Hands (part II)

A meeting of the early modern workshop: Writing Technology/ The Technology of Writing

Organized by Jenny Oliver (St John’s) & Marie Thébaud-Sorger (MFO)

Making, writing, pointing, demonstrating, feeling, representing… hands work hard in early modern texts. This workshop will consider these intersecting uses and meanings of hands from a variety of temporal, disciplinary, generic, and theoretical perspectives. From the emblematic hands of an idealised renaissance architect-figure to the mechanical hands designed to fill in for their human counterparts in eighteenth-century machinery, we will explore the language and imagery of handling, manipulation, and manoeuvre.

Marie Thébaud-Sorger (History of Science and Technology, MFO) ; Jérôme Baudry (History of Science and Technology, Geneva) ; John Christie (Oxford); Jennifer Oliver (Early Modern French, Oxford) ; Wes Williams (Early Modern French, Oxford)

(coffee served from 1.45pm) – all welcome

PROGRAMME:

Marie Thébaud-Sorger (History of Science and Technology, CNRS/MFO)
« Hands in theory and practice »

Jérôme Baudry (History of Science and Technology, Geneva)
« Mechanical hands »

Jennifer Oliver (Early Modern French, Oxford)
‘Hands and handling in Philibert de l’Orme’s architectural emblematology’

Wes Williams (Early Modern French, Oxford)
‘Ambroise Paré’s Wise Hands’

John Christie (History of Science, Oxford)
Title tbc