Part III Manager: Helen Curry
MPhil Managers: Marta Halina and Staffan Müller-Wille
Part III and MPhil Seminars 2021–22
The Department's Part III and HPSM MPhil students must attend these seminars. They are not open to anyone else.
Michaelmas Term
Weeks 1 and 2
Marta Halina: Kinds of minds
- Dennett, Daniel, Kinds of Minds (Basic Books, 1996), chapters 1–4
Helen Anne Curry: Histories of extinction
- Qureshi, Sadiah, 'Dying Americans: Race, Extinction and Conservation in the New World', in A. Swenson and P. Mandler (eds), From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c. 1800–1940, Proceedings of the British Academy 187 (2013), 267–286
- Sepkoski, David, 'Extinction, Diversity and Endangerment', in F. Vidal and N. Dias (eds), Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 62–86
- TallBear, Kim, 'Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity', Social Studies of Science 43 (2013), 509–533
Weeks 3 and 4
Tim Lewens and Stephen John: Is, can or should science be 'value-free'?
- Douglas, Heather, 'Inductive Risk and Values in Science', Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), 559–579
Simon Schaffer and Josh Nall: Instruments and empires
- Raj, Kapil, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), chapter 6 ('When Human Travellers become Instruments: The Indo-British Exploration of Central Asia in the Nineteenth Century', pp. 181–222)
- Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), chapter 5 ('Astrophysics and Imperialism', pp. 121–143)
- Anderson, Katherine, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), chapter 6 ('Science, State and Empire', pp. 235–284)
Weeks 5 and 6
Staffan Müller-Wille: Race and history
- Doron, Claude-Olivier, 'Race and Genealogy. Buffon and the Formation of the Concept of "Race"', HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies 5 (2012), 75–109
- López Beltrán, Carlos, 'Hippocratic bodies, temperament and castas in Spanish America (1570–1820)', Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 8 (2007), 253–289
- Seth, Suman, 'Materialism, Slavery, and the History of Jamaica', Isis 105 (2014), 764–772
Hasok Chang: Realism, relativism and pluralism
- Chang, Hasok, 'Relativism, Perspectivism and Pluralism', in Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 398–406
- Chang, Hasok, 'Pragmatism, Perspectivism, and the Historicity of Science', in Michela Massimi and Casey D. McCoy (eds), Understanding Perspectivism: Scientific Challenges and Methodological Prospects (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 10–27
Weeks 7 and 8
Salim Al-Gailani: Covid-19 and the history of medicine
- 'Reimagining Epidemics', special issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94 (2020), esp. the introduction, 'Epidemics Have Lost the Plot' and 'Reconsidering the Dramaturgy'
- Lachenal, Guillaume, and Gaëtan Thomas, 'COVID-19: When History Has No Lessons', History Workshop Online, 30 March 2020
- Harrison, Mark, 'Pandemics', in M. Jackson (ed.), The Routledge History of Disease (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 129–46 (available on Moodle)
Lauren Kassell: Medical records and digital humanities
- Kassell, Lauren, 'Casebooks in Early Modern England: Astrology, Medicine and Written Records', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88 (2014), 595–625
- Kassell, Lauren, Michael Hawkins, Robert Ralley, John Young, Joanne Edge, Janet Yvonne Martin-Portugues and Natalie Kaoukji (eds), 'Casebooks', The Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier, 1596–1634: A Digital Edition
Lent Term
Weeks 1 and 2
Anna Alexandrova: Evidence-based policy and its discontents
- Deaton, Angus, and Nancy Cartwright, 'Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials', Social Science & Medicine 210 (2018), 2–21
- Khosrowi, Donal, and Julian Reiss, 'Evidence-Based Policy: The Tension Between the Epistemic and the Normative', Critical Review 31 (2019), 179–197
Richard Staley: Defining climatic periods and making climate history
- Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste, and Fabien Locher, 'Modernity's Frail Climate: A Climate History of Environmental Reflexivity', Critical Inquiry 38 (2012), 579–598
- Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 'Anthropocene Time', History and Theory 57 (2018), 5–32
- Antonello, Alessandro, and Mark Carey, 'Ice Cores and the Temporalities of the Global Environment', Environmental Humanities 9, no. 2 (2017), 181–203
Weeks 3 and 4
Mary Brazelton: Decolonization and the history of science
- Amrith, Sunil S., Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chapter 1
- Murphy, Michelle, 'Some Keywords toward Decolonial Methods: Studying Settler Colonial Histories and Environmental Violence from Tkaronto', History and Theory 59 (2020), 376–384
- Richardson, Eugene T., Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2020), introduction and chapter 3
Jacob Stegenga: The sciences of sexual desire
- Lloyd, Elisabeth, 'Pre-Theoretical Assumptions in Evolutionary Explanations of Female Sexuality', Philosophical Studies 69 (1993), 139–153
- Stein, Edward, The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), introduction and chapter 7
- Stegenga, Jacob, Book Synopsis Draft
Weeks 5 and 6
Liba Taub and Dániel Margócsy: What is a scientific instrument?
- Warner, Deborah Jean, 'What is a scientific instrument, when did it become one, and why?', British Journal for the History of Science 23 (1990), 83–93