Katharine Anderson
Professor
Office: 321 Founders College
Phone: (416) 736-2100 Ext: 22026
Email: kateya@yorku.ca
Accepting New Graduate Students
Interested in HUMA 4227 aka HIST 4087 3.0A (Fall) Mind and Matter?
This year, the course explores Victorian preoccupations with death and dying. This theme gives us a focus for thinking about nineteenth-century society and culture in many different ways. Death and dying lead us into diverse contemporary concerns: the place of science and religion in people’s lives, the rise of the modern city, the appetite for sensation and violence in modern print culture, the role of memory and the importance of reputation and inheritance. Drawing on historical studies, fiction, poetry, visual art and journalism, we’ll look at such topics as mourning rituals and momentos, epidemics, the popularity of death bed fiction and poetry, London and its Victorian cemeteries, and murder sensations like Jack the Ripper.
Katharine Anderson teaches in the interdisciplinary Department of Humanities at York University. She is a member of the graduate programs of Humanities, History and STS at York. Her research areas of interest include scientific exploration, the history of weather and climate, science and the oceans in the early twentieth century, the history of scientific instruments and the study of material culture as a bridge between and among disciplines associated with STS. Her current major research project investigates the oceans as a site of scientific research, showing how these spaces were defined, observed and imagined in the 1920s and 1930s. It uses various expeditions of the inter-war period as a focus for understanding the place of the oceans in the development of scientific practices and disciplines, and it asks how ideas about the oceans shaped and were shaped by the technological, political and cultural shifts after WWI.
Degrees
PhD, Northwestern UniversityMA, University of Massachussets at Amherst
BA, McGill University
Professional Leadership
Co-editor, Oceans in Depth, University of Chicago Press (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/OCEDEP.html)
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
A. the study of marine observation practices and exchange networks after the coming of radio to the breakdown of scientific exchange in WWII B.the study of ships logs as resources to track hurricane frequency during WWII
Description:This project analysed ships’ logs during 1939-45 in the Atlantic to consider how historical records might be used to study hurricanes. A preliminary study of marine records from this period connects to growing body of historical research on logs, and on hurricanes and climate change. It also contributes to the study of meteorology’s history as an international, observational science. But the chief innovation of the project is to ask how the perspectives and questions of the historian of science might shape our understanding of science and of climate change. An analysis of logs offers a unique opportunity to examine the intersection of historical and scientific studies. It seeks to build a foundation for shared work and to promote familiarity with the assumptions, practices, languages and scholarly products peculiar to different disciplines.
Publications arising from this work include:
“The weather ship: networks, disasters and imaginaries after 1945,” in Martin Mahony, Sam Randalls, eds. Weather and the Geographical Imagination (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, forthcoming).
“Marine Meteorology: Observing Regimes and Global Visions 1918-1939” in Anderson, Rozwadowski, eds. Soundings and Crossings (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History, 2016) 213-241.
-
Summary:
material culture; gravitational measurement; geophysical prospecting; scientific instruments; research methods
Description:In this research, I consider the place of artefact study as a link between past and present practices in the sciences, and as a link between different kinds of pedagogical practice and students.
Publications related to this project include:
K. Anderson, M. Frappier, E. Neswald, H. Trim, "Reading Instruments: Objects, Texts and Museums" Science and Education 22 (2013) 1167–1189. a collaborative case study of the Eotvos Gravimeter used at the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa in the late 1920s and 1930s by A.H. Miller (1886-1992) and the later life of the instrument in the Canadian Science and Technology Museum.
K. Anderson, "An ‘experimental’ instrument: testing the torsion balance in the Empire" (under review).
“Beyond the Glass Cabinet: The History of Scientific Instruments” in Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos del Centro de Estudios Históricos. Edition Digital No 4. Dossier: Los archivos de la ciencia: Prácticas científicas, cultura material y organización del saber. Issue guest edited by Irina Podygny on current methods in history of science. 2013. http://www.refa.org.ar/
“Coral Jewellery/ Victorian Things: A Forum on Material Objects,” Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies 34 (2008) 47-52.
