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Science and Sociability: Women as Audience at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1901

Higgitt, Rebekah F., Wither, Charles W J (2008) Science and Sociability: Women as Audience at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1901. Isis, 99 (1). pp. 1-27. ISSN 1545-6994. (doi:10.1086/587538) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:40724)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/587538

Abstract

This essay recovers the experiences of women at the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) from its founding in 1831 to the end of the Victorian era. It aims to add to research on women in science by reconsidering the traditional role of women as consumers rather than producers of knowledge and to that on science popularization by focusing on audience experience rather than on the aims and strategies of popularizers. The essay argues that, in various ways, the ubiquitous and visible female audience came to define the BAAS audience and 'the public' for science more generally. The women who swelled the BAAS audiences were accepted as a social element within the meetings even as they were regarded critically as scientific elites to distance themselves from their audiences. Arguing from diary and other evidence, we present examples that complicate exciting notions of audiences for science as necessarily active.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1086/587538
Additional information: questionable eprint id: 32121;
Subjects: C Auxiliary Sciences of History > C Auxiliary sciences of history (General)
D History General and Old World
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User: Stewart Brownrigg
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2014 00:05 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40724 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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