BLUE

Dr Vanessa is the monster

@hpsvanessa.bsky.social

historian of science, medicine, sport and exploration; other content generally but not limited to: food, a weird bug, feminist beer, complaining about bad parking. Latest book: tinyurl.com/HigherColder

3.5k followers650 following4.3k posts

DVhpsvanessa.bsky.socialOct 1, 2024 2:42pm

new publication! I am really pleased with this chapter, a lot of work, although I wonder how much it will be read given the astronomical price of the 6 vol edition? :/ Unrelatedly, do remember that if you email academics they will nearly always share a copy of their work with you ;) #histSTM 🗃️

hand holdin a white book with a black and white photo of a husky dog in snow listening to a gramophone. The title is "A cultural history of exploration in the modern age" edited by Martin Thomas

screen shot of a pdf chapter, text reads "CHAPTER ONE:Technologies of Exploration VANESSA HEGGIE
The overarching story of exploration technology in the twentieth century is
one of domestication. The elite, expensive, and often unreliable technology of
the early century becomes routine and ubiquitous by the turn of the twentyfirst.
In part this process reflects the changing demographics of exploration, as
almost every iconic space of exploration in the first half of the century became
a site of tourism by the second half. Although extraterrestrial space did not get
tourists until the early twenty-first century, the trajectory is clear and universal,
and is in part due to the continuing industrialization of technology: the massproduced,
standardized material culture that circulates through international
webs of science and commerce. So flight stops being a moment of exploration
itself and turns into the way in which you commute to a site of exploration;
the Global Positioning System..."

DVhpsvanessa.bsky.socialOct 1, 2024 2:48pm

ps: if you enjoy me writing on single word concepts please know that "food" is already out (Cultural History of Medicine, vol 5) and that "progress" is hopefully forthcoming...ps: if you enjoy me writing on single word concepts please know that "food" is already out (Cultural History of Medicine, vol 5) and that "progress" is hopefully forthcoming...

screen shot of a chapter "CHAPTER TWO Food VANESSA HEGGIE
Western medicine made its break with humoral theories definite in the
nineteenth century, but at least one of the non-naturals – food – remained a
core element of healing practices and disease theories. From 1800 to 1920,
food and eating were rewritten into new theories of biomedicine, while at the
same time maintaining strong socio-cultural meanings, leading to complex
identities for individual foodstuffs, specific eating habits and even practices of
preparation and storage. Building on older, empirically-focused studies of what,
when and how much people ate (Burnett 1966), social and cultural historians
interested in the interactions between nineteenth-century science and food
practices take one of two paths: first is a concentration on the intersection of
public health – another nineteenth-century preoccupation – and the analysis of
foods, as demonstrated by the pure food movements and by campaigns and
scandals about..."

word document screenshot "Progress
Vanessa Heggie

Abstract
In the last generation of scholarship ‘progress’ became a dirty word in much scholarship in both the health and environmental humanities. From the assertion that there was no such thing as the scientific revolution through a roiling critique of modern medicine and healthcare practices that very specifically dismantled claims of unmediated success and improvement, contemporary health humanity studies often take a sceptical angle on claims of progress, demonstrating who, and what, was left behind. Meanwhile the environmental humanities recognise that for centuries “progress” within an environmental context meant bending ecosystems to human needs, or more recently to the needs of endless-growth capitalism – converting to agriculture, to industry, to sites of extraction and pollution; progress can too easily be measured in terrifying parts per million of carbon dioxide. However, in their daily practice scholars..."

DHdavehitchcock.bsky.socialOct 1, 2024 3:23pm

Libraries quite like the big Bloomsbury cultural histories I think, I reckon exploration will be a popular set.

BSbenspky.bsky.socialOct 1, 2024 3:24pm

Looks great!

Dr Vanessa is the monster

@hpsvanessa.bsky.social

3.5k followers650 following4.3k posts