Reflections on 2011 HSS - Cleveland, OH

2011 HSS Summary – Cleveland, OH
By CBS Graduate Students Marci Baranski, Erick Peirson, Mark Ulett and Postdoc Nathan Crowe

From November 4-6th, Cleveland hosted the annual meeting of the History of Science Society (HSS) along with concurrent conferences of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). On Friday night, the plenary talk opened the conference with an engaging and extremely relevant discussion of the Fukushima disaster. The panelists shared their unique perspectives on the historical and social dimensions of the disaster and nuclear technologies.

Per usual at HSS, there were far too many sessions for us to attend all of them, but we divided and conquered as many as possible between us. Marci Baranski’s interest in agricultural and environmental history led her to particular sessions, which spanned from colonial commodity chains to the use of radioactive elements for agricultural research during the Cold War. She found these sessions extremely well prepared and relevant to her own work as well as general history of science scholarship.

Erick Peirson’s especially enjoyed Center for Biology and Society alumna Mary Sunderland’s session on “Natural History in Transition,” which was chaired by Janet Brown, and featured talks by Mary, Eli Gerson of the Tremont Research Institute, former Center post-doc Kristin Johnson, and graduate student Jenna Tonn of Harvard University.

In a session of paleontology from Osborn for Gould, Mark Ulett’s presented a paper outlining his latest work on the role of laws of biology in orthogenetic theory. The session was well attended and led to a lively and lengthy discussion over Mark’s approach in reevaluating the historiography of 20th century evolutionary theory.

As co-chair of the Graduate and Early Career Caucus (GECC) of HSS, Nathan helped organize several events this year, including two sessions and a joint HSS, SHOT, and 4S mixer for graduate students and early careerists. All the of events were extremely well attended, particularly the session "Bringing Science to the Public: What Can The Science Studies Scholar Do?," in which CBS Director, Jane Maienschein, was one of the five speakers.

Silvan Schweber gave the HSS distinguished lecture on his biographic work on Hans Bethe. Schweber focused on the challenges of writing a biography on someone whose life spanned so many pivotal moments in the history of physics. We are looking forward to the tri-society meeting this summer in Pittsburgh between the British, Canadian, and American History of Science Societies, as well as the next HSS meeting in San Diego.