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/ SPRING 2023
Historicizing the European Space Agency: An Archival Overview, 1987–2000
Gherardo Bonini (Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence)
Wednesday, 22 February 2023, 10–11:30 EST
Location: Online
Since 1989, the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in Florence have appraised, inventoried and made available a wealth of ESA’s historical records. In-depth research carried out by a team under the direction of John Krige as well as successive projects have extensively examined these archival resources covering the years up to 1987 but more recently processed holdings remain largely unexplored. This presentation offers an overview of what the archival collection concerning ESA's external relations has to offer for space historians. Special attention will be given to ESA‘s collaboration with the European Union and the so-called Big Four: France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Rocket Boys: Space Enthusiasm in Early 1960s France
Catherine Radtka (Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris)
Wednesday, 22 March 2023, 10–11:30 EDT
Location: Online
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, astronomy and discussions about spaceflight were popular in France. But, contrary to Germany or the USA where the promotion of space travel and amateur experimentation developed, interest in amateur rocketry remained limited. It took off only in the late 1950s through the form of an educational program capitalizing on children’s enthusiasm for outer space to foster scientific education. This talk discusses a specifically French path by exploring the homemade rocket craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The case study sheds new light on a particular subset of astroculture, mostly consisting of experimental practices. In doing so, it examines an important, though little-explored, topic: the relationship between youth culture and astroculture.
Remaining in the Cradle: Amateurs and Children in Space
Denis Sivkov (Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Moscow)
Wednesday, 19 April 2023, 10–11:30 EDT
Location: Online
The practices of contemporary Russian amateurs challenge the assumption that space can only be accessed by nation states and transnational corporations. In contrast to state-led space research and exploration, amateur cosmonautics reframe outer space as the domain of local, unaffiliated, and ordinary people. Children are the main space dreamers and consumers of space-branded goods, even though not a single child has traveled off-Earth yet. How do space amateurs address and imagine the role of children and teenagers in the creation of collective (extra)terrestrial futures? Drawing on an ethnography of space amateurs I argue that space nonprofessionals do not see children as merely the biopolitical industry’s workforce, but rather as the cosmopolitical co-creators and companions in inspiration.
Planetizing History
Alexander C.T. Geppert (NYU/NYU Shanghai) and Brad Tabas (ENSTA Bretagne)
Moderation: Anne Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana)
Thursday, 11 May 2023, 10–11:30 EDT
Location: Online
The expansion of the human sphere beyond Earth has larger repercussions for understanding the present than is usually acknowledged. The outcome of a collaboration between a historian and a philosopher, this paper proposes Teilhard de Chardin’s 1946 notion of ‘planetization’ as a key analytical concept. Planetizing history amounts to situating it within a dynamically transforming horizon, emphasizing the significance of extra-terrestrial technology including robotic spacecraft and orbital infrastructures for the environmental, social, and political histories of what is commonly theorized as globalization. To planetize history, then, is to show that the history of the globalized present cannot be written from an exclusively terrestrial point of view.
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