These Puttis aren't cuties...

Ugly Renaissance Babies!

(Now, go back to writing those final papers!)

Jesuits and the Construction of Knowledge, 1540–1773

I'm pleased, but a little late in announcing that an exhibit I co-curated with Dr. Florence Hsia, Dr. Robin Rider, and Dr. Jim Lattis has opened in Special Collections at Memorial Library. As the title suggests, the exhibit focuses on Jesuit and knowledge production from the order's establishment in 1540 to its repression in 1773. The disciplines commonly associated with the early Society like astronomy and mathematics are well represented, however we wanted to demonstrate the richness of early-modern Jesuit scholarship. As it turns out, we have a ton of rare books that could have been part of this exhibit and we ultimately had to make hard choices of what to include and exclude. The final display features over 100 works and includes a long list of books in our collections that didn't make the cut.

In helping select books for the exhibit, I really got a feel for the panoptic nature of early-modern Jesuit scholarship. As has often been said, the Jesuits were everywhere in the early modern world and the fruits of this globetrotting can be seen in their studies on hydrography, natural history, and cartography. The Society was clearly proud of the global nature of their mission, which is evidenced by the motto "unnus non sufficit orbis." Meaning "one world is not enough," this motto is inscribed in many engraved illustrations on display.

One particularly striking image in which it appears is a large map of the Society in the form of a tree. The trunk of the tree represents Rome, while the branches of the tree are the major missions of the world. A sundial clock is associated with each region of the world where the Jesuits were stationed, allowing the viewer to calculate the time difference between Rome and its provinces. Another one of my favorite images is a large, detailed selenography that appears in Riccioli's Almagestum novum (1651). Produced forty years after Galileo's telescopic study of the moon, much of Riccioli's lunar nomenclature has stuck. (Nick Jacobsen and I are hoping to produce a new interpretation of this image, possibly for HSS next year...)

None of these images can be adequately described in words and I've purposefully omitted links to images in order to encourage people to check out the exhibit, if possible. It will be up through December. However, I will be posting again about another related project: The Jesuit Iconography visual culture database.

Anna Zeide on Grist

Don't forget to check out our own Anna Zeide's recent posts on Grist, on the history of canned food in America!

Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing

As the history of science has moved beyond strict intellectual history, our work has gotten more and more interdisciplinary. At the same time, because we are in one of the few independent history of science departments in the country, even our colleagues on the other side of Bascom Hill can sometimes seem like they're from another world. When beginning work on a new project, you inevitably realize that other subdisciplines of history likely have valuable contributions to offer. But catching up on decades of historiography in a field that impinges on your work takes time and hard work. And especially for those of us who come from backgrounds other than history, figuring out how to start can be bewildering.

Probably the most important thing to do is ask a friend in the "regular ol' " History Department for suggestions about what to read and who to talk to. Syllabi and textbooks from survey courses can also point you in the right direction.

I just stumbled upon a useful source, though, that can help make tracking down and understanding unfamiliar historiographies just a little bit easier: The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Trying to decide whether it's more correct to say that your work will be relevant to "diplomatic historians" or to "historians of international relations"? Want to know who the most important authors in legal history are? Wonder what the heck Arnold Toynbee argued, anyway? This is the place to go.

Now, I obviously haven't read the whole thing, so I can't say whether every article is spot-on, but this is definitely a resource to add to your toolkit when venturing into new areas of history (especially if you find yourself suspicious of Wikipedia's handling of the topic). Unfortunately, our library system does not have it in electronic form, and only part of Volume 1 is available at Google Books.

While we're on the subject, how have you approached the problem of familiarizing yourself with relevant historical subdisciplines? Any tips to share or frustrations to vent?

(P.S. I'm hoping we can get more vigorous discussion going in the comments section of this blog, though maybe the low volume is just a result of the quality of our brownbag and happy hour conversations!)

The History of Cartography Project @ UW

Among the many research projects residing at UW-Madison, the History of Cartography Project stands out as having produced the well-received multi-volume History of Cartography series of books about the history of maps, mapping, and mapmaking. Begun by J. B. Harley and David Woodward in the 1980s, the Project is now edited by an international team of scholars who are working on the next three planned volumes to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, came out as a two-book set in 2007. Four previous volumes have been published (recently available online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/) : Volume 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (1987); Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (1992); Volume 2, Book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies (1994); and Volume 2, Book 3: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies (1998).

These volumes have become a standard reference not only for their outstanding scholarship, but for their extensive illustrations (over 1,000 images in Volume 3; 80 in color), detailed footnotes, and reference maps. For information about the Project and these volumes, visit the Project’s web site at http://www.geography.wisc.edu/histcart/.

As a graduate student who has worked at the Project for nearly 12 years as their Illustrations Editor, I’ve gained excellent experience and research skills in locating images needed for the volumes from archives and libraries worldwide. Given my own interests in this field, which pairs nicely with the history of science, I’ve made numerous professional contacts that will be beneficial to my current and future research.

Historical Methods & Resources For the Greenhorn Historian

Dear HSMTers (and their fans),

I have compiled a list of all the books and resources that I have found to be particularly helpful for learning historical methods and teaching. I also included a section on managing the lifestyle of being a graduate student and budding scholar. These resources may be a little basic, but they might be helpful for those with little or no historical or pedagogical training.

Books:

Becker, Howard Saul, and Pamela Richards. Writing for Social Scientists : How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. 2nd ed, Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed, Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Chandler, James, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry D. Harootunian. Questions of Evidence : Proof, Practice, and Persuasion across the Disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Davidson, James West, and Mark H. Lytle. After the Fact : The Art of Historical Detection. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote : A Curious History. [Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Jordanova, L.J., and LJ Jordanova. History in Practice: Arnold London, 2000.

Murray, Rowena. "Writing for Academic Journals." Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd, 2009.

Rampolla, Mary Lynn. A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010.

Rosen, Leonard J. The Academic Writer's Handbook. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2012.

Tosh, John. The Pursuit of History : Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History. 5th ed. Harlow, England ; New York: Longman, 2010.

Turabian, Kate L., John Grossman, and Alice Bennett. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 6th ed, Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Research:

Perspectives on History: Finding the Story

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0901/0901gra3.cfm

On Taking Notes

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0901/0901gra4.cfm

Managing the Terror

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0901/0901gra2.cfm

How Writing Leads to Thinking (And not the other way around)

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2010/1002/1002art1.cfm

"Building a Mystery":Alternative Research Writing and the Academic Act of Seeking

http://wrt-brooke.syr.edu/courses/205.03/mystery.pdf

Web 2.0 A Useful Tool for the History of Medicine (and Science and Technology...)

http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/589.full

Teaching:

Getting Ready to Do History

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_Carnegie_Essay_Getting_Ready_to_Do_History_2004.pdf

What Does it Mean to Think Historically?

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2007/0701/0701tea2.cfm

Learning Historical Research

http://www.williamcronon.net/researching/index.htm

Introduction to Historical Research

http://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/introhist

Lapham’s Quarterly Lesson Plans/Handouts

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/educational-outreach/

Helpful hints for deciding “What is happening?” and “Where do I stand?”

http://noteonmydoor.blogspot.com/2011/02/helpful-hints-for-deciding-what-is.html

Teaching/Writing Handouts

http://www.williamcronon.net/handouts.htm

Digital Resources:

UW Database Library: History of Science, Medicine, Technology

http://xerxes.library.wisconsin.edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/wisc/databases/subject/history-of-science-medicine-technology

Directory of History Journals

http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/journals/

University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center

http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/

Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/wiarchives/

The Knight Digital Media Center and Source Guides

http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/

Wisconsin Division for Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning: BadgerLink

http://www.badgerlink.net/

Oral History Tools

http://archives.library.wisc.edu/oral-history/links.html#Tools

Historical 'Hardware':

Transcriptions: Transcribing Audio to Text Software Aid (for Mac only)

http://code.google.com/p/transcriptions/

Chicago Manual of Style Crib Sheet

http://www.docstyles.com/cmscrib.htm

RefWorks/EndNote/Zotero Features Comparison

http://library.wisc.edu/citation-managers/comparison.html

All Bookstores Search Engine

http://www.allbookstores.com/

Internet Disablers

http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/

http://macfreedom.com/

http://anti-social.cc/

Mac Applications Disabler

http://www.alorsoft.net/watcher/

Desktop Screen Darkener

http://freeverse.com/mac/product/?id=7013

Free Trainings & Workshops:

