Tag: History of Education

Podcasts

The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: An Interview

Kelly J. Whitmer’s new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Prussian city of Halle by a group of German Lutherans known as Pietists. Whitmer understands this orphanage as a scientific community, thereby countering a tendency to approach the history of science in a way that treats science and … Continue reading The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

The New Math: An Interview

Christopher J. Phillips’s new book is a political history of the “New Math,” a collection of curriculum reform projects in the 1950s & 1960s that were partially sponsored by the NSF and involved hundreds of mathematicians, teachers, professors, administrators, parents, and students. The New Math: A Political History (University of Chicago Press, 2015) explores the formation of an idea of the “American subject” in an environment where … Continue reading The New Math: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Learned Patriots: An Interview

What were Ottomans talking about when they talked about science? In posing and answering that question (spoiler: they were talking about people), M. Alper Yalcinkaya’s new book Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the 19th-Century Ottoman Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2015) introduces the history of science as discussed and debated by nineteenth-century Turkish-speaking Muslim Ottomans in Istanbul. The book compellingly argues that these discussions and debates were … Continue reading Learned Patriots: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Life on Display: An Interview

In lucid prose that’s a real pleasure to read, Karen Rader and Victoria Cain’s new book chronicles a revolution in modern American science education and culture. Life on Display: Revolutionizing U. S. Museums of Science & Natural History in the Twentieth Century guides readers through a transformation in American science and nature museums as museums moved from a nineteenth-century focus on research and specimen collections to a twentieth-century emphasis on … Continue reading Life on Display: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Public Memory in Early China: An Interview

Ken Brashier’s wonderful new book, a must-read for scholars of Chinese studies, offers a history of identity and public memory in early China. We had a chance to talk about it for the New Books in East Asian Studies podcast, it was a lot of fun, and you can listen to the interview here. (Ken and I also talked about his previous – and also awesome – book … Continue reading Public Memory in Early China: An Interview

Carla Nappi
Podcasts

Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: An Interview

Matthew Stanley’s wonderful new book introduces James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79) and T.H. Huxley (1825-95) as they embodied theistic and naturalistic science, respectively, in Victorian Britain. Moving well beyond the widespread assumption that modern science and religion are and always have been fundamentally antithetical to one another, Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon offers a history of scientific naturalism that illustrates the deep and fundamental commonalities between positions on the proper practice … Continue reading Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: An Interview

Carla Nappi