Fall 2024
Tuesday November 12, 2024
Information Session & Fall Reception - conversations with STS students & faculty
4:15PM: Pearsons Outdoor Classroom / Stanley Patio, Pomona College
Snacks from Some Crust will be included!
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini
Friday November 8, 2024
11:00 AM; Founders Room in West Hall, Pitzer College
Iris Clever, University of Chicago
"The Making of the Modern Statistical Identity: From Skull Science to Biometrics"
FMI: Prof. Jemma Lorenat (for Zoom link)
Spring 2024
Monday February 12, 2024
4:15 PM: Pearsons 101, Pomona College
Cori Hayden, University of California, Berkeley
"The Spectacular Generic: Pharmaceutical and the Simipolitical in Mexico"
Event is co-sponsored by the Pomona College Anthropology Dept.
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini or Cristina Bejarano
Fall 2023
Monday November 20, 2023
3:00 PM: via Zoom
Julia Tomasson, Columbia University
"Inventing the 'Islamic Golden Age': Orientalism and the History and Historiography of Mathematics"
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday November 13, 2023
3:00 PM: Fletcher 110, Pitzer College and via Zoom
Kristine Palmieri, University of Chicago
"True Grit: Writing the History of Women at Yerkes Observatory, 1895 – 1950"
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Thursday November 9, 2023
4:15 PM: Hahn 101, Pomona College
Kim TallBear, University of Alberta
“The Geneticist's Vanishing Indian vs. Indigenous Collective Presence”
Event is co-sponsored by the Pomona College Dean's Office and Anthropology Dept.
FMI: Prof. Cristina Bejarano
Wednesday November 8, 2023
Information Session & Social Hour - conversations with STS students & faculty
4:15PM: Pearsons Outdoor Classroom / Stanley Patio, Pomona College
Snacks from Some Crust will be included!
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini
Thursday October 26, 2023
4:30 PM: Drinkward Auditorium, Harvey Mudd College
Kathleen M. Burns, Harvey Mudd College
"Cultivating the Human: Plant Plasticity & the American Eugenics Movement"
FMI: Prof. Rachel Mayeri
Monday October 23, 2023
3:00 PM: Fletcher 110, Pitzer College and via Zoom
Louis Beaugris, Kean University
"A Mathematician and all his functions: The Untold Story of Lucien Hibbert"
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday September 18, 2023
3:00 PM: Fletcher 110, Pitzer College and via Zoom
Amir Alexander, UCLA
"The Sceptical Mathematician: How John Wallis Saved Mathematics for the Royal Society"
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Wednesday September 13, 2023
4:15 PM: Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College
Only West Coast performance of "Diving into Math with Emmy Noether"
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Spring 2023
Monday, May 1, 2023
Aubrey Clayton, Harvard University
"R.A. Fisher, Eugenics, and the Foundations of Probability"
3:00PM: Gold Center Multipurpose Room, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Friday, April 28, 2023
A Celebration of Professor Richard McKirahan's 50 years at Pomona College!
4:15PM: Pearsons Outdoor Classroom / Stanley Patio, Pomona College
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini
Monday, April 17, 2023
Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University, author of Merchants of Doubt
"The Race, Class and Gender of Climate Change Denial"
5:45-7:00PM: Shanahan center Auditorium, HMC
FMI: Bruce J. Nelson '74 Distinguished Speaker Series (HMC)
Monday, April 17, 2023
Margarita Boenig-Liptsin, ETH Zürich
"Just Right: an Imaginary of Data and Justice"
12:15PM: Gold Center Multipurpose Room, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Information Session & Social Hour - conversations with STS students & faculty
4:15PM: Pearsons Outdoor Classroom / Stanley Patio, Pomona College
Snacks from Some Crust will be included!
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini
Monday, March 20, 2023
Amitav Ghosh, author of Nutmeg's Curse
5:45PM: Shanahan Center Auditorium, Harvey Mudd College and via Zoom (with rsvp)
RSVP and FMI on the Climate Storytellers, Nelson Distinguished Speaker Series
Monday, March 20, 2023
Deniz Sarikaya, Technical University of Denmark
"Narratives of Mathematical Practice (and why they matter!)"
