia: Crisis, Aid, Reform (co-authored with Loren Graham, 2008), and Transformational Research: New Priority of the State After the Pandemic (2020). Since 1995 she has been the author of the chapter “State of Science and Innovation” in the annual edition “Russian Economy: Trends and Prospects” by the Gaidar Institute. In 2016, she was awarded a title Chevalier, The Ordre des Palmes académiques (Order of Academic Palms, France) for works on Russian science and technology policy.

https://www.iep.ru/en/person/dezhina-irina-g.html

 

Douglas Weiner is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona in Tuscon. He earned his PhD at Columbia University under Loren Graham. According to the Russian newspaper ZAVTRA, Dr. Weiner was one of the people chiefly responsible for the downfall of the Soviet Union. His research has focused on examining and explaining environmental policies and the nature of environmental activism in the Soviet Union; see Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (1988) and A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (1999). Paradoxically, in light of the above, he has also written critiques of "environment" and "environmental history" as fuzzy concepts.  See esp. "A Death-defying Attempt to Articulate a Coherent Definition of Environmental History," Environmental History 10:3 (July 2005). He is currently working on a book, "Curiosity for its Own Sake," about the conflict between progressive education and its tsarist and Stalinist opponents, both of whom sought to "teach to the test." He loves bowling, cats, and high culture.

https://history.arizona.edu/person/douglas-weiner

 

 

CfP: Culture and Psychiatric Paradigms During the Cold War

 Dear all.

Call for papers for the workshop “Culture and Psychiatric Paradigms During the Cold War,” which will take place on June 18-19, 2025, at Charité University, Berlin.

The workshop will be organized in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences-BAS) and the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine, Charité Berlin, as part of the ERC Synergy Project “Leviathan.” In-person attendance is mandatory. Further information about the project can be found here: https://leviathan-europe.eu/.

You can check all the necessary information in the CfP here: https://historypsychiatry.com/2025/01/30/call-for-papers-culture-and-psychiatric-paradigms-during-the-cold-war/ . If you have any questions, please contact me via social media or via e-mail: tiago.pires@iefem.bas.bg

(from Tiago Pires)

Marc Landry: Mountain Battery. The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age

Marc Landry: Mountain Battery. The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age.  Redwood City: Stanford University Press 2024. ISBN: 9781503639775

Excerpts: https://www.sup.org/books/history/mountain-battery/excerpts

By the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans had come to see the Alps as the ideal place to fashion an alternative to the era's dominant energy source: coal. After 1850, Alpine water increasingly became "white coal": a power source with the revolutionary economic potential of fossil fuel. In this book, Marc Landry shows how dam-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries transformed the Alps into Europe's "battery"—an energy landscape designed to store and produce electricity for use throughout the Continent. These stores of energy played an important role in supplying the war economies of west-central Europe in both world wars as demand for munitions and other factory production necessitated access to electrical energy and the conservation of coal.

Through historical research conducted in archives across Europe—especially in Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Italy—Landry shows how and why Europeans thoroughly transformed the Alps in order to generate hydroelectricity, and explores the effects of its attendant economic and military advantages across the turbulent twentieth century. Landry surveys the environmental and energy changes wrought by dam-building, demonstrating that with global warming, melting glaciers, and calls for a green energy transition, the future of white coal is once again in question in twenty-first-century Europe.

Marc Landry is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies at the University of New Orleans.

Christine Karner: "Dies mein zweites Leben soll nicht gemordet werden". Elise Richter und ihre Tagebücher. Eine Biografie

Christine Karner: "Dies mein zweites Leben soll nicht gemordet werden". Elise Richter und ihre Tagebücher. Eine Biografie. Wien: Löcker Verlag 2025. ISBN: 978-3-99098-205-1

Beschreibung

Elise Richter (1865–1943) war gemessen an den gesellschaftlichen Standards und der Geschlechterordnung ihrer Zeit eine außergewöhnliche Frau. Sie wurde nicht nur zu einer Pionierin des ab 1897 schrittweise zugelassenen Frauenstudiums an der Universität Wien, sondern auch die erste habilitierte Wissenschaftlerin im deutschsprachigen Raum (1905/07) und eine weit über die Grenzen Österreichs hinaus anerkannte Romanistin. Im „Dritten Reich“ galt sie als „Rassejüdin“; sie wurde entrechtet und schließlich mit ihrer Schwester Helene Richter im Oktober 1942 nach Theresienstadt deportiert, wo sie elendiglich umkam.

