Degenhart Brown, “‘Spiritscapes’ as ‘Atlantic Modernities’: Examining the Ritual Pathways of Spirit Possession and ‘Fetish’ Objects in West Africa.”

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In this presentation I explore how the dense vectors of material culture and spirit possession established in the crucible of the modern era continue to inform the decisions of millions of west Africans as they navigate everyday realities at home and abroad. In the first half of this talk, I explore emerging themes in “fetish […]

Mario Biagioli, “From Anti Science to Science Mimicry: Inventing Ethics in Trump’s EPA.”

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October 18, 5 pm Mario Biagioli (UCLA Law and Information Studies) (please note the later time) This paper moves from the recent findings of agnotologists (like the book Merchants of Doubt) about the post-WWII strategy by tobacco and oil companies to cast doubt about the scientific evidence concerning, respectively, the risks of tobacco smoking and the existence […]

Chris Willoughby, “Collected without Consent: Imperialism and Enslavement in Harvard’s Medical Museum.”

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Nov 1 Chris Willoughby (Huntington Library) "Collected without Consent: Imperialism and Enslavement in Harvard’s Medical Museum." Co-sponsored with the Atlantic field   In 1847, upon his retirement, John Collins Warren gave his entire anatomical collection to Harvard’s medical school, including a  collection of racial skulls that would grow to include more than 150 objects. In this […]

Iris Clever, “The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science.”

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Nov 29 Iris Clever (University of Chicago) "The Afterlives of Skulls: How Race Science Became a Data Science." This talk will introduce anthropological practices that remain largely unexplored in the historical literature on racial science: biometrics. In the early twentieth century, biometricians analyzed skull measurements with novel statistical methods to demonstrate racial-biological differences. With skull-measuring instruments […]

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