Kelly J. Whitman presents her latest book Useful Natures: Science, Pedagogy and the Power of Youth in Early Modernity. She will join us via zoom.

Kelly J. Whitman presents her latest book Useful Natures: Science, Pedagogy and the Power of Youth in Early Modernity. She will join us via zoom.

 

Useful Nature(s): Youth and Science in the Early Modern World

In this talk I will provide an overview of my (almost finished) book project, which recovers the largely untold story of science's preoccupation with youth as a distinct and largely desirable stage of life in the early modern past.  I will explore the origins and appeal of the idea that young people were in some ways more adept than older adults at generating ways of knowing the world that were novel, playful and future focused. I will also consider how ideas about nature’s generative powers, along with “oeconomic” portrayals of nature as a storehouse of untapped riches, were easily applied to young bodies and what this ultimately resulted in.