In all diesen Jahren hat Elise Richter Tagebuch geführt und da­­­mit ein besonders reichhaltiges Quellenkorpus hinterlassen, das nun erstmals umfassend ausgewertet wurde: Welche Ereignisse, Sichtweisen und Deutungen werden in diesen Aufzeichnungen erwähnt und reflektiert? Was schrieb Elise Richter darin über Freund*innen, Wegstreiter*innen, Kolleg*innen …, was über ihren mit vielen Hindernissen belegten Werdegang als Wissenschaftlerin? Und welche widersprüchlichen oder ambivalenten Positionierungen fallen dabei besonders auf, welche (inneren) Kämpfe und Konflikte werden manifest?

Das sind einige der Fragen, die in Christine Karners Biografie von Elise Richter behandelt werden. Sie führt von der Herkunft der jüdischen Familien Richter und Lackenbacher über die Kindheit von Helene und Elise bis zu deren Tod im Konzentrationslager Theresienstadt – wobei stets die Tagebücher im Zentrum stehen, aus denen durchgehend und dicht zitiert wird. So werden bisherige Forschungen oder Lesarten zu Elise Richters Biografie erweitert und neue Blickweisen auf die so wichtige Pionierin an der Universität Wien zur Diskussion gestellt.

CFP: Women’s Scientific Literatures: The Poetry and Poetics of Early Modern Natural Philosophy

 CFP: Women’s Scientific Literatures: The Poetry and Poetics of Early Modern Natural Philosophy, 26–27th June 2025, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge Deadline for submissions: Monday 3rd March 2025. Deadline: 03.03.2025

Plenary speakers

- Danielle Clarke (University College Dublin)

- Helena Taylor (University of Exeter)

Confirmed speakers

- Liza Blake (University of Toronto)

- Sajed Chowdhury (Utrecht University)

- Johanna Luggin (Innsbruck University)

- Whitney Sperrazza (Texas A&M University)

- Elizabeth Swann (Durham University)

How did early modern women poets engage with and contribute to natural philosophical thought? ‘Women’s Scientific Literatures: The Poetry and Poetics of Early Modern Natural Philosophy’ will explore a substantial body of poetic work by early modern women that engages knowingly and creatively with natural philosophical ideas. While recent scholarship has drawn attention to the scientific knowledge embedded in women’s recipe books and natural philosophic prose, we have yet to fully uncover the specific and sustained engagement with the natural sciences in female- authored verse and poetics, particularly in manuscript or in under-explored printed texts. This is the case especially in poetic texts that have not been read through a scientific lens but nevertheless demonstrate sophisticated scientific knowledge. Taking up forms from the epigram to the lyric, papers will show how early modern women used literary and material poetic forms as productive, experimental spaces to explore scientific ways of thinking.

One of the major ‘discoveries’ in early modern scholarship over the past few decades is the extent to which women writers, including Margaret Cavendish, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Émilie du Châtelet produced incisive scientific writing and engaged with contemporary natural philosophy. There remains, however, an extensive body of lesser-known manuscript literature by women on scientific subjects, and, of equal importance, a pressing need for a methodological realignment in how we understand this material. Jaime Goodrich and Paula McQuade recently argued for “a feminist philosophical approach to early modern women’s writing, in which scholars do not write about female authors but rather think with them about the great existential questions that have vexed generations of human beings” (2021). This is a timely and urgent call to action, which demands a rediscovery of the philosophical themes and vocabularies that pervade texts written by women.

