Blogposts 2023-24
Lectures
Convenors for 2023-24
Chiara Lacroix
Marie van Haaster
Simon Werner
Tunahan Durmaz
Timo Houtekamer
19.10.2023
Lorraine Daston — Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
A talk by Lorraine Daston
October 19, Sala degli Stemmi and online, Villa Salviati
In this talk, Professor Lorraine Daston presented her newest book, ‘Rules: A Short History of What We Live By’ (Princeton, 2022). This session was part of the Histories of Knowledge seminar, organised by Prof. Lauren Kassell and Prof. Nicolas Guilhot. It was also an opportunity for other EUI members to listen and ask questions to the most prominent historian of science of our time.
Book abstract
Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organise the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we do not, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change—how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they do not, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines.
Rules offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us—whether we know it or not.
19.02.2024
John Christopoulos — Abortion in Early Modern Italy
Book presentation by John Christopoulos
February 19, Sala del Torrino, Villa Salviati
The EUI Queer and Feminist Studies and the History of Science and Medicine Working Groups hosted a book presentation with John Christopoulos.
In this talk, John Christopoulos, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia’s History Department, presented his latest book, Abortion in Early Modern Italy, originally published in 2021 by Harvard University Press, with an upcoming Italian translation.
Book abstract
In this authoritative history, John Christopoulos provides a provocative and far-reaching account of abortion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. His poignant portraits of women who terminated or were forced to terminate pregnancies offer a corrective to longstanding views: he finds that Italians maintained a fundamental ambivalence about abortion. Italians from all levels of society sought, had, and participated in abortions. Early modern Italy was not an absolute anti-abortion culture, an exemplary Catholic society centered on the “traditional family.” Rather, Christopoulos shows, Italians held many views on abortion, and their responses to its practice varied.
20.03.2024
Simon Schaffer — Fact and Fable in Enlightenment Sciences
March 19, Sala del Capitolo, Badia Fiesolana, and March 20, Sala degli Stemmi, Villa Salviati
Simon Schaffer, distinguished historian of science from the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture in the framework of the HEC Colloquia hosted by the Department of History and the History of Science and Medicine Working Group. The previous day, he also participated in a workshop for members of the History of Science Working Group, in which he gave feedback on researchers’ papers.
Lecture abstract
The status of matters of fact in the late Enlightenment was never stable and often questioned: puzzles of evidence and authority were critical in the establishment of reliable forms of knowledge at that decisive conjuncture. In a range of episodes that included reports of falling stones and wondrous cures, of dramatic experiments and marvellous machines, questions of plausibility and credibility were debated in public. Strenuous attempts were made somehow to police and control models of knowledge and doctrines about nature and society, and thus to define what counted within society as imagination or superstition. These imbroglios raise issues of trust and of politics that have, perhaps, become familiar in more recent concerns with factitious news. The historiography of facts thus requires careful and attentive study to make sense of the entanglement between authorities in the sciences and conditions of public knowledge.
25-26.09.2024
Mary Fissell — The Long History of Abortion
September 25 and 26, Sala del Torrino, Villa Salviati
On the initiative of Prof. Lauren Kassell, and thanks to the organisation of Monica Morado Vazquez (convenor of the Queer and Feminist Studies Working Group), Prof. Mary Fissell visited the EUI to workshop the manuscript of her new book on the long history of abortion. Over two days, a small group of HEC researchers and professors discussed Mary Fissell’s manuscript, providing comments and suggestions for its revision. The book covers the history of abortion from Antiquity to the twentieth century. It uses an impressive amount of empirical cases to show how women have always sought abortions, and how abortion prohibition has never worked. It is also a book aimed at a wide public, and as such, it smoothly combines an educative and informative function with academically rigorous analyses. We are looking forward to seeing it published.
About the author:
Mary E. Fissell is professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, with appointments in the history of science and the history departments. Her scholarly work focuses on how ordinary people in early modern England understood health, healing, and the natural world. She coedits the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
15.03.2024
Mental Health Outside the Asylum: The European Legacy of Franco Basaglia
March 15, Le Murate Caffè Letterario
This workshop, co-organised by the History of Science and Medicine Working Group and the Robert Schuman Centre, in collaboration with the project “MANICOMIO, ADDIO! Franco Basaglia 100” by Chille de la Balanza, explored the legacy of Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia.
March 2024 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Franco Basaglia, a key thinker and reformer in the global anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960’s. Although his legacy is still very much alive in Italy, it is much less well known abroad. We decided to mark this centenary with a workshop centred around the legacy of Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia, including topics such as (de-)institutionalisation, mental health and (de-)stigmatization. The event began with a keynote by Bojan Bilic, a scholar of gender studies at the University of Vienna, on the impact of Basaglia’s ideas on Yugoslav feminism and psychiatry. After the keynote, a roundtable with literary scholar Marina Guglielmi, psychologist Patrizia Meringolo and sociologist Mariella Orsi, further expanded on Franca Ongaro Basaglia’s work, the position and role of women in asylums, and narratives and images created inside and outside the asylum.
After the event, participants had the opportunity to visit the premises of San Salvi, former asylum of Florence, under the guidance of Claudio Ascoli from the theatre company Chille de la Balanza.
You can download the poster and programme of the event by clicking on this link: 2024.02 BASAGLIA_EN-DIGITAL
19.03.2024
Simon Schaffer — A Masterclass with Simon Schaffer
Chiara Lacroix
Marie van Haaster
Jan Becker
Maxime Guttin
Jakub Ochocinski
Ewa Zakrzewska
Simon Werner
Timo Houtekamer
Raffaelle Danna
25.10.2023
Eliska Bujokova — Transition of healthcare institutions from spaces of improvement, reform and medical research to municipal organs of public health, in Glasgow and Edinburgh between the 1720s and 1850s.