3:00PM: Gold Center Multipurpose Room, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Fall 2022
Monday, November 21, 2022
Jane Panangaden, Pitzer College
“Confronting the Legacy of the Human Betterment Foundation at Caltech”
3:00PM: Avery 202, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday, November 7, 2022
Amir Alexander, UCLA
“The Sceptical Mathematician: How John Wallis Saved Mathematics for the Royal Society”
3:00PM: Avery 202, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday, October 24, 2022
Elena Marchisotto, Cal State Northridge
"H.S.M. Coxeter’s Theory of Accessibility: A Narrative in the Language of Synthetic Projective Geometry"
3:00PM: Avery 202, Pitzer College and via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Eugenia Cheng, Art Institute of Chicago
"X+Y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender"
4:15 - 5:30PM: Estella 1051, Pomona College
FMI: Inaugural 47 Lecture
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Eun-Joo Ahn, Claremont Center for Mathematical Sciences Colloquium
"Human Computers in Astronomy: Women Astronomers at Mount Wilson Observatory during the Early Twentieth Century"
4:15 - 5:30PM: Humanities Auditorium, Scripps College
Monday, September 19, 2022
"John Venn: A Life in Logic"
3:00 - 4:00PM: Avery 202, Pitzer College and via Zoom (Meeting ID: 848 6766 2225, Passcode: 031785)
Spring 2022
Thursday, January 27, 2022
"Making Up Minds: Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence in Late Socialism and Late Capitalism."
4:15 - 5:15PM (Pacific) via Zoom (Meeting ID: 964 2415 3287 Passcode: 906306)
Abstract: This talk discusses Soviet and American converging views on the mind as a crucial economic and political resource in the computer age. During the 1950s-1970s, both sides of the Iron Curtain came to believe that social, economic, and political progress hinged on a strong and capable technoscientific workforce. To satisfy these two technocracies’ growing appetites for productive thinkers and efficient learners, researchers in both countries suggested teaching humans with special pedagogical computers. In the 1970s, the research and development in pedagogical computing made significant contributions to artificial intelligence. Tracing the movement of ideas, technology, and people across the Cold War divide, the talk discusses the Soviet-American co-production of the theories, assumptions, and beliefs about desired and valuable thinking that underpinned pedagogical computing and artificial intelligence in these two countries.
FMI: Prof. Vivien Hamilton
Fall 2021
Monday, November 15, 2021
Information Session & Social Hour - conversations with STS students & faculty
4:15PM: Pearsons Outdoor Classroom / Stanley Patio, Pomona College
Snacks from Some Crust will be included!
FMI: Prof. Laura Perini
Friday, September 17, 2021
"Medicine, Technology & Infrastructure in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds."
An Invited Speakers Panel at the Intercollegiate STS Program at the Claremont Colleges
1:00PM (Pacific Time) via Zoom
Featuring talks by:
^ Vaia Sigounas, MD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "Decolonizing the Prosthetic"
^ Randall C. Burson, MD, University of Pennsylvania "Boxed-In & Beside: (Un)Situating Indigenous & Biomedical Health Infrastructures in Wajmapu/La Araucania, Chile"
^ Jane Chang Mi, Scripps College "(See Reverse Side.)"
FMI: Prof. Andre Wakefield
Spring 2021
Friday, May 14, 2021
Jessica Carter, Aarhus University
"The Philosophy of Mathematics as Practiced."
10:00AM (PDT) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, April 30, 2021
Eileen Abrams, Cornell University
"Which shall be regarded as best? Axium Systems and American Mathematics."
10:00AM (PDT) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Thursday, April 8, 2021
Open House for all interested students, STS majors, STS faculty
12:15 - 1:15PM (PDT) via Zoom (Meeting ID: 950 4278 3313; Passcode: 024806)
FMI: Prof. Vivien Hamilton
Friday, April 2, 2021
Dirk Schlimm, McGill University
"'Calculus' as Method or 'Calculus' as Rules? Boole and Frege on the Aims of a Logical Calculus."
