Colloquia 2005-06 Claudia Brosseder, Alexander von Humboldt visiting scholar from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich "Magic between Two Worlds: The Many Lives of Andean "Sorcerers" in Colonial Peru " June 1, 2006 Lane History Building Room 307, 4:15pm Stanford University Andean "hechiceros" (sorcerers) are difficult to grasp. The many sources that either Spaniards, Creoles or Mestizos have written about these despised "supernatural" agents in colonial Peru offer diverse and contradictory reflections on their significance and activities. While Andean "hechiceros" became a primary target of evangelization efforts in Peru, occupying bishops, the Inquisition courts, and many unnamed missionary "heroes", the picture of the "hechiceros" and their actions remains for us rather puzzling. They are either described as another Merlin or a "New World Eva", seducing indigenous souls. Supposedly they were able to fly, do harm, and cure diseases at the same time. Sometimes they were presented as worshipers of Jupiter in Andean disguise or as witches of European complexion. But who and what were Andean "hechiceros" in early colonial times? Can we somehow get beyond the European perceptions? The paper explores how to tackle this prominent figure in the colonial history of Peru. I will offer a method for how to carefully dismantle the many tales spun around the "hechiceros" by comparing European and Andean sources alike. Essentially this is a story of European convictions about the natural, supernatural, idolatry, demonology, and God. At the same time, it is also a story of indigenous categories: Yllapa, villca, huacas, and fertility rites in the Andean world. Last but not least, it is an exploration of the many transformations of European and Andean beliefs and practices. One might call them symptomatic for any encounter between two worlds. But I will confine myself to the very specific case of colonial Peru and to the peculiar logic(s) we find there. Katherine Dunlop, Stanford Post Doctoral "Lambert and Kant on Geometrical Postulates" May 16, 2006 Building 100, 4:15pm, Main Quad Stanford University Alison Wylie, University of Washington, and 2005-2006 Michelle Clayman Research Fellowship Stanford Institute for Research on Women and Gender "Standpoint (still) Matters: Research on Women, Work and the Academy" May 4, 2006 Lane History Building Room 307, 4:15pm Stanford University Feminist standpoint theory offers a framework for making sense both of the substantive insights generated by thirty years of research on the status and experience of women in the academic workplace, and of the persistent controversy that surrounds this work, especially when it concerns women in the sciences. The 1999 MIT report on the status of women scientists, juxtaposed with the debate touched off by Larry Summers' remarks a year ago, provides a point of departure for analysis of how a subject matter and a field of research has been constituted that embodies and, at the same time, puts epistemically consequential pressure on standpoint theory-inspired guidelines for doing (social) science as a feminist. Brian Ogilvie, University of Massachusetts "Ezechiel Spanheim's Metallic Archive" April 20, 2006 Stanford Humanities Center Boardroom, 6:30pm-7:30pm Stanford University cosponsored with the "Ancients and Moderns" Humanities Center Workshop Pam Long, independent historian, currently at the Getty Center this year "Engineering the Eternal City: Urban Process and Knowledge Production in Early Counter-Reformation Rome, c. 1557-1570." March 2, 2006 noon to 1:30pm Lane History Building Lounge, room 302, lunch will be provided, please RSVP rrogers@stanford.edu Paola Bertucci, University of Bologna Electric Conversations: Shocks and attractions for public and private Enlightenment 4:15pm, Monday, February 6, 2006 Lane History Building Room 201 Stanford University Treading in the footsteps of more famous contemporaries such as Fontanelle and Algarotti, in remote provinces of the Republic of Letters less famous authors too published fictional dialogues between learned gentlemen and learning ladies on the subject of electricity. Attractions stimulated by the rubbing of bodies, shocks produced by electric kisses, sparks that inflamed spirits in front of unaware spectators, created a microcosm of metaphors that could be employed for celebrative as well as satirical poems. The spectacle of electricity quickly won the interest of aristocratic audiences in search for entertainment, but it also reached more provincial ones thanks to a number of publications that mocked best-selling works on natural philosophy. The paper focuses on such kind of literature and it examines how electrical experiments replaced classical symbolism for courting and love. Together with the theatrical dimension of electrical performances it highlights how the expanding market for cultural products created the conditions for the domestication of electrical experimental philosophy: a number of electrical toys made it possible to stage in one's household famously controversial experiments while inexpensive textbooks helped curious ladies and gentlemen catch up with most recent philosophical news. Marcos Cueto "International Health, Cold War Malaria and Mexico" 4:15pm, Thursday, January 19, 2006 Lane History Building Room 307 Stanford University During the 1950s, malaria, a rural disease extended in Mexico and Latin America, became the quintessential international health intervention for agencies working in developing countries (as yellow fever and hookworm were for tropical health during the early 20th century). The Pan American Sanitary Bureau, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.S. Department of State supported malaria eradication by indoor spraying of DDT and use of antimalarial drugs. This presentation will examine the Cold War motivations of the campaign and examine the responses in Mexico (the first developing country to embrace eradication). Malaria eradication was portrayed as an instrument for improving agricultural productivity, tourism, and rural progress. There was also an official belief that the campaign would advance Western medicine and overcome the "apathy" and "fatalism" of peasants. Eradication was carried out through a military-style campaign with overconfidence on technological solutions. Christopher Smeenk, UCLA "Newton on Constrained Motion: Methodological Morals from Section X" 4:15pm, Thursday, November 3, 2005 Lane History Building Room 307, Stanford University A Century of Relativity 1905-2005: An Einstein Workshop (PDF) Tilman Sauer, Senior Research Associate in History and Einstein Papers Project, California Institute of Technology "Heuristic Aspects of Einstein's Unified Field Theory Program" and Dean Rickles, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Canada "What Price Determinism? A Hole Other Story!" October 27, 2005 2:00 - 5:00 pm Wallenberg Theatre, Wallenberg Hall, Bldg 160, Stanford CA free and open to the public Sponsored by the Patrick Suppes Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology and the Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Agnotology: The Cultural Production of Ignorance Ocotober 7th and 8th, 2005 Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center 424 Santa Teresa Street, Stanford CA free and open to the public Previous Year's HPST Colloquia Top of Page