MICROSCOPIC SLIDES II: INVESTIGATING A NEGLECTED HISTORICAL RESOURCE

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE/ INSTITUT PASTEUR JOINT WORKSHOP

19-21 March, 2009
Institut Pasteur, Paris,
CIS, salle Dedonder

THURSDAY 19TH MARCH

Session 1: Thursday 14h30-17h30: Microscopic preparations: technique and content.

Chair and commentator: Hans-Joerg Rheinberger (MPIWG, Berlin)

Erna Fiorentini (MPIWG, Berlin), "From the specimen to the drawing and back: Santiago Ramón y Cajal's eye training strategy"

Oliver Gaycken (Temple University, Philadelphia), "The Unseen World: On the Circulation of Microscopic Slide Knowledge in 1903" 

María Jesús Santesmases (CSIC, Madrid), "Visual cultures of cytogenetics: from maize to human genetics"

Jean Paul Gaudillière (CERMES, Paris), "Changing scale: slides, electron microscopy and the molecularization of viruses at the Pasteur Institute after 1945".

17h30-18h30 Projection of movies: microcinematography

FRIDAY 20TH MARCH

Session 2; Friday 9h30-13h00: Slides, collections and identities.

Chair and commentator: Florence Bellivier (Université Paris X Nanterre)

Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes University), "Preparations microscopiques et crimes Nazi" (titre temporaire)

Naomi Pfeffer (London Metropolitan University), "R slides us?: on claims that slides are body parts and should be disposed in the same way as a corpse"

Bronwyn Parry (Queen Mary College, London), "The Afterlife of the slide: Exploring emotional attachment to artefactualised bodily traces"

Michaela Meyerhoffer (University of Graz), "Biobanks in practice: The contingent meaning of collected bodily material".

Discussion:  Slides:  scientific artefacts or body parts: juridical and ethical  dilemmas

 Friday 15h-17h: Visit of collections at the Pasteur institute

SATURDAY 21ST MARCH

Session 3, Saturday: 9h30-12h30: The normal and the pathological on a slide.

Chair and commentator: Rafael Mandressi (Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris)

Tricia Close-Koenig (Université de Strasbourg) "Making slides, making diagnoses: early 20th century histopathology".

Ilana Löwy (CERMES, Paris), "Sex on a slide: Antoine Lacassagne  and  the search for microscopic determinants of masculinity and femininity."

Annick Opinel (Institut Pasteur, Paris) "From slide to strain. Emile Brumpt and Plasmodium gallinaceum (1935-37)"

Flavio Braulin (Université de Genève), "Variation du statut épistémique de « ce qu’on voit » dans la préparation microscopique de syphilis avant et après l’invention de l’ultramicroscope de Reichert"

Discussion:  What to do with collections: microscope slides and the historian.

Project for a "slides" meeting in Paris

During the first "slides" meeting we identified several elements which help to define the specificity of microscope slides as scientific objects, among them:

a)  The intermediary status of slides, at the same time documents / records and the "thing in itself". This status is especially visible when e.g., pathology blocks, kept in order to be able to revise pathologist's verdict, document decisions,  provide references for classification and modification of classifications — are re-used as primary material for the extraction of DNA.

b)  The  importance of visual evidence — images, and their transformations: screen projections of "slides" for a magic lantern, drawings ( esp., those made with camera lucida),  photography and  microcinematography – in "training of the eye" and standardization of observations made under the microscope.

c)  The role, collections  of slides in  the organization of  existing knowledge and generation of a new one. Collections are at the same time descriptive and prescriptive tools, while the circulation of slides homogenised communities of practitioners. The size of some of the collections highlights their importance as depositories and site of production of knowledge in the life sciences (one can liken such collections to the hard disk of a computer: a site which contains data that can be conserved, circulated and exploited in numerous ways)

More information about the first workshop can be found on the slide's project's website.

Collections play a key role in the use of slides as depository of  the existing scientific knowledge and tools for the  production of  a new one. We decided  therefore to dedicate the second "slides" workshop to the collection, classification, conservation and  circulation of slides. The second "slides" workshop will study the origins of collections of microscope slides,  their architecture, material organization and links with other collections of biological materials. It will be also interested in documentation, linked with collections, and in their multiple uses as research and teaching tools. One of the workshop's aims is  to attract researchers' attention to these collections. Another is  to define traits shared by all the collections of biological material and to point out to those that are specific to "preparations" observed under a microscope. We also wish to examine how slide collections connect numerous communities of practitioners and multiple social worlds. Collections of slides may be described as Foucault's  "dispositif": a  network which links heterogeneous assembly of discourses, practices, institutions, concepts  and policies. Such dispositifs produced and continue to produce new ways to understand and modify living organisms, including humans.
We propose a two days conference 19-21  March 2009 from Thursday afternoon to Saturday noon. The workshop will be based on precirculated papers,  and will include discussion of papers by invited moderators, but also some "hands on" activities such as  visits to collections  (in Pasteur Institute, probably in the Museum). At  the workshp's end, we will discuss  the form of a future publication, destined to present slides and collections of slides as a resource  for the study of history of science. The conference will also contribute to further development of the "slides" website.