10:00AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, March 5, 2021
Nic Ramos, Drexel University
"Policing Health: Making Poverty, Race, and Sexuality Productive in Global Los Angeles, 1965-1986"
2:00PM (Pacific) via Zoom
Abstract: This talk will examine the development of medical expertise and health protocol in new public health institutions. It investigates neighborhood clinics, community mental health centers, and emergency medical systems nationally piloted in a Los Angeles County hospital and Black-led Medical School built as a response to the 1965 Watts Uprising/Riots called King-Drew Medical Center. I argue, by the 1980s, this suite of health institutions functioned with enlarged police outfits, new patterns of spatial segregation, and more highly securitized state hospitals to manage worklessness, undocumented immigration, and working poverty resulting from post 1960s global economic restructuring. My reading of archival documents reveals politicians, medical experts, and health policy makers mobilized discourses of health and moral uplift embedded in the racial and sexual liberalism of 1960s and 1970s social movements to reform the supposed “backwards” sexuality, reproductive politics, and “culture” of LGBT, undocumented, and poor people of color. As an urban “safety net” for the medically indigent, these public health institutions renewed policing of LGBT, undocumented, and poor Black and Brown people while buffeted profitable health markets outside “medically underserved areas” from collapse.
FMI: Prof. Carlin Wing
Friday, February 26, 2021
Laura Turner, Monmouth University
"Women as Data and as Individuals: Public Dialogues on Sexism in Mathematics During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s"
10:00AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Vincent Peluce, City University of New York
"The Perception of Time in Intuitionistic Arithmetic"
9:15AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Aston Wesner, University of California, Berkeley
"Ecology Against Empire: Spiders, Sex, and Feminist Field Science"
4:00PM (Pacific) via Zoom
Abstract: Ashton Wesner is a lecturer of history of science—and research fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society—at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research and teaching in environmental humanities combine feminist history of the natural sciences, queer science & technology studies, and Native American and Indigenous studies. She brings these fields together to sharpen our conceptions of US imperialist environmental violence and expand feminist practices in evolutionary and field biology. Her current book project, Anti-colonial Arachnology, examines the gendered and racialized dynamics of how knowledge is produced about animal mating behavior. She situates an ethnographic study of evolutionary biologists in a “spider lab” within a spatial and political analysis of their fields on Tohono O’Odham ancestral territory at the US-México border. Wesner’s broader collaborative research program is guided by the questions: How do practicing biologists uphold and upend heteropatriarchal understandings of sex, gender, and violence in their quotidian study of non-human animals? How might life sciences offer openings for feminist analytics of migration and right-relations with occupied lands?
Friday, January 29, 2021
Matthew Jones, Columbia University
"Learning to Love Opacity: Decision Trees and the Genealogy of the Algorithmic Black Box"
9:15AM (Pacific) via Zoom (Meeting ID: 870 1604 9318; Passcode: 170485)
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, January 22, 2021
Paola Cantú, Aix-Marseille University and CNRS
"Peano's Formalization and Semantics"
10:00AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Fall 2020
Friday, November 20, 2020
Brigitte Stenhouse, The Open University
"Translating Laplace's Mécanique Céleste in Early 19th-Century Great Britain"
9:00AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, October 30, 2020
Nicolas Michel, Utrecht University
"Tic-Tac Geometry: The Principle of Correspondence from Chasles to Segre"
9:00AM (Pacific) via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, October 26, 2020
Kelli Moore, Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU
"The Digital Rape Complaint: Allegation Escrow Technology and the Social Dynamics of Rape Reporting, A Media Studies and Legal Theory Concern"
4:15PM (Pacific) via Zoom
Abstract: This talk is positioned at a theory intersection between law and media studies. The use of these applications by rape victims occurs in the context of Violence Against Women Act and Title IX legislation and a social media environment that amplifies political feelings and the negotiation of attention to social situations. Guided by Ariella Azoulay’s concept of the “civil contract of photography,” the talk examines how allegation escrow apps contribute to the way rape “shows up in the discourse without the mediation of visual images either direct or indirect." I consider reporting models to understand what we mean by victim participation, solidarity, and the transformation from tabooed visual evidence of rape toward managing victim hesitation and passivity, minor political emotions I associate with Sianne Ngai’s conception of the “ugly feelings.” I ask what are the imagined legal futures and social dynamics of rape reporting, testimony, and prosecution? What are the social dynamics of evidence production and the performance of testimony? I suggest how these dynamics involve shifts in disciplinary understanding of the rape perpetrator, and theories of victimization.
