HIST 4915A – Historical Geographies of Science: Finding Scientific Landscapes: Place, Scale, Period
Summer 2017
Instructor: Peter Anderson
Description:
This seminar examines the historical geographies of science. David Livingstone argues “like other elements of human culture, science is located…Yet bringing science within the domain of geographical inquiry seems disquieting.” In this course, we will explore this disquiet through the ways that the geography of science, at different times and in different places, informs our understanding of who we are, where we are, and what futures we can create.
We will examine the landscapes where knowledge about the human and more-than-human worlds are produced, stored, and disseminated through the interlinked lenses of place, scale, and period.
The places of science include the laboratory and the field, the city and the classroom, across every continent and in outer space. While acknowledging that science operates on different scales—locally, nationally, globally—we will use the two main university campuses and key local sites such as the Experimental Farm to read our local landscapes for evidence of scientific labour and understanding.