22.11.2023
Jakub Ochociński — John Aubrey’s Brief Lives and Astrology
23.04.2024
Zsófi Veszely — Sex Education in State-Socialist Hungary
Eliska Bujokova, a visiting researcher from the University of Glasgow, presented a draft chapter of her PhD thesis. Eliska’s thesis addresses the transition of healthcare institutions from spaces of improvement, reform and medical research to municipal organs of public health, in Glasgow and Edinburgh between the 1720s and 1850s. Her chapter raised many fascinating issues, such as the involvement of Scottish hospitals in colonial ventures. The lively discussion was a great way to kick off this year’s internal sessions.
Jakub Ochocinski, first-year EUI history researcher, shared a paper that grew out of his MA thesis. The paper dealt with changing approaches to knowledge production in relation to life writing in late 17th century England, by exploring John Aubrey’s (1626-1697) extensive use of astrology in his biographical work, Brief Lives (1680-81). We later heard from Kuba that the paper got accepted, and eventually published, in Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Congratulations on the publication, Kuba!
Zsófi Veszely, second-year EUI history researcher, presented extracts from her thesis to receive feedback before the One-Quarter deadline. Zsófi researches sex education in state-socialist Hungary. The extracts we read untangled the politics of different educators’ thought on sexual knowledge. Aside from the interesting analysis, we also appreciated Zsófi’s smooth writing style. It was a pleasure to read her work.
13.02.2024
Emile Bryon — Exploring Human Uniqueness: Animal behaviour research at its best (and worst)
Presentation by Emile Bryon
February 13, Sala del Camino, Villa Salviati
The History of Science Working Group invited a PhD researcher from Utrecht University, Emile Bryon, to talk to us about his research on chimpanzees’ cumulative culture. As historians of science, we are used to looking at scientific fields with historical (and critical) eyes. For example, historians have often criticised studies in biology for their normative assumptions on human bodies and societies. But how do scientists themselves view their own field and their research? Emile’s presentation was the opportunity to find out about his perspective on his field, animal behaviour studies.
Emile’s abstract
The rather recent research field of animal behaviour has brought valuable knowledge and questions on the human species’ place within the continuum of living species and what sets us apart from others. It has also produced harmful normative policies: one of its founding fathers, Konrad Lorenz, was a devoted advocate of eugenics. This conflicting history reflects the sensitive nature of the topics at hand; at once crucial to the understanding of our nature, but also prone to being leveraged for dubious ends. It is thus no small task to enquire about the origins of culture, which is often deemed to be a unique human characteristic. But what is culture, and how can learning about its expression in other species bring us valuable knowledge on who we are, and how we ought to be?
Monthly 2023/24
Bring Your Own Book Coffee Sessions
Some of the books discussed:
Alaine Polcz. One Woman in the War. Central European University Press, 2002.
Anne Kirstine Hermann. Børn í Heimsveldi. Sprotin Publishers, 2022.
https://sprotin.fo/products/1035/born-i-heimsveldi?_ProductFilterIds=2&_ProductId=1035&_l=en&_c=EUR
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. The Makioka Sisters. Serialised between 1943 and 1948.
Naomi Klein. Doppelganger. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
Kathleen Wilson. The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth century. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Island-Race-Englishness-Empire-and-Gender-in-the-Eighteenth-Century/Wilson/p/book/9780415158961?srsltid=AfmBOorNWWluYZIMKi6xdZCoNjL253yc_XLulYvXwafMbzPOAZMc21KI
Elizabeth Stephens and P.M. Cryle. Normality: A Critical Genealogy. UChicago Press, 2017.
24.05.2024
La Specola
20.05.2024
Zoe Lauri — The Nature of the Risorgimento: Science, Environment and Nation–Building in
Nineteenth–Century Italy
PhD thesis defence by Zoe Lauri
This thesis investigates conceptions of nature and their relationship to politics in nineteenth century Italy. I claim that, in the context of nation-building that followed Italian political unification in 1861, Italian nature was used as an instrument of legitimisation of the nation. This happened in different ways and involved the creation of the very concept of Italian nature, which until then met with little correspondence on either the scientific or cultural level, and only had meaning when referred to the Italian peninsula as a geographical entity. Within the context of the politicisation of nature in Risorgimento and liberal Italy, science played a central role. The production of knowledge about Italian nature was the basis for giving legitimacy to the national territory through the definition of a naturalistic unity of the peninsula, the mapping of its natural resources for exploitation and, finally, the invention of the Italian landscape and the creation of an imagery still partly operating today. These three perspectives, which correspond to the three parts into which the thesis is divided ('Territorialising Italian Nature', 'Exploiting Italian Nature', 'Experiencing Italian Nature') define what I refer to as Patriotic ecology, which I consider to be a crucial moment for Italy’s history of science and environmental history.This thesis aims to be a contribution in the field of the history of science, yet it recognises environmental history as an essential component, showing the inextricable link between the history of nature, science, and politics in nineteenth century Italy. The choice of archives was determined by a preliminary selection of key figures in the scientific panorama of nineteenth century Italy, considering both the history of institutions and the contributions of single individuals. Sources include published and unpublished material dated between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Examiners:
Lucy Riall (EUI – HEC)
Deborah Coen (Yale University)
Elena Canadelli (Università degli Studi di Padova)