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2017-18: Revolutions

Our investigation for this year is anchored by two anniversaries of important historical and cultural events: the 100 years of the Russian听Revolution听in October 1917, and the 200 years of the publication of Mary Shelley鈥檚听Frankenstein听in January 1818. Our lectures focus on political transformation, technological bodies,听revolution, perception, and art.

The Fall 2017 series featured

  • Arthur Shapiro, Revolutionizing Perception, September 20

  • Michael Sappol, Body Modern: Fritz Kahn, Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity 1915-1960,听October 4
  • Eric Lohr, 100 Years Ago Today: The Russian Revolution,听October 25
  • Catherine Knight Steele,听Black Joy and Resistance: Black Feminist Discourse Online,听November 8, 2017

The Spring 2018 series featured

  • Richard Sha Presents Romantic Science, February 7
  • Jimena Canales, Metastable Demons: The Otherworldly Operators of the 20th Century, March 7
  • Oliver Gaycken, Digital Complexity: On the Circulation of Special Effects, 听April 4

revoulution 2017

Fall 2017

Arthur Shapiro, Revolutionizing Perception
September 20, 2017

Have you ever seen the Duck-Rabbit illusion? It is an image that people see and interpret differently, sometimes seeing the rabbit, sometimes the duck, sometimes both at the same time. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used this image to describe the problem of perception as 鈥渟eeing that鈥 (鈥淚t鈥檚 a rabbit鈥) and 鈥渟eeing as鈥 (鈥淚 see this picture as a rabbit鈥). In this accessible and fun lecture, Artur Shapiro will explore the difference between what we see and how we understand and interpret what we see, by using examples from his current laboratory research and award winning visual illusions.

Arthur Shapiro completed his undergraduate work in Mathematics (Computer Science) and Psychology (Cognitive Science) at U.C. San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University and did post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. He has been interested in illusions ever since his parents first took him to a science museum. He started producing research related to illusions in 2002, following a sabbatical year at the University of Cambridge. In addition to his research, Shapiro is currently co-editing听The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions. In addition to being an academic, Shapiro is also a vision scientist and an internationally acclaimed creator of visual illusions.听听in the 鈥淏est Visual Illusion of the Year鈥 contest, sponsored by the Neural Correlate Society. The contest started in 2005, and since then Shapiro鈥檚 lab has produced twelve illusions in the top ten, and six illusions in the top three鈥攎ore than any other researcher or research team. The National Geographic show听Brain Games听has featured several of Shapiro鈥檚 illusions

Michael Sappol | Body Modern:
Fritz Kahn, Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity 1915-1960
October 4, 2017

A poster first printed in Germany in 1926 depicts the human body as a factory populated by tiny workers doing industrial tasks. Devised by Fritz Kahn (1888鈥1968), a German-Jewish physician and popular science writer, 鈥淒er Mensch als Industriepalast鈥 (or 鈥淢an as Industrial Palace鈥) achieved international fame and was reprinted, in various languages and versions, all over the world. It was a new kind of image鈥攁n illustration that was conceptual and scientific, a visual explanation of how things work鈥攁nd Kahn built a career of this new genre.

In this lecture, Michael Sappol will offer his analysis of Fritz Kahn, his visual rhetoric, and the relationship between conceptual image, image production, and embodied experience.

Kahn and his artists created playful new visual tropes and genres that used striking metaphors to scientifically explain the 鈥渓ife of Man.鈥 This rich and largely obscure corpus of images was a technology of the self that naturalized the modern and its technologies by situating them inside the human body. The scope of Kahn鈥檚 project was vast鈥攅ntirely new kinds of visual explanation鈥攁nd so was his influence. Today, his legacy can be seen in textbooks, magazines, posters, public health pamphlets, educational websites, and Hollywood movies. But, Sappol argues in his latest book,听Body Modern, Kahn鈥檚 illustrations also pose profound and unsettling epistemological questions about the construction and performance of the self. Join us for this insightful and unique lecture to learn more about the impact and importance of Kahn鈥檚 illustrations.

Michael Sappol lives in Stockholm, Sweden and is a visiting researcher at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in University of Uppsala. For many years he was a historian, exhibition curator and scholar-in-residence in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (USA).听听Sappol鈥檚 work focuses on the history of anatomy, death, and the visual culture of medicine and science in film, illustration and exhibition. He is the author of听A Traffic of Dead Bodies听(2002) and听Dream Anatomy听(2006), editor of听A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire听(2010) and听Hidden Treasure听(2012), and formerly curator of Medical Movies on the Web. His most recent book is听Body Modern: Fritz Kahn, Scientific Illustration and the Homuncular Subject听(University of Minnesota Press, 2017).听Sappol is currently working on two new books, 鈥淎natomy鈥檚 photography: Objectivity, showmanship and the reinvention of the anatomical image, 1860-1950鈥 and 鈥淨ueer anatomies: Perverse desire, medical illustration and the epistemology of the anatomical closet.鈥

Eric Lohr | 100 Years Ago Today:
The Russian Revolution
October 25, 2017

Join us for a lecture by听Eric Lohr听(Department of History, 小蓝视频) on the 100 years since the Russian revolution of 1917. How have the meanings of socialism changed over the course of this century? And what can the Bolsheviks teach us about the structure and impact of revolutions?

Eric Lohr is Chair of the History Department at 小蓝视频 and is widely recognized as one of the leading scholars of Russia鈥檚 World War I experience, authoring many articles and document publications on the subject.听听He previously taught at Harvard as an assistant professor of History (2000-2003). 听He is the author of听Russian听Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union听(Harvard University Press, 2012) and听Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I听(Harvard University Press, 2003). He is also the co-author of a book with Lafayette College history professor Joshua Sanborn titled听Russia鈥檚 Great War, 1914-1918,听and is the听editor of the forthcoming book听The Empire and Nationalism at War.听He is currently writing听Russia鈥檚 War, 1914-1918: From Total Mobilization to Total听Demobilization.

Catherine Knight Steele | Black Joy and Resistance: Black Feminist Discourse Online
November 8, 2017

Dr. Steele鈥檚 latest project, and the topic of this lecture, is on digital black feminism and how the affordances of new media technology are shaping black feminist discourse online. She provides critical analysis of the digital culture of black and white feminist thought in the blogs and听,听by examining what happens when the subject, the black body, at least temporarily does not exist as an 鈥榦ther鈥 but is squarely within a context that allows it to be merely a body.

As Jessie Daniels explains, 鈥渢he Internet offers a 鈥渟afe space鈥 and a way to not just survive, but also resist, repressive sex/gender regimes. Girls and self-identified women are engaging with Internet technologies in ways that enable them to transform their embodied selves, not escape embodiment.鈥

Dr. Catherine Knight Steele is a scholar of race, gender and media with specific focus on African American culture and discourse in traditional and new media. She is a native Chicagoan and received her PhD听in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research has appeared in the听Howard Journal of Communications听and the book听Intersectional Internet听(S.U. Noble and B. Tynes Eds.) Her doctoral dissertation,听Digital Barbershops, focused heavily on the black blogosphere and the politics of online counterpublics. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how traditionally marginalized populations resist oppression and utilize online technology to create spaces of community. She is currently working on a monograph about digital black feminism and new media technologies. Dr. Steele also serves as the first Project Director for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded College of Arts and Humanities grant, Synergies among Digital Humanities and African American History and Culture.

鈥淚 consider myself a digital black feminist, often exploring the 鈥渟hades of grey鈥 between media听consumption听and media critique as black female activist scholar.鈥

revoultion 2018

Spring 2018

Richard C. Sha |听Romantic Science
February听7听

No work of literature has influenced more how we think of science and technology than Mary Shelley鈥檚 first novel. In this lecture, Richard Sha will outline Romantic science, talk about why it was so fraught and influential, and consider how certain branches of science like obstetrics and embryology shaped the novel. He shows within the science of the time, what it means for the monster to call himself an 鈥渁bortion,鈥 and how the three narrators of the novel reflect upon ideas of biological and cultural development.

Richard C. Sha is Professor of Literature at 小蓝视频, as well as a member of its Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. His new book, Imagination and Science in Romanticism, is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press in August 2018, and considers how science then shaped ideas of scientific discovery and artistic achievement. Chapters focus on chemistry and physics, neurology, physiology, and obstetrics and embryology. The book shows what is lost when the imagination is not understood properly as it was, an engine for epistemology. The research for this book was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The book he is now working on, Modelling Emotion in Romanticism and Beyond, examines how writers from Goethe through Voltaire to Leopardi experimented with different models of how to connect emotions to subjectivity. What kinds of things were the emotions, and how to stitch them together to achieve personhood? How do scientific models both simplify and idealize, and how do models capture how artists think about what it means to be human? He argues that Romantic thought challenges our current fascination with the unconsciousness of affect, and that these writers had productive models of structuring the relations between emotions and the feeling subject. Together with Joel Faflak, he edited Romanticism and the Emotions, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. Recent articles treat Byron鈥檚 sexuality, Distributed Cognition in Blake, what鈥檚 wrong with affect theory, and what 鈥渆rotic鈥 means for Romantic poets. He is the recipient of three teaching awards at 小蓝视频, including being named the 2012 鈥淪cholar Teacher of the Year.

On October 24, the Literature Department will hold a special colloquium on听Frankenstein. Sha is currently teaching a course on Science and Romanticism, and they recently discussed the novel. He attempts to convey to students Mary Shelley鈥檚 erudition and curiosity. For instance, Shelley once wrote about the death of her child, and in the next sentence mentioned reading Edward Gibbon鈥檚听The History of the Decline and Fall听of听the Roman Empire. And given听Frankenstein鈥檚 depth and profundity, it鈥檚 remarkable that Shelley started drafting the novel at age 17.

Sha has read听Frankenstein听some 30 times, and he finds it endlessly fascinating. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure on the 31st time of reading, I will start thinking about a passage that I鈥檝e never really thought about before.鈥

Jimena Caneles | Metastable Demons: The Otherworldly Operators of the 20th Century
March听7, 2017, 1 pm

鈥淭here is no reason to suppose that metastable demons do not in fact exist,鈥 explained the mathematician Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics (1948). Wiener referred to a new class of hybrid actants that were increasingly all around us, even in our homes. They could be living or mechanical, human or not, two distinctions that increasingly did not matter to him. Their unifying characteristic was their ability to reverse entropy, albeit momentarily and locally. Instead of focusing on the 鈥渃an鈥檛 do鈥 aspects of thermodynamics, a number of scientists became concerned with temporary exceptions to it, that is, by 鈥渘egative entropy.鈥 Metastable demons appeared in feedback mechanisms, photosynthesis, viruses, enzymes, genes, and even in some self-organizing crystals like snowflakes. Canales鈥 talk will focus on mid-twentieth-century demons in relation to physics, computing, and information theory to explore key changes in our understanding of life, mechanization and intelligence.

Jimena Canales is an award-winning author and scholar focusing on science in the modern world.听She received an MA听and PhD听from Harvard University in the History of Science and a BSc in Engineering Physics from the Tecnol贸gico de Monterrey. Her first book,听 explored the relation between science and history as one of the central intellectual problems of modern times. Her second book,听, is now available. Her scholarly work on the history of science has been published in Isis, Science in Context, History of Science, the British Journal for the History of Science, and the MLN, among others. Her work on visual, film and media studies has appeared in Architectural History, Journal of Visual Culture, Thresholds. She writes for general readers publishing in Aperture, Artforum, WIRED, Nautilus, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.