Library Workshops: Historical Research

http://www.library.wisc.edu/workshops/workshop-topic.html#hist

Library Workshops: Graduate Support Series

http://www.library.wisc.edu/workshops/workshop-topic.html#grad

Library and Information Literacy Instruction

http://www.library.wisc.edu/instruction/

Writing Center Workshops

http://writing.wisc.edu/Classes/classByTopic.html

Software Training Workshops by DoIT

https://www.doit.wisc.edu/training/student/classlist.aspx

For Inspiration:

Why Become a Historian?

http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/why/blackeyintro.htm

Why Study History?

http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/WhyStudyHistory.htm

Why the Past Matters

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_Why_the_Past_Matters.pdf

Advice Against Despair: Caring for the Whole ... and for Ourselves:

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Northland_Commencement.html

Professional Development:

Campus Humanities Portal

http://humanitiesportal.wisc.edu/

Grad School Survival

http://www.alicedreger.com/grad_school_survival.html

Scholarly Pursuits: A Guide to Professional Development During the Graduate Years

http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/current_students/scholarly_pursuits.php

Publishing Without Perishing: A Handbook for Graduate and Professional Students

http://www.asbh.org/uploads/files/pubs/pubperish.pdf

Graduate Student Professional Development Career Planning

http://www.grad.wisc.edu/education/gspd/careerplanning.html

The Professor Is In

http://theprofessorisin.com/pearlsofwisdom/

Careers for History Majors

http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/careers/Index.htm

How to Find a Job Outside of Academia, Even if You Aren't Sure That You Want One

http://qtstreamer.doit.wisc.edu/gsa/Getting_a_Job_os_Academia.mov

The Academic Job Search Handbook

I just got a copy of The academic Job Search Handbook (2008, 4th ed.) by Julia Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong. Wow. I wish I'd known about this earlier.

Not only does it include a timetable for planning job searches, but it has examples of vitas, cover letters, teaching philosophies, etc. There are also discussions of the job interview, and strategies for job searching when your partner is also an academic. I haven't read the whole thing yet, and I realize that it is not tailored to our particular discipline, but it looks like a great way to get familiarized with the general process in a way that is not overly intimidating.

I ILLed it, as the on-campus copies apparently don't allow borrowing privileges. You can preview it at Google Books.

Have any of you come across this before and have any opinions about it before I dive completely in? As far as I know, there's not another book like this (though many online discussions of similar topics).

“The Canadian Reindeer Project: Experimenting with Science and Development in Northern Environmental History”

Hello readers of this blog!

I'm hoping I can use this space to share some writing with you--to gather your input and to let you know what I've been working on recently.

I have been invited to contribute a chapter for an edited volume on northern environmental history. This field of scholarship has academic kin in environmental history, Canadian and Alaskan history, and Arctic studies. The longer piece of writing below is actually a blog post about my chapter for this edited volume. (I know, this is a very involved introduction--but please, dear reader, keep reading).

The blog post is part of a series of posts released by the contributing authors, meant to promote the collection and to start conversations among the authors. We are gathering as a group in late October to offer feedback to one another and to build cohesion into our project. You can check out the existing posts and read more about our group here.

Any feedback on this post is welcomed and appreciated. You'll soon see that I'm writing to a very specific audience, so apologies for jargon and ambiguous references. Also, to learn more about the shape of my contribution to the book project--and my dissertation--please attend next week's brownbag. I will be presenting on the Canadian Reindeer Project and adding flesh to the skeleton of an argument I lay out below.

All the best-
Andrew Stuhl

--------------------------------

On December 8^th, 1948, a motley crew of civil servants, military officials, and academics huddled together at the Royal Canadian Air Force mess on Gloucester Street in Ottawa. Calling themselves “The Arctic Circle,” they formed to confront matters of national importance in the north. At this inaugural meeting, botanist A.E. Porsild reported on the reindeer experiment in the Mackenzie Delta, a government program he helped establish in the 1930s. Admitting some difficulties in recruiting local Inuit as herders, Porsild boasted that the Canadian Reindeer Project had demonstrated “considerable and sustained progress."

