CSTHA-AHSTC

Science and Method in the Humanities

3/2/12, abstracts due 11/1/11

Rutgers University announces “Science and Method in the Humanities,” an interdisciplinary graduate symposium to be held on March 2, 2012, with keynote speakers Peter Dear (Cornell University) and Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Duke University, Brown University).

The aim of the conference is to explore questions of method and methodology in the sciences and in humanities scholarship that engages the sciences. This one-day event will bring together scholars working across that curricular divide for an interdisciplinary discussion of science and method, ranging from the historical development of scientific methods and their various historical re-articulations to broader concerns of methodology across the humanities.

How does interdisciplinary scholarship reframe questions of methodology, broadly construed? How is method variously understood and how are its formulations shaped by historical, theoretical, and disciplinary concerns? How does method relate to matters of fact and theory? How do humanities disciplines appropriate and modify particular scientific methods?

Related themes/topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Scientific methods and the history of science
• Methodology, disciplinary history, and the professionalization of the humanities
• Method and form, genres of scientific knowledge, aesthetics of science, or as science
• Inscription and writing: media, authority, translation, referentiality
• Elements of method: hypothesis, collaboration, witnessing, objectivity
• Historical method: induction, deduction, experimentation
• Philosophy and the Analytic/Continental divide
• Vitalism in the sciences and in critical theory
• The afterlives of positivism
• The “cognitive revolution” and the humanities
• The curriculum and the “two cultures” debate
• Science Studies/STS, Actor Network Theory, and historical study
• Vernacular Science and Mobile Technologies
• Digital humanities: computation, quantitative analysis, electronic publishing and peer review

Please send 400-500-word abstracts to Lizzie Oldfather (lizzie.oldfather@gmail.com) by November 1, 2011.

Sponsored by: Rutgers British Studies Center, Program in the History of Science, Technology, Environment and Health, Center for Cultural Analysis, Program in Early Modern Studies.

For more information, please visit http://sciencemethodhumanities.wordpress.com/

Dear Colleagues,

Some of you may be interested in the following conference:

Best,

Dorotea Gucciardo

Apologies for troubling you with this but. . .  I am on the program committee for the 2012 Western History Association’s conference.  This will be held in Denver, Thursday, 4 – 7 October (Thursday – Sunday) — not this coming October, I should add, but October 2012.  The WHA – a very congenial group of academics – is keen to attract more Canadian content, and hence I am dutifully trying to assist in this goal.  If you’re at all interested in presenting at this conference, I’d certainly encourage you to do so.

The conference title for 2012 is “Boundary Markers and Border Crossers:

Finding the West and Westerners” and the call for papers is online as a .PDF – http://www.westernhistoryassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012-Call-for-Papers.pdf

Note that the deadline for proposals is 1 September 2011.

Best wishes

Jeremy Mouat

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science (CSHPS) is holding its annual conference as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) at the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University, 29-31 May 2011.

The program committee invites scholars working on the history and philosophy of science to submit abstracts for individual papers or proposals for sessions. Submissions may be in English or French. Bilingual sessions (with some papers in French and others in English) are also welcome. Only one proposal per person may be submitted. Individual paper submissions should consist of a title, a brief abstract of 150-250 words, and contact information for the author. Session proposals should consist of a session title, titles and brief abstracts for each paper, and contact information for the session organizer. All submissions will be blind refereed (therefore, all contact information needs to be in a separate document). Proposals will be accepted by e-mail only.

The CSHPS meeting overlaps with the meeting dates of a number of other member societies of the CFHSS, including the Canadian Historical Association, the Canadian Philosophical Association, the Canadian Sociological Association, the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association, the Canadian Women’s Studies Association, the Environmental Studies Association of Canada and the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy. We welcome proposals for joint sessions with these and other societies. However, no talk will be accepted for presentation at more than once society.
E-mail address for submissions: program.cshps@gmail.com.
Deadline for submissions: February 1, 2011. Notification of results: February 15, 2011.

CSHPS offers a book prize (the Richard Hadden Award) for the best student paper presented at the meeting. Details of this prize can be found at: http://www.yorku.ca/cshps1/HaddenPrize.htm
Those wishing to be considered should submit a copy of the paper by e-mail three weeks prior to the Congress.

As a bilingual society, efforts to broaden participation are appreciated (e.g. a presentation in English could be accompanied by a powerpoint in French, and vice-versa).

It is required to be a member of CSHPS in order to present a paper at the conference. Individuals whose papers have been accepted will be requested to join CSHPS for a modest membership fee. For more information about CSHPS, consult: http://www.cshps.ca/. Information about Congress registration and accommodation will be available at the CFHSS website: http://www.fedcan.ca/

International Commission for the History of Meteorology

Call for papers: Climatic Determinism: Then and Now

National Hellenic Research Foundation

Athens, 18 – 20 July 2011

Climatic determinism has a very long and checkered history. It has provided an enduring framework for thinking about the relationship between the human and natural environments by making the climate a demiurge of social universe. In doing so, climatic determinists have put forward a particular species of political ethics whose self-serving claims about the environmental distribution of virtue, value and privilege have long been subject of debate and criticism. Most problematically, the idea of climate as a key force in social development has naturalized existing forms of cultural domination, political hierarchy, economic dependency and racial inequity. While most of such thinking has been discredited, in recent years, the omnipresence of anthropogenic climate change has caused a resurgence of similar ideas, causing scholars and commentators to ask if these represent a revival of climatic determinism and, if so, with what consequences?

This question is especially relevant in today’s policy domain, in which we see climate change as the most prominent environmental issue and one of the key forces in shaping of international politics, global economy and social theory. In this context, we have all become gradually aware that climatic trends, past and present, have a lot to do with the history of energy, political power, and technological innovation as much as they relate to distribution of goods and services and the legality of resource use and exploitation of fossil fuels. Furthermore, as scholars in geography and science studies argue, the nature and location of climate change are continually being negotiated, interpreted and produced through practices and knowledges, none of which can be said to dominate others, none of which can be called a master discourse.

And yet, paradoxically, much of environmental thinking, planning and doing these days is framed within a deterministic and reductionistic master discourse as a response to the unitary agency of climate change. In such a discourse, climate is seen as an external force that impacts the economy, affects countries, harms national security, hurts the world’s poor, and potentially leads to global conflict. The UNDP Human Development Report, for example, calls for a ‘fight against climate change,’ while BBC and the Met Office say that ‘tackling climate change will be one of the most important things this generation does.’ In some instances, visual imagery designed to alert policy and popular audiences to climatic change, including the ‘Burning Embers’ image and the ‘Tipping Points’ lean towards an environmental deterministic interpretation of the climate change impacts. This framing of climate change rhetoric presents climate as more than just a trend of environmental change. Instead, it constructs it as an independent, self-contained and self-perpetuating mechanism with power to shape everyday life and structure the way we think about our common future(s).

Do such views constitute a revival of climatic determinism? How does the role of climate in today’s world compare to its earlier roles in geography, earth sciences and political theory? How can historians and social scientists contribute to the scientific and political discussion of climate crisis?

Our 2-day meeting in Athens encourages historians, philosophers, sociologists, geographers, literary historians, and cultural theorists to reflect and debate about reductionist readings, deterministic explanations and the putative obviousness of the climate crisis in both the academic and the public spheres.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the Committee consisting of Georgina Endfield (Nottingham), James R. Fleming (Colby), George Vlahakis (Athens) and Vladimir Jankovic (Manchester).

Submission deadline: 1 March 2011.

Please send 200 word abstracts and a brief CV to