April 2017
What Fire Does: A Conference
Each year, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society sponsors an interdisciplinary program under the title of “Earth, Itself,” designed to stimulate conversations and collaborations across the natural and social sciences, humanities and the arts. What Fire Does will be held primarily from April 18-28, 2017, and will focus on the productive, creative, destructive, and transformative powers of fire. The creative arts are the ‘fire arts’—particularly ceramics and glass—with exhibitions and performances conducted in collaboration with RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). The keynote speakers will be Stephen J. Pyne (Arizona State University) and Pamela H. Smith (Columbia University).
Find out more »Pamela Smith – Keynote Address: Fire and Transformation in Early Modern European Art and Alchemy
Earth, Water, Air, and Fire were conceptual building blocks in early modern European views of nature, and, at the same time, fire was an everyday agent of transformation in all realms of early modern life, from quotidian charcoal making and other forms of utilitarian knowledge about fire and fuel, to metalworking practices, to the language of alchemical allegory. The lecture will survey these areas and focus in on the mental world of metalworkers whose work with fire involved a material network of transformative substances, including red pigments, blood, gold, and lizards. Introduction will be given by Lenore Manderson; the Chairperson is Rachel Berwick (Glass, RISD).
Find out more »May 2017
My Data, My Self: A Century of Self-Tracking Health Technologies
From women using body temperature to track their fertility, to the devices used to monitor diabetes, to recent debates about genetic tests for disease risk, this talk will explore the technologies we use to ask and answer questions about our health and what we do (and don't) come to know about ourselves in the process. The discussion will be led by CHF researchers Deanna Day, Amanda L. Mahoney, and Ramya M. Rajagopalan.
Find out more »September 2017
Immortal Life: The Promises and Perils of Biobanking and the Genetic Archive
Please join the Consortium for a reception at 5:30pm to meet and welcome historians of science, technology and medicine as they kick off the 2017-2018 academic year at the Consortium.
Find out more »April 2018
Eric R. Kandel – From Vienna to New York: Memory of a Life in Two Worlds
Nobel Prize-winner and 2018 Silvers Visiting Scholar Eric Kandel explores his career in brain science and its connection to art through the lens of his autobiography, where he reflects on how his experience as a young Jewish boy in Vienna 1938 has shaped his life as a scientist and a thinker.
Find out more »The River Ganga: India’s Iconic Water Machine
Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai and the American Center, invite you to the exhibition ‘The River Ganga: India’s Iconic Water Machine,’ researched and designed by Dr. Anthony Acciavatti from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University. By combining techniques from the arts and sciences, Acciavatti has created the first comprehensive visual profile of the Ganga River Basin in 50 years.
Find out more »New Approaches to Preindustrial Technology: Bodies, Minds, and Machines
An international workshop organized by Paula Bertucci with the support of the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, the Program in the History of Science and Medicine, the Department of History, and the Humanities Program at Yale University will take place on April 20-21, 2018.
Find out more »Science and Transformation in Jewish Culture
During this two-day colloquium, scholars from around the world will join our fellows to explore the ways that science and Judaism have long been mutual catalysts of change, exploration, and self-reflection.
Find out more »June 2018
Learning by the Book: Manuals in the History of Knowledge Conference
This international conference will feature senior scholars and graduate students working on the role of manuals and handbooks in knowledge transmission, from antiquity to the present, in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Find out more »July 2018
Utopias At Sea – Refuge, Resistance, Research
Lesvo, Greece The sea – like the concept of utopia itself – does not feature much in our current social theories, let alone our contemporary political rhetoric or social imagination. If anything, the sea seems lately to assume a villainously protagonist role in many of our present-day dystopic realities: harrowing images of the liquid refugee cemetery of the Mediterranean, depressing statistics of declining aquatic life, floating waste and toxic maritime pollution, or the impending threat of rising sea levels dominate…
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