As part of our Behind the Scenes thread, we highlight events of interest both to us and - we hope - to our readers. We are quite lucky, then, to be able to announce the Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book Summer School 2018: The Scientific Image which just-so-happens to be taking place about 9 months before the launch of Thinking 3D!
Summer School at the Bodleian Libraries
Centre for the Study of the Book
June 25-29, 2018
The Scientific Image
In this course we will explore scientific images in the collections of the Bodleian Libraries and discuss the contribution of visual images to the communication of observations and the dissemination of scientific theories during the period from the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. By analysing the formal qualities of the printed image we can ask: what visual strategies of description, analysis, explanation and persuasion are deployed? Taught seminars will include examination of original drawings, original printing blocks and plates and printed books from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The course will visit the Sherardian Library of Plant taxonomy and the Museum of the History of Science to look at original drawings, specimens and scientific instruments.
Course convener: Roger Gaskell is an antiquarian bookseller specializing in scientific medical and technical books. He has lectured on scientific book illustration at the Bodleian Summer School and teaches a regular seminar, ‘Science in print’ in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and a regular course at the Rare Book School in Virginia.
Guest lecturer: Jim Bennett is former Director of the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford and curator of the Whipple Museum, University of Cambridge. His publications include, as co-author, London’s Leonardo: the life and work of Robert Hooke.
To apply: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/courses/summer-school-2018