Preliminary Conference Program for “Linnaean Worlds: Global Scientific Practice during the Great Divergence,” May 4-5, 2012
Friday, May 4
9–10:45 AM
Panel 1: Climatology and the Colonial Experience
Katharine Anderson, York University, “Charting The Forces of Nature: The Surveying Voyages of HMS
Beagle.”
Bio Abstract
Franz Mauelshagen, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Climate and Culture, Essen,
Germany, “Colonial History and the Revolution of Climatology, 1750–1850.”
Eleonora Rohland, “Hurricanes on the Gulf Coast: Environmental Knowledge and Science in French
Louisiana.”
Commentator: James Fleming, Colby College
11:15 AM–1 PM
Panel 2: Sciences of Commodity Production in Global Context
Leida Fernandez, Spanish National Research Council, Madrid, “Globalizing Knowledge and Scientific
Practices in Tropical Agricultural: the Spanish Caribbean during the "Great Divergence.”
Stuart McCook, University of Guelph, “Directed Diasporas?: The Plant Sciences and the Neo-Columbian
Exchanges.”
Mina Ishizu, London School Of Economics, “A Missing Chapter in the Great Divergence Debate? The
Production and Diffusion of Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Western Europe and Tokugawa
Japan, 1750-1850.”
Bio Abstract
Commentator: Eric Vanhaute, University of Gent, Belgium
3 PM–4:45 PM
Panel 3: Information-Processing and Empire
Matthew Crawford, Kent State University, “Between Bureaucrats And Bark Collectors: Botany and Empire
in the Spanish Atlantic world, 1750-1800.”
Devyani Gupta, St. John's College, Cambridge UK, “Scientific and Economic Concerns in the Growth and
Development of the British Indian Postal Network, 1750–1850.”
Bio Abstract
Jessica Ratcliff, University of Illinois, “Travancore In the Business of Science: Data, Publishing and
Patronage between a Princely State and Europe, Circa 1850.”
Commentator: Sujit Sivasundaram, Cambridge University, UK
Saturday, May 5
9 AM–11 AM
Panel 4: Trading Names: Zoological Exploration in Iberian America
Iris Montero Sobrevilla, University of Cambridge/UNAM Mexico, “The Missionary, the Merchant, and the
Artist: Ornithological Illustration in New Spain, 1762-1803.”
Bio Abstract
María Eugenia Constantino, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, Mexico City, and Antonio
Lafuente, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, “The Ark of José Longinos:
Conservation Practices and Bonds of Value in New Spain Animalia.”
Bio Abstract
Marcelo Fabián Figueroa, National University of Tucumán, CONICET-Argentina, “Félix de Azara and the
Birds of Paraguay: Making Inventories and Taxonomies in the Boundaries of the Spanish Empire
(1784-1802).”
Bio Abstract
Irina Podgorny, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, “Scraps of Information and
the Affinities of South American Mammals in the 19th Century.”
Bio Abstract
Commentator: Staffan Müller-Wille, University of Exeter, UK
11:30 AM–1 PM
Panel 5: Translating Textual and Visual Knowledge
Kay Etheridge, Department Of Biology, Gettysburg College, “The History and Influence of Maria
Merian's Bird-Eating Tarantula: Circulating Images in the Production of Natural Knowledge.”
Ann Jannetta, University of Pittsburgh, “Texts and Contexts: Translating Western Scientific Knowledge in
Early Modern Japan.”
Commentator: Neil Safier, University of British Columbia
2:30 PM–4:15 PM
Panel 6: Diffusion, Divergence, and Change – Linnaean Thinking at Home and Abroad
Hanna Hodacs, Warwick University, UK, “Between Metropolitan and Colonial Natural History: Swedish
Naturalists in London.”
Kenneth Nyberg, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, “Linnaeus’s Apostles and the Globalization of
Knowledge, 1729–1756.”
Göran Rydén, Uppsala University, “From an Integrated Utilitarian Economic Thinking to Views of
Progress: How ‘Travelers in Trade’ Changed Swedish Perceptions of Economic Systems.”
Commentator: Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University
4:30 PM–5:45 PM, Concluding Remarks
Dan Rood, “Global History of Science/History of Global Capitalism: The State of the Field and Future Directions.”
Commentator: Diego Holstein, University of Pittsburgh, World History Center Associate Director