Conecta.

Call for Papers LINNAEAN WORLDS: GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE DURING THE GREAT DIVERGENCE, 1750-1850 First Annual Conference in the World History of Science May 4-5, 2012 Sponsored by the World History Center and the University of Pittsburgh Press, in collaboration with the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science. Supported by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Proceedings Conducted at the University Of Pittsburgh * Conference Theme * The thesis that a "great divergence" abruptly separated East from West after centuries of economic parity has been extensively debated by world historians over the past decade. Whereas proto-industrial England looked surprisingly similar to southern China in 1750, the argument goes, by 1850 England's technological, economic, and military prowess had attained truly exceptional heights. Advantageous trade with the slave societies of the Americas, it turns out, was decisive in enabling Western Europe to b

Call For Papers                                                               Knowledge in a Box:              How Mundane Things Shape Knowledge Production    Organizing committee:    Susanne Bauer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science,  Berlin, Germany  Maria Rentetzi, National Technical University of Athens, Athens,  Greece  Martina Schlünder, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany    The topic:    We invite proposals from scholars in the history of science,  technology, and medicine, science and technology studies, the  humanities, visual and performing arts, museum and cultural studies  and other related disciplines for a workshop on the uses and meanings  of mundane things such as boxes, packages, bottles, and vials in  shaping knowledge production. In keeping with the conference theme, we  are asking contributors to include specific references to the ways in  which boxes have played a role—commercial, epistemic or otherwise—in  their own particular dis

The John Carter Brown Library announces the opening of a new exhibition of significance to those interested in medicine, pharmacology, history, illustration, botany, environmental studies, and the culture of the book. Drugs from the Colonies: The New American Medicine Chest will be on view in the Reading Room of the John Carter Brown Library until December 22, 2011. The exhibition was prepared by the Library’s Curator of European Books, Dennis C. Landis. European physicians, healers, apothecaries, and others who prepared and administered drugs for medical purposes worked for centuries with a treasury of materia medica that was familiar from ancient times, drawing on minerals, plant products, and other biological resources from European and nearby African and Asian sources. The discovery of the New World opened a new pharmacopoeia available to those healers. At the same time, global expansion brought with it an intercontinental exchange of disease. While Old World diseases were pr

Meeting Summary: Organized by Pilar León-Sanz and Otniel Dror, CEMID's anual international conference will focus on questions of the emotions in the history and practice of medicine. In so doing, the conference hopes to trace continuities and discontinuities in the history of the relationships between emotions, health, and pathology in medicine, and to contribute to the history of medicine and to the history of emotions/passions. Principle Inquiries: 1. Was there a shift in the “pathological” nature of emotions with the shift from a language of “passions” to a language of “emotions” in Western culture?  2. Were there “pathological” emotions sui generis? Or were all emotions potentially pathological or healthy? 3. What were the dominant models that explained the pathologizing effects of emotions? 4. Did the relationships between the “normal” and “pathological” change in respect to emotions during the nineteenth century? 5. What were the similarities and differences between Eas