Category Archives: Talk

16 January 2026 — 12:00 noon — GAR 4.100

Odile Lehnen (Durham University)

“A Seat at the Table: Collaborative Observation in the Herschel Household”
A familiar depiction of the Herschel siblings’ astronomical work presents William Herschel at the telescope in the garden and Caroline Herschel seated at a desk, pen in hand, recording observations. In 1783, working in this manner, the Herschels embarked on a systematic campaign to observe the sky region by region and catalogue nebulae and star clusters. By the time they completed this endeavour in 1802, they had catalogued 2500 celestial objects. Caroline’s role in this collaboration is still largely perceived as that of a passive scribe. This talk challenges this prevailing perception through a close analysis of the siblings’ observing process. This involves examining their observing space and coordinated actions within it. I will pay particular attention to the objects on Caroline’s desk, many of which were made out of paper and functioned not merely as records but as practical observing instruments facilitating both the inscription and retrieval of information. Some examples include her observing journals, a heavily annotated star atlas, and various printed and manuscript star catalogues. Studying these sources as material objects reveals Caroline’s skill and agency in crafting paper machines tailored to the siblings’ specific observing practice.
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Odile Lehnen is a PhD student at Durham University in the UK, holding an AHRC collaborative doctoral award partnered with the Library of the Royal Society of London. In her work she offers a new perspective on Caroline Herschel’s scientific achievements by focusing on Herschel’s use of paper machines for the accumulation and production of astronomical knowledge. This emphasis underscores Caroline Herschel’s agency as a collaborator of her brother, William Herschel, and as an observer in her own right. Odile received an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine from the University of Cambridge and a BSc in Science and Society from University College London.

 

17 October 2025 — 12:00 noon — GAR 4.100

Kelly McDonough (UT Spanish & Portuguese)

“Embodied, Predictive, and Didactic: Nahua Science in Book XI of the Florentine Codex”

As the only Nahua natural history produced during the colonial period, Book XI of the Florentine Codex, entitled “Earthly Things,” is an unparalleled register of sixteenth-century Indigenous science, or “ways of knowing and explaining the world.” The result of a decades-long collaboration between elite-class male Nahua scholars and elders, and a Franciscan friar, Book XI offers rare insight into Nahua engagement with, and understandings of, the environment they inhabited in the Central Valley of Mexico. In my presentation, I analyze sixteenth-century Nahua science through a focus on Nahua principles, methods, and rationales of scientific investigation, as well as modes of communication related to scientific knowledge production, gathering, and dissemination. From this analysis, I argue that Nahua science in Book XI was 1) based on a blend of first-hand, embodied experiences and ancient authority; 2) concerned with predicting and influencing future outcomes; and 3) used to model an ethical framework that would ensure survival in an interconnected world.

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Kelly McDonough is the Tomás Rivera Regents Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the author most recently of Indigenous Science and Technology: Nahuas and the World Around Them (Univ. of Arizona Press, 2024).