Collaborator: Elisabeth Neswald (Brock), Melanie Frappier (Dalhousie), Henry Trim (UBC), Jan Hadlaw (AMPD, York)
-
Summary:
This historical project explores how the ocean was defined, observed and imagined in the 1920s and 1930s. It uses the definition of particular spaces in the ocean - such as coral reefs and deep water life - as a focus for understanding a key period in modern oceanography, ecology and natural history.
Description:In this era, the wider context for marine scientific work included the development of the Pacific after World War One, the rise of internationalism, the popular audience for biology, and the rapid development of both fisheries research and ecology. This will become Like other studies in the history of ecology and the environment, this project investigates how ideas about natural worlds – here, watery ones – shaped and were shaped by modern cultural and political life.
-
Summary:
Annotated edition with a critical introduction of the 1839 Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle. 4 vols. by Philip Parker King and Robert Fitzroy (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).
Studies of the voyage narrative as a genre of scientific publication in the nineteenth century.
Description:HMS Beagle has entered the collective imagination as the ship that carried Charles Darwin to the Galapagos, triggering his later work on the theory of natural selection. However, the Beagle also played a vital role in the development of modern hydrography, cartography and meteorology in both the voyage of 1831-36 and an earlier one of 1826-29 in an expedition led by Phillip Parker King in the Adventure. The work of the Beagle under her captain, Robert FitzRoy, was to chart South American coastlines, many of which had not previously been mapped, and to build a global chain of meridian distances. On this voyage FitzRoy pioneered the use of Francis Beaufort’s new system for identifying wind force, the basis of the modern Beaufort scale. FitzRoy’s further, unofficial goal on this voyage was to return three Fuegians to their native shores, and establish a Protestant mission in the desolate, southern fringes of the continent. It was a pivotal experience of civilization and savagery for both Darwin and FitzRoy. The separate accounts of the voyages by King, FitzRoy and Darwin were published in the four-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle Between the Years 1826 and 1836 (1839). Darwin’s volume has never been out of print. In contrast, this set presents the first critical edition of the remaining texts from 1839: FitzRoy’s account of the second voyage, his detailed appendices, and the account of the 1826-29 voyage authored by Phillip Parker King, captain of HMS Adventure. Together they give an unparalleled example of British scientific exploration. It will generate new scholarly approaches to the Beagle voyages and be crucial for those interested in Darwin, Maritime Studies, History of Science, and Empire. test
In addition to this annotated edition, the publications related to the study of the scientific voyage narrative as a genre include:
“Natural History and the Scientific Voyage” in Helen Anne Curry, Nick Jardine, James Secord, Emma Spary, eds. Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“The Hydrographer’s Narrative: Writing Global knowledge in the 1830s,” Journal of Historical Geography (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.09.002).
“Reading and Writing the Scientific Voyage: Robert FitzRoy, Charles Darwin and John Clunies Ross,” British Journal for the History of Science (August 2018 First View at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000708741800050X)
Fitzroy, R and P.P.King, The Narrative of the Voyages of Adventure and Beagle 1826-1836. Edited and annotated by Katharine Anderson. 4 vols. (London Pickering and Chatto, 2011)
Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Katharine Anderson, Helen Rozwadowski, eds. Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2016).
Rozwadowski, Anderson, “Soundings and Crossings” (1-16)
“Marine Meteorology: Observing Regimes and Global Visions 1918-1939” ( 213-241).
'Cloud spotting: past & present.' Weather Local Knowledge and Everyday Life: Issues in Integrated Climate Studies. Ed. Vladimir Jankovic and Christine Barboza. Rio de Janeiro: MAST, 2009.
'Mapping Meteorology.' Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate. Ed. James R. Fleming, Vladimir Jankovic and Deborah R. Coen. Science History Publications/USA, 2006. 69-91.
'Almanacs and the Profits of Natural Knowledge.' Culture and Science in the Nineteenth Century Media. Ed. Louise Henson et al. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. 97-112.
'Instincts and Instruments.' Nineteenth Century Psychological Thought: The Transition from Philosophy to Science. Ed. C. Green, T. Teo and M. Shore. Washington: American Psychological Association, 2001. 153-74.
