Vendredi 15 novembre 2019, ENS, 29 rue d’Ulm, 16h-19h, salle U 205

Périodiques et vulgarisation

Jonathan TOPHAM (Senior Lecturer in History of Science and Director of Centre for HPS, Leeds University Researching the cultural history of science in late Georgian Britain)

Periodicals, Popular Science, and the Construction of Scientific Communities in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

From the moment that Britain’s first commercial scientific periodicals began to be produced in the 1790s, the question of how to achieve a sustainable readership was a central concern.  Such issues overlapped critically with questions about the politics of knowledge.  Who in an industrializing society should have access to, or be able to contribute to the development of the sciences?  This paper explores how the emerging notion of the “popular” was deployed in the first fifty years of British science periodicals, both to generate a market and to develop and maintain communities of scientific practice, showing that publishers, editors, and readers offered a range of perspectives on how periodicals might be used to manage the involvement of diverse participants in the sciences.

Mark MORRISSON (Professor and Head of English, Penn State University)

Periodicals, Scientific Popularization, and Domaining Effects in Anglophone Nuclear Physics, 1900-1945

The early decades of research in radioactivity and nuclear physics were rich in metaphors and analogies that circulated widely across several cultural and knowledge domains, often through numerous genres of periodicals. Using the concept of domaining from anthropologist Marilyn Strathern and literature and science scholar Susan Merrill Squier, this talk will explore the alchemical tropes in the early chemistry and physics of radioactivity and the militaristic tropes often employed in discussions of particle accelerators and other attempts to break up atomic nuclei (on both sides of the Atlantic) as examples of the generative circulation of scientific concepts through periodical genres and other publications.  The paper will also suggest possible uses for topic modelling and other forms of quantitative analysis of scientific journals and popularizing periodicals.

Séminaire PéLiAS
Les périodiques comme médiateurs culturels (littérature, arts,
sciences)
Le séminaire PéLiAS se propose d’étudier les périodiques artistiques, littéraires et scientifiques du 18e siècle à la première moitié du 20e siècle en tant que médiateurs culturels. Il s’agit d’analyser les périodiques en tant que constructions sociales, matérielles et entrepreneuriales, qui font intervenir de multiples acteurs : écrivains, artistes, typographes, graveurs, imprimeurs, éditeurs, ou lecteurs… et touchent des milieux socio-professionnels variés (milieux artistiques et littéraires, scientifiques, universitaires, théâtres, galeries, maisons d’édition…) L’approche adoptée sera
double : les périodiques seront interrogés en tant que support de communication appartenant à la culture de l’imprimé et en tant qu’objet culturel pluridisciplinaire.
La notion de médiateur permettra également d’insister sur la circulation des idées, des textes, des images et des rédacteurs. Les périodiques seront pensés en terme de «réseau» : un dialogue s’établit entre les différents périodiques, au-delà des catégories traditionnelles qui opposent grande et petite presse, revues et livres, revues artistiques et littéraires et revues scientifiques. Enfin, les périodiques seront étudiés dans leur dimension de vulgarisation, tant au niveau littéraire que scientifique, et dans leur rapport au livre et aux différents publics.

Organisateurs :
Hélène Védrine (Paris-Sorbonne, CELLF 19-21)
Norbert Verdier (Paris-Sud, GHDSO)
Alexia Kalantzis (Versailles Saint-Quentin, CHCSC)

Comité scientifique :
Evanghelia Stead (UVSQ, CHCSC)
Hélène Gispert (Paris-Saclay, GHDSO)
Viera Rebolledo Dhuin (UVSQ, CHCSC)
Hélène Védrine (Paris-Sorbonne, CELLF 19-21)
Norbert Verdier (Paris-Saclay, GHDSO)
Alexia Kalantzis (UVSQ, CHCSC)