Introduction to Project Absentia (full website coming 2008)

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 largely unnoticed byproducts of everyday life?

Launched in 2006 with the support of the Stanford Humanities Lab, the Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Suppes Center, Project Absentia hosted its inaugural session in May 2006 with presentations by two 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, titled How and Why Data Disappear, we examined 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. The session was an immense success, generating discussion among a highly interdisciplinary audience in a packed board room.

Building on that energy, Project Absentia has now moved into the second and final year of Phase One, having established an international network of scholars from a wide range of disciplines who will come together to analyze and compare disappearance from a collaborative, empirical, and interdisciplinary perspective.

Over the course of a five-month series, running from January to May 2008, the program will feature speakers and participants hailing from Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Environmental Studies, History, Information Studies, Latin American Studies, Library Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Science, Technology and Society (STS).

2008 Schedule (PDF Series Poster here)

January 10: Introduction to Project Absentia & Screening of A Certain Kind of Death

January 24: How Do Languages Disappear?
Lindsay J. Whaley, Chair, Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Dartmouth College

February 7: Open Roundtable Discussion (more details soon)

March 6: Waging the Technological War on Oblivion: A Report from the Front Lines
Jean-François Blanchette, Information Studies, UCLA

April 3: How Do Concepts Disappear?
Yair Mintzker, Department of History, Stanford University

April 10: How Does a Species Disappear?
Jon Christensen, Department of History, Stanford University

May 1: Open Roundtable Discussion (more details soon)

May 15: How Does a Human Being Disappear?
João Biehl, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University

May 29: How Does Everything Disappear?
Thomas S. Mullaney, Department of History, Stanford University

All Events 4:15-6:00 pm in Building 200 (History Corner) Room 307

Contact: Professor Thomas S. Mullaney, Department of History, tsmullaney [at] stanford [dot] edu

Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center, Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Department of History, Suppes Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American Studies, Department of Linguistics, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford Humanities Lab, and the Woods Institute for the Environment, Environmental Forum