1999-2000 Sessions   Wednesday, Oct. 6, 1999, 6 pm. Planning and Organizational Session. Wednesday, Oct. 20, 1999, 6 pm.: Sha Xin Wei discussed "PostScript(TM): Geometric Writing as Performance." Abstract Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1999, 6 pm.:Robert Batchelor's talk was "The Republic of Codes: Cryptographic Theory and Scientific Networks in the Seventeenth Century" Abstract Full paper. Steven Meyer's talk "A Different Kind of Theory of Everything; or, What Does Donna Haraway Have To Do with Gertrude Stein? And Does Michael Joyce Really Have Anything To Do with Either of Them?" will be Wednesday, Nov. 17th, at 6 pm in the History department Lounge. Abstract Modest Witness draft paper.   Friday, December 10, we held our last Writing Science workshop of the quarter from 4-8 p.m. at Xerox Parc, in which we explored the new reading technologies that they are developing. Wednesday, January 26, at 6 pm Neil Denari, "BINARIES, MONOLOGICS, AND MULTIPLICITIES" It will explore, through spatial, cinematic, and cultural examples, and ultimately through my work, modes of thinking and working that attempt to both reflect and remake the world. Using Zen one-ness, classical two-ness, and Deluezian/Godardian many-ness (or more specifically, the concept of the AND), I will outline the ways in which I navigate through the unmappable post-modern (F. Jameson) landscape. Neil Denari, Gyroscopic Horizons (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), p. 8. Bio: Neil Denari became director of SCI-Arc in 1997, having taught design studio at the School since 1988. He has been involved in a variety of projects on an international scale, including the "Beauty 2000" pavilion scheduled to open in Avignon, France, in April. His work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in "The Unprivate House." It is included in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; FRAC Centre, Orleans; Denver Art Museum, and Carnegie/Heinz Collection, Pittsburgh. Publications include Interrrupted Projections, 1997, and Gyroscopic Horizons, a collection of Denari's work published by Princeton Architectural Press in fall 1999. February 2 Marc Alley, History Lounge, 6 pm. "An Introduction to Volumetric Display Techniques for Radiological Imaging." Synopsis: The development of faster imaging techniques across all radiological imaging modalities is leading to a dramatic increase in the number of images that are produced in a given study. A Computed Tomography (CT) study can easily produce 500 images in 30 seconds, and trends in Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging are following the same path. Traditionally, the clinician will interpret the resulting study by printing each image to multi-format film. Clearly as more images are produced, this approach rapidly becomes unwieldy and inefficient. As a response to this trend, research in volumetric image processing is becoming an important tool in the reduction of these vast amounts of data into more easily visualized forms. In this talk I will introduce some of the basic techniques that are used for imaging processing: maximum intensity projections (MIPs), volume and perspective volume rendering (VR and PVR) and shaded surface display (SSD). We will also look at how these techniques can be expected to influence the practice of Radiology in the coming years. 3D Lab synopsis: The visit to the Stanford 3D Medical Imaging Laboratory in the following week should help provide some context for the techniques that I will be introducing. In addition to seeing how these approaches are being applied clinically, several current research topics will also be demonstrated. I encourage you to visit the web page of the 3D lab at: http://mumm.stanford.edu/~snapel/3Dlab/3dlab.html February 9 visit to 3D Lab, Lucas Center with Sandy Napel, 5:45 pm. Wednesday, February 23, at 6 pm Alison Winter, Cal Tech, in the History Department Lounge. "The chemistry of truth: attempts to manage honesty in the human body c1850-1950." March 9 (Th) Kate Hayles "Linking Bodies: Hypertextual Strategies in Print and New Media." Abstract: From dynamic typography to multimedia hypertext fictions, New Media have vividly explored the fusion of word and image. Less widely known is the tradition of artists' books, which have exuberantly experimented with the fusion of word and image in print. Enriching the complex dynamic between image and text are hypertext links, which can operate in print as well as digital media, creating multiple reading paths and allowing for a wide variety of narrative strategies, as well as for complex interactions between visual and verbal signifiers. This talk will explore the hypertext link as it is deployed in print and in digital media, with an emphasis on theorizing the link as connection and rupture, enactment and breakdown, design and randomness. The goal is to work towards a typology of linking strategies, while remaining attentive to structural and semiotic differences between print and digital media. April 5 (W) Otniel Dror Biomedicine and the Paradox of Emotions Otniel E. Dror is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He holds a Ph. D. from Princeton University and an M.D. from Ben Gurion University in Israel. He is currently writing a book on the history of emotions and the life sciences for Stanford University Press, provisionally entitled The Science of Passion: Modernity and the Study of Emotions, 1880-1950. His previous publications have appeared in Isis, Configurations, and in collections on the history of emotions and the philosophy of mind. April 26 (W) Thierry Bardini, "The Augmentation of Human Intellect as an Alternative Research Program to Artificial Intelligence: Implications for the Definition of the Human-Machine Boundary " abstract Thierry Bardini