“Natural History and the Scientific Voyage” in Helen Anne Curry, Nick Jardine, James Secord, Emma Spary, eds. Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“Reading and Writing the Scientific Voyage: Robert FitzRoy, Charles Darwin and John Clunies Ross,” British Journal for the History of Science (First View Aug 2018 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000708741800050X).
“Beyond the Glass Cabinet: The History of Scientific Instruments” in Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos del Centro de Estudios Históricos. Edition Digital No 4. Dossier: Los archivos de la ciencia: Prácticas científicas, cultura material y organización del saber. Issue guest edited by Irina Podygny on current methods in history of science. 2013. http://www.refa.org.ar/
Anderson, Frappier, Neswald, Trim. "Reading Instruments: Objects, Texts and Museums" Science and Education (2011).
'Coral Jewellery/ Victorian Things: A Forum on Material Objects' Victorian Review An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies. 34 (2008).
'Does History Count?' Endeavour 30 (December 2006) 150-55.
'Looking at the Sky: Visual Methods in Victorian Meteorology.' British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2003): 301-32.
Approach to Teaching
Interested in HUMA 4227, aka HIST 4087 3.0 F 2022 Mind and Matter in Victorian Society ?
This year, the course explores Victorian preoccupations with death and dying. This theme gives us a focus for thinking about nineteenth-century society and culture in many different ways. Death and dying lead us into diverse contemporary concerns: the place of science and religion in people’s lives, the rise of the modern city, the appetite for sensation and violence in modern print culture, the role of memory and the importance of reputation and inheritance. Drawing on historical studies, fiction, poetry, visual art and journalism, we’ll look at such topics as mourning rituals and momentos, epidemics, the popularity of death bed fiction and poetry, London and its Victorian cemeteries, and murder sensations like Jack the Ripper.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2023 | AP/HUMA1915 9.0 | A | Animals and the Imagination | LECT |
| Fall/Winter 2023 | AP/HUMA1915 9.0 | A | Animals and the Imagination | TUTR |
Interested in HUMA 4227 aka HIST 4087 3.0A (Fall) Mind and Matter?
This year, the course explores Victorian preoccupations with death and dying. This theme gives us a focus for thinking about nineteenth-century society and culture in many different ways. Death and dying lead us into diverse contemporary concerns: the place of science and religion in people’s lives, the rise of the modern city, the appetite for sensation and violence in modern print culture, the role of memory and the importance of reputation and inheritance. Drawing on historical studies, fiction, poetry, visual art and journalism, we’ll look at such topics as mourning rituals and momentos, epidemics, the popularity of death bed fiction and poetry, London and its Victorian cemeteries, and murder sensations like Jack the Ripper.
Katharine Anderson teaches in the interdisciplinary Department of Humanities at York University. She is a member of the graduate programs of Humanities, History and STS at York. Her research areas of interest include scientific exploration, the history of weather and climate, science and the oceans in the early twentieth century, the history of scientific instruments and the study of material culture as a bridge between and among disciplines associated with STS. Her current major research project investigates the oceans as a site of scientific research, showing how these spaces were defined, observed and imagined in the 1920s and 1930s. It uses various expeditions of the inter-war period as a focus for understanding the place of the oceans in the development of scientific practices and disciplines, and it asks how ideas about the oceans shaped and were shaped by the technological, political and cultural shifts after WWI.
Degrees
PhD, Northwestern UniversityMA, University of Massachussets at Amherst
BA, McGill University
Professional Leadership
Co-editor, Oceans in Depth, University of Chicago Press (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/OCEDEP.html)
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
A. the study of marine observation practices and exchange networks after the coming of radio to the breakdown of scientific exchange in WWII B.the study of ships logs as resources to track hurricane frequency during WWII
Description:This project analysed ships’ logs during 1939-45 in the Atlantic to consider how historical records might be used to study hurricanes. A preliminary study of marine records from this period connects to growing body of historical research on logs, and on hurricanes and climate change. It also contributes to the study of meteorology’s history as an international, observational science. But the chief innovation of the project is to ask how the perspectives and questions of the historian of science might shape our understanding of science and of climate change. An analysis of logs offers a unique opportunity to examine the intersection of historical and scientific studies. It seeks to build a foundation for shared work and to promote familiarity with the assumptions, practices, languages and scholarly products peculiar to different disciplines.
