Events

Spring 2026 Colloquium - Kathryn Maxson Jones

History, Purdue University

Title: Sea Change: The Squid Giant Axon and the Transformation of Neurobiology in the 20th Century

Abstract: In this talk, Kathryn Maxson Jones will explore selected episodes from her book-in-progress, Sea Change: The Squid Giant Axon and the Transformation of Neurobiology in the 20th Century. In 1952, the physiologists Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley published a quantitative description of the action potential, an electrical impulse central to the process by which nerve cells send signals. The Hodgkin and Huxley (HH) description was based on data gleaned from experiments with a uniquely large nerve fiber, the “squid giant axon” (SGA), and the central premise that the electrical activity of the axon arose from voltage-dependent permeabilities in the nerve fiber membrane to specific ions. By 1977, the HH model had become so fundamental to brains and nervous systems, including for human biology, that one prominent scientist wrote of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology and medicine, for which Hodgkin and Huxley had received a two-thirds share: It was like awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature for “knowledge of typewriters, or of ink!”

Drawing on the published scientific literature and archival correspondence, Maxson Jones will discuss the little-known history of the HH model after 1952. Focusing on how this model became so central to the study of nerve cells and nervous systems between 1952 and 1977, she will explore several sets of experiments wherein biologists, including Hodgkin and Huxley, actively worked to test and expand the HH description from squid to other organisms. The talk will end with a discussion of the historical and historiographical implications, examining scientific and institutional developments associated with the rise of “neuroscience” from the 1950s to the 1970s. Overall, the talk will argue that marine creatures and coastal laboratories played integral roles in these developments.

The Religion of AI Observed

The Religious Studies Program presents "The Religion of AI Observed: Reflections on a Season of Revival" with John Modern.

A Roetzel Family Lecture.

Co-sponsored by the Departments of English, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature (CSCL), Philosophy, History, and The Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (HSTM).

Modern, the Arthur & Katherine Shadek Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, will sketch a religious history of computer science and artificial neural networks, It is a story that is jagged, ironic, and unreasonable, told in the hopes of being unassimilable into the large language models that seek to calcify—in order to instrumentalize-- their common sense about religion and much else besides.

There will be light refreshments to follow the event.

*email [email protected] with any questions or for accommodations.

April 2026 First Fridays - Featuring the CBI Archives

First Fridays: Sensory Experiences

Join us for the 2025-2026 season of First Fridays as we explore the things you can see, hear, touch, taste or smell in Archives and Special Collections. This penultimate program in the First Fridays season features presentations from the Andersen Horticulture Library and the Charles Babbage Institute Archives.

Light lunch at 11:30 a.m. Presentations begin at noon. A tour of the archival caverns will take place after the event concludes. ASL interpreters will be present for all First Fridays events.

Register

A Sensory Walk Through the Forest: Discovering the Andersen Horticultural Library

Presented by Kristen Mastel, Head Librarian and Curator, Andersen Horticulture Library
Embark on a sensory-rich journey through the Andersen Horticultural Library’s collections, where nature, literature, and lived experience intertwine. This immersive presentation invites participants to explore the five senses — sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell — through the library’s unique holdings and experiential learning. Guided by Kristen Mastel, librarian and certified forest bathing guide, we’ll discover how sensory awareness deepens our connection to the natural world. Kristen will weave her experience leading forest bathing sessions on campus throughout the presentation.

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Social Change and Experiential Art: The Maureen A. Nappi Papers

Presented by Maureen A. Nappi Project Archivist, Charles Babbage Institute Archives
Dr. Maureen A. Nappi was an activist and artist who utilized computer graphics and design to produce thought provoking, multi-sensory works invoking the cultural zeitgeist and social movements of the 1980s and 1990s, with a specific focus on the relationship between humanity and technology, feminism, and racial violence. Join us for an experiential introduction and deep dive into Dr. Nappi’s work and activism.

About

First Fridays is a series of intellectually stimulating conversations from the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries. First Fridays is made possible by a generous gift from Governor Elmer L. Andersen and Mrs. Eleanor Andersen in honor of former University Librarian Dr. Edward B. Stanford.

Event details

What: First Fridays: A Sensory Walk Through the Forest: Discovering the Andersen Horticultural Library and Social Change

When: Friday, April 3, 2026 | Lunch at 11:30 a.m. | Presentations begin at noon

Where: Elmer L. Andersen Library, room 120 and ONLINE | Parking and directions

Spring 2026 Colloquium - Gregory Radick

School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds

Title: Salience traditions as a theme in the pedagogical epistemology of science: The case of genetics

Abstract: Since Kuhn, philosophers of science have appreciated the role that exemplar-based reasoning plays in organizing a body of scientific knowledge as well as in organizing the research and teaching efforts of the scientific community that emerges around that knowledge. As Kuhn emphasized, it’s in the conservative nature of exemplar extension that scientific problems which more obviously lend themselves to solution via modest adjustments in the existing reasoning skills, apparatus, presuppositions etc. attract attention, with problems lying outside that domain regarded as uninteresting (except by mavericks, whose status is underscored precisely by that sort of interest), and with some unassimilable phenomena dropping away from scientific attention entirely (“Kuhn loss”). The result is that choices made at the start of inquiry about what to emphasize and what to marginalize – or even outright ignore – can have ramifying consequences for how a science develops.

