CfP: Göttingen Spirit Summer School The material culture of exploration and academic travel, 1700-1900
Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Historic Observatory, University of Göttingen, Germany,
24th-29th July 2017
Convenors:
Dr. Marie Luisa Allemeyer (Zentrale Kustodie, University of Göttingen)
Dr. Dominik Hünniger (Lichtenberg-Kolleg, University of Göttingen)
Christian Vogel (Zentrale Kustodie, University of Göttingen)
Experts/Speakers:
Professor James Delbourgo, Rutgers University
Professor Joachim Rees, Freie Universität Berlin
Dr. Bernhard C. Schär, ETH Zürich
Dr. Lola Sanchez-Jauregui, University of Glasgow
Professor Vanessa Smith, University of Sydney
Topic and Purpose
Travel
has long been a subject of inquiry in the history of science and
scholarship. In recent years, the changes and development of the
practices
of travel, especially collecting and inscription during the long 18th
century, have received special attention. Many studies focused on the
changing aims, objectives and perceptions of travel, the collection of
data and objects, the visualisation of observations
and the collaborative nature of these practices. It has become clear
how an earlier encyclopaedic attention was slowly supplanted by specific
disciplinary interests and how this also shaped many fields of academic
inquiry. Working "in the field" became a requisite
of newly developed disciplines, like ethnography and the biological
sciences. Indeed, these practices seem to have been instrumental in
making scientific and scholarly careers. At the same time, individual
observation and inscription became objects of contention
and debate themselves. Reports of individuals needed to be supported by
new strategies of evidence production, like field diaries or new tools
for measuring and recording the observations. Practices of collection,
preparation, classification, visualisation,
as well as the transfer of specimen and objects were widely discussed
and their improvement was fiercely debated. The objects themselves
became tokens of evidence, especially after their transportation to the
growing institutions of collecting in Europe and
elsewhere. They were supposed to verify the travel reports. Comparison
or objects and observation became important, too. Cataloguing and the
paper tools of collecting were also part and parcel of this development.
Since 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.
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 successfully be 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 to five PhD candidates will present their research and give an
introduction
to their projects, with one expert commenting and leading the
discussion for each project.
James Delbourgo will give a keynote lecture on Monday, 24th July: “Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum”
We
will also include a session on how to visually communicate academic
research and how to create complex narratives through strategic display.
It
will also investigate how inquiry into material aspects of objects can
enhance research. This object-based session will be led by Lola
Sanchez-Jauregui, University of Glasgow, and will involve hands-on
experience.
For parents we can offer a child care service during the time of the summer school.
The summer school will be reflecting travel in four thematic sections:
-
The Natural Lives of Cultural Things: Collecting Materials, Environments and Categories
-
Scientific travels and the spaces and people in-between
-
Imperial infrastructures and scientific travel as a collaborative endeavour
-
Drawing and inscription as practices of mobilisation and insight
The Natural Lives of Cultural Things: Collecting Materials, Environments and Categories //
James Delbourgo
What
is the relationship between what we think of as cultural objects and
the natural environments from which they come? Histories of collecting,
like modern museums, are usually
organized by disciplinary categories such as science, natural history,
anthropology, archaeology and art. But how can attention to the natural
environments from which objects come shed new light on the processes by
which they get valued and categorized? If
historians of science have sought to restore the cultural context
within which natural knowledge is made, how might we restore the natural
context in which cultural knowledge is made? The rise of
industrialization and imperialism between 1700 and 1900 produced
unprecedented global mobility and contacts between different peoples,
while fostering specializations of knowledge into new disciplines and
institutions, notably including museum collections. By what practices
were objects valued, represented (verbally and
visually) and collected both through dealings with local populations
and negotiating natural environments? What role did forms of materials
science – whether vernacular or more formal judgments of specific
materials’ value – play for the formation of a basis
for collecting what later came to be seen as primarily cultural
artefacts? How, in other words, might we melt down conventional
disciplinary divisions to reframe the history of collecting and see how
acts of collection were interventions in natural environments
that, in turn, produced judgments about natural materials, as well as
cultural forms? Finally, how did the meanings of specific materials
shift through relocation from collection sites to museums, and to what
extent did such movement erase, preserve or invent
associations between exotic materials, lands and peoples in the minds
of metropolitan publics?
Scientific travels and the spaces and people in-between // Vanessa Smith
There
is now a long history of work on the implication of scientific voyaging
in the establishment of European global Empire; however more recent
scholarship, building on the
insights of Kapil Raj in Relocating Modern Science, has shifted the
focus to the intercultural constitution of scientific knowledge. Rather
than a Latourian vision of European science emanating from ‘centres of
calculation’ in which Indigenous specimens were
amassed and classified and local knowledges appropriated, Raj and
others have set out ‘an alternative vision of the construction and
spread of scientific knowledge through reciprocal, albeit asymmetric,
processes of circulation and negotiation’. This panel
will focus on the transnational travel, networks and exchanges that
produced scientific knowledge: that is, knowledge that would not have
come into existence without documented intercultural encounter. We are
interested both in work that engages with new archival
materials or case-studies, and work that revisits existing accounts of
European scientific discovery and assesses them in the light of these
considerations. We envisage that both accounts of travel from Europe to
outer Empire, and travels by colonial subjects
to metropolitan centres will be of relevance to the discussion.
Imperial infrastructures and scientific travel as a collaborative endeavour // Bernhard C. Schär
Scientific
expeditions into “unknown territories” developed simultaneously with
imperial aspirations of European colonial powers from the middle of the
eighteenth century onwards.
On the one hand, they benefited from colonial infrastructure, such as
trade fleets, support from colonial armies, plantation owners, and
colonial administrators, who provided forced laborers, translators,
local guides, and indigenous collectors. On the other
hand, they provided cartographic, geographic, ethnographic, but also
botanical or zoological knowledge, which was useful for economic
exploitation and European rule in the colonies. Such entanglements
between colonial infrastructures, colonial trade relations
and exploration voyages enabled a rapid expansion in the presence of
“scientific objects” in Europe, as well as the establishment of an
appropriate infrastructure for the exploration of these objects:
academies, museums, botanical gardens and universities.
In recent studies on global history, the sciences are therefore seen
both as a supporting pillar and as a product of colonialism.
In
the course of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
the practice and the organization of expeditions and exploration
changed of course: from the journey
of an encyclopaedic scholar, still embodied most recognizable by
Alexander von Humboldt, they increasingly mutated into well-organized
and firmly-lead expeditions of multi-disciplinary research teams -
typically consisting of specialists in botany, geology,
zoology and ethnography. However, specialization was not only visible
and important for the European scientists but increasingly produced a
large number of indigenous specialists from the colonized population who
often remain anonymous. Researchers were also
always involved in transnational communication networks in Europe and
the colonies.
The
studies envisioned for this panel could address the following
questions: How did the relationship between expeditions and colonial
infrastructure in play out in the different
European empires?
Drawing and inscription as practices of mobilisation and insight // Joachim Rees
Drawing
and sketching took prominent positions among the practices which
transcended the seen and the observed into flat and mobile units. The
laborious
and meticulous efforts to create, print and distribute images, as well
as the passionate arguments among European scholars about quality,
adequacy and usefulness of images, clearly show the enormous importance
of drawings in the exploration of foreign environments.
At the same time, the visual mobilization of both natural and social
phenomena transferred the hitherto strange environment not only into an
object of scientific knowledge, but also into an object of imperial and
colonial governmentality and administration.
After all, drawing was itself a form of knowledge production, as well
as a key technique of the appropriation of the natural world. Thinking
with the sketching hand was an important form of approaching objects and
phenomena not only in the European studios,
but also in the field. In addition to the practical conditions of
drawing in the field, contributions to the collaboration between
scholars and draughtsmen and -women, the professional self-understanding
of draughtsmen and -women are very welcome. Furthermore,
the epistemic significance of drawings, the media competition between
preparation and drawing, as well as the different graphic
representations and formats of drawings may also be addressed.
Applications and Selection Procedure
The
summer school will be held in English and welcomes PhD candidates or
advanced postgraduates to apply. Up to 18 applicants will be admitted.
Interested
applicants are asked to send a cover letter, a CV, as well as the
completed application form that can be downloaded from the website (https://www.uni-goettingen.
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 and only need to collect a participation fee of 50
€ prior to the Summer School.
For further information and questions, please contact Christian Vogel (summerschool@kustodie.uni-
Preliminary program
Monday, 24.07.2017
4:30 pm – 6 pm: Arrival, registration, and presentation of the
Zentrale Kustodie and the Lichtenberg-Kolleg
6:15 pm – 8 pm: James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Keynote
lecture)
8 pm: Opening Dinner
Tuesday, 25.07.2017
9:30 am – 10 am: presentation of the chair
10 am - 12:30 pm: 2 project presentations
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm: visit of a collection
4 pm – 6 pm: 2 project presentations
6:30 pm – 8 pm: Guided tour Historic Observatory
8 pm: Dinner
Wednesday, 26.07.2017
9:30 am – 10 am: presentation of the chair
10 am - 12:30 pm: 2 project presentations
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm: visit of a collection
4 pm – 6 pm: 2 project presentations
6:30 pm – 8 pm: Object-based session with Dr. Lola Sanchez-Jauregui
8 pm: Dinner
Thursday, 27.07.2017
9:30 am – 10 am: presentation of the chair
10 am - 12:30 pm: 2 project presentations
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm: visit of a collection
4 pm – 6 pm: 2 project presentations
7 pm: Dinner
Friday, 28.07.2017
9:30 am – 10 am: presentation of the chair
10 am - 12:30 pm: 2 project presentations
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm: visit of a collection
4 pm – 6 pm: 2 project presentations
7 pm: Dinner
Saturday, 29.07.2017
10 am – 11 am: Departure