Project Description:

The fate of the Royal Library of Alexandria, the incineration of Mayan texts by Fray Diego de Landa, and the mass looting of the Baghdad Museum in modern times all bear witness to the ways in which vast storehouses of knowledge can disappear in the course of single, cataclysmic events. But what about those forms of large-scale loss which take place, not instantaneously, but incrementally and imperceptibly? What about those forms of disappearance which take place, not at the hands of armies or looters, but as the unintentional and unexpected byproducts of everyday life?

Launched with the generous support of the Stanford Humanities Lab, Project Absentia (PA) explores the phenomenon of unintentional loss in its myriad forms. With the assistance of the program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, PA has already prepared a pilot session in May of this year that will feature presentations by leading scholars in the fields of Information Studies and STS: Christine Borgman, Presidential Chair of Information Studies at UCLA, and Geoffrey Bowker, Executive Director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University. During this session, we will examine the phenomenon of unintentional, catastrophic data loss, investigating the processes by which vast collections of information can disappear despite concerted efforts to maintain and preserve them.

Based upon this exploratory session, Project Absentia will expand next year to involve eleven disciplines: STS, Linguistics, Information Studies, History, Conservation Biology, Cognitive Science, Archival and Library Science, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Actuarial Science. Whether viewed through the lens of extinction, forgetting, ruin, obsolescence, or degradation, the phenomenon of unintentional disappearance constitutes a central concern for each of these branches of research. However, there is at present no arena for interdisciplinary dialogue.

To facilitate such dialogue, and to serve as a common thread throughout the year, the centerpiece of next year’s work will be the Disappearance Studies Working Group, composed of Stanford University faculty and graduate students hailing from a wide variety of departments and disciplines. To date, seventeen members of the Stanford community have expressed interest in the series, representing the disciplines of History, Computer Science, Archaeology, Classics, Anthropological Sciences, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Library Science (see below).

The working group will convene ten times over the course of 2007-8 to engage in interdisciplinary discussion and to present works-in-progress. During six of these sessions, one or another of the graduate student members of the working group will moderate presentations by visiting scholars. Each of these sessions will feature a pair of presenters, each hailing from one of the above-named disciplines, who will converse cross-paradigmatically about a particular mode of disappearance which their fields share in common. In the inaugural session, for example, extinction will serve as the centerpiece of a discussion between Conservation Biology and Linguistics, two disciplines that possess a rich yet mutually distinct understanding of the dynamics of intergenerational transmission and the manifold ways it can break down. In another session, dislocation – the process by which an individual or entity is delinked from the network of relations that give it meaning and uphold its existence – will anchor a discussion between Anthropology and Archival Science. The first of these disciplines addresses dislocation through the lens of “social death” and the second by means of “orphaned data.”

Processes of unknowing will also be explored, bringing together a comparative analysis of forgetting, as examined from the perspective of Cognitive Science, and knowledge cancellation, as discussed in the pathbreaking subfield of Agnotology. In a separate session, attention will be turned to ruin as understood through the disciplinary lenses of Actuarial Science and Archaeology. Following each of these sessions, the working group will convene to summarize and discuss the presentations and to prepare the online content, in the for of podcasts and videocasts.

Core personnel:

• Thomas S. Mullaney, Assistant Professor, Modern Chinese History; Director, Center for the Comparative Study of Disappearance
• Carl Hewitt, Professor, Computer Science
• Melissa J. Brown, Assistant Professor, Anthropological Sciences
• Sonja Schmid, Science Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation
• Victoria Reich, Director, LOCKSS Program, Stanford University Libraries
• Jennifer Trimble, Associate Professor, Department of Classics
• Michael Shanks, Professor, Department of Classics; Director, Stanford Humanities Lab; Director, Stanford Archaeology Center
• Reviel Netz, Professor, Department of Classics (Department of Philosophy by courtesy)
• Hilde De Weerdt, Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, 2006-7
• Jonah Willihnganz, Stanford Humanities Center Fellow, 2006-7
• Carolyn Lougee, Professor of Early Modern European History, Department of History
• Jessica Riskin, Assistant Professor, Department of History
• Josh Howe, Graduate Student, Department of History
• Kären Wigen, Associate Professor of Japanese History, Department of History
• Lydia Barnett, Graduate Student, History of Science, Department of History
• Matthew Sommer, Associate Professor of Chinese History, Department of History
• Mia Bruch, Post-Doctoral Fellow, IHUM Program
• Yair Mintzker, Graduate Student, Department of History