Conecta. Desde 1995

Prakash Kumar.  Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India. Cambridge  Cambridge University Press, 2012.  350 pp.  $103.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-107-02325-3. Reviewed by Darren Speece (Sidwell Friends School) Published on H-Empire (August, 2014) Commissioned by Charles V. Reed Prakash Kumar has written a deeply researched and compelling history of "indigo science" as he describes it in _Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India_. It is a story of plants, planters, politicians, empire, and markets. His study narrates the ways in which "savants," planters, chemists, bacteriologists, and botanists experimented with indigo cultivation and manufacturing from the sixteenth through early twentieth centuries. Simultaneously, Kumar pulls the history of indigo into the stream of globalization since the Columbian Exchange. Essentially, Kumar works to provincialize India, England, and the Caribbean, following Dipesh Chakrabarty's lead in h...

Eric Gottfrid Swedin, ed.  Survive the Bomb: The Radioactive Citizen's Guide to Nuclear Survival.  Minneapolis  MBI Pub. Co. and Zenith Press, 2011.  186 pp.  $17.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7603-4031-8. Reviewed by Zach Kopin (American University) Published on H-War (August, 2014) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey After the initial dropping of the bomb on Japan, the American public came to terms with the nuclear genie it let out of the bottle. While the period of soul searching would largely end alongside America's nuclear monopoly on August 29, 1949, when the Soviets successfully tested their first atomic weapon, the American government, at various levels, had to devise a way to survive what it perceived as the coming nuclear conflict with the USSR. It is this world into which Eric G. Swedin transports his reader. Swedin's book _Survive the Bomb: The Radioactive Citizen's Guide to Nuclear Survival_ utilizes primary source material, mostly gover...

Call for Papers: Beyond Borders: The Practice of Atlantic, Transnational, and World History. Graduate Conference, University of Pittsburgh, April 11-12, 2015 For the past two decades, innovative scholarship has challenged the primacy of national histories, providing graduate students with methodological and theoretical tools for research projects that transcend spatial boundaries. Atlantic, transnational, and global studies have changed the way history is written; nevertheless, they face their own challenges. As more and more graduate programs offer training in Atlantic and World history, it is important for students to critically engage with the benefits and limitations of their specialization. What is the future of Atlantic, transnational, and World history? What are their respective strengths and weaknesses, and their latent assumptions? What sort of innovative research is being done in these fields?  How do the fields relate to each other? These questions and mor...

Panels and Roundtables to be held during the 46th annual conference of the ASSOCIATION FOR SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE HISTORICAL STUDIES (ASPHS) at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (USA), March 19-22, 2015. Dear Colleagues: We would like to invite you to participate in a series of panels and roundtables bringing together historians of Iberian and colonial Latin American science to discuss recent historiographical developments in the field, new research and to explore the field’s future direction. Some possible roundtables and panels are described below, but we welcome additional proposals. Travel subventions are available for a limited number of accepted participants. Prof. Maria M. Portuondo and Prof. Gabriel Paquette serve as the sub-committee on history of science of the ASPHS program committee and will assist coordinating papers and panels. We ask that you please contact us directly indicating your interest in participating. Since the deadline for all fina...

Es una alegría comunicaros que hemos publicado l as   Actas del VII Simposio de Enseñanza e  Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas de la SEHCYT   (en soporte electrónico, pdf).  Podéis acceder a la publicación en el apartado  Actividades de la SEHCYT --> Publicaciones en la web de la SEHCYT ( https://sites.google.com/site/sehcyt2012/congresos-y-publicaciones ).