The History of Science Society, Philosophy of Science Association, and Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts are meeting together in Atlanta this November. Their programs feature several sessions of interest to historians of anthropology, including these from the History of Science Society program:

Evolutionary Progress, Thursday, November 3, 1:30–3:00, Chastain H (6th Floor)
Organizer: Myrna Perez Sheldon
Chair: Robert Richards (University of Chicago)
• “Evolutionary Progress and Social Reform in American Pragmatism,” Trevor Pearce (University of North Carolina at Charlotte)
• “Ascent or Descent? Post-WWII Attempts to Reconcile Progress and Aggression in Human Evolution,” Erika Milam (Princeton University)
• “Adaptation, Progress and Racism in Evolutionary History,” Myrna Perez Sheldon (Ohio University)
• “The Directionality of Science,” Chris Haufe (Case Western Reserve University)

Human Ecology as an Interdisciplinary Approach to Social and Environmental Crisis, Thursday, November 3, 3:45–5:45, Piedmont 5 (12th Floor)
Organizer: Adrianna Link
Chair and Commentator: Laura J. Martin (Harvard University)
• “New Deal Human Ecology: Regionalism, Succession, and Equilibrium in Howard Odum’s Sociology,” Emilie Raymer ( Johns Hopkins University)
• “Postwar Human Ecology: The Problem of ‘Communities’ and the Decline of Succession in American Sociology,” Christine Manganaro (Maryland Institute College of Art)
• “A Museum for the Family of Man: Organizing Human Ecology at the Smithsonian Institution, 1968–1976,” Adrianna Link (Amherst College)

Binaries, Scales, and Other Modes of Classification in the Social and Life Sciences, Saturday, November 5, 9:00–11:45, Piedmont 8 (12th Floor)
Organizer: Tabea Cornel
Chair and Commentator: Howard Kushner (Emory University)
• “‘Other’ in a World of Humans and Animals: Monstrosity, Race, and Taxonomy, 1790–1840,” Sara Ray (University of Pennsylvania)
• “Half-Sighted: A History of Neglect Syndrome at the Crossroads of Neurology and Phenomenology,” Scott Phelps (McGill University)
• “The New Race Typing: Serological Genetics at the Mid-Century,” Michell Chresfield (University of Pittsburgh)
• “Left, Right, Mixed, or Scaled? Genetic Theories of Handedness and Dexterity Questionnaires in Britain, 1950s–1980s,” Tabea Cornel (University of Pennsylvania)

Private Science: Non-State Actors in Advancing Natural History and Archaeology, Saturday, November 5, 9:00–11:45, Piedmont 6 (12th Floor)
Organizer and Chair: Darryl Brock
• “Beebe in Haiti in 1927: The Modern Natural History Expedition,” Katharine Anderson (York University)
• “Private New York Science: Colonial Expeditions and Puerto Rican Archaeology,” Darryl Brock (City University of New York – Borough of Manhattan Community College)
• “Private Archaeology: Mexico’s Casas Grandes and Charles Di Peso,” David McIntosh (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• “Swimming Under the Archetype: Private Actors in Undersea Science,” Helen Rozwadowski (University of Connecticut – Avery Point)
• “21st-Century Wildlife Filmmaking as Natural History Expedition,” Eleanor Louson (York University)

Forum for History of Human Science Business Meeting and Distinguished Lecture, Saturday, November 5, 12:00–1:15, Augusta B (7th Floor)
•“The Role of Biography in Intellectual History,” Robert Richards (University of Chicago)

Hybrid Science: Racial Science across Borders and Disciplines in the Nineteenth Century, Saturday, November 5, 1:30–3:00, Augusta B (7th Floor)
Organizer: Christopher Willoughby
Chair: Suman Seth (Cornell University)
• “Educating the Senses: Race and the Science of Anatomy in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States,” Christopher Willoughby (Tulane University)
• “‘The Terrors of the Climate’: Medicine, Politics, and Race in Early Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone,” Sean Morey Smith (Rice University)
• “Racial Science as the Re-Occupation of Christian Supersessionism,” Terence Keel (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• “Mad with Freedom: The Political Economy of Blackness, Insanity and Civil Rights in the 19th Century,” Élodie Grossi (University of California, Los Angeles, Université Paris Diderot)

Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity in Anthropology, 1870–Present, Saturday, November 5, 3:45–5:45, Piedmont 5 (12th Floor)
Chair: Debbie Weinstein (Brown University)
• “Gentlemen and Savages in the Travel Writing of Lucio V. Mansilla and Ramón Lista,” Ashley Kerr (University of Idaho)
• “Reinventing American Physical Anthropology in the 1940s–50s,” Ageliki Lefkaditou (University of Oslo)
• “Enchantment, Exchange, and Entanglement: The Politics and Practices of Xavante-Warazú Research Relationships,” Rosanna Dent (University of Pennsylvania)

The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts program features one session on literature influenced by anthropology and natural history:

Creating Places 2: Wild Spots, Saturday, November, 5, 8:30–10:00, Peachtree 2
Chair: Melissa Bailes
• “Created for Consumption: Botany, Colonial Cannibalism, and National/Natural History in Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl,” Melissa Bailes (Tulane University)
• “‘Misled by the Picturesque Appearance of Villages’: The Rural Idyll, Hygiene, Backwardness and Creating the Rural Environment in Britain, 1870–1914,” Keir Waddington (Cardiff University)
• “Defiant Captives and Warrior Princesses: New Representations of Womanhood in Writing of the Argentine Pampa,” Ashley Kerr (University of Idaho)

Finally, the Philosophy of Science Association program features two sessions that deal with the validity of the concept of race in medicine and human population genetics, disciplines influenced by the concept’s history in anthropology.

New Directions in Philosophy of Biology, Thursday, November 3, 10:45–12:15, Piedmont 4 (12th Floor)
Chair: M.A. Hunter
• “Feminist Values in Service of the Holobiont,” Tamar Schneider Zipory (University of California, Davis)
• “Biological Individuals, Communities, and Populations: How the Concept of Persons and Personhood Can Inform the Discourse,” Denise Hossom (University of California, Davis)
• “Germ-Line or Somatic Mutations? The Pitfalls and Concerns for Deleting and Replacing the Concept of ‘Race’ in Human Genetics,” M.A. Hunter, (University of California, Davis/London School of Economics and Political Science)

How Should Race Be Used in Medicine? Thursday, November 3, 6:00–7:15, Peachtree D (8th Floor)
Moderator: Quayshawn Spencer (University of Pennsylvania)
• “For the Strictly Social Use of Race in Medicine,” Michael Yudell (Drexel University)
• “For the Social and Genetic Use of Race in Medicine,” Robin Andreasen (University of Delaware)

Authors
Peter Sachs Collopy: contributions / website / peter@collopy.net / My primary research project concerns how people used the medium of videotape to experiment with consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the main methods for such experimentation was mediated self-observation, the practice of recording and then watching oneself. Such techniques appeared decades earlier in ethnographic film, including in the work of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali and New Guinea in the 1930s. Mead and Bateson went on to be part of the group that developed the new science of cybernetics, which became the framework in which many of my research subjects in the 1960s and 1970s conceptualized the videotape as a new tool for individuals and communities to engage in feedback loops, observing themselves and learning from the experience. Bateson in particular was actively involved in the communities of experimental videographers that emerged in both psychotherapy and the art world in the 1960s, bringing the methods of his cybernetic anthropology to practitioners of other disciplines.