BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:'A day of comparatively small things': spatial anxiety in the high
  British Empire - Tom Simpson (Gonville and Caius College\, Cambridge)
DTSTART:20160303T130000Z
DTEND:20160303T140000Z
UID:TALK63298@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:Around the turn of the twentieth century\, surveyors under the
  auspices of European Empires apparently eliminated much of the remaining 
 blank space on the world map. Exploration and border demarcation parties m
 ade significant inroads into interior regions of Africa\, the high mountai
 ns and deserts of Central Asia\, and Arctic regions. At the same time\, ho
 wever\, a host of fears regarding spatial understandings and practices cry
 stallised among numerous agents\, from men of science in metropolitan and 
 colonial hubs to junior surveyors beyond the fringes of effective European
  control. If\, as Joseph Conrad famously claimed\, British geography trium
 phed in this era\, it was a curiously ambivalent victory.\n\nThis paper ex
 amines how concerns over understanding and enacting spaces travelled withi
 n and beyond the British Empire through the dispersal of images\, texts\, 
 and key individuals. These mobile elements often originated at the outskir
 ts of empire rather than in established centres. Far from being immutable\
 , they were repeatedly reformulated\, facilitating anxieties that were wid
 espread but far from homogeneous across different settings. The paper also
  shows that agents of imperial science questioned the very elements that m
 any recent scholars consider constitutive of a spatial modernity emanating
  from Europe\, such as maps\, borders\, and exploration narratives. In the
 ir place\, previously overlooked regions and disparaged non-Western episte
 mologies became increasingly vital within British spatial imaginaries.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR