ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

History of Science and Natural History Humanities in multidisciplinary classrooms, collection storage rooms and exhibitions

• In Event: “Pedagogies of Things” in the Natural History Humanities

English Abstract

For historians of the material culture of science, medicine and the environment, (university) collections provide excellent teaching objects and museums are and were valuable sites of pedagogical innovations. This presentation will reflect on my own teaching and curation experiences as well as the current state of the "pedagogy of (scientific) things" in Germany and the historical roots of contemporary developments. The presentation will highlight the potentials and difficulties in teaching across disciplines and co-teaching with curators and scientists. Three seminars will be used as examples. The first was developed in close collaboration with the curators of various collections at the University of Goettingen and analysed “Institutions of Natural History in the long 18th Century - Gardens, Collections, Travel and Universities in Europe and beyond.” We studied the global entanglements of the University of Göttingen in the Enlightenment period in order to reflect upon the influence of (colonial) exploration and the expansion of European empires on natural history practices and knowledge formation. The second seminar “The pedagogy of things – universities and their objects from the 18th to the 21st century in a global perspective” included an excursion to The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, where students analysed and expanded on the special exhibition “The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766–1820.” The third seminar "All of Nature - Forces, Order and Borders" was co-taught with art historians at the University of Hamburg and resulted in a "natural history humanities" exhibition at the Museum of Nature in Hamburg, co-curated with a biologist. The presentation will reflect on the methods and outcomes of the courses which highlighted the multidisciplinarity of knowledge formation around nature/culture since the 18th century and the material basis of these processes.

Author

• Dominik Huenniger, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow