Journal of the History of Biology - Call for Papers for Topical Collection: The Life Sciences in South America
Guest Editor: Ana Barahona
Please read our Author Instructions for Topical Collections (this opens in a new tab) to get further information about the submission, review and publishing process of Topical Collections.
he Journal of the History of Biology is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for a topical collection dedicated to The Life Sciences in South America. This collection seeks to move away from narratives focused on Europe and the United States to explain the role of transnational exchange networks and the circulation of knowledge, people, artefacts, and scientific practices in South America. This rich approach problematizes notions like circulation, reception, adaptation, and creativity.
As a cultural area, South America, the product of more than three hundred year of Iberian colonization, facilitated scientific exchange, collective production of knowledge, and identification beyond the level of the nation states. This increased connectedness and its role in the formation of transnational spaces, ideas, and identities in the region is a subject of historical inquiry. We look for submissions that challenge the classical colonial studies narrative, which posits that science and technology were brought to America by the Western Empires as part of the discourse of the “civilizing mission.” In this way, this collection will contribute both theoretically and empirically to the history of the life sciences at an international level.
Papers are encouraged to discuss, among other topics, assymetrical networks of collaboration; circulation and travels; history of objects and technological devices; history of race, gender, and other social categories; conflicts or disagreements between local and global forms of knowledge; localities as the grounding of scientific practices that circulate within narrow regional or transcontinental spaces; history of the introduction, professionalization and institutionalization of disciplines; history of science in politically defined periods (colonial period, the Cold War, etc.); trans-South American exchanges and science diplomacy; to name a few possible themes.