is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, Universite de Montreal, where he co-directs the Research Laboratory in Multimedia Communication. He joined the department in 1993 after two years as a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Author of approximately a dozen papers or book chapters (Science, Technology and Human Values, Knowledge and Policy, Journal of Communication, Technologies de l'Information et Societe, Reseaux), Thierry Bardini is currently finishing his first book, Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Co-Evolution and the Origins of Personal Computing, forthcoming inthe Fall 2000 at Stanford University Press. May 3 (W) Timothy Ferris, "Quantum Weirdness" Abstract and Bio May 17 (W), 5 - 7:30 pm, Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Modernism's Fourth Dimension with Bruce Clarke, Linda Henderson, and Steven Meyer May 24 (W) Mary Flanagan, "HyperBodies, HyperKnowledge: Women in Games, Women in Cyberpunk, and Strategies of Resistance" Abstract and Bio     Tim Lenoir, Chair, Program in History and Philosophy of Science, tlenoir@leland.stanford.edu Haun Saussy, Chair, Department of Asian Languages, saussy@leland.stanford.edu Steven Meyer, Stanford Humanities Center, stevenm@leland.stanford.edu Graduate Student Assistant: Casey Alt, Dept. of History, caseyalt@leland.stanford.edu Tereza Virginia de Almeida is a Professor of Brazilian Literature and Literary Theory at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/Brazil. She is a visiting scholar within the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. In her work in progress,entitled "For a Critique of Cannibal Reason", she is drafting a collection of essays each of which hinges upon a revisionist close reading of the thesis "The Crisis of Messianic Philosophy" which was presented in 1950 by the Brazilian modernist poet Oswald de Andrade. "For a critique of cannibal Reason" sets out to re-interpret Oswald's utopian proclamation of the emergence of a natural-technological man from a postmodern/techno-tribal perspective.virginiaalmeida@hotmail.com Nancy Anderson is a doctoral student in the History of Art at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation (of which 2-1/2 chapters are written) looks at representation and the rise of fields of microscopy (cytology, especially) during the second half of the 19th century. Chapters will cover: 1) the development of biological stains, "seeing" nature through a painted artifact, and the role of aesthetics; 2) representation (writing, drawing, photography) and how 19th-century microscopists debated the relative roles and merits of different forms of representation; and 3) 19th century arguments over the role of the imagination in scientific inquiry and then in the creation of representations by scientists. stfelix@leland.stanford.edu Anne Balsamo is a research scientist at Xerox PARC in a design group called RED (Research on Experimental Documents). The current RED project is the design and construction of a museum installation called "Experiments in the Future of Reading." Her previous work on the body and technology was published by Duke University Press in a book titled Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Her current research focuses on the relationship between the design of new media and cultural theory.abalsamo@parc.xerox.com Robert Batchelor is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford. He recently received his doctorate from UCLA. His current project is a book on cryptography in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and its relation to studies of the Chinese language. defoe@leland.Stanford.edu Richard M. Benjamin, Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University. His interests are in contemporary American culture most broadly; in technology studies; in critical and literary theory; and in syncretic versions of cultural criticism and communication theory that enable him to examine American pop iconography, contemporary film, interactive media, and "post-modernity." richb@leland.Stanford.edu W. Bernard Carlson is a Visiting Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford. He holds a joint appointment in the Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication and the History Department at the University of Virginia. As a historian of technology, he has specialized in studying the thought processes and business strategies used by prominent American inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. His publications include Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric (Cambridge, 1991). He is especially interested in the ways in which inventors use representations, sketches, and models in their creative work. With the support from the Sloan Foundation, he is currently working on a scientific biography of Nikola Tesla which will be published by Princeton University Press. wc4p@virginia.edu Angelica Duran, Doctoral candidate, English Dept., Stanford University Dissertation, "The Art and Craft of Milton's Pedagogy: The Scientific Revolution in Milton's Poetry and Prose", explores the influence of the English Scientific Revolution on the representations of pedagogy in all of Milton's works. It combines historical research and analysis of poetry and prose to accurately appreciate how Milton captured the excitement, anxieties, and developments of the parallel Scientific Revolution and educational reform. angeled@leland.Stanford.edu Lynn Eden, a sociologist, is a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. She is currently completing a book titled Constructing Destruction: Organizations, Knowledge, and the Effects of Nuclear Weapons(Ithaca: Cornell University press, forthcoming) about how scientific and engineering knowledge was encoded in organizational routines, and how and why that knowledge seriously underestimated