Date/Time
Thursday
5 Dec 2013
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Colloquium

Carla Nappi
Associate Professor of History, The University of British Columbia

Many scholars have become interested in integrating the sensorium more fully into our histories of science, technology, and medicine. Increasingly, sophisticated stories are emerging about the importance of sound, sight, scent, taste, and touch in knowledge about the natural and physical worlds of the past and present. Inspired by and sharing in these efforts to render a more embodied and sensual perspective in the historiography of the sciences, this talk will approach the relationship between history and the sonic from the perspective of narrative craft. The DJ and the historian of science use comparable methods in the art and technics of narrative production, from analogies between sampling and quotation to comparisons of sonic and argumentative structure. The talk will argue that considering the crafts of sonic and historical narrative production from within a common epistemic frame can not only inform our understanding of sound and silence in the history of STM, but can also offer new generative possibilities for the narrative composer in science studies.