Decomposing Global Histories of Science
Date of Lecture: March 24, 2017
About the Speaker: Carla Nappi is associate professor of history and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is author of "The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and its Transformations in Early Modern China" (Harvard University Press, 2009). Her current work explores how 17th and 18th century translators wrote about the anatomy and health of human bodies in the Manchu language, and specifically how they used what we might call “prepositions” (in, on, from, across, through, etc.) to understand and translate bodily relationships and the experiences they produce.
About the Talk: Nappi draws on her work with Manchu anatomical texts to suggest tools and examples for re-orienting historians to pay attention to stories of breaking down and coming apart. Her talk was the keynote address of the conference "Globalization of Science in the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries."