Knowledge is Survival: A New History of American Exploration

知识就是生存：美国探索新史

• 批准号: 2317588
• 负责人: Cameron Strang
• 金额: $ 9.62万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-07-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2317588&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Knowledge; Survival; New; History; American

This project rethinks the performers, goals, and geopolitical consequences of American exploration. It investigates how and why diverse women and men pursued, interpreted, and reported knowledge amid exploratory travel and how they applied what they learned to help their communities endure a world shaped by colonial violence. The history of exploration is already a topic of immense interest among the American public; indeed, for many Americans, the exploration and peopling of the continent remains the central story of national science and society. The field thus offers a unique opportunity in the history of science, a chance to introduce the public to a far richer cast of knowledge producers through fascinating stories that eschew the triumphant Eurocentrism embedded in popular conceptions of science and exploration. By demonstrating that one of America’s most iconic scientific pursuits was thoroughly diverse from the beginning, this project can help more Americans envision themselves as researchers and, potentially, advance representation in the sciences today. The overarching goal of this project is to address the following research question: What does American exploration look like when we include all of the peoples who engaged in it? Based on interdisciplinary research, Knowledge is Survival argues that diverse individuals explored North America as an intellectual strategy for resisting domination and destruction. Despite centuries—and, for Indigenous people, millennia—of investigating the continent, non-white explorers have been almost entirely absent from histories of exploration. This neglect has not merely led to an incomplete story but has distorted some of the field’s core premises. Scholars have long emphasized connections between knowledge and power, particularly how ambitions to control lands and peoples engendered exploration and how the knowledge developed through exploration encouraged conquest. However, these connections were only half the story of knowledge, power, and exploration. Far from seeking to rule over others, many American explorers pursued discoveries that promised to help their own people overcome subjection or survive elimination.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个项目重新思考美国探索的执行者，目标和地缘政治后果。它调查了不同的妇女和男子如何以及为什么在探索旅行中追求，解释和报告知识，以及他们如何应用所学知识帮助他们的社区忍受殖民暴力塑造的世界。探索的历史已经是美国公众非常感兴趣的话题;事实上，对许多美国人来说，对非洲大陆的探索和定居仍然是国家科学和社会的中心故事。因此，这一领域在科学史上提供了一个独特的机会，一个通过引人入胜的故事向公众介绍更丰富的知识生产者的机会，这些故事避开了流行的科学和探索概念中的胜利欧洲中心主义。通过证明美国最具标志性的科学追求之一从一开始就完全不同，这个项目可以帮助更多的美国人将自己想象成研究人员，并有可能在今天的科学中取得进步。 这个项目的首要目标是解决以下研究问题：当我们包括所有参与其中的人时，美国的探索是什么样子的？基于跨学科的研究，知识就是生存认为，不同的个人探索北美作为一种智力战略，以抵抗统治和破坏。尽管几个世纪以来，对土著人来说，数千年来一直在调查这片大陆，但非白人探险家几乎完全没有出现在探险史上。这种忽视不仅导致了一个不完整的故事，而且扭曲了该领域的一些核心前提。长期以来，学者们一直强调知识与权力之间的联系，特别是控制土地和人民的野心如何引发探索，以及通过探索发展的知识如何鼓励征服。然而，这些联系只是知识、力量和探索故事的一半。许多美国探险家并不寻求统治他人，而是追求那些有望帮助自己的人民克服征服或生存下来的发现。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。