This scene hints at several themes I will explore in my contribution to this collection. Consider first the interplay between expertise and administration embodied in A.E. Porsild. Hired by the Department of Interior to study the Alaskan reindeer industry in the mid 1920s, Porsild had no academic training in botany nor experience managing reindeer. He was selected as the man for the job despite internal grumblings in a nascent northern bureaucracy—a so-called systematic botanist was no match for a “practical reindeer man” who could travel in the remote, unforgiving north. Yet by the 1940s, Porsild was hailed as an authority on Arctic vegetation, partly because of his tenure with the body assembled to manage the Canadian Reindeer Project, the Interdepartmental Reindeer Committee. His career is a rich case study for understanding the conditions by which professional scientists entered the realm of Arctic leadership.

At the center of Porsild's report to The Arctic Circle sat reindeer, an animal he had grown to know well. The story of reindeer has heretofore been confined to popular accounts of the drive from Alaska or presented as a corollary to histories of game management. Thanks to historian John Sandlos, we understand the reindeer as representative of conservation politics in the early 1900s and as emblematic of a pastoral Arctic ideal. Emerging from a Royal Commission on developing muskox and reindeer industries, the reindeer experiment created a 7,000 acre Reindeer Grazing Preserve, protected by permits for trapping or hunting within its boundaries. Yet the introduction of a foreign species to the Western Arctic has more nuances to unpack, beyond the ways officials used reindeer to regulate northern life and landscapes.

At play with the Canadian Reindeer Project was not just a politics of conservation, but also a politics of conversion. We glimpse this as Porsild bemoans the issue of attracting Inuit from the trapping economy to the grueling practice of herding. Enchanted by the animal's innate abilities to transform barrenlands into grazing pastures, bureaucrats hoped the animals would convert primitive hunters to domesticated herders—creating Canadian citizens who, by their labor in a new reindeer economy, demonstrated sovereignty in the Western Arctic. Here, in the reindeer, we witness a tool capable of restricting the “wanton slaughter” of caribou—and establishing a wholly different commerce among bureaucrats, Saami, and Inuit. The Reindeer Project thus begs for contextualization alongside other Canadian imperial gestures in a post-Depression era push for low-cost paternalism and high-value development.

The timing of this first meeting of The Arctic Circle presents a final riddle, for my chapter and for northern environmental historians. One of the grand narratives of northern historiography postulates that Ottawa neglected northern territories until mid-century, when defense needs provoked unprecendented intervention into Arctic life. That The Arctic Circle would convene in 1948 to consider a twenty-year-old development scheme may then seem out of place. Building on recent scholarship that challlenges the simplicity of this narrative, I argue that relationships between the government and the north should not be measured with post-World War II characteristics as a baseline. Rather, we must situate manifestations of expertise and development, as has been achieved with the idea of “the North,” in historical, geographical, intellectual, and political contexts. Doing so yields a complex, if more complicated, picture of northern environmental history.

Indeed, as native northerners, scientists, and civil servants made sense of the federal presence in the Western Arctic in the 1950s, they turned to the reindeer for guidance. Like Porsild above, officials in Ottawa found in the animal hope for a happy union among science, enterprise, and government. In contrast, for Inuit in Aklavik and Inuvik, reindeer epitomized governmental exploitation of and experimentation with northern lands and people. Reindeer had not suddenly appeared as symbols of progress or control. Rather, these meanings were imbued in the animals because of a deep history and despite a radically changing present. For those at mid-century and for us today, then, the Canadian Reindeer Project brings into focus textures of northern environmental history that might otherwise be overshadowed.

Using the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Recently, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) asked me to answer some questions about how I use their database for their ongoing blog series of BHL users. If you do anything related to the history of the life sciences, you probably already know what a helpful resource it is. How do you use BHL or similar databases? In the interview, I brought up the fact that I have found it helpful to use hardcopies alongside the BHL's searchable text for some types of sources. Have you had similar experiences? Other reactions to the post?

FYI, they asked me to do this after commenting on one of the BHL's Facebook posts, so it pays to interact online!

Brown Bag (September 23, 2011): Oral History

This week's brown bag was our second at the beautiful new Union South, this time in the Governance Room:

We hear our own Judy Houck and Troy Reeves, of the UW Oral History Project, speaking on the topic of oral history.

