Doctoral Dissertation by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
This dissertation explores the popularisation of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in Romania ... more This dissertation explores the popularisation of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in Romania from 1859 to 1918. Placing Darwinism in the Romanian context is important in several ways, as not only gives a picture of the interconnectedness between the political and the scientific construction of knowledge, but also reveals how cultural hegemony was formed in the European periphery. The research traces the multidirectionality of scientific ideas, highlighting its top-down and bottom up character. It focuses on the social staging of Darwinism, materially and culturally (in printed texts and institutions), politically (in ideological contests and outcomes), and scientifically (in epistemological negotiations). Finally, it explores the relationship between these historical agents.
Special attention is given to science popularisation journals, pamphlets, manuals of natural history and museum artefacts in Romania, which addressed the evolutionary theory and its role for the adoption of the biological perspective in studies of ecology. To this end, the dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the social context in which scientific institutions and associations operated, exploring how Romanian naturalists acquired scientific authority, while deciding which scientific theories circulated in the public sphere. At the same time, the dissertation highlights how Darwinism was intertwined with ideas of racial, social and gender inequalities. Drawing on relevant comparisons with other countries, it reveals the development of a scientific public in
Romania at the end of the nineteenth century, and the role played by popular knowledge and counterpublics in scientific debates.
Articles by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
New Europe College Yearbook, 2023
This research investigates the development of the nature study movement in the secondary schools ... more This research investigates the development of the nature study movement in the secondary schools of Transylvania and the Romanian Kingdom between 1870 and 1914. Building on the scholarship dealing with the rise of the “biological perspective” in Germany, the paper deals with the roots of the Romanian nature preservation movement and its relationship with the political and economic projects of nation-building that developed in the dualist Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It analyses how methodological changes in the teaching of natural history and the introduction of teaching aids such as nature excursions, botanical school gardens, and celebrations of birds and trees, influenced the development of a nationalist, utilitarian, anthropocentric and racial approach toward the natural environment.
Journal of Romanian Studies, 2022
This study explores a neglected episode in the history of Romanian encounters with racial classif... more This study explores a neglected episode in the history of Romanian encounters with racial classification theories before and during the mid-nineteenth century. The study begins with a brief historiographic discussion and illustrates the recent debates concerning the definitions of the origins of scientific racism, as portrayed by Stephen Jay Gould and Nicolaas Rupke. Accordingly, the paper identifies three suggestive case studies (Iacob Czihac, Iuliu Barasch, Dimitrie Ananescu), which might shed some light on the intellectual roots of racial classifications in Romania. Placing the investigation within the emerging studies of the popularization of science, the paper argues that naturalists and physicians alike, trained and influenced by the German tradition of Naturphilsophie, were the ones to express their authority in reproducing and diffusing racial classifications and gendered concepts of reproduction.
Revista de Antropologie Urbana, 2020
The present paper explores the entanglements between the practice of science popularization and t... more The present paper explores the entanglements between the practice of science popularization and the diffusion of racial classification theories in the second half of the nineteenth-century Romania. Therefore, the study traces how official naturalists and intellectuals were involved in promoting race narratives, which were delivered in popular versions at the cultural platform of the Romanian Athenaeum of Bucharest. In contrast with the authority of recognized members of the high-class society, the paper also turns to the lesser-known counterpublics identified in form of anarchist popularizers of science, which frequently challenged the legitimacy of the official public discourse.
Popular Articles by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme Bulletin du CIRA, 2019
Popularization of Darwinism in Romanian Culture
Book Reviews by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Annuaire Roumain d'Anthropologie, 2024
Hungarian Historical Review, 2021
Inventing the Social in Romania sets out to explore what most historical scholarship has overlook... more Inventing the Social in Romania sets out to explore what most historical scholarship has overlooked so far, namely the articulation of the "social question" in modern Romania. Placing the analysis on the Eastern "semi-periphery" of European Empires, this work skillfully goes beyond the "colonizer and colonized" dichotomy and the supposition of the unidirectional flow of Western ideas of modernity, proposing instead a so-called "colonial continuum" and a "top-down and bottom-up" approach. Cotoi deploys an impressive interdisciplinary arsenal, working from perspectives that include social economy, the history of medicine, the history of science, and political history. In doing so, he maps out the staging of the "social question" by focusing on the interplay among numerous historical agencies, bringing together the transnational circulation of ideas and groups such as the "narodniks," the anarchists, the Marxists, and public health specialists. Based on a mixed neo-Foucauldian methodology, the work follows the political and intellectual biography of individuals who "crisscross chapters and themes, and travel inside the book, mirroring, somehow, their real life intellectual, emotional, and geographical trajectories" (p.11). However, non-human agents of change, such as bacteria, are also central to the argument, and Cotoi also looks at statistics, medical and hygiene diplomas, and national exhibitions in order to understand the main pandemic of the nineteenth century: cholera. Cotoi's book is organized in three parts and eight chapters and begins with an analysis of the discursive role played by three important Romanian revolutionaries who debated the significance of the "specter of communism" and its alien character for the social realities of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. One of these voices was the French-trained agronomist Ion Ionescu de la Brad, who, after his involvement in the Tanzimat movement in the Ottoman Empire, became a vocal political figure in the Romanian process of peasant emancipation and land reform. The second and third chapters are built on the "empty signifier of communism" created by the political tensions between 1848 revolutionaries and conservative boyars over the neo-feudal meaning of property and labor. Cotoi then gives voice to what much of the Romanian and Western historiography found difficult to put together: the international networks of exiled Russian narodniks and anarchists. The first to arrive in Romania was the Russian narodnik physician Nicolae Codreanu, a member of the "going to the
History: Journal of the Historical Association, 2020
History: Journal of the Historical Association, 2019
Conference Organization by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
International Graduate Student Conference. 20th–22nd Sept 2021.
The National and Kapodistrian Uni... more International Graduate Student Conference. 20th–22nd Sept 2021.
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens & The National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Online.
Co-organized by Beatriz Martínez-Rius (Sorbonne Université Paris), Jelena Stanulovic (University of Belgrade), Grigoris Panoutsopoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Cosmin Koszor-Codrea (Brooks University, Oxford), and Benjamin Wilck (Humboldt University Berlin).
Keynote speakers:
– Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens): “History of Science in the Age of Post-Truth”, 20 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Maria Paula Diogo (NOVA University of Lisbon), “Crisis and the Anthropocene”, 21 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Kostas Gavroglu (University of Athens): “The Dire Consequences of Constructing Utopias”, 22 September 2021, 18:00 EET
Conference Presentations by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Conference: Telciu Summer Conferences: Race, Sovereignties, and South-Eastern Thought, 2019
Conference: “Self-Fashioning Scientific Identities in the Long Nineteenth Century”At: University of Leicester
In a climate of secularization and state modernization, Romanian naturalists invested considerabl... more In a climate of secularization and state modernization, Romanian naturalists invested considerable thought and time in consolidating their academic positions, while also assuming the role of educators of the lay people. The aim of this paper is to discuss how Romanian nineteenth-century natural science played out into the public sphere debates. Focusing on the practice of science popularization, this talk will seek to answer questions regarding the idea of authority in Romanian natural science. How the line between professional knowledge and lay scientific opinion was constantly redrawn? What were the discontinuities between these two types of discourses? Focusing on the practice of science popularization and taking as a case study the career of Gregoriu tefănescu (1836-1911), one of the most preeminent figures in Romanian geology, this paper will explore the various ways in which efănescu managed to gain access to political and university positions, thus influencing the official scientific discourse. First, the talk will briefly address the proliferation and objectives of Romanian science popularization during the nineteenth century; secondly, it will critically asses tefănescu's academic career, taking into account the articles published in periodical journals and public lectures that helped cement his reputation; finally, in order to have a better understanding of tefănecu's life and work, my analysis will take in account his critics such as Matei Drăghiceanu (1844-1939) who was at the time excluded from major geological projects of the country.
Conference: Population in Historical Perspective At: Oxford Brookes University
Reports by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Calls for Papers by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
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Doctoral Dissertation by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Special attention is given to science popularisation journals, pamphlets, manuals of natural history and museum artefacts in Romania, which addressed the evolutionary theory and its role for the adoption of the biological perspective in studies of ecology. To this end, the dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the social context in which scientific institutions and associations operated, exploring how Romanian naturalists acquired scientific authority, while deciding which scientific theories circulated in the public sphere. At the same time, the dissertation highlights how Darwinism was intertwined with ideas of racial, social and gender inequalities. Drawing on relevant comparisons with other countries, it reveals the development of a scientific public in
Romania at the end of the nineteenth century, and the role played by popular knowledge and counterpublics in scientific debates.
Articles by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Popular Articles by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Book Reviews by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Conference Organization by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens & The National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Online.
Co-organized by Beatriz Martínez-Rius (Sorbonne Université Paris), Jelena Stanulovic (University of Belgrade), Grigoris Panoutsopoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Cosmin Koszor-Codrea (Brooks University, Oxford), and Benjamin Wilck (Humboldt University Berlin).
Keynote speakers:
– Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens): “History of Science in the Age of Post-Truth”, 20 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Maria Paula Diogo (NOVA University of Lisbon), “Crisis and the Anthropocene”, 21 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Kostas Gavroglu (University of Athens): “The Dire Consequences of Constructing Utopias”, 22 September 2021, 18:00 EET
Conference Presentations by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Reports by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Calls for Papers by Cosmin Koszor Codrea
Special attention is given to science popularisation journals, pamphlets, manuals of natural history and museum artefacts in Romania, which addressed the evolutionary theory and its role for the adoption of the biological perspective in studies of ecology. To this end, the dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the social context in which scientific institutions and associations operated, exploring how Romanian naturalists acquired scientific authority, while deciding which scientific theories circulated in the public sphere. At the same time, the dissertation highlights how Darwinism was intertwined with ideas of racial, social and gender inequalities. Drawing on relevant comparisons with other countries, it reveals the development of a scientific public in
Romania at the end of the nineteenth century, and the role played by popular knowledge and counterpublics in scientific debates.
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens & The National Hellenic Research Foundation.
Online.
Co-organized by Beatriz Martínez-Rius (Sorbonne Université Paris), Jelena Stanulovic (University of Belgrade), Grigoris Panoutsopoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Cosmin Koszor-Codrea (Brooks University, Oxford), and Benjamin Wilck (Humboldt University Berlin).
Keynote speakers:
– Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens): “History of Science in the Age of Post-Truth”, 20 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Maria Paula Diogo (NOVA University of Lisbon), “Crisis and the Anthropocene”, 21 September 2021, 18:00 EET
– Kostas Gavroglu (University of Athens): “The Dire Consequences of Constructing Utopias”, 22 September 2021, 18:00 EET