al-mofhariz

A fascinating CFP for a conference on "Color, Commerce, and Consumption in Global Historical Perspective" went up a while back. The due date has passed, so that is old news. But I finally got around to looking over this 2007 Chemical Heritage Foundation piece by the conference's convener --- on the history of DuPont's work with car colors. I expected it to be all about chemical dye production, so I was surprised and fascinated by this:

In January 1925 two DuPont managers discussed the company’s need for practical advice on the psychology of colors as a means to anticipate major color fads. DuPont took a chromatic leap in October 1925 when it hired Towle and created the Duco Color Advisory Service to design the latest and most desirable color combinations for the auto industry. Born in Brooklyn, Towle had studied painting at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. During World War I he put his art training to good use as a member of the U.S. Army’s celebrated …

For your consideration---
A conference celebrating (physical geographer and other things) George Perkins Marsh: An American for all Seasons -- proposals due 15 March 2012


The College of Arts and Letters at the Stevens Institute of
Technology is pleased to announce a conference
celebrating the achievements and insights of George Perkins Marsh
(1801-1882), environmentalist, diplomat, philosopher, and scholar, to be
held on our campus 04 May 2012.  Our campus-wide commitment to the
development of innovative thinking in a culture of collaboration makes
Stevens an ideal venue for sharing ideas about Marsh – a luminary figure
whose life and works connect scholar-teachers across disciplines and
cultures.  Authors are invited to submit papers on any aspect of Marsh’s
many achievements or the impact of his work.  A selection of papers will
be published in a volume of conference proceedings.

Please submit inquiries and papers (maximum 4,000 words) or abstracts
(250-500 words) to Lisa Dolling <ldolling@ste…

I noticed a fascinating Call For Papers this morning on h-net for a conference on "Science, Space, and the Environment," sponsored by the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and scheduled for thus July 17-18 at London's Science Museum.

Here's the pitch: "Although the sciences have provided critical resources in environmental debates, their own role in environmental change has been little studied. This conference will explore how the sciences have affected the physical environment."

The organizers seem to have negative impacts on the environment foremost in their minds, but there are clearly other directions one could take such an inquiry. Don Worster's Nature's Economy imagined science to have split personalities when it came to nature: the "Arcadian" strain of science produced knowledge that helped humans understand, love, and live with nature; the "imperial" strain led to domination and abuse. Forgive me a pun, but I imagine that the …