Troy started the discussion off by discussing the role of his project: the Curate, Communicate, and Collaborate oral history related to the University. Some of their projects are as recent as the political protests that began this February in Wisconsin and others go back much further, such as the history of the GLBT community in Madison.

Then Judy shared her experience as a "reluctant oral historian" on her recent project on Feminist women's health centers in California. The clinic she is focusing on still exist and therefore have no archives beyond boxes in someone's attic, so oral history is essential for it's content, access to written documents, and for finding futher subjects to interview.

In her own work and through her study of oral history different problems and challenges have come up, such as finding contacts, their reluctance (or alternatively, exhuberance), the difference between documents and memory, the power dynamics of interviewing, what is left unspoken, the ethics of speaking for someone else, conflicting agendas, interviewing people you may not like, and how to deal with "off the record" information as a historian.

Some useful sources and discussions concerning oral history that were brought up include:

• After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection by James West Davidson
• "Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan" by Kathleen M. Blee
• "The Comfort Women" Controversy: History and Testimony" by Yoshiko Nozaki

Victoria Nourse on Eugenics Laws in 20th Century America

My apologies for posting this late: Here are my thoughts on the first brown bag of the year.

History of science can boast a long standing concern for interdisciplinarity, and, in this spirit of bridging departmental divides, it seems appropriate that our first brown bag speaker should be a guest from outside the History of Science. On Friday, Victoria Nourse, Burris-Bascom Professor from the School of Law, discussed her book, In Reckless Hands (2008), which has provided enlightening social and historical texture to the landmark Supreme Court decision of Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942).

We can assume that Professor Nourse’s research offers fresh insights and challenges to the field of legal history. For instance, Nourse argues that the Skinner v. Oklahoma decision, striking down certain eugenics laws by invoking the “Equal Protections” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, has wrongly been depicted as vindicating individual rights. Characterizing the case in terms of privacy and personal liberties, as many legal experts have done, would be anachronistic even if Skinner v. Oklahoma does seem to resonate with later court decisions advocating these rights, such as Roe v. Wade (1973). Nourse also pulls no punches in her depiction of Oliver Wendell Holmes (a sweetheart of many contemporary legal scholars) as a champion of the eugenics movement and a staunch defender of compulsory sterilization.

In addition to these historical revisions, Nourse also levels a methodological challenge for legal historians to engage in “dirty history.” Apparently in the field of legal history, most historical evidence is drawn from the published pages of court opinions and case law. Nourse is calling for more work to be done on the individual people who successfully brought their cases to trial.
Recalling the grit and dust that accumulated on her fingers while flipping through files in the Oklahoma Historical Society, she explained that the term “dirty history” does not simply refer to the nitty-gritty details of social history, but also the tactile experience of handling documents that have gone unnoticed for decades.

The story of Skinner v. Oklahoma is not simply a legal history, however. It is also a history of science. Nourse begins her book with a quote from the renowned biometrician and founder of the eugenics movement, Francis Galton (1822-1911): “Eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to many of the noblest feelings of our nature” (as quoted in In Reckless Hands, pg. 13). Scientific pronouncements on the heritability of deviant and criminal behavior became the foundation of an argument for control over certain races and social classes. In many respects, Nourse’s is a cautionary tale of what can happen when scientific theories enter into the social, political, and legal arena. It also documents the malleability of certain categories, which, initially, may seem firmly established. For instance, the word “race” itself took on multiple meanings as it was used in the documents that Nourse uncovered in her research. It could be used to identify a person’s ethnicity, but also their social class or gender.

Nourse’s presentation serves as a reminder of the many research opportunities that might be discovered at certain intersections of a society. The dynamic interplay between legal and scientific thought – in the United States and in general – seems to be an area of study that has yet to be fully explored.

Topic Brainstorm!

We discussed potential blog topics at our last grad meeting, but I thought I'd get the conversation going again here. What do you want to see on this blog? Remember this is our blog--all HSTM grads are welcome and encouraged to share ideas and links here!

Here are some things that came up when we talked, plus a few I've thought of since:

• Summary and further discussion of HoS brownbags and colloquia
• Ideas for future brownbags
• How to approach your first journey into the archives (organizing notes, etc.)
• Using Scrivener (I volunteered to do this one-- should be coming out in the next week or so)
• Using citation managers
• Writing grant applications/getting outside funding
• Brainstorming, outlining, organizing your writing
• Discuss your current research (a seminar paper, MA paper, dissertation) and get feedback on a problem, or just share a cool primary source
• Discuss a photo or image
• Discuss a book or share a reading list (or ask for reading suggestions!)
• Teaching ideas, experiences, and resources
• Share what you do in your spare(?) time
• Just finished/in the depths of some part of the process (prelims, dissertation proposal, job search, etc.)? Share what you learned!

Add to the list of posts you'd like to see in the comments section below, or claim a topic that you want to write on. Some things, like visiting the archives, could certainly be a series with multiple authors.

This is an informal space for sharing ideas in our community. And blog posts are short. Contribute!

HSMT on FB

Hopefully, we are now set up to feed this blog through an HSTM Facebook page. I'm going to test it with this post before inviting you all!

UPDATE: It appears to be working. If you are a grad (or alum) who happens not to have gotten an invitation yet, please find the page here and join!

"Demystifying the Dissertation Proposal"

I thought some of you might be interested in this article on "Demystifying the Dissertation Proposal" at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Workshops

Two posts? I guess I am on a roll today...

I just signed up for some Writing Center workshops on preparing material for the job market (cover letters, statements of teaching philosophy, etc.). I'm not sure if you folks are aware of all the workshops like this that are available on campus, so here's a round-up:

http://writing.wisc.edu/Classes/classByTopic.html#gradprof

http://www.delta.wisc.edu/Workshops/workshops.html

http://library.wisc.edu/workshops/workshop-topic.html#grad

Maybe I will see you there?

Writing Your Dissertation

If you know me, you know I am not normally a big "self help" literature fan. But over the summer, as I set out with a goal of writing my first two dissertation chapters, I felt I needed some advice managing such a big and emotionally draining project. Several other current or recent dissertators suggested the following three books, which I have found incredibly helpful:

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (Thanks to Andrew Case for recommending this.)

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (And, thanks to Christine Manganero for recommending this.)

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker (Thanks Lynnette Regouby for lending this to me for so long awhile back. I'm now hogging the library's copy, but all of you should feel free to recall it!)

Bird by Bird and Writing Down the Bones are both directed at fiction writers, but much of the advice still applies. The practical and psychological issues around creativity, self-doubt, and discipline apply equally to fiction and non-fiction writers. Both of these books helped me feel like a writer, not like a person who had to produce a dissertation.

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day is more obviously and directly relevant to the specific process of dissertation writing, from choosing a topic and selecting a committee, to finishing and publication. But this is a book by a psychologist, and it's at its best when confronting the emotional aspects of the process––including sections such as "On Ownership," "On Dissertation Paranoia," and "About Creating a Writing Addiction."

The only drawback of these three books is that they are getting to be quite a bit old. They don't discuss software, like Scrivener for example, that can help organize notes and "shitty first draft" writing. Nor do they address the specific problems of internet procrastination (including wasting time searching for new "productivity" software!).

Nevertheless, they still get at the heart of the writing process and can really help you avoid, or at least deal with, some of the roadblocks you encounter when setting out to write. And, in spite of their very different styles, all three books have the same core message: Make writing a part of who you are. Make it part of your day, every day. If you do this, you will have before you not one huge insurmountable task, but a daily practice (or addiction even!) of writing.

Do you have any other reading suggestions for writers?

Anna Zeide's Dining and Opining

Anna Zeide is a PhD candidate in the History of Science and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics and a graduate student affiliate of the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE). In addition, she is an excellent cook who is deeply interested in the politics, ethics, emotion, and eating of food! She has a wonderful blog, that I've just added to our links. Please check it out!

