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