ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Self(re)presentation of a European Scholar Across Political Regimes 3

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Scientists were usually presented as eccentrics, living in their own bubble where ordinary mortals could not enter because they did not understand their thought processes. They dressed too simply or eccentrically. They spoke incomprehensibly in public. Has this image changed over time? How did the new media of the 19th and 20th centuries influenced it? The symposium aims to focus on the presentation and self(re)presentation of scientific personalities, their works, their connections with institutions, and the creation of their own image both within and outside their scientific platform.
We aim to examine how scientific personas were constructed, circulated, and mediated through various channels—radio, newspapers, photography, and both scientific and popular magazines. These media not only shaped how scholars were perceived by the public but also provided opportunities for self-fashioning within institutional and ideological frameworks. We will address how scientists and their institutions consciously managed reputation and visibility, what kinds of financing or patronage supported these representations, and how visual and textual strategies differed across generations, gender, national and disciplinary contexts.
Particular attention will be paid to the intersections of gender, politics, and social status: How were male and female scholars differently represented? How did scientists project authority or respectability through symbols of everyday life—housing, clothing, cars, or leisure spaces? To what extent did regimes, institutions, or publishers control or encourage specific forms of self-representation?
The symposium seeks to understand how scientists, through self-fashioning and mediated images, negotiated their public and private identities, responded to political expectations, and contributed to the evolving cultural image of “the scholar” in modern Europe. Symposium is held on behalf of a Commission on Women and Gender in Science, Technology and Medicine.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Milada Sekyrkova, Institute of the History and Archive of Charles University, Czech Republic

Individual Presentations

• Between Merit and Morality: Political Transformations and the Self-Presentation of Scholars in Slovenia - Željko Oset, Alma Mater Europea, Maribor, Slovenia

• Self(re)presentations of Women Scholars in the late 1920s – Two special Examples - Annette B. Vogt, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

• Sources of Visibility: How Archives, Photographs and Cultural Media Shape Representations of Women Scientists - Anne-Sophie Godfroy, Université Paris Est Créteil

Session Organizer

• Adela Junova Mackova, Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences