Course of Interest: History of Science 921: Scientific Expeditions

For those of you who have an interest in the intersections of science and material culture, this course might be right up your alley:

History of Science 921: Scientific Expeditions

Fall 2011, Tuesdays 5:30-8:00pm, Bradley Memorial Building 204

Open to graduate students or by instructor consent.

Together with the laboratory, museum, specialized society, and scientific journal, the expedition is one of the central institutions of modern science.  One can hardly imagine the history of astronomy and geodesy without Maupertuis in Lapland, La Condamine in Peru, and the Venus transit observations reiterated throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; botany and physical geography absent Linnaeus' peripatetic students, Cook and Bougainville in the South Seas, Ruiz and Pavón in South America, and Humboldt in his tours of the Americas and Russia; or the theory of natural selection without the voyages of the Beagle. 

At the same time, the history of organized scientific travel is also necessarily the history of cultural encounter, globalization, and colonialism, and so of networks, accumulation, circulation, translation, and transculturation.  Through close examination of historical case studies from the 18th through the 20th century, analysis of theoretical frameworks, and the exploration of digital resources, this seminar asks students to reassess the ways in which the history of scientific travel can inform our understanding of the scientific enterprise and its place in changing institutional, economic, and political relations across the globe.  

Instructors: Gregg Mitman and Florence Hsia