Pamela H. Smith
Research Interest
ON LEAVE SPRING 2023
Education
Ph.D. — The Johns Hopkins University, 1991
B.A. (Hons) — University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, 1979
Interests and Research
Pamela H. Smith, professor, specializes in early modern European history and the history of science. Her current research focuses on attitudes to nature in early modern Europe and the Scientific Revolution, with particular attention to craft knowledge and historical techniques. She is founding director of The Making and Knowing Project, founding director of The Center for Science and Society, and chair of Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience.
In The News:
- The Making and Knowing Project: A Unique Scientific Collaboration, Musée des Augustins, April 2020
- Could Doing Things The Old-Fashioned Way Make Us Better Modern Scientists?, Popular Science, Spring 2020
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Learning through Reconstruction: The Making and Knowing Project, Yale University Art Gallery, 2018.
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Weaving Knowledge: An immersive weaving workshop for PhD students, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2017 and 2019.
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Making and Knowing in Weaving (from Center for Science and Society Conference on Weaving: Cognition, Technology, Culture, April 2017).
- The Making and Knowing Project was the subject of Sean Kean's "Twenty-First-Century Alchemists," The New Yorker, 26 September 2016.
- British Society for the History of Science, Viewpoint no. 11, “Experiments in the early modern European investigation of nature,” 2016.
- Sciences et Avenir covers the Making and Knowing Project, in “La science redécouvre les secrets de la Renaissance,” by Bernadette Arnaud, April 2016.
- Read about Making and Knowing in The Recipes Project: “A Recipe for Recipe Research: The Making and Knowing Project,” February 2016. See also “Making ‘Powder for Hourglasses’ in the Early Modern Household.”
- WHYY visits Smith's Making and Knowing Project in "The power of failure, and other lessons from a 400-year-old 'book of secrets'," May 2015.
- Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Convenor of the Working Group, "Itineraries of Materials, Recipes, Techniques, and Knowledge in the Early Modern World," 2014.
- “Snakes, Lizards, and Manuscripts: Humanists in the Laboratory,” University Lecture, Columbia University, December 2, 2013 (video).
- Interview with Columbia News, December 2013.
- Columbia College Magazine, “Ancient Workshop Discovers New Ideas.”
Courses
Fall 2022
HIST UN2978. Science and Pseudoscience: Alchemy to AI
Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:10pm-5:25pm
During the 2020 US presidential election and the years of the COVID-19 pandemic,
science and “scientific truths” were (and are) fiercely contested. This course provides a
historical perspective on the issues at stake, and shows how science and pseudoscience
developed in tandem in the period from 1400 to 1800. This historical account equips
students to examine contemporary issues of expertise, the social construction of science,
pluralism in science, certainty and uncertainty in science, as well as critical engagement
with contemporary technologies.
HIST GU4101. The World We Have Lost: Daily Life in Pre-Modern Europe
Mondays 10:10-12
This course examines the material circumstances of life and death in Europe from the
fifteenth to the eighteenth century. But it will also ask the question of whether we can
enter into the inner life of people who lived in the past. The material conditions of life
are one thing, but how people experienced those conditions is quite another. How did
they respond intellectually and emotionally to their material circumstances? Finally, the
course will investigate the methods employed by historians to gain knowledge about the
material conditions of life in the past.
Spring 2023
HIST GU4962. Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europe: Hands-On
History
Tuesdays 10:10-12
This course introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the materials,
techniques, contexts, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in early modern
Europe (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of topics, including craft knowledge
and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions
of historical methodology in reconstructing the material world of the past. The course
will be run as a “Laboratory Seminar,” with discussions of primary and secondary
materials, as well as hands-on work. The class sessions include discussion sessions and
hands-on work in the Making and Knowing Laboratory.
Follow The Making and Knowing Project on Twitter.
