Date:
Location:
“‘Alien Gesticulations’: Movement Science in Germany, 1928-1936”
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speaker:
Whitney Laemmli, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University.
Contact:
Paul Sherman
paul_sherman@hks.harvard.edu
Co-sponsored by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduDex5bm5Oa9lp6z30zBOKxcodi171rmBi-rF6BQH-h681LA/viewform
Please note: This event requires registration by noon on Friday, September 25 to receive the meeting link and password.
Abstract:
In 1928, the German choreographer Rudolf Laban announced the creation of a notation system that could “objectively” record human movement on paper. Called “Kinetographie,” it was hailed by the arts community as a tool to preserve dance for future generations. Laban himself, however, saw the notation as a technology for manipulating human physiological response, and he deployed it in a series of efforts to scientifically engineer a new kind of German nation. This talk explores the roots of Kinetographie’s appeal in both in the Weimar period and later, when Laban served as the Nazi Minister of Dance. It argues that the system simultaneously promised two things: first, that movement could be a source of psychological health, emotional connection, and personal expression; and,second, that this expressive potential would never go too far. Movement would be continually monitored and put in the service of the modern state.
Speaker Bio:
Whitney Laemmli is a historian of science and technology and Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has focused on the study and control of the human body, and she is currently completing a book manuscript titled Measured Movements, which explores how and why movement became a central object of scientific, political, and popular concern over the course of the twentieth century. Laemmli has received fellowships and awards from the SSRC, theACLS/Mellon Foundation, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Forum for the History of the Human Sciences, and she was the recipient of the 2018 Abbot Payson Usher article prize from the Society for the History of Technology. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, she spent 2016-2019 as a member of Columbia University’s Society of Fellows.
