Tag Archives: Archives

Framing women’s scientific labour at the Burden Neurological Institute through archival photography

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‘Triple exposure shows Lady Janet Shipton flinching from light’, Life, ‘Electronic Patterns of the Brain’ / ‘The Love Machine Tests Compatibility’, 9 April 1956. BURD/A/06/113, BNI

Over on the Science Museum Group Journal site, David Saunders (a PhD student at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, Queen Mary University of London), has written a good read entitled Wired-up in white organdie: framing women’s scientific labour at the Burden Neurological Institute. 

Using untapped photographic collections in the Burden Neurological Institute’s (BNI) papers, Saunders work addresses a lacuna in the historiography of science that has overlooked the prominent roles women have played in the history of the BNI. 

The work does not, however, treat the photos as “providing an unproblematic ‘window’ onto the experiences of these scientific workers, this article contends that the photographs in question ‘frame’ women’s labour in particular ways so as to devalue, obscure and erase their contributions to the BNI’s much-lauded achievements.” 

Rather, the article “considers three such frames: the objectification of women as the subjects, rather than the practitioners, of neuroscientific research; the elision of women’s scientific, domestic, and familial roles; and the visual equation of women’s labour with that of the machine.”

Read the entirety here!

Psychologist and Wonder Woman Creator William Marston’s Papers Now at Schlesinger Archives

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A collection of papers of psychologist and Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston have landed at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Schlesinger Library. And more papers from Marston’s granddaughters are set to arrive at in the archives in the months ahead. Undoubtedly the Marston’s papers will also feature items from his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and partner Olive Byrne, both of whom are well deserving of collections in their own right. As described in the Harvard Gazette,

Over the past academic year, two collections of William Moulton Marston, the Harvard graduate, psychologist, and inventor of the lie detector machine whose Wonder Woman comics promoted the triumph of women, arrived at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Schlesinger Library.

Though there’s little material directly related to Wonder Woman among the photos, letters, articles, drawings, and miscellanea in the archive, the collections go a long way toward explaining the influences in Marston’s life that inspired his righteous crime-fighting character, her racy look, and her fantasy storylines.

“His collection helps tell a back story rooted in Marston’s controversial research and the women in his unorthodox personal life,” said Kathy Jacob, curator of manuscripts at the Schlesinger. That includes Marston’s simultaneous relationships with two strong and idealistic women, a connection to Margaret Sanger ­— one of the most important feminists of the 20th century — as well as Marston’s work with behavioral psychology and his theories on love.

Relatedly, a new feature film, Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, is set to be released later this fall.

July 31st BPS/UCL Talk: “Kingsley Hall: An Island? Exploring Archival Accounts of Life at the Hall”

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R. D. Laing

The British Psychological Society‘s History of Psychology Centre, in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines, has announced the next talk in its summer seminar series. On Monday July 31st Adrian Chapman, of Florida State University, will be speaking on “Kingsley Hall: An Island? Exploring Archival Accounts of Life at the Hall.” Full details below.

Monday 31st July

Dr Adrian Chapman (Florida State University)

‘Kingsley Hall: An Island? Exploring Archival Accounts of Life at the Hall’

Kingsley Hall was radical therapeutic community established by R. D. Laing in 1965 (and that ran until 1970) in the East End of London. Here I turn to archival accounts of life at the Hall by residents and visitors. These accounts are from a book (never published) about Kingsley Hall and other communities established by the Laing network in the 70s. In his introduction to the book (the most stable title of which was Asylum: To Dwell in Strangeness), Laing engages in a debate with his former collaborator, David Cooper, who had spoken derisively of the Hall and other communities as “happy islands”, isolated zones of pseudo-freedom. Following a consideration of the aims, scope, history and marketability of the book project, I take the island metaphor as my starting point for exploring archival materials. This route allows me to trace significant connections and dissonances among several contributors to Asylum: To Dwell in Strangeness, and offers rich possibilities for interrogating the nature of the Hall and the radical psychiatry associated with R. D. Laing. In particular, I want to examine debates around the politics of the Kingsley Hall project; the relation of the Hall to its surrounding area in the East End; as well as the relation of Laing and his project to mainstream psychiatry, and to 1960s counterculture.

Tickets/registration: https://uclkingsleyhall.eventbrite.co.uk

Location:
SELCS Common Room (G24)
Foster Court
Malet Place
University College London

Time: 18:00-19:30

New at the Wellcome Library: Tavistock Institute of Human Relations Archive Now Open to Researchers!

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The papers of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) have now been catalogued – 130 boxes of them! – and are now open to researchers at the Wellcome Library. As the TIHR Archive Project reports,

These papers – the registered document series (SA/TIH/B/1) – provide a framework for the research and outputs of the Institute from 1945 to 2005, containing key reports and findings from seminal social studies from the post-war period to the early 21st century.

The reports trace the dynamic and cutting-edge work undertaken by the Tavistock Institute’s team of social scientists, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, in their efforts to apply new thinking emerging in the social sciences to the most prevalent contemporary needs and concerns of society. The topics addressed in the reports are hugely diverse, covering many aspects of the organisation of human social and cultural relations, institutions, social conflicts, and organisational structures and group dynamics.

More details about the archive can be found here, while the collection can be explored here.

Issues in Open Scholarship: ‘If Data Sharing is the Answer, What is the Question?’

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coverThe European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics‘ publication ERCIM NEWS put out a special issue on ‘scientific data sharing and re-use.’ In it Christine Borgman (out of UCLA’s department of Information Studies) touches in brief on some of the topics covered in her new volume Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World (2015, MIT Press).

