/ Forschung

Ankündigung: “In the Shadow of the Tree”

Shadow of the Tree

Bildausschnitt: Kinship diagram of the Choqueticlla and Colqueguarachi families, 1804, La Plata (today Sucre), National Archive of Bolivia. Image courtesy of Julian Miguez.

Vom 2.-3. April 2020 findet die erste internationale Konferenz des SNF-Sinergia Projekts "In the Shadow of the Tree. The Diagrammatics of Relatedness as Scientific, Scholarly, and Popular Practice" statt.

SNF Sinergia Conference

Date: April 2-3, 2020

Location: University of Lucerne, Room 4.A05

Title: “In the Shadow of the Tree: The Diagrammatics of Relatedness as Scientific, Scholarly, and Popular Practice”

Conveners: Marianne Sommer, Simon Teuscher, Staffan Müller-Wille, Caroline Arni

Visualizations of relatedness between organisms tend to take the shape of diagrams, and these scales, cones, maps, networks, trees, etc. do not simply make visible natural connections but create or deny kinship in particular ways and for particular reasons. In the Sinergia project, we investigate diagrams of relatedness in Western Europe and in spaces of European expansion since the late medieval period in the areas of genealogy, natural history, biology, heredity, and anthropology. In doing so, we develop diagrammatics as a methodology that interrelates disciplinary approaches to working with and working on diagrams. Understanding diagrams as techniques that transcend such binaries as ‘thought and action’ and ‘image and text,’ we aim at a comparative analysis of how they were made and used, of how diagrams of relatedness function as epistemic, cultural, and political practices, e.g. with respect to incest prohibition, (male) hereditary succession of power and wealth, or the constitution of ‘racial relations’ and the determination of ‘purity of blood.’

The first international conference focuses on Genealogy (15th-19th c.): Stéphane Jettot (Paris Sorbonne), Michaela Hohkamp (University of Hannover), Simon Teuscher (University of Zurich), Jean-Paul Zuñiga (EHESS Paris); Natural History, Biology, Heredity (18th-20th c.):Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (MPIWG Berlin), Ariane Dröscher (University of Trento), Amir Teicher (Tel Aviv University), Ted Porter (UCLA); and Anthropology (17-20th c.): Staffan Müller-Wille (Cambridge University), Marianne Sommer (University of Lucerne), Helen Gardner (Deakin University Melbourne).

Financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

For more information contact coordinator Eric Hounshell (snfsinergiatree@clutterunilu.ch)