Forwarded Message from Nordic Network for Global Cultural History
<[log in to unmask]>:
Call for Papers: Cultural Encounters and Historical Practice
Conference November 7-9, 2007, Carlsberg Akademi, Copenhagen, Denmark
With the third and final conference in the Nordic network for Global
Cultural History we wish to engage scholars studying cultural encounters
in the context of European colonial expansion after 1500 by broaching
questions of theory and methodology.
The study of cultural encounters has been conducted in a variety of ways,
with multiple theoretical and methodological approaches stretching from
ethnohistory and microhistory to new historicism and postcolonial
deconstruction, to mention but a few. In this conference we hope to
explore how the study of cultural encounters is practiced by individual
scholars and how individual histories of specific encounters can be
related to the development of global economic, political, and cultural
structures.
During the conference we will discuss the limits and possibilities of
different methodological and theoretical approaches to historical cultural
encounters. We therefore seek contributions from scholars who reflect on
their own practice: on the methods and theories they employ, the sources
they explore, the contexts they relate to (pre-colonial, colonial,
imperial, postcolonial and so on), and/or the narratives they have
constructed.
Some of the many questions that we want to approach are:
- What is, or when is, a cultural encounter?
- What is the place of cultural encounters in global history?
- How does it influence our practice to adopt concepts like the Atlantic
world, globalization, colonialism, or empire?
- In what ways is it useful to compare different cultural encounters like
mission, trade, colonial or intimate encounters in order to establish the
specificities of and similarities between cultural encounters?
- What is the balance between internal dynamics of specific encounters and
the larger structures by which they are shaped and to which they add? What
are the connections between specific encounters and the mapping of the
larger chronology of colonialism and capitalism?
- How does the history of people who did not produce written documents
differ from those who did and how do we ensure that our analyses of the
encounter deal with both sides?
Sessions may include:
The concept of cultural encounter
Cultural encounters and structural change
Violent clashes and cultural confrontations
Pre-colonial, colonial, postcolonial cultural encounters
Economic structures and cultural encounters
Legal, intimate, and mission encounters in comparative perspective
Writing encounters with multiple perspectives - the problem of asymmetric
sources
Strategies for writing the history of peoples without written documents
Europeans abroad - non-Europeans in Europe
Counting and quantification as a way of studying cultural encounters
Material culture and cultural encounters
Imperial ideologies as shaping or being shaped by concrete encounters
Please submit proposals for individual presentations or panels to
[log in to unmask] by May 1, 2007. We especially encourage
proposals for panels.
Nordic Network for Global Cultural History
University of Aarhus
Department for History and Area Studies
Ndr. Ringgade
DK 8000 Aarhus C.
Phone: (+45) 89421111
Email: [log in to unmask]
Visit the website at http://www.globalkulturhistorie.au.dk
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