On Wed., 28 March from 6-8 p.m. in room 9207, Maria Portuondo, Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History of Science at Johns Hopkins University, will come to talk on:

“American Convergence: Science and Technology in Colonial Latin America.”

Abstract: The essential backdrop of the history of the region we now call Latin America is the centuries-long process of negotiation between the different social, religious, cultural and political registers of the Indigenous, African and European peoples who came to inhabit the area. The resulting American scientific and technological convergence involved the combination and recombination of practices whose exact origins are difficult to trace. As in any other period of scientific and technological change, the solutions that emerged were driven by intellectual traditions, market demands, labor availability and economic paradigms. Yet in the case of the Americas, these solutions were often an amalgam of the knowledge, skills, traditions and expertise of the different cultural groups that came together, willingly or unwillingly, to the shores of the American continent. This talk proposes a framework for the study of the scientific and technological registers of the American convergence. It recognizes the hybrid, complex and local nature of the convergence and explores these through three kinds of human activities: learning, moving and making.

This event is the last installment of the New York Series of Science Lecture Series in 2017–18.