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Origin and Descents by John Mathew November 9, 2008

Posted by Jenny Ferng in Book Club.
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This post is not actually mine but belongs to a colleague here in Paris and one of Will’s former classmates, John Mathew, who is a candidate in the history of science at Harvard University. He has written a fictional novel about to be published based on Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and their encounter with India. Most of his material is based on historical archives. I thought this selection of his work reminds us of the quandary that many historians and indeed, many writers of historical fiction inevitably face — can historical novels be capable of good historical study, and can they do justice to their protagonists who are based on real-life scientists? Charles Gillispie in a recent issue of Isis advocated for true faithfulness to historical sources, a lively narrative, and a push for less apparatus, more readibility.

This selection is copyrighted by John Mathew through Apeejay House, Calcutta (Kolkata). Please do not quote or reproduce without permission of the author.

Chapter 1
1.1
They tell you there are stars when it happens. Never mind the intervening elements, like branches and leaves, and yes, headstones looming lofty on the hill alongside if you’re lying supine in context. But I don’t remember the stars from the outset. I do remember the leprechaun, however, pirouetting and whirling like a grinning dervish on the grave of Asa Gray, which, my mind informed me, afforded me a current locus in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Then the clouds parted and the stars appeared, braided into a necklace that (more…)

Cowboys, Scientists, and Curators August 18, 2008

Posted by Jenny Ferng in Uncategorized.
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Will has been reminding me of my inactive presence on this blog so I finally decided to get my act together and contribute something more history of science-ish.

Having been inspired by Will’s numerous reviews on the recent Isis from June 2008, I thought I would tackle Jeremy Vetter’s essay (in the same issue) “Cowboys, Scientists, and Fossils,” which underscores several history of science questions about the tensions between local collaborators and experts from the “outside,” including professional collectors, scientists, and museum curators. While American paleontology in the early 20th century is not exactly a specialized interest of mine, it does, however, dovetail into some of the similar challenges faced by European geologists in the early 19th century (some of whom I do study). I did read the work of Robert Kohler a long time ago whose books Lords of the Fly and Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology stimulated my scholarly curiosity about how contestations in the field affected the bigger picture of making science and whose concepts are echoed in Vetter’s ideas about the status of the field site as a place of contentious negotiation. The intervention of (more…)

French history debate results May 12, 2008

Posted by Jenny Ferng in Uncategorized.
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Sorry for another prolonged absence. Obviously Will is beating me in the number of posts here but I will do my best to plod alongside his commentary. This post summarizes our online debate that occurred several weeks ago. We are thinking of trying something similar, maybe with more of a direct science slant, in the near future.

Online debate on French history, theory, and the question of modernism

Our first experimental virtual chat went very well, and we are happy to report that we had the generous participation of some French historians in training who took some time to talk with us about the usage of theory, the meanings behind history, and what it means to be modern.

Our guests included Micah Alpaugh, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Irvine, who studies non-violent political protest during the French Revolution; Meghan Cunningham, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Northwestern, who examines modern conceptions of the family as evidenced in the writings of Enlightenment savants; and Natasha Naujoks, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UNC Chapel Hill, who investigates the mythology of Napoleon during the 19th century in light of both classical and contemporary traditions.

Here are summaries and fragmented excerpts selected from our group chat:

1. Derrida and Foucault in the Classroom

The long shadowy presence of Foucault seemed to dominate this part of the conversation since most of our participants’ educational backgrounds had touched upon his theories in some way. Most of our guests were in agreement that theory was often taught but there was little in the way of guidance about how to employ theory in relation to history. Natasha recommended Elizabeth Clark’s History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn as a good source that commented about the origins of the “new intellectual history” and its debt to French theory. Apparently, it also turned out that I was the sole supporter of theory with Will and the others quite happy to leave it alone. No closet Deleuzians here…

2. Textual Interpretation, Inside Out

Literary interpretation was another area of interest that seemed to be debilitating, or at least, lacking in proper means of usage. Meghan raised the problem of interpreting the emotional language found in the letters between romantic partners, parents/children, and friends for the purposes of her dissertation. Micah agreed that linguistic categories were equally limiting for the concept of mass-action. Everyone seemed to enjoy the work of Clifford Geertz as a budding graduate student, but Micah’s dislike of Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms merit as a micro-history divided the group. Bruno Latour’s Laboratory Life and Science in Action provided some amusing thoughts about the agency of salmon.

Meghan: (summarizing the book)…with the more theory-inclined arguing that bacteria have agency…
Meghan: and this one history grad student pipes up, “So what’s next? Salmon have agency?”
Will: See, it’s not that he’s wrong, if you read him right, it’s that he’s not that helpful.
Meghan: I would say that was my take on him as well.

3. Historians are Humanists too!

Should history graduate students really pretend to be part of the humanities in order to garner more grants and fellowships (when art historians really do need the money)? As Natasha aptly articulated, the “exercise in fantasy,” when a dissertation has yet to become a concrete project, is a mix of rhetorical posturing and not knowing where one will find the appropriate forms of evidence (if they even exist). Some shuddered at the thought that some historians do not even use archives at all.

4. Traversing the *“Leaderless Minefield”

Meghan noted that some historians, in the spirit of finding new frontiers, were making the move to the area of material culture. Which possibly could devolve into museum studies, according to Will. Which could be generalized as visual culture, as I implied. Which could end up in media studies. Not quite sure if that is so good. In retreating to the analysis of culture, the group agreed that there was a strong lack of argumentative programs that did not offer any original viewpoints about the state of the field (there were many scholars who were certainly trying to avoid obvious faux pas or attempting to revise the revisionist literature).