OTHER COURSES
HIST G9102: Knowledge in Transit in the Early Modern World
HIST W3103: Alchemy, Magic, and Science
HIST W4120: Witchcraft and the State in Early Modern Europe
HIST G9101: Material Culture and the Life of Objects in Early Modern Europe
Awards
- The Eugene S. Ferguson award to The Making and Knowing Project for a reference work that supports future scholarship in the history of technology, 2019
- Leo Gershoy Prize for The Body of the Artisan awarded in early modern European History by the American Historical Association, 2005
- Pfizer Prize for The Business of Alchemy awarded for best book of the year in the history of science by the History of Science Society, 1995
- Scholar in Residence, Robert H. Smith Renaissance Sculpture in Context, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, May 2012
- Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, July 2011
- Alliance Program, seed grant for project on “Circulating and Connecting Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1850,” with Bruno Belhoste, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 2009-10
- Fellow, Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University, 2009-10
- Samuel H. Kress Paired Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., co-grantee Tonny Beentjes, Programme Leader, Metalwork Conservation, Instituut Collectie Nederland (ICN), Amsterdam. 2007-08
- NSF Grant #SES-0444302 for Conference on "Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge," London 11-15 July 2005
- Andrew Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship for research at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2003-04, 2009-10
- Getty Research Institute Scholar, 2000-01
- Visiting Fellow, Downing College, Cambridge, 2000
- John S. Guggenheim Fellow, 1997-98
- National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, 1997-98
- Sidney M. Edelstein International Fellowship for research in the history of chemistry, 1997-98
- Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg - Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin, 1994-95
Publications
Books
From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France: A Digital Critical Edition of Ms. Fr. 640, edited by the Making and Knowing Project, Pamela H. Smith, Naomi Rosenkranz, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Tillmann Taape, Clément Godbarge, Sophie Pitman, Jenny Boulboullé, Joel Klein, Donna Bilak, Marc Smith, and Terry Catapano, eds., Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France. A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 (New York: The Making and Knowing Project, 2020), http://edition640.makingandknowing.org.
Pamela H. Smith, ed., Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).
The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750, co-edited with Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop (Manchester University Press, 2014).
Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge, co-edited with Amy Meyers and Harold J. Cook (Bard Graduate Center/University of Chicago Press, 2014; new ed. 2017).
Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400-1800, co-edited with Benjamin Schmidt (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2004; 2018).
Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, co-edited with Paula Findlen (Routledge, 2002).
The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton University Press, 1994, new ed. 2016).
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“Artisanal Epistemology,” Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Marco Sgarbi (Springer, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_1182-1), 2018.
“Des recettes et des secrets à l’expérience: le “Making and Knowing Project,” Toulouse Renaissance, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2018): 340-43.
“The Codification of Vernacular Theories of Metallic Generation in sixteenth-century European Mining and Metalworking,” The Structures of Practical Knowledge: Toward Early Modern Science, Matteo Valeriani, ed. (Springer/Dordrecht, 2016).
Guest Editor, New Directions in Making and Knowing, a special issue of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 23.1 (2016): 3-101, with 4 invited essays, and an introduction (3-5), including “The Making and Knowing Project - Reflections, Methods, and New Directions,” co-authored with Donna Bilak, Jenny Boulboullé, and Joel Klein (Postdoctoral Scholars, the Making and Knowing Project): 35-55.
“Historians in the Laboratory: Reconstruction of Renaissance Art and Technology in the Making and Knowing Project,” Art History, special issue on Art and Technology, 39.2 (2016): 210-233 (co-authored with the Making and Knowing Team; students from the 2014-15 Columbia University course, Hist G8906: Craft and Science: Making Objects in the Early Modern World; students in the University of Amsterdam M.A. in conservation and restoration of cultural heritage, metals specialization course; and students from the V&A/RCA PhD in History of Design).
“Introduction” and “The Matter of Ideas in the Working of Metals in Early Modern Europe,” The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250-1750, Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, Pamela H. Smith, eds. (Manchester University Press, 2015.)
“Between Nature and Art: Casting from Life in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts, Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, eds. (Ashgate, 2014).
“Introduction” and “Making as Knowing: Craft as Natural Philosophy,” Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge, co-edited with Amy Meyers and Harold J. Cook (Bard Graduate Center/University of Michigan Press, 2014).
“Knowledge in Motion: Following Itineraries of Matter in the Early Modern World,” in Daniel Rogers, Bhavani Raman, Helmut Reimitz, eds, Cultures in Motion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 109-33.
“The History of Science as a Cultural History of the Material World,” Cultural Histories of the Material World, ed. by Peter Miller (University of Michigan Press, 2013), 210-225.