With particular attention to lesser-known, marginal or unpublished work, this conference will examine how early modern women were exploring natural philosophical topics in depth across a range of literary forms and in devotional, fantastical, political, autobiographical and elegiac writings as well as in predominantly natural philosophical texts. Examples might include the presence of atomic physics in devotional lyric; explorations of botany and astronomy in country house poems and hexameral narratives; reflections on anatomy in political verse. By drawing attention to overlooked, surprising, or unconventional occurrences of scientific thought, we seek to rethink the contexts and philosophical knowledge base of early modern women’s writing, as well as the history of the relations between natural philosophy and poetics more broadly.

Topics of interest might include:

- Women’s use of poetic genres and forms as vehicles for scientific knowledge (devotional, occasional, dedicatory; the elegy, the ode, the epigram etc.).

- Natural philosophical vocabularies including, but not limited to, cosmology and astronomy; the body, soul and medicine; botany and alchemy in women’s poetic texts.

- Women’s participation in (and exclusion from) spaces and communities of learning, including scientific and philosophical circles and academies, salons, literary coteries, correspondence networks, and patronage networks.

- How scientific ideas filter into other frameworks of women’s poetic writing, such as the theological, political and domestic.

- Relations in women’s scientific-poetic writing between early modern vernaculars and neo-Latin.

- Instances of transcultural and transnational encounter and exchange in women’s natural philosophic writing.

- The role of manuscript and printed texts in preserving women’s natural philosophical works.

- Comparative studies of male and female literary engagement with natural philosophy.

- Recovery of lesser-known, marginal, or unpublished work by women writers.

- The historiographical exclusion of women’s poetry from histories of science and philosophy.

- New methodologies for reading women’s poetic writing.

Please send proposals of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers or contributions for roundtables (in English), along with a short biographical note (c. 50 words), to WomensScientificLiteratures@gmail.com by Monday 3rd March 2025. We welcome submissions from graduate students and ECRs. Please get in touch with any questions.

Martin Franc, Věra Dvořáčková (eds.), Dějiny Československé akademie věd II. (1963–1970) [History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences II (1963–1970)].

Martin Franc, Věra Dvořáčková (eds.), Dějiny Československé akademie věd II. (1963–1970) [History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences II (1963–1970)]. Praha: Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR; Academia 2024. ISBN: 978-80-200-3569-1

Druhý díl dějin Československé akademie věd se zabývá obdobím, kdy v jejím čele stál chemik František Šorm. Šedesátá léta jsou spojována s uvolňováním politických poměrů, rozvojem občanské společnosti i se stále větší otevřeností vůči impulzům ze západní společnosti. Změny naplno využívala i ČSAV a pro mnoho oborů byla šedesátá léta zlatou érou rozvoje. Zároveň šlo o období výrazných reforem uvnitř Akademie věd i o dobu hledání nové pozice této nejvýznamnější československé mimouniverzitní vědecké instituce ve společnosti v podmínkách hospodářské krize i zásadních ekonomických reforem. V nelehkém bouřlivém období sklonku šedesátých let ČSAV, její zaměstnanci i vedení celkově obstáli se ctí, i když to znamenalo, že instituce upadla u mocných v nemilost jako jedno z „center kontrarevoluce“.

Klio, Vol. 71 (2024): Tom specjalny kopernikański // Special issue on Copernicus

Klio, Vol. 71 (2024): Tom specjalny kopernikański // Special issue on Copernicus is published. Polish with English abstracts

OA URL: https://apcz.umk.pl/KLIO/issue/view/2905

This issue table of contents

Artykuły

Punctator at the University of Bologna in the era of Copernican studies

Stanisław Sroka

7-17

 pdf (Język Polski)

Corpus Mysticum versus Corpora Terrestria. Kościół rzymskokatolicki wobec Mikołaja Kopernika XV-XXI wiek.