the damage that would be caused by nuclear weapons. More broadly, Eden is interested in issues of social cognition and representation in organizations. lynneden@stanford.edu Robert E. Horn, Visiting Scholar, Program on People, Computers and Design, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. His book Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Centuryhas recently been published by Stanford UP. His work is focused on developing a broad understanding of visual language, which he describes as the very tight integration of words and visual elements into new units of communication. He is also heavily involved in developing a kind of mapping of great public debates, called argumentation mapping. bobhorn@well.com Thomas Hughes is Mellon Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. His most recent publications include RESCUING PROMETHEUS (Pantheon, 1998); AMERICAN GENESIS (Penguin 1990), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and LEWIS MUMFORD: PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL (Oxford University Press 1990), which he edited with Agatha Hughes. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology. tphughes@leland.stanford.edu Steven Meyer, visiting fellow this year at the Stanford Humanities Center, is currently on leave from Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches modern and contemporary poetry and directs the graduate Creative Writing Program. His study Irresistible Dictation: Gertrude Stein and the Correlations of Writing and Science, due out next year from Stanford University Press, examines Stein's radically experimental writing in terms of late 19th- and early 20th-century, as well as late 20th-century, literary, philosophical, psychological and neurophysiological contexts. stevenm@leland.Stanford.EDU Ellen S. O'Connor is a Visiting Scholar at the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research, Stanford University, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Her research pursues linkages between the humanities and management-organization studies. Her most recent article, "The Politics of Management Thought: A Case Study of the Harvard Business School and the Human Relations School," appears in the Academy of Management Review, January, 1999. eoconnor@leland.Stanford.EDU Norbert Paul completed his doctoral degree in Theoretical Medicine in Germany and holds a Masters degree in History, Philosophy and German Philology/Linguistics. Since 1989 Assistant Professor for History and Ethics of Medicine at the Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Germany, he is currently joining the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Program in History and Philosophy of Science as an Alexander von Humboldt-Fellow. He is working on a book focusing on History and Ethics of Molecular Medicine focussing on gentic testing and gene therapy. Recent publications include a volume on methodology in Medical History (N. Paul/Th. Schlich (ed.) (1998), Medizingeschichte: Aufgaben, Probleme, Perspektiven. Frankfurt/M.:Campus) and articles on the interaction of biomedical knowledge and clinical practice (cf. e.g. N. Paul (1998), Incurably Suffering from the "Hiatus Theoreticus". Some Epistemological Problems in Modern Medicine and the Clinical Relevance of Philosophy of Medicine, in: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 19:229-251) npaul@leland.stanford.edu Michael Riordan is Assistant to the Director at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Stanford, teaching a course on the history of 20th century physics. He author of "The Hunting of the Quark: A True Story of Modern Physics" (Simon & Schuster, 1987), and coauthor of "Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age" (W. W. Norton, 1997), a history of the transistor. He is now working on a multi-author history of the SSC to be titled "Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider." michael@slac.stanford.edu Daniel Rosenberg, Stanford University. His principal work concerns theories of language and epistemology in eighteenth-century Europe. He has written on etymology, neology, and language origins theory as well as Diderot's Encyclopediaand Condillac's pedagogical works. His work aims especially at understanding the role of history and temporality in these various theories. Some of his current work concerns relationships between the concept of the encyclopedia in the eighteenth century and contemporary information theory, in particular, Theodor Nelson's theory of hypertext. He is also currently writing about the Hoover Dam. He would be especially interested in talking with people who think about computers and such things. drosenbe@socrates.berkeley.edu Haun Saussy, Associate Professor in the Departments of Asian Languages and Comparative Literature. His research interests include Chinese poetry and archaeology, translation, and linguistic philosophy.saussy@leland.stanford.edu Sha, Xin Wei, Visiting Scholar, Program in History and Philosophy of Science, and Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Mathematics. Sha is interested in differential geometry, hybrid media, and critical studies of technoscience. His current work concerns how mathematicians construct intuitions about differential geometry, particularly continuous and infinite things, by manipulating material signs using chalk, pen or software. xinwei@stanford.edu Ann Weinstone is a Ph.D. Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. Her essays have appeared in Science-Fiction Studies, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and Diacritics, among other venues. She is currently working on her dissertation: Universe City or The Risk of Posthumanism.weinstne@leland.Stanford.EDU Site designed and maintained by Rosemary Rogers. For questions or comments, please email rrogers@stanford.edu.