Distinguished Visiting Scholar: Pamela Smith (Columbia)

Transforming Matter and Making Art in a sixteenth-century Workshop
Pamela Smith
Columbia University, Seth Low Professor of History Director of the Center for Science and Society

Both in their writings and their works of art, early modern European artists and craftspeople participated in philosophical debates.  This lecture examines some of their objects and their practices of making to bring to light their material philosophizing and systems of knowledge. Please refer to The Making and Knowing Project website to see the latest developments in the program.

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Pamela H. Smith is Seth Low professor of history and founding Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University where she teaches early modern European history and history of science. She has published books and articles on early modern European artisanal knowledge and culture, and is now directing a collaborative initiative, The Making and Knowing Project, to reconstruct the knowledge of early modern craft from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including hands on work in a laboratory.
Her books include The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (1994); Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, (ed. with P. Findlen, 2002; The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (2004); Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400-1800 (ed. with B. Schmidt, 2008); Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge (ed. with A.R.W. Meyers and H. Cook, 2015); and The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices and Cultural Logics c. 1250-1750 (ed. with C. Anderson and A. Dunlop, 2015).

The lecture will take place at Alumni Hall in Old Victoria College.
Tea will be served from 4:00 p.m., and the lecture will begin at 4:15 p.m.