Dr Rosalind Powell
University of Amsterdam
A Risky Business: Roles and Representations of Self-Experimentation, 1715-1770
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday 27 November, 2024: 16:15 – 17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture by Dr Rosalind Powell (University of Amsterdam), entitled “A Risky Business: Roles and Representations of Self-Experimentation, 1715-1770”. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Dr Rosalind Powell: “How do the stories that eighteenth-century scientists and physicians tell about self-experimentation and their own bodies shape knowledge and the boundaries of scientific enquiry? This talk will focus on trials on three natural substances – bezoar stone, camphor, and hemlock – in which medical practitioners used their own bodies as a test-subject. Exploring the relationships between taste and authority and between narrative and measurement, it will also evaluate how risk can play an important but ambivalent role in the textual construction of knowledge. Finally, close attention to reports of these experiments will show how, in this period, the presentation of the self could be as important as the presentation of the science.”
About Dr Rosalind Powell
Dr Rosalind Powell is an Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Amsterdam. She earned her PhD from the University of St Andrews and her undergraduate degree from Cambridge University.
Dr Powell’s research focuses on the intersections between literature, science, and religion in the long eighteenth century. Her second book, Perception and Analogy (Manchester University Press, 2021), investigates what it means to “see scientifically” in the eighteenth century, examining the descriptive strategies of poets, natural philosophers, and theologians. Her publications also cover topics such as Linnaean botany in poetry, scientific satires about reproduction, Christian influences in Romantic literature on science, children’s literature, and anti-Newtonianism in the works of Christopher Smart and his peers. Her first book, Christopher Smart’s English Lyrics (2014), explores Smart’s reception of Biblical and classical verse in shaping national and religious identity. Currently, Dr. Powell is researching scientific self-experimentation and the evolution of aesthetic categories from 1660 to 1830. This project examines how scientists and physicians like Joseph Priestley, Anton von Störck, George Cheyne, and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek documented self-trials, contributing to genius, originality, taste, and inspiration concepts.
About Prof. Dr Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC start-up grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
