[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, February 27th - Jessica Wang - (Please RSVP)

[STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
[image: image.png]

*Jessica Wang*
*University of British Columbia, History*
*
*
on

*Physics, Emotion, and the Scientific Self in the Nuclear Age: Merle Tuve's
Cold War*
Monday, February 27th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

[image: image.png]

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, February 23rd.
*
*
*Abstract:* In recent years, few scholars of cold war American science have
had much to say about the ideal of pure science, other than to reject the
concept as a fiction that belied the material conditions of military
patronage, cold war objectives, and their power to direct scientific
inquiry in the post-World War II decades.  A focus on political and
institutional circumstances, however, misses the broader scope of
mid-twentieth century science as a form of identity and an object of
intense public concern.  Pure science may not have reflected material
realities, but it nonetheless profoundly shaped scientific personae,
perceptions of selfhood, and the experiential dimensions of scientific
life.  This talk will examine the physicist Merle A. Tuve’s postwar career,
his emotionally charged dedication to an ideal of pure science, and his
fraught relations with the institutions of cold war science as a way to
address larger questions about emotion, scientific selfhood, and the
cultural status of science in the nuclear age.


*Biography*: Jessica Wang’s main interests lie in U.S. political and
intellectual history, political theory, the history of science
and technology, and the history of U.S. foreign relations. More recently,
she has been delving into the history of medicine and public health, as
well as social and urban history. Her book, *American Science in the Age of
Anxiety* (1999), examined the effects of cold war anti communism on the
American scientific community.  Her more recent publications include essays
on science and political theory, social science and New Deal political
economy, and internationalism and U.S. foreign relations. Wang is currently
pursuing two major book-length projects. The first, tentatively titled
"State of Knowledge: Reform Social Science and New Deal Public Policy,"
examines the interplay between an early twentieth century qualitative
tradition in American social science and public policy under the New Deal
of the 1930s. The second project is a social history of rabies in New York
City, with the working title, "Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies and
Urban Life in New York City, 1840-2000."


A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
Follow us on Facebook: STS at Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20120220/0a505fe5/attachment.htm