Performing Science, Mediating Knowledge (Hardcover)

Performing Science, Mediating Knowledge examines how science was staged, embodied, and made visible in the long nineteenth century -- a period defined by rapid technological transformation and an expanding public culture of knowledge. Moving across settings such as lecture halls, world's fairs, opera houses, scientific congresses, and travelling fairgrounds, this volume traces the heterogeneous performance cultures through which scientific ideas circulated, were challenged, and gained authority.

Drawing on performance studies, media history, and the histories of science and knowledge, the chapters analyse how rhetoric address, bodily gestures, visual media, scenography, and audience interaction shaped both the credibility and the appeal of scientific claims.

Foregrounding the wide range of actors involved -- scientists, showpeople, artists, lecturers -- and the various media and venues through which science entered the public sphere, the chapters reveal how scientific ideas were shaped through practices of staging, and how science functioned as a cultural practice embedded in the political, social, and aesthetic dynamics of the nineteenth century.

Nele Wynants is assistant research professor at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA) at the University of Antwerp and the principal investigator of the EU-funded project 'Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850-1914'.

Eva Andersen is project and data manager 'Glashelder' at Ghent University and previously worked on the EU-funded project 'Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850-1914' at the University of Antwerp.