In her book, Borgman locates data as only meaningful within borgmaninfrastructures or ecologies of knowledge, and discusses the management and exploitation of data as particular kinds of investments in the future of scholarship. Her take on the history of big data and the growing enthusiasm for data sharing, which she asserts often obscures the challenges and complexities of data stewardship, is relevant to historians of the social sciences. An excerpt:

Data practices are local, varying from field to field, individual to individual, and country to country. Studying data is a means to observe how rapidly the landscape of scholarly work in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities is changing. Inside the black box of data is a plethora of research, technology, and policy issues. Data are best understood as representations of observations, objects, or other entities used as evidence of phenomena for the purposes of research or scholarship. Rarely do they stand alone, separable from software, protocols, lab and field conditions, and other context. The lack of agreement on what constitutes data underlies the difficulties in sharing, releasing, or reusing research data.  Continue reading Issues in Open Scholarship: ‘If Data Sharing is the Answer, What is the Question?’ →

Call for Participation: Interviews with Archival Researchers

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Humanites_Numeriques-550x300Here at AHP, we’re interested in fostering conversation about historiographic theory and methods, and as we have access to such a vibrant community of historians and allied researchers, I thought I’d forward this query posted on the H-Public discussions section of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. 

Alexandra Chassanoff from the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is looking for assistance with her doctoral research in the form of participation by “individuals who have used digitized photographs in their scholarly activities (teaching, publications, presentations, or related research pursuits). ”

Here are further details:

The interview should take approximately one hour and can be conducted in person, over the telephone, or online using Go2Meeting.  Your responses to these questions will be kept confidential.  There is no compensation for participating in this study; however, I am confident that your participation will contribute significantly to this emerging area of research.

If you are willing to participate, please send an email to: achass@email.unc.edu to confirm your interest. I am happy to answer any questions for you as well.

Historians of science (and other academic or professional disciplines) are used to studying how other people conduct research, but rarely have the spotlight turned on their own work. It is always beneficial to be be given the opportunity to take a look at your methodological ‘black box’ and reflect on those processes. If interested, please contact Alexandra.

New Issue of History of the Human Sciences: Historians in the Archive

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A new issue of History of the Human Sciences is now online. The October 2013 release is a special issue on the topic of “Historians in the Archive: Changing Historiographical Practices in the Nineteenth Century.” As described by guest editors Pieter Huistra, Herman Paul and Jo Tollebeek in the introduction, the issue  “explores the influence that archives, in a classic, institutional sense, exerted on the practices of 19th-century historiography. How did the archival turn affect historians’ working manners? How contested was this archival research imperative, with its underlying autopsy principle? And how did it spread geographically, in and outside Europe?” The seven articles that comprise the issue include pieces on the persona of the archival historian, the use of state archives, and the role of debates about testimony in the archival turn. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Historians in the archive: An introduction,” by Pieter Huistra, Herman Paul, and Jo Tollebeek. The abstract reads,

Historians in the 19th-century were not the first to discover the importance of source materials kept in archival depositories. More than their predecessors, however, scholars working in the historical discipline that the 19th century saw emerge tended to equate professional historical knowledge with knowledge based on primary source research, that is, practically speaking, on knowledge gained from source material that was usually kept in archives. While previous scholarship had paid ample attention to the methods that 19th-century historians employed for the study of such archival material, to the epistemologies they developed in tandem with these methods and to the institutions they created for the study of archival records, this special issue explores the influence that archives, in a classic, institutional sense, exerted on the practices of 19th-century historiography. How did the archival turn affect historians’ working manners? How contested was this archival research imperative, with its underlying autopsy principle? And how did it spread geographically, in and outside Europe?

“Inventing the archive: Testimony and virtue in modern historiography,” by Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen. The abstract reads, Continue reading New Issue of History of the Human Sciences: Historians in the Archive →

New Image Database Online: Weill-Cornell Medical Center Archives

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Over the course of the summer months, the Weill-Cornell Medical Center Archives in New York have been uploading images from their collection into two new online databases: one for internal users and one that is open to the public. The public database, a part of the Shared Shelf Commons, can be searched directly by selecting “Cornell: New York-Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell” from the drop-down menu. The online collection features both drawings and photographs and includes building interiors and exteriors, staff, and events from the New York Hospital buildings, the Bloomingdale Asylum (later Hospital), the House of Relief, the Lying-in Hospital, the Medical School, and the Nursing School (for background on these institutions, click here). The earliest images date into the late 1700s, with photographs beginning in the late 1800s and running well into the 1970s.

The project is the result of a collaboration between the Archives, Cornell University, and ARTstor.org.

AHP readers may be interested to know that much of the Weill-Cornell Medical Center Archives’ print collection is also available digitally via the ever-growing archive.org site. This material includes:

100 Years of the Rockefeller Foundation

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Electrophysiological lab at McGill University, 1951


In celebration of its centennial the Rockefeller Foundation has digitized and made available online a number of items from the Rockefeller Archive Center. Among the material now online that may be of interest to historians of psychology are items related to funding for the social sciences and psychiatry, as well as material related to the Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Kinsey Reports (left). Specific items of interest include a 1968 memorandum on “A social psychological analysis of black students at Oberlin College and suggested institutional adjustments to meet their needs,” and the 1925 “Report of committee on inter-board conference on mental hygiene, psychology, psychiatry, etc.” The full collection of documents, images, and videos can be searched here.