"Troubling Epistemics and Postcolonialism" is a monthly reading seminar interrogating 'postcolonial' as an analytic concept in the history of science. The goal is to understand the ethics and mechanisms of our own epistemic practices as they relate to politics and power. We aim to examine the ways that epistemology is both historically contingent and actively produced within the history of science with the goal of troubling our disciplinary positions. For each meeting we list and circulate

1. a short 'provocative text' to carry the empirical element and to provoke us to go wider in attempting to attend to something that troubles. Everyone is expected to read that text. In addition,
2. we identify two or three 'theoretical' or descriptive papers that we feel might be useful in 'attending to the trouble.' These are optional readings. The idea is that everyone who attends the discussion will have read at least the short provocation paper and bring some 'troubles' to the meeting.