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"Born out of the optimism of the Paris Peace Conference, the League of Nations, and women's suffrage in Britain and the United States, the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) was founded in 1920 and consciously set out to break the mold of prewar society. To achieve sweeping professional and social change, the IFUW brought together women passionately committed to promoting higher education as a means to achieve international understanding, and launched an international academic women's network to achieve these objectives, weaving together personal friendships and professional contacts across divisions hardened by the unprecedented ordeal of global conflict. At its peak, the IFUW had 24,000 members and had expanded to thirty nations. In this fascinating transnational study, Christine von Oertzen traces the IFUW's rise in the international arena and its eventual decline in the Cold War era, making a valuable contribution to the cultural histories of diplomacy and intellectual exchange"--

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Paper, Gender, and the History of Knowledge - Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oertzen -- Part I. Beyond the Page: The Sociomaterial History of Paper -- One. Letter Writing and Paper Connoisseurship in Elite Households in Early Modern England - Heather Wolfe -- Two. Papering the Household: Paper, Recipes, and Everyday Technologies in Early Modern England - Elaine Leong -- Three. The Sociomateriality of Waste and Scrap Paper in Eighteenth-Century England - Simon Werrett -- Four. Paper Trials, Multiple Masculinities, and the Oeconomy of Honor - Gabriella Szalay -- Part II. Transcending Boundaries: Tools and Technologies -- Five. Bookkeeping for Caring: Notebooks, Parchment Slips, and Enlightened Medical Arithmetic in Madrid's Foundling House - Elena Serrano -- Six. Unpacking the Phrenological Toolkit: Knowledge and Identity in Antebellum America - Carla Bittel -- Seven. Keeping Prussia's House in Order: Census Cards, Housewifery, and the State's Data Compilation - Christine von Oertzen -- Eight. Tracing Paper, the Posture Sciences, and the Mapping of the Female Body - Beth Linker -- Part III. Knowledge, Power, and the Everyday -- Nine. A Letter Is a Paper House: Home, Family, and Natural Knowledge - Elizabeth Yale -- Ten. Family Notebooks, Mnemotechnics, and the Rational Education of Margaret Monro - Matthew Daniel Eddy -- Eleven. Papier-Mâché Anatomical Models: The Making of Reform and Empire in Nineteenth-Century France and Beyond - Anna Maerker -- Twelve. Women Who Worked with Documents to Rationalize Reproduction - Dan Bouk -- Afterword: Making and Using Paper in Late Imperial China: Comparative Reflections on Working and Knowing beyond the Page - Jacob Eyferth -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index.

Science depends on the unexpected. Yet surprise and its role in the process of scientific knowledge-making has hitherto received little attention, let alone systematic investigation. This collection explores surprise as a historical category, as a staged performance or as a spontaneous reaction, or as part of a personal experience during scholarly endeavors. The texts are arranged in alphabetical order by author's last name, and ranging, randomly, from "A Family Conversation" to "Zufallsfunde." The arbitrariness of that order is meant to suggest the indefinite and surprising ramifications of human understanding. The volume is less a purely erudite collection than an epistemic and emotional exercise in friendship and gratitude, offered by members of Department II in honor of Lorraine Daston.