UPDATE # 2: A scholarly analysis of the cat piano

I finally found an academic article that discusses the cat piano! Micheal John Gorman, director of the Science Gallery, contextualizes the cat piano within the Baroque culture of machines and the early-modern obsession with torturing cats (that's right, cat torture was a bit of a craze). Apparently the cat piano is believed to have been invented by the Jesuit polymath Althanasius Kircher (no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with this guy). Schott and Kircher were both interested, among many other things, in the strange, exotic, and wondrous side of nature. Gorman's article focuses on the spectacular array of marvelous machines (for e.g. the water-vomiting two-headed Imperial Eagle machine) that Kircher displayed in his Musaeum Kircherianum (part of the Collegio Romano) and the space they occupied between legitimate and illicit magic. The cat piano, however, seems to have been more of a playful early-modern joke (despite the um... animal cruelty aspect). Gorman cites another study that treats the cat piano, Instruments and the Imagination, which I have yet to check out. I guess that means stay tuned for another installment on my bizarre fascination with this oddity!

Update #3: Video of a modern cat piano for Prince Charles!

History of Science Society annual meeting, November 3-6 in Cleveland

The History of Science Society (HSS) has announced that registration for the annual meeting and housing is now open:

http://www.hssonline.org/Meeting/index.html

Travel grants are also available to grad students, independent scholars, and recent PhDs, so be sure to avail yourself of the support out there!

Several of us are planning on driving together to Cleveland, which is just a day's drive, so consider joining us if you'd like to make the conference more affordable.  The HSS annual meeting is a great opportunity to get connected with colleagues and get your research interests out there -- it's also a relatively low pressure opportunity to present, so keep it in mind for future papers.

UPDATE: Cat piano!

I recently posted about an image of what appeared to be an early-modern musical instrument that harnessed the vocal stylings of live animals. I had found the image in Gaspar Schott's 1657 Magia universalis at Memorial Library's Special Collections. I am still working on my Latin, so I was unclear whether or not this was actually a musical instrument. Turns out it was! The more popular form of which was the "cat organ" or "cat piano." In fact, this musical instrument has its own wikipedia page. As always, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The blogosphere is alive with the sound of HSMT

Many thanks to Darwin blogger Michael Barton, who has posted an impressive list of blogs and twitter feeds related to the history of science, medicine, and technology:

http://thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/hos_blogs/

Enjoy!

Animal Keyboard from 1657

Remember those toy keyboards that would play animal sounds instead of musical notes? I remember being particularly fond of the MOO key on mine. Turns out the animal-sound-keyboard was not an invention of the 1980s, but is much more ancient in origin. Perhaps, first invented by the Jesuit polymath Gaspar Schott in 1657:

Clearly that's what's going on here, right? :)

We exist!

I was recently at a party attended mainly by grad students in the Sociology department. One party-goer revealed that she had a secret crush on a student outside of Sociology and a mutual friend of ours quickly began listing off names of departments in an attempt to narrow down the identity of the crushee. But, when he exuberantly called out “History of Science,” the girl laughed and replied “No, name some real departments!”

We are, indeed, a real department (the oldest and in U.S., even), but as any grad student currently working on their PhD in the HoS knows, many people have never heard of the department or discipline. I often get asked if I do “more history or science” when I tell people what I'm getting my doctorate in. How to remedy this? Probably with a cool t-shirt:

I mean, did anyone know what NASA was before this came out:

Probably not.
Ok. I really just want to make a cool t-shirt to commemorate my time here. But, this might raise awareness of the department around campus... maybe. The question is: what to put on it? A graphic representing Galileo's velocity experiment will no longer do since the Sci Rev isn't as central to our discipline. I do think we could create a design that would appeal to everyone. I'm willing to look through Special Collections for cool images, but this might just generate a list of of quirky images that Meridith likes. So, I'm hoping we can collectively come-up with a list of ideas for designs. I'm reasonably good at illustration and volunteer to draw something up if you have an idea, but neither the time nor inclination to sketch it.

Rides to Cleveland for HSS

Several of us are already making plans to be at the History of Science Society annual meeting in Cleveland, November 3-6. If you haven't been to HSS, it's a friendly, mostly non-intimidating conference, and you'll meet some really great scholars who will be only too happy to talk with you about their research. We're going to have at least one car-load, and perhaps more than one, driving there to save money, so save the dates and plan to join us in Cleveland!

For more information about History of Science Society and the annual meeting, go to the HSS homepage.

Allons-y!

Welcome to Wisconsin HSMT's new graduate student blog. We hope that this forum can be an informal, fun, and respectful venue for us to share our brainstorms, announcements, updates, and resources. Please feel free to contact Scott Prinster if you have suggestions about how this page might be an even better resource.