Canales is currently a faculty member of the Graduate College at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a Research Affiliate at MIT (2017-2018). She was previously the Thomas M. Siebel Professor for the History of Science at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an Associate Professor at Harvard University, and senior fellow at the IKKM (Internationales Kolleg f眉r Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie) in Germany. Canales received the 鈥淧rize for Young Scholars鈥 of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Division of History of Science and Technology. She has been a visitor at various universities and research centers including the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, MIT, the Princeton-Weimar Summer School of Media Studies at Princeton University and has lectured widely nationally and internationally, presenting her work at the BBC, the听Mus茅e Georges Pompidou, and the 11th Shanghai Biennale.

Check out some of Jimena Canales鈥櫶books below. Also, check out her听听for more information about her publications.听

On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson鈥檚 theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable with the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein鈥檚 theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one that ignored the intuitive aspects of time.听The Physicist and the Philosopher听tells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today.

Jimena Canales introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism, phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new technologies of the period鈥晄uch as wristwatches, radio, and film鈥昲elped to shape people鈥檚 conceptions of time and further polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his rival鈥檚 legacy鈥旴ergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion.

The Physicist and the Philosopher听is a magisterial and revealing account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a divided century marked by a new sense of time.

In the late fifteenth century, clocks acquired minute hands. A century later, second hands appeared. But it wasn鈥檛 until the 1850s that instruments could recognize a tenth of a second, and, once they did, the impact on modern science and society was profound. Revealing the history behind this infinitesimal interval,听A Tenth of a Second听sheds new light on modernity and illuminates the work of important thinkers of the last two centuries.

Tracing debates about the nature of time, causality, and free will, as well as the introduction of modern technologies鈥攖elegraphy, photography, cinematography鈥擩imena Canales locates the reverberations of this 鈥減erceptual moment鈥 throughout culture. Once scientists associated the tenth of a second with the speed of thought, they developed reaction time experiments with lasting implications for experimental psychology, physiology, and optics. Astronomers and physicists struggled to control the profound consequences of results that were a tenth of a second off. And references to the interval were part of a general inquiry into time, consciousness, and sensory experience that involved rethinking the contributions of Descartes and Kant.

Considering its impact on much longer time periods and featuring appearances by Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, and Albert Einstein, among others,听A Tenth of a Second听is ultimately an important contribution to history and a novel perspective on modernity.

Oliver Gaycken | Digital Complexity: On the Circulation of Special Effects
April 4, 2017

One of the most venerable Hollywood institutions is named the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But science is rarely in the forefront of discussions of the movie industry, featuring only occasionally and then usually in reductive discussions of whether films have gotten their science 鈥渞ight.鈥 The confluence of the cultures of science and entertainment nonetheless offers a wide range of topics for investigation. This talk will consider the transformations within filmmaking as the sciences traditionally associated with motion-picture industry鈥攐ptics, photochemistry鈥攈ave given way to the sciences of digital imaging. Gaycken will focus on a certain type of scientific object, the scientific visualization, and its transit between laboratory and special-effects studio. The history of how these visualization techniques were adopted by the entertainment industry attests to a greater proximity between the cultures of science and entertainment in the age of digital technologies. In particular, Gaycken will share his investigation of 鈥渟warming鈥 algorithms, which originated in the study of such complex natural systems as bird flocks and insect swarms, and which have become a prominent feature of effects-heavy science-fiction and fantasy films.

Oliver Gaycken received his BA in English from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He previously has taught at York University (Toronto) and Temple University. His teaching interests include silent-era cinema history, the history of popular science, and the links between scientific and experimental cinema. He has published on the discovery of the ophthalmoscope, the flourishing of the popular science film in France at the turn of the 1910s, the figure of the supercriminal in Louis Feuillade鈥檚 serial films, and the surrealist fascination with popular scientific images.听His book听, appeared with听Oxford University Press in the spring of 2015.