ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Making and Circulating Images, Their Impact and Influences on Different Fields of Science 1

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

The role of images in the historiography of science has gained increasing prominence over the past few decades. As powerful historical sources, images can reveal perspectives on the development of scientific fields that textual materials capture only in part. This organized session examines how different kinds of visual media—drawings, engravings, maps, photographs, and films—produced between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries across diverse geographical, cultural, and social settings, can reshape our understanding of scientific practices and knowledge-making.
The contributions in this session mobilize a variety of methodological approaches to explore the production, circulation, and uses of images in science. They address the materiality of visual artifacts; the roles of illustrators, engravers, and publishers; and the complex interactions between visual representations and their political and institutional contexts. By bringing these perspectives together, the session seeks not only to deepen current debates on the place of images in the historiography of science, but also to open new avenues for research and interpretation.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Breno Moura, UFABC, Brazil

Individual Presentations

• The Codice Casanatense (Ms 1889): from the materiality of drawing to historical geography of Portuguese Empire in a global perspective. - Beatriz Bueno, FAU-USP - Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo e de Design da Universidade de São Paulo

• Nautical Atlases, the Royal Navy and Slave Trade Abolition: Maritime Science in Ships and Ports, 1750-1850 - Íris Kantor, FFLCH-USP, Brasil

• The invisibles who made sparks visible: the role of Mynde and Ingram in the development of the iconography of electricity in the eighteenth century - Breno Moura, UFABC, Brazil

Session Organizers

• Breno Moura, UFABC, Brazil

• Ermelinda Moutinho Pataca, University of São Paulo