CfP: ESHS 2020 Bologna, Hybrid Scientific Objects

Hybrid scientific objects: stories of visual cultures, gender and transnational expert communities

A proposal for a symposium for the 2020 ESHS Meeting, Bologna María J. Santesmases, org.
mariaj.santesmases@cchs.csic.es

Many materialities in the history of contemporary science has circulated between the industry, the clinic and the laboratory.This session proposal is aimed at studying hybrid objects for a plural epistemology that is composed of shared styles of representations such as images and facilities as components of a material culture of science and technology in which gender participates. Chromosomes are an example of such hybrid scientific objects, that circulated between biology and the clinic, the cytological laboratory and the clinical practice; and there would be many others, such as minerals that travel from mining to technological devices in the atomic era.

Provided by the conceptual framework of the histories of scientific objects, this session proposal aims at focusing on the circulation of knowledge between different places; between the invention setting and those where they were used, between the laboratory and the clinic, the consulting room, the pilot plant, the factory. In so doing, the history of the sciences would include those who, by adopting and using experiments and knowledge invented somewhere else, became integrated in transnational expert communities articulated around hybrid scientific objects, that is objects that belonged to different professional and cultural spaces. By historizing their shifts and travels, a collective of people and materials would be involved: women, men, medical and technological institutions, gender as well as knowledge represented in images, materials and new dispositifs, either apparatuses or methods.

We call for contributions that take into consideration two or more of such agents so as to provide stories of the circulation of knowledge between political geographies, professional spaces and domains of authority in the gendered contemporary era.

Please, note that any proposal for a contribution to this symposium should be sent by December 12th at latest to mariaj.santesmases@cchs.csic.es and should include:

1. Title
2. Author(s) (full name(s), academic title, institution, address,
email and a short biographical note of max.150 words). In case of
multiple authors the first author should be the presenting and
corresponding author.
3. Abstract (max. 300 words, including possible references)
4. Keywords (3)