Hubert Łaszkiewicz

19-36

 pdf (Język Polski)

Popularisation of Nicolaus Copernicus and His Achievements in the Polish People's Republic

Mateusz Hübner

37-61

 pdf (Język Polski)

Mikołaj Kopernik in recent history textbooks. A Polish-German comparison

Izabela Lewandowska, Stephanie Zloch

63-92

 pdf (Język Polski)

Patron 2023 roku i Dnia Nauki Polskiej. Parlamentarne upamiętnienie Mikołaja Kopernika

Marek Białokur, Teresa Maresz

93-136

 pdf (Język Polski)

Perspektywy badań kopernikańskich a odmienne tradycje metodologiczne w 550. rocznicę urodzin Mikołaja Kopernika.

Michał Kokowski

137-177

 pdf (Język Polski)

Artykuły recenzyjne i polemiki

On the life and work of Nicolaus Copernicus – New scientific literature published in the anniversary year

Barbara Bienias

179-196

 pdf (Język Polski)

Do We Already Know Everything About Nicolaus Copernicus's Studies?Some Reflections on Marian Chachaj's Monograph

Andrzej Korytko

197-210

 pdf (Język Polski)

Recenzje

Mirosław Bochenek, Mikołaj Kopernik czy Thomas Gresham? O historii i dyspucie wokół prawa gorszego pieniądza, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2023, ss. 670

Mirosław Kłusek

213-217

 pdf (Język Polski)

Stanisław Roszak, Agnieszka Wieczorek, Mikołaj Kopernik. Życie po życiu. Osiemnastowieczne kręgi pamięci, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2023

Kazimierz Stanisław Puchowski

219-224

 pdf (Język Polski)

Kronika naukowa

Sprawozdanie z krakowskiej części Światowego Kongresu Kopernikańskiego 24–26 maja 2023 r.

Łukasz Kwiatek

225-232

 pdf (Język Polski)

Sprawozdanie z olsztyńskiej części Światowego Kongresu Kopernikańskiego 21–24 czerwca 2023 r.

Elżbieta Klimus

233-240

 pdf (Język Polski)

Sprawozdanie z toruńskiej części Światowego Kongresu Kopernikańskiego 11–16 września 2023 r.

Rafał Openkowski

241-252

 pdf (Język Polski)

Suplement

Bibliografia Kopernikowska 2023 wraz z uzupełnieniami

Jolanta Milz-Kłaczkow, Adam Biedrzycki

253-310

 pdf (Język Polski)

Call for Collaboration: Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities

 Call for Collaboration: Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities

The project “Unlocking Maths: Teaching and Learning Practices in the Habsburg Lands: 1750s–early 1800s” (https://unlockmaths.wordpress.com/) as part of the Centre for Science, Technology and Society Studies (Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences) is prepared to assist candidates in preparing an application for the following postdoctoral opportunities:

A postdoc from the Czech Academy of Sciences (https://www.flu.cas.cz/images/dokumenty/verejne/jine/2025/PPPLZ_2025_text-web-newsletter.pdf)

Postdoctoral Fellowships Incoming, from the Czech Science Agency (GAČR) (https://gacr.cz/en/types-of-grant-projects/)

Knowledge of the Czech language is not required.

In particular, we are especially interested in in supporting research proposals that focus on:

The cultural history of mathematics and sociology of mathematics, with a focus on the development of practical and military mathematics during the long eighteenth century

The history of education, including institutional histories, with a non-exclusive emphasis on the Habsburg lands or Central and Eastern Europe during the long 18th century

The application of digital humanities methodologies to the history of science and mathematics, especially with a focus on the 18th century

Interested candidates in either call are invited to send their application to Davide Crippa (crippa@flu.cas.cz) by March 01, 2025. The application must include:

* a preliminary version of the research project (max 2 pages)

* a short curriculum vitae (with a clear presentation of publications and the date of the Ph.D. defense or its equivalent. For candidates who have not yet defended, the expected date of the defense must be provided, which must occur before the fellowship commences.)

Selected applicants will receive guidance on their project and support in preparing the final submission.

Questions can be directed to: crippa@flu.cas.cz

Davide Crippa (https://stss.flu.cas.cz/all/people/davide-crippa)

Image: Lehrbuch der Arithmetik und der praktischen Geometrie, Cod. Sal. VII,96; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg; Heidelberg; Bundesrepublik Deutschland.