Sarton Centre for History of Science

In 2025, KU Leuven will celebrate its 600th anniversary. In 2024, however, it was UNIKIN/Université de Kinshasa's turn. This institution has a long and complex history which started in 1954 when Lovanium, the university project of KU Leuven in the Belgian Congo, was founded. Over the following days and weeks, Bestor will highlight the history of Lovanium and colonial science in the Belgian Congo.

A brief introduction to the shared history of UNIKIN and the KU Leuven can be found on https://www.kuleuven.be/global/international-partnerships/lovanium/history.

Explore the history of Belgian colonial science via:
NL: https://www.bestor.be/wiki_nl/index.php/Portaal:_Congo_en_de_wetenschap
FR: https://bestor.be/wiki/index.php/Portail_:_Le_Congo_et_les_sciences

We're excited to announce the agenda for our lecture series in autumn & winter. Abstracts and further information can be found on our website. Everybody is very much welcome!

TALK

Talk by Prof. Dr. Allan Potofsky ‘The Origins of “Greater Paris?” Delimiting, Appropriating, and Reforming the Stone Quarries in the Outer Boundaries of Paris in the Eighteenth Century.’

Date: 17th of October 2024, 1pm
Location: Auditorium VANDENHOVE - Rozier 1

Organization by Teodoro Katinis (Dep. of Literary Studies – GEMS) and Elizabeth Merrill (Dep. of Architecture – Sarton Center for the History of Science)

In the years leading to this summer’s Olympics, Parisian and the Île de France regional authorities wielded broad municipal authority to redeploy the Seine for ceremonial and sporting events as well as post-industrial quarters in the outer suburbs for housing and transport. Starting in the eighteenth century, urban reform featured a similar restructuring of the capital city’s core and periphery. Eighteenth-century Paris was a time and a place where urban space was deftly reassigned from historically determined spaces where specific trades had traditionally gravitated: displaced activities included market spaces (increasingly confined to Les Halles) and the leatherwork and chemical works (moved from the Seine to la Bièvre). What a later generation would call zoning, the geographic fixing of life and work to demarcated areas, was practiced in an embryonic form during the ancien régime.

However, some industries were clearly not transplantable. In his paper, Allan Potofsky examines the reforms of the end of the ancien régime that sought to limit the risk presented by an archetypically unmovable industrial site: the stone quarries situated in much of the outer zones of the capital, particularly, in the areas of Montmartre, Belleville, and Ménilmontant in the North and Northeast of Paris. Collapsing buildings and industrial accidents alerted authorities to the hazards of open stone quarries in proximity to encroaching residential areas, rapidly expanding as the overpopulated city grew desperate for livable space. The porousness of Paris and its outer perimeters first posed the challenge of the limitless city, well before the contemporary idea of a Greater Paris was born.

Allan Potofsky (PhD Columbia University, 1993) is an urban historian who specializes in the history of planning and construction of early modern Paris. He is particularly interested in the relationship between social and architectural history, political economy, and intellectual history. He is currently Professeur des universités and was previously Maître de conferences at the Université Paris-8. As a sequel to his "Constructing Paris in the Age of Revolution" (NY: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), his current book project is entitled “Paris is the World: the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." It focuses on the politics of urban reform, techniques of organization and construction, and the material culture (particularly, the interplay of property right, labor, and resources) that shaped the city in the century before Haussmannisation.

In three weeks, the annual Belvedere Lecture will take place at UGent. This year's speaker is Prof. Frans-Willem Korsten, professor of 'Literature, Culture, and Law' at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He is a leading specialist in early modern Dutch literature, with ground-breaking publications such as "A Dutch Republican Baroque" (AUP, 2017). His research is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach to early modern culture. As an engaged scholar, he consistently connects historical issues to contemporary challenges. In the Belvedere Lecture, he will explore 'cultural techniques' from the early modern period that have led to 'problems of (ir)responsibility, both legally and historically', particularly in relation to colonial thinking. This thematic focus reflects Professor Korsten's deep interest in legal history. You can learn more about his vision on the relationship between literature and law on the Leiden University website: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2024/03/lterature-explores-all-sorts-of-things-that-the-law-is-not-yet-ready-for.

https://www.belvederelecture.ugent.be/speaker/

On Monday 23 October we will have this year’s Belvedere lecture by Frans-Willem Korsten

In three weeks, the annual Belvedere Lecture will take place at UGent. This year's speaker is Prof. Frans-Willem Korsten, professor of 'Literature, Culture, and Law' at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He is a leading specialist in early modern Dutch literature, with ground-breaking publications such as "A Dutch Republican Baroque" (AUP, 2017). His research is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach to early modern culture. As an engaged scholar, he consistently connects historical issues to contemporary challenges. In the Belvedere Lecture, he will explore 'cultural techniques' from the early modern period that have led to 'problems of (ir)responsibility, both legally and historically', particularly in relation to colonial thinking. This thematic focus reflects Professor Korsten's deep interest in legal history. You can learn more about his vision on the relationship between literature and law on the Leiden University website: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2024/03/lterature-explores-all-sorts-of-things-that-the-law-is-not-yet-ready-for.

https://www.belvederelecture.ugent.be/speaker/

Next week Thursday (26 October, 2pm-4pm), Thomàs Bartoletti will give a talk entitled "Towards a Multispecies History of Capitalism. Economic Entomology and the Expansion of Ecological Frontiers 1880-1930". This talk is part of the lecture series in African and Global History organized by the research group Economies Comparison Connections. We hope to see many of you there!

The 2nd Belvedere Lecture on 26 September will be held in the belvedere of the famous Boekentoren. The library is designed by Henry Vandevelde and the magnificent belvedere is one of its highlights. It is an architectural highlight of the city. This year, architecture will also take centre stage in the lecture itself. Caroline van Eck (University of Cambridge) will take us from Vandevelde's 20th-century modernism to 'Architectural Grotesques in 16th-century Florence'. In her lecture, Caroline van Eck will consider the relation of grotesque architectural ornament to contemporary armour, the suggestion of a second skin, as well as the duplication and sometimes triplication of masque features in architectural grotesques. See: https://www.belvederelecture.ugent.be/lecture/

This afternoon, Dmitri Levitin will give talk about Isaac Newton! All welcome (if you are in Ghent or nearby...)!

Dmitri Levitin - A New Discovery: Isaac Newton as Artisan, Theologian, and Roommate | Sarton centre for history of science 11-05-2023 14:00 - 16:00 Library Lab Magnel Dmitri Levitin Seminar Sarton seminar In this talk, Dmitri Levitin presents the first results of a project to edit and analyse a remarkable new source, (re)discovered in 2021: the notebook of Isaac Newton’s roommate at Cambridge, John Wickins. The notebo...

After Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen's great talk on the art of preserving flowers last week, we will have Marius Bunning speaking on printing privileges on Thursday! Again a joint event with GEMS - Group for Early Modern Studies

Marius Buning - Controlling information flows: Printing privileges in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic | Sarton centre for history of science 04-05-2023 14:00 - 16:00 Library Lab Magnel Marius Buning Seminar GEMS/Sarton Joint Seminar This presentation provides an analysis of printing privileges in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. It investigates the impact these privileges had on the dissemination of information, the development of...