Col·loquis de la SCHCT online. 4 juny a les 18h. Andreas Daum “Science and Identity. Alexander von Humboldt’s Search for Knowledge in a Time of Revolutions”

Dia: Dijous 04 de juny del 2020, 18h. ONLINE

Abstract: This talk will focus on the Mensch Humboldt and the ways in which his search for knowledge merged with his struggle to find his identity in a time of massive social and political transformations, following the French Revolution of 1789.  In the 1790s, Humboldt’s science was a project as precarious as the epoch it emerged from.  It inscribed the personal into the scientific—and vice versa.  In both, Humboldt encountered considerable challenges and performed more than one balancing act. As such, this talk wants to open new avenues for historicizing Humboldt, instead of reinforcing the heroic narratives–renewed in recent years–that position the naturalist from Prussia far head of his time and embrace him as one of us in the global, post-modern 21st century.  Humboldt deserves to be situated within the various context of his time to understand the distinctiveness of his achievements– and to be discussed with the help of questions that the transatlantic historiography has developed.

Andreas Daum is professor of modern history of the State University of New York and the recipient of a Humboldt Research Prize in 2019-20.  His research deals with German and transatlantic history, as well as the history of emigration and knowledge from the 18th to the 20th century.  He has published a compact biography of Alexander von Humboldt (C.H. Beck, 2019) and authored books on the history of popular science (Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert, 1998, 2nd. ed. 2002) and, the Cold War (Kennedy in Berlin, 2003 and 2008), in addition to several edited volumes, most recently The Second Generation: Émigrés from Nazi Germany (2016). His research has been supported, among others, by fellowships of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society.

Modera: Oliver Hochadel (IMF) i Agustí Nieto-Galan (UAB)