For over a century, what has been made salient to the beginning student in genetics are the binary traits which Gregor Mendel studied in his crossbred peas, the patterns of dominance and recessiveness that he discovered by tracking those binaries, and the atom-like entity – the gene – which, according to textbooks anyway, Mendel introduced in order to explain those patterns. Unquestionably, a curriculum that anchors students in elementary Mendelism can be highly successful on its own terms, step-by-step guiding students into genetic problem-solving as the gradual extension of Mendel’s reasoning to ever more complex cases. But it does so at the price of having students imprint on basic examples of inheritance in which – unlike the vast majority of inherited traits in the real world – nothing matters to explaining why they are as they are except the combination and recombination of genetic variants or “genotypes.” What is made salient in elementary Mendelism is, then, scientifically misleading. Many have long worried that it might be even worse than that, in that elementary Mendelism seems also to bring with it a determinism about genes that can shade into essentialism about people, related to an incuriosity about real-world variability and the multifactorial causation that brings it about.

Drawing on my recent book Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (U. Chicago, 2023), I’ll describe how historical inquiry into the early twentieth-century debate over Mendel – and in particular, into the work of the leading critic of emerging Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon (1860-1906) – opened up the historical possibility that genetics as a body of knowledge might have had an alternative, traits-are-modifiable-in-environments salience pattern. I’ll then look at how that historical possibility in turn prompted a counterfactual or “what-if?” question: what difference would it have made to genetics and society had genetic knowledge been organized not in line with Mendelian emphases but with Weldonian ones? I’ll also discuss my attempt to answer that counterfactual question by way of a novel classroom experiment, reflecting on the potential significance of the experiment for the history and philosophy of science, for genetics and its pedagogy, and for the disruption of salience traditions in science more widely.

Spring 2026 Colloquium - Michael Reidy

History and Philosophy, Montana State University

Title: The Most Recent Orogeny: Mountains, Verticality, and the Rise of Modern Science

Abstract: In the mid-nineteenth century, two Swiss geologists, Amanz Gressly and Jules Thurmann, coined the term “orogenic” to describe the process of mountain formation. Since then, geologists have identified several periods of mountain creation, including the relatively recent Alpine orogeny, which produced the Alps, the Hindu Kush-Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains. We are now entering the most recent orogeny, though this one is social, cultural, and political. Mountains are created through geological processes, but they are also formed through our ideas and imagination. I will link the two. At the exact time that Gressly and Thurmann imagined the geological concepts, mountaineer-scientists were using mountains as their laboratory to transform our understanding of a wide range of sciences – from geography and climatology, to evolution and physics – helping to shape our current interest in the geological and cultural importance of mountain landscapes.

Spring 2026 Colloquium - S. Wright Kennedy

University of South Carolina

Title: Separate but Dead: Mapping Disease & Segregation in New Orleans, 1880-1915

Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, life expectancy rose dramatically in Western societies, yet this unprecedented public health triumph was starkly divided along racial lines in the United States. This talk examines public health and demographic trends in New Orleans from 1880 to 1915, showing how intersections of race, environment, and disease produced profound disparities that reflect broader patterns of racial inequality in the United States. Using historical GIS, the study integrates diverse historical records, including death certificates, census data, topographic surveys, and municipal records, to map inequalities driven by residential segregation and environmental injustice.

Despite sanitary improvements such as drainage, sewerage, and clean water infrastructure in the early twentieth century, health benefits overwhelmingly accrued to white residents. African Americans, increasingly segregated into flood-prone and poorly serviced neighborhoods, faced severe disease burdens, particularly tuberculosis among adults and diarrheal diseases among infants. Consequently, Black life expectancy stagnated or even declined, while white life expectancy steadily increased. By 1915, the racial gap in life expectancy at birth exceeded fifteen years, with an eleven-year disparity among those surviving to age fifteen.

This research demonstrates that the mortality transition, a hallmark of demographic progress, was fundamentally unequal, shaped by deliberate racial policies and violent grassroots actions, including strategic arson by white residents to establish and enforce racial boundaries. Connecting spatial and demographic analyses, this study underscores the lasting legacies of segregation and the enduring relevance of historical injustices in contemporary discussions about health equity, infrastructure, and urban policy.

May 2026 First Fridays

First Fridays: Sensory Experiences

Light lunch at 11:30 a.m. Presentations begin at noon. A tour of the archival caverns will take place after the event concludes. ASL interpreters will be present for all First Fridays events.

Registration will open April 2026

A Touch of Tweed: Jewish Garment Businesses

Presented by Kate Dietrick, Archivist, Upper Midwest Jewish Archives
From fur coats to tweed coats, Jewish-owned clothing companies have thrived for decades in the Upper Midwest. Delve into fabric swatches and pinking shears, and learn more about how it might feel when the sitting United States President is attired in a St. Paul storm coat.

Poetry Out Loud

Presented by Erin McBrien, Interim Curator, Upper Midwest Literary Archives
Poetry is powerful on the page, but can be transformative heard aloud. Join us for a tour of UMLA’s audio collections and hear poems from local authors in their own voices.

About

Event details

What: First Fridays: A Touch of Tweed: Jewish Garment Businesses and Poetry Out Loud

When: Friday, May 1, 2025 | Lunch at 11:30 a.m. | Presentations begin at noon

Where: Elmer L. Andersen Library, room 120 and ONLINE | Parking and directions

Spring 2026 Colloquium - Wendy Kline

PurdueTitle: Mapping the Criminal Brain: Murder, Morphology, and the Rise of the Psychiatric Expert Witness

Abstract: In 1901, medical student Edward Anthony Spitzka autopsied Leon Colgosz’s brain just after he was executed for assassinating President McKinley. It was a transformative moment not just for his career, but also for the psychiatric profession. Mapping the brain – its size and structure, its electrical impulses, its composition, and its injuries – enabled psychiatric knowledge to enter the criminal courtroom. Forensic psychiatrists presented judges, lawyers, and jurors with a new way of understanding the mind of the murderer, and, more generally, the secrets of the human brain.