[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, March 21st - John Mathew - (please RSVP)

[Harvard STS]

*PLEASE NOTE: There will be no STS Circle next Monday, March 14th.  The talk
below will be on March 21st.*
*
*
*STS Circle at Harvard*
*[image: line.gif]
*
*
*
*John Mathew*
*History of Science, Harvard*
*
*
on

*Encountering Fauna in late 18th and early 19th Euro-Colonial India *
**
Monday, March 21st
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

[image: line.gif]

Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts <sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>
 by 5pm Thursday, March 17th.

*
*
*Abstract:* In this paper, I explore the manner in which animals were
encountered through European, particularly French and British eyes, in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The British had an implicit
governmental agenda, not least the legitimization of their own rule through
the assumption of the trappings of the Mughal emperors. Such angles as the
elaboration of the hunt, the increasing establishment of menageries and
animals as objects of artistic rendition were symbolic of that effort. The
French, though relegated to tiny colonies on the Indian subcontinent and
dependent upon the largesse of the British to undertake natural history
studies, pursued their explorations as a continuation of the late 18th
century French modus operandus of understanding the scientific world, with
collections returned to the Mus'eum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in
Paris. Although European systems of classification as organizing principles
grew in this period, not least through the efforts of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal (founded 1784), the influence of Indians was more than merely the
role of interlocutors, with such aspects as Company Art drawing upon native
traditions of expertise as much as that of British influence.


*Biography*: John Mathew is currently drawing to the close of his doctoral
program in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University,
where his focus has been the making of taxonomic zoology in British India.
He holds a Ph.D. in Ecological Sciences from Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, Virginia and an A. M. in Medical Anthropology from Harvard
University, along with undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in Zoology
from the Madras Christian College, Madras (Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India.

A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20110311/5ab7b327/attachment.htm