This course is a part of HF's PhD week.
In most cases, scale has been defined by the singular object, a text, a work, an event, an instance of communication, which is then linked to other objects at the same scale, forming a process or a pattern.
Questions of scale have entered the humanities mainly by way of two major social, natural, and technological transformations: on the one hand, the accelerating climate emergency and nature crisis, often referred to in the geochronological shorthand “the Anthropocene”, on the other, the digital revolution, including DH, SoMe, and AI.
This PhD course asks what it means to work with scales, scaling, and scalability in humanities research. Our focus will be on time scales, although temporal and spatial scaling are always involved with each other and cannot be investigated independently. We will read both theoretical and more empirical work that analyses and makes use of scale and scaling, from fields like “big history” and “big data”, including key texts by scholars like Fernand Braudel, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Geoffrey Bowker. We will explore the theoretical and methodological presuppositions of scaling, as well as the ethical and political implications, and will ask how scaling in the humanities relates to scaling practices in capitalist economies and the possible virtues of “non-scalability” (Tsing).
Key questions:
- How do longer or shorter time scales impact our objects of study?
- What happens if we change the time scale, by zooming in or out?
- Is there also an ontology of scale, in other words, are certain scales inherent to certain objects?
- What is the politics, and indeed, the economy and ecology, of temporal scale?
- What is the relationship between temporal scale and acceleration, both technological and social?
- How do the genres of longer time scales change humanities research (i.e. big history, deep history, distant reading, GIS temporal mapping etc.)
- In what ways are time scales linked to disciplines?
- Is there something like a human – and by implication, humanities – time scale?
The course will also have a practical side, where participants are asked to look at their objects of study at different temporal and spatial scales, and experiment with how
This is a 1 ECTS course.
Course preparations
Course participants will read the required readings, in total about 100 pages. Participants will write a brief (1-2 page) response paper where you critically engage with a proposition in one or several of these texts. You will also write a 2-3-page essay relating themes from the workshop to your own field or research project. The two texts, with references and bibliography, should be uploaded to the digital course site in Canvas by May 19.
In class
Your reflections will be the starting point for our discussions - in groups and plenary. Everyone is expected to read all essays submitted by the other course participants. Expect an interactive and problem-driven day. We start with discussing issues arising from your response-papers to the common readings. After lunch we move on to your reflections centering on your own field or research project. In-between we’ll do an exercise, in which you experiment with looking at your object of study in different temporal scales and analyze the implication of zooming in and out.
Language
The course language is English, including reading responses and essays. We may switch to Norwegian in discussions, if everyone is able to follow what is being said.
Registration
The course is open to PhD fellows, completion grant holders, and post-doctoral fellows at the Faculty of Humanities, other UiO faculties and external PhD fellows.
Registration opens 3 March at 12 noon and closes 5 May at 12 noon. Priority will be given to PhDs from the Faculty of Humanities, then PhDs from other Faculties at UiO, and lastly other applicants.
From 6 May, you may register for the course if there are still seats available.
Course convenor
Professor Helge Jordheim, helge.jordheim@ikos.uio.no
Postdoc Sine Halkjelsvik Bjordal, s.h.bjordal@ikos.uio.no
IKOS, responsible department
Curriculum
Bowker, G.C. (2019). The Time of Computers: From Babbage and the 1830s to the Present. In: Aspray, W. (eds) Historical Studies in Computing, Information, and Society. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.ezproxy.universitetetioslo.no/10.1007/978-3-030-18955-6_1
Chakrabarty, D. (2018), Anthropocene Time. History and Theory, 57: 5-32. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12044
Jordheim, H. (2022), Natural Histories for the Anthropocene: Koselleck's Theories and the Possibility of a History of Lifetimes. History and Theory., 61: 391-425. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12268
Shryock, Andrew, et al. “Introduction.” Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, 1st ed., University of California Press, 2011, pp. 3–20. JSTOR, Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present on JSTOR
Braudel, F (1960). History and the Social Sciences: The Long Duration. In: Political Research, Organization and Design, 3:6, 3-13