Publications arising from this work include:
“The weather ship: networks, disasters and imaginaries after 1945,” in Martin Mahony, Sam Randalls, eds. Weather and the Geographical Imagination (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, forthcoming).
“Marine Meteorology: Observing Regimes and Global Visions 1918-1939” in Anderson, Rozwadowski, eds. Soundings and Crossings (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History, 2016) 213-241.
-
Summary:
material culture; gravitational measurement; geophysical prospecting; scientific instruments; research methods
Description:In this research, I consider the place of artefact study as a link between past and present practices in the sciences, and as a link between different kinds of pedagogical practice and students.
Publications related to this project include:
K. Anderson, M. Frappier, E. Neswald, H. Trim, "Reading Instruments: Objects, Texts and Museums" Science and Education 22 (2013) 1167–1189. a collaborative case study of the Eotvos Gravimeter used at the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa in the late 1920s and 1930s by A.H. Miller (1886-1992) and the later life of the instrument in the Canadian Science and Technology Museum.
K. Anderson, "An ‘experimental’ instrument: testing the torsion balance in the Empire" (under review).
“Beyond the Glass Cabinet: The History of Scientific Instruments” in Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos del Centro de Estudios Históricos. Edition Digital No 4. Dossier: Los archivos de la ciencia: Prácticas científicas, cultura material y organización del saber. Issue guest edited by Irina Podygny on current methods in history of science. 2013. http://www.refa.org.ar/
“Coral Jewellery/ Victorian Things: A Forum on Material Objects,” Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies 34 (2008) 47-52.
Project Type: Self-FundedRole: collaborator; author
Collaborator: Elisabeth Neswald (Brock), Melanie Frappier (Dalhousie), Henry Trim (UBC), Jan Hadlaw (AMPD, York)
-
Summary:
This historical project explores how the ocean was defined, observed and imagined in the 1920s and 1930s. It uses the definition of particular spaces in the ocean - such as coral reefs and deep water life - as a focus for understanding a key period in modern oceanography, ecology and natural history.
Description:In this era, the wider context for marine scientific work included the development of the Pacific after World War One, the rise of internationalism, the popular audience for biology, and the rapid development of both fisheries research and ecology. This will become Like other studies in the history of ecology and the environment, this project investigates how ideas about natural worlds – here, watery ones – shaped and were shaped by modern cultural and political life.
Project Type: FundedRole: PI
-
Summary:
Annotated edition with a critical introduction of the 1839 Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle. 4 vols. by Philip Parker King and Robert Fitzroy (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).
Studies of the voyage narrative as a genre of scientific publication in the nineteenth century.
Description:HMS Beagle has entered the collective imagination as the ship that carried Charles Darwin to the Galapagos, triggering his later work on the theory of natural selection. However, the Beagle also played a vital role in the development of modern hydrography, cartography and meteorology in both the voyage of 1831-36 and an earlier one of 1826-29 in an expedition led by Phillip Parker King in the Adventure. The work of the Beagle under her captain, Robert FitzRoy, was to chart South American coastlines, many of which had not previously been mapped, and to build a global chain of meridian distances. On this voyage FitzRoy pioneered the use of Francis Beaufort’s new system for identifying wind force, the basis of the modern Beaufort scale. FitzRoy’s further, unofficial goal on this voyage was to return three Fuegians to their native shores, and establish a Protestant mission in the desolate, southern fringes of the continent. It was a pivotal experience of civilization and savagery for both Darwin and FitzRoy. The separate accounts of the voyages by King, FitzRoy and Darwin were published in the four-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle Between the Years 1826 and 1836 (1839). Darwin’s volume has never been out of print. In contrast, this set presents the first critical edition of the remaining texts from 1839: FitzRoy’s account of the second voyage, his detailed appendices, and the account of the 1826-29 voyage authored by Phillip Parker King, captain of HMS Adventure. Together they give an unparalleled example of British scientific exploration. It will generate new scholarly approaches to the Beagle voyages and be crucial for those interested in Darwin, Maritime Studies, History of Science, and Empire. test
In addition to this annotated edition, the publications related to the study of the scientific voyage narrative as a genre include:
“Natural History and the Scientific Voyage” in Helen Anne Curry, Nick Jardine, James Secord, Emma Spary, eds. Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“The Hydrographer’s Narrative: Writing Global knowledge in the 1830s,” Journal of Historical Geography (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.09.002).
