The annual meeting of the History of Science Society will be held in-person in New Orleans, LA from November 13-16, 2025.
The HAR News editors are pleased to share a selection of panels that may be of interest to our readers. Other panels and additional details can be found in the conference program.
Thursday, November 13
Subject to Mediation: Bodies, Matter, and Media in the Human Sciences
2:00 to 3:30 pm
Participants:
“Atmosphere, Environment, Matrix: How Mother Became a Medium,” Hannah Zeavin (University of California, Berkeley)
“Behaviorism Bricolage: Box, Relay, Recorder,” Jeff Nagy (York University)
“Fast and Loose (in and out) Traces of the Asylum Image,” Perwana Nazif (University of Southern California)
“Normal Accidents: Trained Judgement at the Nexus of Machine, Body & Bureaucracy,” Laura Stark (Vanderbilt University)
Session Organizer: Jeff Nagy (York University)
Chair: Stephanie Dick (Simon Fraser University)
Friday, November 14
Forum for the History of Human Science Sponsored Session
9:00 to 10:30 am
Lecturer: Sarah Igo (Vanderbilt University)
Organizers: Ayah Nuriddin (Yale University), and Emily Klancher Merchant (University of California, Davis)
(De)colonizing the Clinic: Medicine, Race, and Power in Twentieth-Century Egypt
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Reforming Madness in British Occupied Egypt, 1895-1935,” Sam Pulliam (George Washington University)
“Environmental Medicine and the Post-Colonial Evolution of Tropical Medicine in Egypt,” Jennifer Derr (University of California, Santa Cruz)
“Germans in 1930s Egypt: Race, Eugenics, Sexology and Technology,” Karim Malak (Wagner College)
“The Figure of the Doctor in Nasser-Era Cinema: Film as an Archive for the History of Medicine,” Soha Bayoumi (Johns Hopkins University)
Session Organizer: Karim Malak (Wagner College)
Chair: Soha Bayoumi (Johns Hopkins University)
Managing Dead Bodies: Global Public Health, Medicine, and Law
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Grave Matters: Corpse Traffic, Secret Burials, and Smuggling in Ottoman Iraq,” Zeinab Azarbadegan (Yale University)
“Claiming Corpses: Dead Bodies and Murder Investigations in British India,” Uponita Mukherjee (Fordham University)
“Corpses as Living Scientific Objects: Transinstitutionalization, Re-Identification, and the Body,” Trevor M Engel (Vanderbilt University)
“Towards a Concept History of the Crematorium: Bombay and Calcutta, 1918-1926,” Sohini Chattopadhyay (Union College)
Session Organizer: Zeinab Azarbadegan (Yale University)
Chair: Zeinab Azarbadegan (Yale University)
Thinking with Primates
2:00 to 3:30 pm
Participants:
“”From Jungle to the Laboratory”: Pastorian Chimpanzees, French Empire, and the Development of Experimental Primatology in the U.S.,” Marion Constance Thomas (University of Strasbourg)
“Neanderthals at the Boundary: Species and Difference between Man and Ape,” Emily Kern, (University of Chicago)
“The Linguistic View of Life: Generative Grammarians’ Apish Modern Synthesis,” Max Fennell-Chametzky (Stanford University)
Chair: Pratik Chakrabarti (University of Houston)
Alternative Science Studies and Conservative Critique Roundtable
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Participants:
Joanna Radin (Yale University)
Myrna Perez Sheldon (Ohio University)
Beans Velocci (University of Pennsylvania)
Cameron Brinitzer (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
Marc Aidinoff (Harvard University)
Session Organizer: Marc Aidinoff (Harvard University)
Chair: Joanna Radin (Yale University)
Psychology, Race, and Empire in the Americas
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Participants:
“Indigenismo, “Psychic Resistance”, and Superstition: Psychotropy and Psychology in the Interamerican Indigenista Movement, 1940-1960,” Timothy James Vilgiate (University of Texas at Austin)
“From Cold War to Cross-Cultural Psychology in the American War in Vietnam, 1968-1983,” Linda Luu (New York University)
“Madness between Religion and Criminality: Mental Illness and Colonial Order in the Philippines under American Rule, 1912-1931,” Joshua Acosta (University of California, Berkeley)
““Definitely Hereditarily Tainted”: Race, Class, and Conversion Therapy Practice in 1940s American State Hospitals,” Andrea Ens (Purdue University)
Session Organizer: Linda Luu (New York University)
Chair: Linda Luu (New York University)
Saturday, November 15
Indigenous Knowledge in Spanish America
9:00 to 10:30 am
Participants:
“Zero to Infinity: The Mayans Concept of Zero and its Role in Calendrical Developments,” Javier Armas (UCB CSTMS)
“History from Knotted Strings: Quipus, Inca Numeracy, and Accounts of Andean Conquest,” Manuel Medrano (Harvard University)
“Indigenous Canoe Building/Knowledge, River Navigation, and The Encounter of Knowledge during the Spanish Conquest of the New World,” Federico Castaño Vargas
“Reproductive Medicine and Indigenous Knowledge in 18th-Century Charcas, a Mining World,” Annelise Walker (Pennsylvania State University)
Chair: Ahmed Ragab (John Hopkins University)
Sciences of Mind
9:00 to 10:30 am
Participants:
“Legal Insanity and Psychiatric Knowledge Integration in Late Qing Legal Reform (1901-1911),” Yujie Pu (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
“Revisiting Charcot on the Anniversary of his Birth,” Daniela S Barberis (North Central College)
“”Living in the Rupture”: Cycles of Grief, Mourning Absence and the Psychology of Intergenerational Trauma,” Angélica Clayton (University of Pennsylvania)
Chair: Debbie Weinstein (Brown University)
Knowledge, Visions, and Power at the Intersections of Social Sciences and Technology
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Problems for the Computer Age: Soviet Industrial Psychology and Artificial Intelligence,” Ekaterina Babintseva (Purdue University)
“Management and the Sublime of Design,” Hunter Heyck (University of Oklahoma)
“Socialist Workers as Sensory Subjects: Engineering Psychology in the People’s Republic of China,” Victor Seow (Harvard University)
“‘Towards a (Cybernetic) Human Science’: Margaret Mead, Communication, and the Study of Culture at a Distance,” Bethany Anderson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Session Organizers: Bethany Anderson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and, Ekaterina Babintseva (Purdue University)
Chair: Judith Kaplan (Science History Institute)
Scientific Genealogies of Whiteness as Natural Norm
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
“Epistemic Whiteness: Classificatory Discreteness, Polygenism, and the Demise of Early Modern Categories of Being,” Patrícia Martins Marcos (University of Oklahoma)
““Wasteland to Date Garden:” Eugenics, the Environment, and Agriculture in the California Desert,” Margaret Maeve Spaulding (University of California, Los Angeles)
“The Pain of Racial Injustice: Richard Payne and the Whiteness of End-of-Life Care,” Matthew Soleiman (University of California, San Diego)
Session Organizer: Patrícia Martins Marcos, University of Oklahoma
Chair: Patrícia Martins Marcos (University of Oklahoma)
Commentator: Pratik Chakrabarti (University of Houston)
Give Me East Asia and I will Raise the History of Science: New Frameworks from Human, Capital, Cement, and Fish Swimming across Boundaries
2:00 to 3:30 pm
Participants:
“Data Gain, Deaf Gain: The Making of Occupational Noise-induced Hearing Loss in Post-Socialist China,” Yu Wang (Cornell University)
“Scientific Capital: A Critique of Science in Political Economy,” Yang Li (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
“What Does Cement Tell us about History of Technology?,” Yuting Dong (University of Chicago)
“Reorienting Reservoir-Fisheries in the Cold War Pacific: Aquatic Technology and Geopolitics within the Socialist Bloc and Beyond,” Aijie Shi (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Session Organizer: Yang Li (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
Chair: Fa-ti Fan (Binghamton University)
Making Human Difference: New Perspectives on Racial Science
4:00 to 5:30 pm
Participants:
“The Limits of Language: Ottoman Philology and the Making of an Imperial Identity,” Caleb Shelburne (Harvard University)
“Race Between the Lines: The Transnational Science of Dermatoglyphics,” Elise K Burton (University of Toronto)
“Skin, Face, Phalloplasty: Trans Medicine in Cold War Taiwan,” Adrien Gau (University of Pennsylvania)
Session Organizer: Caleb Shelburne (Harvard University)
Chair: Suman Seth (Cornell University)
Sunday, November 16
Scientific Authority and Accountability in the History of Archaeology
9:00 to 10:30 am
Participants:
“Egypt as a Health Resort: Tuberculosis, Lung Trippers, and Antiquities,” Kathleen Sheppard (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
“”If They’re Angry at Us, We’re on the Right Track”: Soviet Archaeology and the Challenge to Scientific Objectivity in Western Deep-Time Narratives (1928 – 1933),” Dmitrii Blyshko (University of Houston)
“”The Difference between Old Papyri and Tobacco”: Science and Smuggling in Interwar Egypt,” Adam Christopher Hill (Greenville University)
Session Organizer: Adam Christopher Hill (Greenville University)
Chair: Kathleen Sheppard (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
Commentator: Christopher Heaney (Pennsylvania State University)
Early Modern Collections, Modern Museums Roundtable
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California)
Christopher Heaney (Pennsylvania State University)
Ashli White
Baker Alexi
Hannah Marcus (Harvard University)
Session Organizers: Hannah Marcus (Harvard University), and Christopher Heaney, (Pennsylvania State University)
Chair: Jean-François Gauvin
Imperial and “Native” Varieties of Science in Africa
11:00 to 12:30 pm
Participants:
““He Looked as if he Were Nearly Gone”: Natural History, Masculinity, and Imperial Violence in 19th Century Africa,” Josh Levy (Library of Congress)
“Radio and the Telegraphic Origins of Broadcasting in Nigeria,” Nnamdi Nnake (McMaster University)
“Reconsidering ‘Improved Varieties’: Cassava Farmers, IITA and the Politics of High-Yield Production in Nigeria,” Aderayo Sanusi (Princeton University)
Chair: Nnamdi Nnake (McMaster University)
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