A @columbiacss Research Cluster led by @ps2270 reconstructing 15th-17th c. craft techniques. See #edition640 for yourself: https://xitter.cf/t.co/i0RnRRxotl
Columbia University
Joined December 2014
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Making And Knowing Project retweeted
We are thrilled to announce that our Founding Director Pamela Smith has been awarded the History of Science Society's most prestigious prize, the Sarton Medal.
Congratulations Pamela!
Learn more via our website: tinyurl.com/phs-sarton
ALT Founding Director Pamela Smith Awarded Sarton Medal.
Making And Knowing Project retweeted
In fall 2024, CSS and @MakingKnowing hosted expert textile dyers Bertha Estrada Huipe and Mateo Rodriguez Estrada from Ahuirán, Mexico. Learn more about their decades of experience and experimentation in our new video! youtu.be/95KdMq72SXk
Hands-on experimentation doesn’t need to be expensive or exclusive. The Companion’s resources can be scaled for various levels of learners, budgets, and research spaces. Start exploring today with teaching640.makingandknowing…
ALT students showing their work in a classroom.
The Companion is our guide to clearing these practical and pedagogical hurdles. It’s a behind-the-scenes guide to the workflows, challenges, and successes that come with hands-on learning.
ALT student working on laptop will well-annotated essay.
The benefits of this collaborative combination of research and teaching are clear. Yet it can be difficult to incorporate hands-on learning in the classroom. Hands-on learning is—by its very essence—difficult to codify and describe.
ALT Group photo of students and instructors in a laboratory
Hands-on work fostered a spirit of collaboration and creativity, allowing students and their instructors to work side by side and learn together. Each day in the lab was a chance to try again and build on our past failures and successes.
ALT students in lab talking with instructors.
Instead of textbooks, M&K used low-stakes making activities to highlight other forms of knowledge: making, experimentation, collaboration, and failure. Students learned to interpret historical texts—and history itself—through materials.
ALT zoom screenshot of students holding up papers with homemade paint.
But the process of creating the edition was just as important as our results. Pedagogy was integrated with original interdisciplinary and collaborative research, opening scientific inquiry to humanities students and vice versa. teaching640.makingandknowing…
ALT image of teacher helping student pour liquid out of beaker in a laboratory.
Learn how and why this led to our Research and Teaching Companion next week! teaching640.makingandknowing…
The result was our digital critical edition. It’s not only an online version of the manuscript, it includes multimedia essays, glossaries, and search functions to help readers explore and find new meanings in our work.
ALT Homepage of the digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature
Hands-on learning allowed us to uncover historical questions embedded in the text that would have otherwise remained inaccessible and helped generate key insights into the relationship between scientific knowing and craft-making in early modern Europe.
ALT Student filming another student making ink
Over 7 years, students, scholars, and practitioners from across disciplines worked together in a boundary-breaking endeavor to research and reconstruct some of the manuscript’s 900 recipes for art objects, medical remedies, and household items.
ALT students working in a laboratory
Why create a Research and Teaching Companion? To answer that, we flashback to 2014, when Professor Pamela Smith founded the Making and Knowing Project to study a 16th-century French artisanal manuscript via interdisciplinary teaching, research, and digital analysis.
ALT manuscript book cover
Making And Knowing Project retweeted
Out now! ⬇️
And OPEN ACCESS on manchesterhive🔓
The newest addition to our #SDMC series is 'Refashioning the Renaissance: Everyday dress in Europe, 1500-1650'
Providing new perspectives on early modern clothing and fashion history 🪡
Four years after publishing our digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature, we are thrilled to share its Research and Teaching Companion! These resources and tools help bring history to life in any classroom. teaching640.makingandknowing…
ALT Thumbnail images
Looking to bring hands-on history into your classroom? Our Research and Teaching Companion shows how experiential learning can be adapted to any space, learner level, or budget with lesson plans, case studies, and other resources. Discover it for yourself: teaching640.makingandknowing…
ALT Making and Knowing Project Research and Teaching Companion
Our students have been in the lab making cochineal lake pigments! Found growing on cactuses in Mexico and South America, the cochineal insect revolutionized pigments and dyes. Trace empire through color and learn how to make pigments at home: tinyurl.com/rtc-cochineal
ALT Beaker in lab filled with red pigment
ALT Student working in lab
ALT students working in lab.
Making And Knowing Project retweeted
For 10 days, we had the incredible honor of hosting expert textile dyers Bertha Estrada Huipe and Mateo Rodriguez Estrada! They shared the environmental, historical, and tacit knowledge embedded in the Purépecha dyeing tradition with students through hands-on experimentation.
ALT students in lab
ALT dyed textiles hanging in lab
ALT Student stirring a dye bath
Making And Knowing Project retweeted
Join us on Oct 4 to learn more about the Purépecha dyeing tradition with Bertha Estrada and Mateo Rodriguez! Students will also showcase their textile results and insights from their hands-on experience alongside these experts. RSVP: tinyurl.com/2s3emeby
ALT Making and Knowing Dyeing Showcase with Bertha Estrada Huipe. Oct 4 10am-12pm Fayerweather Hall Room 513. 1180 Amsterdam Avenue
Making And Knowing Project retweeted
We are thrilled to announce our new minor in Science and Society starting this fall! Undergraduate students will be able to explore the societal implications of science, tech, health, and the environment. Learn more: tinyurl.com/css-minor
ALT Science and society minor