CfP: Knowledge in Displacement: Emigration and Exile in the History of Mid-Twentieth Century Science
Knowledge in Displacement: Emigration and Exile in the History of Mid-Twentieth Century Science
A Symposium to be held at the 25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23-29 July 2017.
Understanding
the economy of scientific production in its global dimensions has
become a priority for scholars in our field. In order to join efforts to
rethink the history of science outside of national(ist) frameworks,
this two-session symposium invites reappraisal of a key moment in the
formation of transnational scientific networks: the emigration (and
remigration) of European scientists to the Americas in the decades
surrounding World War II.
The outsized contribution of
émigré scientists in the development of physics during and after the War
is already well established. But what about other fields? Our
symposium’s focus will be on those areas of research which were
conceptualized or institutionalized as sciences largely in this
time period, including the cultural, human and life sciences. Our goal
is to understand how migration changed the concept of science itself and
explore its complex relation to the formation of a Cold War rationality
that extended quantitative and/or positivist methodologies beyond the
physical sciences. In so doing, we wish to address questions of broad
significance to a transnational history of science: How does the
position of emigrant, foreigner, exile, or refugee structure scientific
interests, strategies, and productions? What are the conditions of
possibility—or failure—for the transplantation, translation, and
refashioning of the émigré scientist? And how can we understand and
theorize the relation between the uprooting of people and scientific
paradigms, between cultural estrangement and scientific creativity?
We
invite contributions investigating the linguistic, cultural, economic,
institutional, and/or political aspects of the scientific life in
displacement in their relation to the process of disciplinary formation
during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Papers on émigré
historians or philosophers of science will be considered alongside those
on the cultural, social, or life sciences. We are particularly
interested in proposals reflecting upon the ways in which this
particular moment in the history of scientific emigration helps us
rethink scientific emigration in other times and places, e.g.
displacements between colonial centers and peripheries, between
privileged and impoverished systems of research and higher education, or
between war-torn and (temporarily) secured areas of the world.
Please
send proposals for 20-minute presentations with abstract of no more
than 350 words and brief biographic information to Sascha Freyberg (sfreyberg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de) or Antoine Lentacker (antoine.lentacker@yale.edu) by **28 November 2016.** For any additional information, feel free to contact us or consult the website of the ICHST at http://www.ichst2017.sbhc.org.br/.