Topic and Purpose
Early
modern cabinets of curiosities/Wunderkammern can be considered as an
important space especially for those developing sciences that wanted to
transcend text based scholasticism and base their knowledge solely on
experience. Scholarly engagement with collections laid the foundations
for knowledge production that was based on experiment and research with
and on objects. Since this development took shape during the 17th century,
collecting, storing, ordering, and the presentation of objects has
become a strong concern for many academic disciplines. Accordingly,
technologies that transformed things into objects of knowledge and
rendered them accessible and sustainable are equally practical as well
as epistemological techniques. Current research in the history of
science and knowledge focusses increasingly on practices of collecting,
ordering and presenting. Thus highlighting how scientific research and
its results are intertwined with and rely upon different cultures of
materiality and the handling of objects is the main concern of the
summer school.
In
addition to questions concerning the role of objects and collections in
the processes of knowledge production, we would also like to address
the state and development of object based research in the humanities.
How can humanities research be enhanced by engaging with objects? Which
methods and theories can be successfully employed in order to achieve
meaningful knowledge about these processes on a medium and larger scale?
Each
day of the summer school will be dedicated to a specific topic where
four PhD candidates will present their research and give an introduction
to their projects, with one expert commenting and leading the
discussion for each project.
As
we acknowledge the epistemic value of engaging with objects, visits to
the relevant academic collections at the University of Göttingen are an
integral part of the program. Two of our experts, Kim Sloan and Emma
Spary, will also give keynote lectures on Monday and Wednesday respectively. On Thursday evening, Anne Mariss will introduce her recent book “A
world of new things”. Praktiken der Naturgeschichte bei Johann Reinhold Forster (Johann
Reinhold Forster and the practices of natural history), thereby
reflecting on her process of writing a thesis on praxeological aspects
of knowledge production and engaging with material culture.
The four thematic sections are:
From
encyclopaedic to specialised collecting: Practices of collecting and
exhibiting, the role of collectors and things // Expert: Kim Sloan,
British Museum
During
the two centuries between 1700 and 1900, a far-reaching transformation
took place that influenced both the scientific practices related to
objects and the role of collectors. Burgeoning university collections
differed considerably from most private or courtly cabinets of
curiosities regarding their claims to establish order, classification
and systematic comparison: the typical and the ordinary gradually
replaced the rare and the unique, and the learned collector became the
collecting scholar. The 18th century can be seen as a period of transition and the nineteenth 19th century
was a threshold in the process of the differentiation of academic
disciplines. This also influenced the collections, which were separated
as well and thereby shed new light on the objects and thus eventually
led to new ways of knowledge production. Accordingly, we especially
invite presentations that address continuities and discontinuities in
practices of collecting and the role of the collectors, as well as the
actual order, presentation and spatial distribution of objects in the
collections. Additionally, presentations that engage with wider
epistemological, cultural, social and political contexts are equally
welcome.
„Putting
nature in a box.“ The material order of things: shelves, cabinets,
boxes and other furniture of order // Expert: Maria Rentetzi, NTU
Athens, University of Vienna
Furniture
that helps to order and to store collections is an important part of
the social world of collecting and is embedded in the epistemic
practices surrounding collections as well. Material appliances influence
the rules of the handling of objects and permit as well as prohibit
certain practices. Thus, they are not neutral vessels but material
conditions of possibilities regarding what and what cannot be known at a
particular time and space. Which role do these vessels play concerning
the development of object centred sciences in the18th and 19th century,
especially concerning the production of knowledge and its contents? How
did cabinets and other storage systems help natural historians to
organise knowledge, and how did they help to create knowledge about the
natural world? How did boxes become multifunctional tools in
transferring the collected material into systematics? Could this
furniture be regarded as a kind of laboratory that decontextualized and
re-contextualised objects in changing spatial-systematic vicinities?
Networks, Actors and Objects // Expert: Emma Spary, Cambridge University
Current
research in the history of science and knowledge no longer focuses
solely on individual collectors and well-known collections, but also on
complex and far-reaching networks of collecting that mobilised and
thereby often transformed objects, actors and inscriptions. This
approach lead to the decentralisation of the persona of the collector
and collections were conceptualised in the Latourian framework as
"centres of calculation". Special emphasis was
laid
on the analysis of the diverse spaces within which objects of knowledge
were constituted and circulated. This panel wants to address the
complicated movements of objects, materials, specimen and living
creatures (both humans and other animals) within these wide and
heterogeneous networks. Studies that address their itineraries between
various spaces of encounter, e.g. academic collections, the marketplace,
the scholars' houses, lecture halls, hospitals, etc. are especially
welcome. Additionally, we are interested in the multitude and diversity
of the actors in these spaces. Extending the research beyond the scholar
as the classical focus in the history of science, we want to know about
artisans, merchants and, very importantly, the members of the source
communities from where the objects originated. It will be interesting to
see if these diversities also produced different kinds of knowledge.
Besides well-studied analytical and systematic forms of knowledge, other
kinds, especially corporeal, implicit and tacit knowledge as well as
technological, practical and artisanal competence – that all of these
actors applied in one way or another – will be the focus of this panel.
Calculation, Ordering and Classification are only three possible
practices that would highlight these processes, and we are equally
looking forward to presentations addressing further practices.
The long road to the image: strategies of visualisation in collections // Expert: N.N.
Images
are also part of the transformation processes surrounding objects but
they exemplify a special form of inscription in their claim to be
mimetic. Current history of science and interdisciplinary visual culture
studies have shown that the road from object to image is not as
straightforward and simple as previously acknowledged. In order to
understand the visual representation of collections, objects, and
collectors, the manifold processes that lead from object/subject to
image have to be analysed thoroughly. Traditions and conventions of
image making have to be studied in order to show how social, epistemic
and affective contexts of image production and presentation have
influenced these processes.
Applications and Selection Procedure
The
summer school will be held in English and welcomes PhD candidates or
advanced postgraduates to apply. Up to 16 applicants will be admitted.
Interested applicants are asked to send a cover letter, a CV and a
research exposé (1500-2000 words/approx. 3-5 pages) preferably via
e-mail as one pdf-file tosummerschool@kustodie.uni-goettingen.de by 1st of
May 2016. The cover letter should address to which of the four sections
the project would correspond to. Ideally, it should already mention a
special interest in one or more academic collections from Göttingen (http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/die-sammlungen-im-detail/521326.html),
as well as contain a short explanation why the certain collection(s)
would be interesting for the PhD or postgraduate project. The selection
will be conducted by the convenors, the experts and the academic
advisory board of the Zentrale Kustodie. Successful
candidates will be informed early in June, and will then be asked to
send in a more developed research exposé (up to 8000 words/approx. 15-20
pages) within 6 weeks of the invitation.
These
texts will be circulated among all participants of the summer school
and will be the basis for the experts‘ commentaries and the discussions
during the summer school. We ask all applicants to address not only the
research content of their projects but also to include references to
concepts and methodologies and an explication of their research agenda
and the sources employed. A discussion on how objects and collections
feature in the research project is very much appreciated.
Thanks
to the generous support of the „Goettingen Spirit Summer
School“-program at the University of Göttingen, we are able to provide
board and lodging for all participants. The participation fee is 50 €.