CfP. Colouring and Making in Alchemy and Chemistry - SHAC PostgraduateWorkshop
Sent on behalf of Mike Zuber by Anna Simmons, SHAC Membership Secretary and Acting Honorary Secretary
Call for Papers | Colouring and Making in Alchemy and Chemistry 7th SHAC Postgraduate Workshop
Utrecht University (Wednesday, 26 October 2016)
Keynote Lecturers Tara Nummedal (Brown University) Ernst Homburg (Maastricht University)
SOCIETY ALCHEMY of for the and HISTORY CHEMISTRY
Hosted by the ARTECHNE research group, the annual postgraduate workshop
of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) will take
place at Utrecht University in 2016. Fostering exchange among
historians of alchemy and chemistry, the workshop offers postgraduate
students and early-career researchers the opportunity to share ideas,
explore methodological issues and network in a stimulating atmosphere.
The theme for 2016, ‘Colouring and Making in Alchemy and Chemistry’,
seeks to highlight colouring and making as twin aspects throughout the
history of alchemy and chemistry. During our workshop, we will explore
how these activities relate to one another in a variety of ways
throughout the ages. More fundamentally, the very ways in which making
and colouring are construed and differentiated are subject to great
changes: when alchemists claimed to have made gold successfully, for
instance, their critics (and later generations) held that they had not
made but merely coloured a substance. Colouring as a defining mark of
making and the making of colours, as well as the techniques used to
colour and/or make, are all equally subsumed under the workshop topic
broadly construed.
Possible topics include but are by no means limited to:
– techniques of colouring and making,
– making through colouring by alchemical or chemical means,
– the production of colouring agents, pigments and dyes,
– the role of colours and/or theories of colour in alchemy and chemistry.
We invite abstract submissions (app. 200 words) for papers (between 15
and 20 minutes) on topics related to the workshop theme in any
historical period. Please email your abstract or any questions to the
SHAC student representative, Mike A. Zuber (Amsterdam), studentrep@ambix.org.
The deadline for proposals is 15 June 2016. Presenters should either be
currently enrolled as postgraduate students or active as junior
researchers (within three years of PhD completion).
The workshop is free of charge but the number of participants is
limited. Bursaries towards the cost of travel and/or accommodation are
available; confirmed presenters will be prioritized