Online working group: History of the Language Sciences
Conveners: Judith Kaplan (CHSTM), Floris Solleveld (University of Bristol)

Hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Monthly meetings: Tuesday 12 Sep, 10 Oct, 14 Nov, 12 Dec, 9 Jan, 13 Feb, 12 Mar, 14 May

The history of the language sciences has expanded considerably in recent years, moving to consider broader disciplinary constellations, global developments, extra-intellectual dynamics, and non-elite actors. This group builds upon that, seeking to underscore the centrality of linguistic knowledge to the history and historiography of science. It provides a forum where those with interests in all varieties of linguistic research can come together to share work in progress, engage in “slow reading,” and build community through discussion.

The first meeting of this group will take place on 12 September at 9:00 a.m. EDT (US) / 15:00 CEST (Europe). For this meeting, conveners invite all participants to bring an object of interest (an image, slide, excerpt, artifact, or recording) to share and discuss. We hope that these will help us introduce our interests to one another and, ideally, to frame the theme of epistemic transfer, which will guide our readings and presentations this year. With this thematic focus, our goal is to highlight historical interactions between the language sciences and other knowledge traditions, so we heartily welcome objects for show-and-tell that come from outside mainstream linguistics.

To inform our discussion and analysis of these objects, we ask everyone to please read the essay “History of Science and History of Philologies” by Lorraine Daston and Glenn Most before coming to the first meeting.

Anyone interested can sign up for membership, locate shared readings, and find Zoom links at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine: https://www.chstm.org/content/history-language-sciences-0