ANNOUNCEMENT:
Registration is now open for Materiality: Objects and Idioms in
Historical Studies of Science and Technology. Please visit the
conference website here (http://materialityconference.wordpress.com/).
It will be updated with exhibit information in the coming weeks.
Spaces are very limited, so register soon if you're planning to
attend. The Conference will be preceded by a public lecture by Peter
Galison. Please see details of conference and lecture below.

 Materiality: objects and idioms in historical studies of science and
technology.

 May 3-4, 2013
 York University
 Toronto, CANADA

 There is a renewed interest in materiality. After the turn to
discourse and signs in the late twentieth century, much recent work in
the history of science and technology has revived its focus on matter
and meaning, and on their fusion in the potent objects we call
“things”. But materiality is about more than things.  As an historical
object; as a story of origins; as a tension with immateriality; as an
effect of assemblage and argument; and as a way of thinking about
scholarly work, materiality begs for broader treatment.

 This conference explores materiality as both historical object and
emerging idiom in historical studies of science and technology. On one
hand, it seeks to push into new sites of inquiry: How do we
historicize materiality? When does materiality become a concern for
historical actors and for scholars? How do the specific, local
materialities of scientific and technical work figure in the
wide-scale sweep of historical developments? But alongside new sites
and questions, the conference explores emerging research tools and
modes of scholarly expression that move beyond traditional text into
sound, film and objects. Through paper presentations, hands-on
sessions, exhibits and installations, we bring together a range of
scholars and projects interested in thinking about materiality as
historical object, intellectual resource, and scholarly expression.


 Keynote:       Peter Galison (Harvard University)

 Presenters:    Katharine Anderson (York University)
                        Bob Brain (UBC)
                        Tina Choi (York University)
                        Kristen Haring (Auburn University)
                        Edward Jones-Imhotep (York University)
                        Carla Nappi (UBC)
                        Sophia Roosth (Harvard University)
                        Hanna Rose Shell (MIT)
                        Emily Thompson (Princeton University)
                        John Tresch (University of Pennsylvania)
                        William Turkel (Western University)


 Peter Galison, Harvard University — “Time of Physics, Time of Art”
 University-Wide Lecture
 May 2, 2013 — 4:30pm
 Robert McEwen Auditorium, Schulich School of Business
 Admission: free

 Abstract: In the standard picture of the history of special
relativity, Henri Poincaré’s and Albert Einstein’s reformulation of
simultaneity is considered a quasi-philosophical intervention, a move
made possible by his dis-connection from the standard physics of the
day. Meanwhile, Einstein’s engagement at the Patent Office (or
Poincare¹s in the Bureau of Longitude) enter the story as lowly day
jobs — irrelevant to fundamental work on the nature of the world. I
have argued, on the contrary, that the all-too material and the most
abstract notions of time cross in essential ways. In a collaboration
with the artist William Kentridge (“The Refusal of Time”) we explored
this intersection, pushing on history, physics, and philosophy into a
more associative-imaginative register. This talk is an account of this
complex of problems at the boundary of art and physics history.

 The conference is made possible by the generous support of the SSHRC
Situating Science Cluster, the Institute for Science and Technology
Studies, the Faculties of Science and Fine Arts, and the departments
of History, Philosophy and Science and Technology Studies/Natural
Science.


 Inquiries may be directed to Eleanor Louson <elouson@yorku.ca>