“Making Things: Techniques and books in early modern Europe,” Things, Paula Findlen, ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 173-203.
“In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, and Meaning,” Shaping Objects: Art, Materials, Making, and Meanings in the Early Modern World, an article series of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, 19 (2012): 4-31.
“What is a Secret? Secrets and Craft Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,” Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800, ed. by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin (Ashgate, 2011): 47-66.
“Science,” A Concise Companion to History, ed. by Ulinka Rublack (Oxford University Press, 2011): 268-97.
“Why Write a Book? From Lived Experience to the Written Word in Early Modern Europe,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 47 (Fall 2010): 25-50.
“Nature and Art, Making and Knowing: Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Life Casting Techniques” (with Tonny Beentjes), Renaissance Quarterly, 63 (2010): 128-179.
“Vermilion, Mercury, Blood, and Lizards: Matter and Meaning in Metalworking,” in Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory,” ed. by Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 29-49.
“Science in Motion: Recent Trends in the History of Early Modern Science,” Renaissance Quarterly,62 (2009): 345-375.
“Alchemy as the Imitator of Nature,” Glass of the Alchemists, catalog for an exhibition at the Corning Museum of Glass, ed. by Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk (Corning Museum of Glass, 2008), pp. 22-33.
“Collecting Nature and Art: Artisans and Knowledge in the Kunstkammer,” in Engaging With Nature: Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Barbara Hannawalt and Lisa Kiser (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), pp. 115-136.
“Artisanal Knowledge and the Representation of Nature in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” The Art and History of Botanical and Natural History Treatises, ed. Therese O'Malley and Amy Meyers (Washington D.C., The National Gallery Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts, 2008), 14-31.
“Making and Knowing in a Sixteenth-century Goldsmith’s Workshop,” in The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention between the Late Renaissance and Early Industrialization, ed. Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer, Peter Dear (Amsterdam: KNAW Press, 2007), 20-37.
“Laboratories,” ch. 13, The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 3: Early Modern Europe, ed. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 290-305.
“Art, Science and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Isis, 97 (2006): 83-100.
“Giving Voice to the Hands: The Articulation of Material Literacy in the Sixteenth Century,” Popular Literacy: Studies in Cultural Practices and Poetics, ed. John Trimbur, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001, pp. 74-93.
“Science and Taste: Painting, the Passions, and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth-century Leiden,” Isis, 90 (1999): 420-461.
Affiliations
- Renaissance Society of America
◦ President 2016-18 (Vice President 2014-16; Past President 2018-20)
◦ Associate Editor, Renaissance Quarterly and Council Member, 2006-12
◦ Gordan Prize Committee member, 2008-09. - Scientific Advisory Committee, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2013-2019.
- Board of Editors, History of the Humanities, 2014-present
- Editorial Board, Journal of Modern History, 2014-2019
- Steering Committee, V&A Research Institute, 2014-2016
- Advisory Board member, Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science, ERC grant project, Cambridge University, 2014-2020
- Expert Advisory Committee, Library of the New York Academy of Medicine, 2014-2016
- Editorial Board, Early Modern Cultural Studies, Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, University of Toronto, 2016-
- Advisory Board, The Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, the University of Chicago, 2014-2016
- American Historical Association
◦ Board of Editors, American Historical Review, 2008-11
◦ Executive Council, 2004-06 (elected position)
◦ Research Division Committee member, 2005-06
◦ Gershoy Prize Committee, 1996-98 - History of Science Society
◦ Nominating Committee member (elected position), 2000-01 and 2008-09
◦ Executive Committee member, History of Science Society, New York Section, 2008-present
◦ Osiris Editorial Board, 2000-04
◦ Executive Council (elected position), 2000-02
◦ Committee on Education, 2000-02, Chair 20001-02
◦ Isis Editorial Board, 1997-2000
◦ President, West Coast History of Science Society, 1997 - Society for Austrian and Habsburg History, Executive Council, 2003-08
- Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Advisory Board, 2008-present
- Bard Graduate Center and University of Michigan Press series, "Cultural Histories of the World," -External Editorial Board Member, 2009-2017
- Interpretatio: Sources and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Classical Science, Editorial Advisory Board member, 2007-present