*We actually owe this term “leaderless minefield” to Micah.

5. Modern, Modernism, Modernity, WTF?

We managed somehow to return to address Fish’s assertion that deconstruction does not and could not have a politics, which did not sit well with most of the guests. The conversation finalized around the types of questions that our guests are posing in their projects and if looming presence of modernity played a role in their assessment of historical periods, fields of study, and the kinds of conclusions drawn from scholarship.

Micah: Very broadly, I think it’s time to have Revolution come back in — the Soviet hangover’s worn off a bunch over the last twenty years, and the world over the next few is likely to get a lot more interesting…
Meghan: I would say my chief interpretative issue is how to write a sort of collective biography, and in particular how to access emotional/private life issues through texts, which involves a lot of correspondence theory.
Natasha: on a provincial level, I’m challenging early modern and modern French historians about periodization
Natasha: I really resent the 1789 dividing line
Me: What would be the new date of the French Revolution?
Micah: I’m pretty invested in the 1789 line myself.
Natasha: I’m in favor of 1750-1850, not across the board of course
Micah: Sounds Furettian ;)
Natasha: well, I do love my ferrets, you know…no seriously, think about teaching the French Revolution, how could you possibly start in 1789 and make sense of it? Inevitably you’d have to create a sort of prologue unit, you know, “origins of…”
Micah: Such is the great challenge, but a worthwhile one. Did the French Revolution really have origins?
Natasha: no, was an accident…you’re right :-) Seriously, though, I’m not sure I’m convinced by the conflation of the FR and “modernity,” fraught with teleological problems
Micah: Yeah, modernity, WTF?

Online debate on French history, theory, and the question of modernism April 22, 2008

Posted by Jenny Ferng in Uncategorized.
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Apologies for my prolonged blog absence. I have not abandoned Will in his search for the history of history but was traveling abroad, which always takes time out of one’s schedule.

I am happy to announce that our online debate will debut tomorrow night, Wednesday, April 23rd, 8pm Paris time or 2pm Eastern standard time. If you have a Gmail account and would like to join our group chat room, feel free to send either me or Will an email at jennifer.ferng or gwilliamthomas. We will hope to refine this project as time goes on.

We will begin the debate with Stanley Fish’s recent essays on French theory in America.

Some other questions we hope to kick around are: how are French theorists different from French historians? Are there competing schools of contemporary French historiography today? What type of new methodologies are being used and what kind of exciting questions are being asked by graduate students and more established scholars? How do French historians compare with British historians? Is modernism still alive in the humanities or should it be? What about its relation to postmodernism?

We hope you can join us and look forward to a constructive and critical debate!

History and its Discontented February 25, 2008

Posted by Jenny Ferng in Uncategorized.
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Thanks Will for inviting me to this online forum. I am glad to provide some contrast and ahem, some color to this discussion on history, pedagogy, and what it means to be a young scholar working in academia in a slew of historically-related fields. I think it is great that there are more and more graduate students and scholars who are interested in pushing the boundaries of how we write, teach, and conceive of history either in the classroom, in a dissertation, or in an academic community as a whole.

Will and I actually first met in a history of physics class at MIT. I think I was the only non history of science person in that class (by history of science, I am also including a number of STS people as well). The class covered Cold War American physics and was a great exercise in seeing how historians of science pursued their topics, articulated their arguments, and focused on science as theories, experiments, institutional developments, and as visual practices and representations.

Regarding Will’s earlier post, I find that philosophy and literary theory do tend to make themselves quite prominent in the field of architectural history, which is what I am currently pursuing. They also tend to find their ways into art history as well. I think Will’s idea of philosophy and literature is still somewhat mixed together. One can find both transhistorical questions and the constructions of categories (subjectivity, bio-life, politics of the image, phenomenology of space) in both areas. Again, I am also using philosophy and literature here as somewhat generalized fields of study. Foucault as a philosopher employing history is one thing, and Stephen Greenblatt on history is something different altogether. For example, I think New Historicism is something that a lot of different graduate students study – those in comparative literature, art history, history, etc. Hayden White’s work also attracts many types of readers. Another instance of this trans-disciplinary concept is the formation of the canon, a known set of universalized standards that are taught as being the exemplary works in a discipline, whether it be a Manet or a novel by Toni Morrison.

I am not sure if I quite like the term transhistorical – I think history operates both in the macro, long durée and in the micro moment. Trans implicates that one is breaching a temporal protocol in examining a historical event or phenomena. Examining “how disciplines develop” can also be an exercise in institutional history. How did biology develop as a classroom curriculum in 1950s America is also a story about how a discipline develops.

I just re-read Will’s line about sociologists of science and putting them into this philosophical category of history…I’m sure that they too would have something against being put into this box. Anthropologists of science have their methods and uses of history as well. Most of them, however, rely mainly on ethnographic evidence and interviews for their work.

I do agree with Will on finding concrete facts and archival evidence to fill out these seemingly meta-narratives that rely on conceptual questions rather than the who, what, where, how and why of how something occurred. It is also tough to write an excellent history with an innovative intepretation of facts. The historiography that currently exists in the history of science is now filled with these books that are much more provocative in their historical interpretation and use of sources. I personally think that this combination of broader questions about concepts in the history of science coupled with good original research is where the field is headed next…