Resembling Science: The Unruly Object across the Disciplines
Call for Participants
"Resembling Science: The Unruly Object across the Disciplines"
Working
Group Organizers: Meghan Doherty (Berea College), Dahlia Porter
(University of North Texas), Courtney Roby (Cornell University)
Bibliography Among the Disciplines Conference
12–15 October 2017, Philadelphia, PA
The
task of transforming observation and experience into representational
media is a constant concern in the long history of scientific knowledge.
We might even argue that the history of of consolidating and
communicating scientific thought is structured by a tension between
two kinds of unruly objects: the objects we seek to represent, and the
objects produced by representational media. Scientific media instantiate
a wide range of representational modes, from drawings, tables, and
diagrams to printed text and script in various languages. In
this working group, we will examine the strategies deployed by writers
and artists to transform material objects—whether a body, a specimen, a
machine, or an observed phenomena—into knowledge that could be shared
and disseminated materially as image, text, and/or book.
This
working group will meet for four sessions over three days (see schedule
below) to discuss the tension between the unruly material object and the
equally unruly materiality of the objects used to represent it. In so
doing, we seek to promote conversations about the tools, practices, and
processes of scientific knowledge making across modern disciplinary
divisions. What verbal and visual strategies are used to discipline
objects of scientific study? How do the conventions of description and
depiction render objects knowable to particular communities, or within a
specific cultural context? Within any given context, is it possible to
identify a “visual grammar,” or “regime of description,” on which
scientific knowledge depends? How does the combination of text and image
forward, or disrupt, the communication of scientific ideas?
What methods of analysis or interpretive approaches might advance the
study of images, texts, and objects across the history of science?
Interested
scholars, librarians, curators, and members of the book trade are
invited to send statements of interest describing a particular
representational problem or proposing a case study that exemplifies the
materiality of scientific knowledge. Statements may address any national
tradition or time period from antiquity to the present; those focused
on non-western representational traditions are particularly welcome.
Participants should be able to commit to attending all sessions of the working group:
Thursday, 12 October 2017, 2:00–3:30pm, 4:00-5:00pm
Friday, 13 October 2017, 1:45–3:15pm
Saturday, 14 October 2017, 10:45–12:15pm
Participants
should further be able to commit to meeting again within one year after
the conference to work toward the final publication of the results of
the working group. In their statements of interest, participants should
indicate their availability to meet during the year following the
conference (e.g., will you be abroad—if so, when, and do you anticipate
that you will have sufficient internet connectivity to meet virtually?).
Please submit a statement of interest of no more than 250 words by 15 November 2016 at:
Bibliography
Among the Disciplines, a four-day international conference, will bring
together scholarly professionals poised to address current problems
pertaining to the study of textual artifacts that cross scholarly,
pedagogical, professional, and curatorial domains. The conference will
explore theories and methods common to the object-oriented disciplines,
such as anthropology and archaeology, but new to bibliography. The
program aims to promote focused cross-disciplinary exchange and future
scholarly collaborations. Bibliography Among the Disciplines is
supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and organized by
the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at
Rare Book School. For more information, please visit: rarebookschool.org/