What is the History of Knowledge?

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What is the history of knowledge? Over the last decades, historians of science have examined a range of figures from artisans and scholars to itinerant healers and household experimenters. This body of scholarship has inquired into the nature of knowledge, asking whether this is a more appropriate historical rubric than “science”. In this graduate seminar, we will investigate this development in historiography by studying books published over the last thirty years in the history of science (ca. 1500 to 1900). Drawing on various approaches – global, social, food, visual, and gender history – students will explore the newest approaches in the field. The seminar addresses graduate students from different fields who seek a grounding in recent methods and concepts in the history of science.