Colloquia 2006-07 James Delbourgo, McGill University, Canada "What is American Enlightenment?: Some Electrical Answers" 4:15pm, April 24th, 2007 Bldg 200 Room 302, History Lounge Stanford University The precirculated reading is the Introduction, Chapter 3 and Conclusion from his award winning book, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (2006). It is available from the main history office, under the front counter. The book is also available at the Stanford Bookstore. Sue Peabody, Washington State University, Vancouver "Free Soil and the Legal Construction of Race in the Atlantic World" 4:15pm, Monday April 30th, 2007 * Note: Monday instead of our usual Thursday Bldg 200 Room 307 Stanford University Data Extinction: How Does Information Disappear? Thursday May 3, 2007 Lane History Building 200 Room 307 3:30pm-6:30pm Christine L. Borgman, Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies, UCLA Disappearing Data: Incentives, Disincentives, and Neglect While a central goal of cyberinfrastructure and e-Science is to improve the use and reuse of research data, massive amounts of research data cease to exist each year. The disappearance of data represents not only the loss of expensive intellectual resources, it represents a huge opportunity cost for comparative and longitudinal research. Relatively little is understood about the scholarly practices associated with data that lead to use and reuse. The talk will present several scenarios of unintentional data loss, mostly in the sciences, discussing situations in which data are lost due to incentives not to maintain them, to the lack of incentives to maintain them, or due to neglect (benign and otherwise). Geoffrey Bowker, Executive Director, Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara University Disappearance and Reality: The Practice of Forgetting Analyzes various modalities of forgetting used in science and business and their relationship to information infrastructure. Discussant: Thomas Mullaney, Department of History, Stanford University Co-sponsored by HPST, CISST, and the Consortium for the Comparative Study of Disappearance (CCSD) History of Global Climate Symposium - May 11th, 2007 1:00 - 5:30pm History Bldg 200 Room 307 1:15 pm Alfred Crosby, emeritus University of Texas         "A Thumbnail Consideration of Humanity's Appetite for Energy" 2:15pm Spencer Weart, Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics         "Climate Change in the Public Imagination, 1896-2006" 3:15-3:45pm break 3:45pm Stephen Schneider, Department of Biological Sciences, & Co-director Woods Institute, Stanford University         "Tipping Phenomena: Biogeophysical or Social?" 4:45-5:30pm overall discussion moderated by Londa Schiebinger Download pdf poster Critical Conversations: Methods and Practices in Interdisciplinary Science Studies 9:30am- 5pm, Friday, May 18th, 2007 Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center Please join us for Stanford Science and Technology Studies Writing Group, 2006-2007 The Stanford Science and Technology Studies Writing Group welcomes Stanford graduate students, postdocs, visiting lecturers, and other members of the Stanford community in the early stages of their academic careers whose work engages with the interdisciplinary study of science and technology. The goal of the writing group is to provide a supportive structure to help prepare work for publication and/or dissertation, as well as grant proposals, dissertation proposals, and any other type of writing demanded of beginning scholars. The Stanford STS Writing Group will meet four times a quarter during 2006-2007, and conclude with a day-long graduate student conference and keynote event in the spring of 2007(see below). At each meeting, a participant circulates a piece of writing intended for publication or dissertation work and another participant serves as a moderator for discussion. In addition to the group discussion at meetings, participants are encouraged to provide written feedback to the author. The STS Writing Group is supported by a grant from the Patrick Suppes Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology at Stanford University. The group meets every other Tuesday from noon to 1:30pm in History room 307. Contact: Lydia Barnett (Department of History, lbarnett at stanford.edu) or Sarah Richardson (Program in Modern Thought and Literature, richardson at stanford.edu). Jon Agar, Cambridge University and visiting scholar at Harvard University (2006). "Margaret Thatcher, Scientist" 'Before becoming a full-time politician, Margaret Thatcher was a research chemist. Later, when she was made minister responsible for science in the early 1970s, she was thrown in to fierce and fundamental debates about the roles of markets in deciding science policy. Did Thatcher's science background matter to the market turn of the 1970s and 1980s?' 4:15pm, March 15th, 2007 Bldg 200 Room 203 Stanford University Film showing and discussion of Who Killed the Electric Car? by Sarah Lochlann Jain, CASA, Stanford University and David A. Kirsch, University of Maryland Director, Chris Paine and Chelsea Sexton, star of the movie (other than the car) 5:30pm Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 Cubberley Auditorium was filled to over capacity! The crowd really seemed to enjoy the free snacks T-shirts, which went very quickly to the first 100 people. Here is the article from the Daily front page coverage Keith Wailoo, Rutgers University on the Cultural Politics of Pain Medicine and Relief in American Medicine and Society Oct 26, 2006 Bldg 200 Room 307 Stanford University Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, emeritus professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science, Cambridge University The world's leading authority on Ancient Science will talk on recent developments and future prospects in the history of science. September 22, 2006, noon Classics Lounge, Bldg. 20 room 21-C Classics Department Stanford University Co-sponsored with the Classics Department Irina Dezhina, Leading Researcher, Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences "Russian Science: State of the Art and Government Reforms" Tuesday, October 10 at Noon, Building 40, Conference Room (41J) Stanford University Co-sponsored with CREES Rega Wood, Research Professor, Philosophy Department and Program in Medieval Studies, Stanford University "Indivisibles and Infinities: Rufus on Points" October 12, 2006, 4:15pm Bldg 200 Room 307 Stanford University Lunch with Thomas Hankins, emeritus from University of Washington, Oct 17 in conjunction with his talk to the Art History Department's Visualizing Knowledge seminar. Noon, Room 307, Lane History Building (Bldg 200). Please RSVP to RROGERS@stanford.edu if you would like to attend. Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 4:30 pm (Stanford Humanities Center) "Seeing and Showing with Instruments in Early Modern Science." Previous Year's HPST Colloquia Top of Page