FMI: Prof. Gabriela Morales
Friday, October 16, 2020
Ekaterina Babintseva, Harvey Mudd College
"Of Minds and Computers: Harnessing Mathematical Creativity"
9:00AM, via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, October 2, 2020
Lucas Bang, Harvey Mudd College
"Abstraction and Computation: a history of the future?"
9:00AM, via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Friday, September 18, 2020
Edray Goins, Pomona College
"The Black Mathematician Chronicles: Our Quest to Update the MAD Pages"
9:00AM, via Zoom
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Spring 2020
Monday, April 27, 2020
Giselle Secco, Universidad Federal de Santa Maria
Title: TBA
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Jemma Lorenat (moderator), Pitzer College
Subject: TBA, a Reading Discussion
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Amir Alexander, University of California Los Angeles
"The Sceptical Mathematician: How John Wallis Saved Mathematics for the Royal Society"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, March 9, 2020 -- CANCELLED
Sloan Despeaux, Western Carolina University
"Competition, Conflict, and Survival of the Fittest in a rapidly-changing commercial publishing venue for mathematics"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Fall 2019
Monday, December 2, 2019
Michael Friedman, Humboldt University Berlin
"On branch points and branch curves at the turn on the 19th century"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Jeffrey Oaks, University of Indianapolis
"Arithmetical Proofs in Arabic Algebra"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, October 14, 2019
Gabriel Greenberg, University of California Los Angeles
"The Semantics of Iconic and Symbolic Representation"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Alyssa Newman, Harvey Mudd College
"Mixing and Matching: The Role of Race in Gamete Donor Selection"
Followed by pizza party: 3rd floor patio, Shanahan Center, HMC
4:15PM, Drinkward Recital Hall, Shanahan Center, HMC
FMI: contact Prof. Vivien Hamilton
Monday, September 30, 2019
Della Dumbaugh, University of Richmond
"Does one man make a team? Solomon Lefschetz as Editor of the Annals of Mathematics"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Monday, September 16, 2019
Jemma Lorenat (moderator), Pitzer College
"Paper read before the mathematical club at Girton College. May Term, 1893" by Charlotte Angas Scott -- a discussion of the historically interesting paper
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
"Science for Social Justice in Puerto Rico"
4:15PM, Drinkward Recital Hall, HMC
Spring 2019
Monday, April 22, 2019
Sean Walsh, University of California at Los Angeles
"Infinitesimals, valued fields, and the orders of infinite smallness"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, HMC
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Hixon Colloquium by Darrel Moellendorf
"Three Interpretations of the Anthropocene: Hope and Anxiety at the End of Nature."
4:15PM, Drinkward Recital Hall, HMC
FMI: Prof. Marianne De Laet
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Information Session: changes to major, internship info, grad school info, research, etc.
5:45 - 7:00PM, Kravis Center Lower Court room 63, CMC
Dinner and refreshments will be included!
FMI: Prof. Vivien Hamilton
Monday, April 1, 2019
Jim Smith, San Francisco State University
"Mario Pieri, Overloading, and Information Hiding in 1907"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday, March 11, 2019
Judy Grabiner (moderator), Pitzer College
"Computers and the Nature of Man: a historian's perspective on controversies about artificial intelligence" -- a discussion of the historically interesting paper
3:00PM, Skandera P105, Pitzer College
Monday, February 25, 2019
Deborah Kent, Drake University
" 'Glorious Beyond Description': The U.S. Naval Corps of Professors of Mathematics Experience a Total Solar Eclipse in 1869"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page
Monday, February 11, 2019
Vincenzo De Risi, University of Paris
"Johann Lambert and Modern Axiomatics"
3:00PM, Parsons 1289, Harvey Mudd College
FMI and an abstract on the HOM seminar page