Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge

Working with Paper builds on a growing interest in the materials of science by exploring the gendered uses and meanings of paper tools and technologies, considering how notions of gender impacted paper practices and in turn how paper may have structured knowledge about gender. Through a series of dynamic investigations covering Europe and North America and spanning the early modern period to the twentieth century, this volume breaks new ground by examining material histories of paper and the gendered worlds that made them. Contributors explore diverse uses of paper--from healing to phrenological analysis to model making to data processing--which often occurred in highly gendered, yet seemingly divergent spaces, such as laboratories and kitchens, court rooms and boutiques, ladies' chambers and artisanal workshops, foundling houses and colonial hospitals, and college gymnasiums and state office buildings. Together, they reveal how notions of masculinity and femininity became embedded in and expressed through the materials of daily life. Working with Paper uncovers the intricate negotiations of power and difference underlying epistemic practices, forging a material history of knowledge in which quotidian and scholarly practices are intimately linked.

Author: Carla Bittel
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 06/25/2019
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780822945598

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2019

About the Author
Carla Bittel (Editor)
Carla Bittel is associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Elaine Leong (Editor)
Elaine Leong is lecturer in history at University College London.

Christine von Oertzen (Editor)
Christine von Oertzen is senior research scholar in Department II at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.