About
The current moment is defined by increasingly precise forms of surveillance, search, and tracking. As these technologies inspire new ways to curate information, they also pose a challenge. How can we balance the drive to produce knowledge that is synthetic, ordered, and accessible while preserving the singularity of objects, persons, experiences?
The Order of Multitudes, a Mellon Sawyer Seminar for 2020-21 at Yale University, responds to this challenge by diving into the genealogy of big data. By studying the long history of attempts to contain data within the genres of atlas, encyclopedia, and museum, we hope to reimagine the making of universal knowledge as an inclusive, egalitarian, historically grounded, and ethically charged enterprise.
Overview of the Sawyer Seminar
We invite you to explore our ongoing research, upcoming events, and funding opportunities, and to share your own ideas. Our programs are designed to bring together a wide range of thinkers, researchers, and students interested in the challenges of big data, along with curators of material and digital collections in the arts and sciences.
The Organization
Faculty Leaders:
Ayesha Ramachandran
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Deborah Coen
Professor of History and History of Science and Medicine, Yale University
Marta Figlerowicz
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Yale University
Lisa Messeri
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Yale University
Richard Prum
William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University
Travis Zadeh
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University
Other faculty:
Chitra Ramalingam
Lecturer in the Program in History of Science and Medicine and the Department History, Yale University; Associate Curator of Photography, Yale Center for British Art
Patrick Sweeney
Collections Manager, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
Paola Bertucci
Associate Professor of History and History of Science and Medicine, Yale University; Curator of the History of Science and Technology Division, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
Joanna Radin
Associate Professor of History and the History of Science and Medicine, Yale University
John Peters
María Rosa Menocal Professor of English; Professor of Film and Media Studies, Yale University
Postdoctoral Associate:
Michael Faciejew
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University
Graduate Fellows:
Allison Chu
PhD Student, Department of Music, Yale University
Sarah Pickman
PhD Candidate, Program in the History of Science and Medicine, Yale University
Yi Lu
PhD Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University