The History Department of the Graduate Center, CUNY invites you to a talk:

American Convergence: Science and Technology in Colonial Latin America

Maria Portuondo, Associate Professor and Chair
History of Science and Technology Department at Johns Hopkins

 Wednesday, March 28^th, 2018
6-8pm
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, room 9207

The essential backdrop of the history of the region we now call Latin America is the centuries-long process of negotiation between the different social, religious, cultural and political registers of the Indigenous, African and European peoples who came to inhabit the area. The resulting American scientific and technological convergence involved the combination and recombination of practices whose exact origins are difficult to trace. As in any other period of scientific and technological change, the solutions that emerged were driven by intellectual traditions, market demands, labor availability and economic paradigms. Yet in the case of the Americas, these solutions were often an amalgam of the knowledge, skills, traditions and expertise of the different cultural groups that came together, willingly or unwillingly, to the shores of the American continent. This talk proposes a framework for the study of the scientific and technological registers of the American convergence. It recognizes the hybrid, complex and local nature of the convergence and explores these through three kinds of human activities: learning, moving and making.

Link to the announcement for the event on the Commons:

https://historyprogram.commons.gc.cuny.edu/history-of-science-talk-maria-portuondo-wed-28-march-from-6-8-p-m/​