“Reading and Writing the Scientific Voyage: Robert FitzRoy, Charles Darwin and John Clunies Ross,” British Journal for the History of Science (August 2018 First View at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000708741800050X)
Project Type: Self-FundedRole: Editor
All Publications
Katharine Anderson, Helen Rozwadowski, eds. Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2016).
Rozwadowski, Anderson, “Soundings and Crossings” (1-16)
“Marine Meteorology: Observing Regimes and Global Visions 1918-1939” ( 213-241).
'Cloud spotting: past & present.' Weather Local Knowledge and Everyday Life: Issues in Integrated Climate Studies. Ed. Vladimir Jankovic and Christine Barboza. Rio de Janeiro: MAST, 2009.
'Mapping Meteorology.' Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate. Ed. James R. Fleming, Vladimir Jankovic and Deborah R. Coen. Science History Publications/USA, 2006. 69-91.
'Almanacs and the Profits of Natural Knowledge.' Culture and Science in the Nineteenth Century Media. Ed. Louise Henson et al. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. 97-112.
'Instincts and Instruments.' Nineteenth Century Psychological Thought: The Transition from Philosophy to Science. Ed. C. Green, T. Teo and M. Shore. Washington: American Psychological Association, 2001. 153-74.
Fitzroy, R and P.P.King, The Narrative of the Voyages of Adventure and Beagle 1826-1836. Edited and annotated by Katharine Anderson. 4 vols. (London Pickering and Chatto, 2011)
Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
“Natural History and the Scientific Voyage” in Helen Anne Curry, Nick Jardine, James Secord, Emma Spary, eds. Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
“Reading and Writing the Scientific Voyage: Robert FitzRoy, Charles Darwin and John Clunies Ross,” British Journal for the History of Science (First View Aug 2018 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000708741800050X).
“Beyond the Glass Cabinet: The History of Scientific Instruments” in Revista Electrónica de Fuentes y Archivos del Centro de Estudios Históricos. Edition Digital No 4. Dossier: Los archivos de la ciencia: Prácticas científicas, cultura material y organización del saber. Issue guest edited by Irina Podygny on current methods in history of science. 2013. http://www.refa.org.ar/
Anderson, Frappier, Neswald, Trim. "Reading Instruments: Objects, Texts and Museums" Science and Education (2011).
'Coral Jewellery/ Victorian Things: A Forum on Material Objects' Victorian Review An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies. 34 (2008).
'Does History Count?' Endeavour 30 (December 2006) 150-55.
'Looking at the Sky: Visual Methods in Victorian Meteorology.' British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2003): 301-32.
Approach to Teaching
Interested in HUMA 4227, aka HIST 4087 3.0 F 2022 Mind and Matter in Victorian Society ?
This year, the course explores Victorian preoccupations with death and dying. This theme gives us a focus for thinking about nineteenth-century society and culture in many different ways. Death and dying lead us into diverse contemporary concerns: the place of science and religion in people’s lives, the rise of the modern city, the appetite for sensation and violence in modern print culture, the role of memory and the importance of reputation and inheritance. Drawing on historical studies, fiction, poetry, visual art and journalism, we’ll look at such topics as mourning rituals and momentos, epidemics, the popularity of death bed fiction and poetry, London and its Victorian cemeteries, and murder sensations like Jack the Ripper.
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2023 | AP/HUMA1915 9.0 | A | Animals and the Imagination | LECT |
| Fall/Winter 2023 | AP/HUMA1915 9.0 | A | Animals and the Imagination | TUTR |
