ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Other Voices in Early Modern Science

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Scientific knowledge in the early modern period depended on the expertise, experience, and bodies of historical actors from various marginalized groups. In recent years, historians of science and medicine have begun uncovering their role in knowledge production and examining the power relations between them and the “scientists” who studied them, which often—but not always—forced them into obscurity. Building on this work, the papers gathered in this panel interrogate the voices of marginalized people who participated in diverse scientific projects as well as the perspectives of those who studied or used them. They ask two fundamental questions. The first is a historical one: under what circumstances did these “Other” voices come to be represented or erased? The second is methodological: which sources allow historians to unearth these voices, and what promise do they hold for the history of early modern science?
The papers in this panel draw on case studies from Africa, Europe, and Spanish America that demonstrate the involvement of different actors in the production of medical and natural knowledge—from indigenous peoples and communities of fishermen to enslaved girls and orphans in foundling homes. This global perspective explores the similarities and differences in knowledge extraction across varied scientific activities. By so doing, this panel enquires into the process of marginalization itself, asking how certain historical actors came to be considered marginal figures and what marginality meant for people living in the early modern period.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Pablo F. Gómez, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Individual Presentations

• The Caiman Archive: Natural History in Seventeenth-Century Spanish America - Valeria López Fadul, Wesleyan University

• Fishing Coral, Mining Fossils: Laboring Knowledge of Nature in Eighteenth-Century France - Lydia Barnett, Northwestern University

• Abrabah: Enslaved Garden Girls as Captive Scientists in a Silent Archive - Carolyn Roberts, Yale University

• 'He Says It Hurts’: Experimenting on Children in Enlightenment Italy - Ori Ben-Shalom, Harvard University

Session Organizer

• Ori Ben-Shalom, Harvard University