L. & A. Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science, PAS
Intellectual history. Stellar sciences. Mathematical instruments. Material/visual culture.
Minority cultures on the periphery of science: the Jews and the circulation of scientific goods (13th-17th c.) Social Sciences and Humanities
phone no. +48 739 689 752
josefinarodriguez@ihnpan.pl, rodriguezarribas@gmail.com
To understand the role of Jewish culture in the circulation of astronomical knowledge and tools by exploring the traces of inter-religious uses/circulation of mathematical instruments and their textual/visual sources.
The methodological approach concerns the textual, material, and visual cultures related to the new quadrant (my case study) as a cultural good that circulated across religions, languages, and borders bearing physical marks of the networks of this circulation and the individual and inter-religious exchanges. The specific methodological steps consist of: (1) the examination of the corpus of Jewish and non-Jewish manuscripts and prints related to the new quadrant; (2) the collection and examination of the technical diagrams and images of new quadrants appearing in Jewish manuscripts and prints and their analysis in the context of non-Jewish diagrams and images in circulation in Europe and the Mediterranean; (3) the examination of the existing corpus of new quadrants in museums and private collections.
Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas has been a research fellow in the USA, Israel, the UK, and Germany. The core of her research is the intellectual history of Jews with a focus on medieval scientific manuscripts, science, and technology (including astronomical instruments and divination). She is a co-editor of Unveiling the Hidden–Anticipating the Future: Divinatory Practices among Jews (Brill 2021) and Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures (Brill 2017 and 2019).
Rodríguez-Arribas, J., & Greenbaum, D. G. (2021). Unveiling the Hidden—Anticipating the Future: Divinatory Practices Among Jews Between Qumran and the Modern Period. Brill.
Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina (2020). Astral Sciences: Jewish Traditions and Practices in the Medieval World. In Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook, ed. Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers, and Hans-Christian Lehner, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 516–531.
Rodríguez-Arribas, J., & Kozodoy, M. (2020). Joseph ben Solomon Ṭaiṭaṣaq on the Construction of an Astrolabe: Study, Diplomatic Edition, and Annotated Translation. Aleph, 20(1-2), 7-101.
72 Nowy Świat, A09 00-330 Warsaw, Poland
Supervisor
Prof. Jarosław Włodarczyk
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