ALL FOR PAPERS REMINDER (deadline 31 July 2010)
The Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700
Birkbeck, University of London, 24-5 June, 2011.
An international conference organized with support from
The Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Renaissance Studies and Birkbeck,
University of London
Confirmed speakers
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto (Notre Dame),
Professor Pamela Smith (Columbia), Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés (London School of
Economics)
PLENARY SPEAKERS: Professor Ricardo Padrón (Virginia), Professor Nicolás Wey-
Gómez (Brown/Caltech), Dr Michiel van Groesen (Amsterdam)
AFTERWORD: Professor Peter Burke (Cambridge)
The period 1450-1700 saw the expansion of European seaborne reconnaissance
of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, which would lead to long-distance
European empires in these regions. It also witnessed changes in European
knowledge-making practices that heralded what is often termed the Scientific
Revolution.
This conference will investigate the impact of European exploration and travel
on the structures, contents and sources of authority of European knowledge c.
1450-1700. It seeks to explore connections between the making of knowledge
and a broad range of intellectual, political, cultural, religious and mercantile
encounters between Europe and the wider world. It aims to bring together
scholars from different disciplines working on any aspect of European
knowledge that included an extra-European dimension. Forms of knowledge
under consideration include ethnology, natural history, botany, natural
philosophy, geography, cartography, medicine and chronology.
Overarching questions
* In what ways was European knowledge re-shaped by exploration, imperialism
and colonialism?
* To what extent did indigenous knowledge systems influence European
‘science’?
* How did information about distant places circulate, and how was it changed by
circulation?
* What was the nature of the exchanges of information and expertise between
travellers, missionaries, colonial administrators, indigenous informants,
artisans, scholars, readers and other groups from different countries? What
challenges did these exchanges pose for testimony and authority?
* What was the impact of colonial rivalries on the ways in which information was
interpreted, used and disseminated?
Possible panel themes might include:
first-hand testimony and authority; expectations and observations; circulation
networks; artisans and learned societies; cultural encounters and indigenous
knowledge; gender and knowledge; empire and knowledge; commerce and
collecting; classification and the structures of knowledge; visual culture.
Proposals are welcomed for full panels and individual papers (25 mins).
Individual submissions should comprise a paper title, abstract (up to 300 words)
and brief CV (max. one page) emphasizing publications. For full panel
proposals, please include an additional 300-word description of the panel itself.
Submissions should be sent to the conference organizer, Dr Surekha Davies
(Birkbeck, University of London) at [log in to unmask], and to Prof. Ricardo
Padrón (University of Virginia) at [log in to unmask]
by 31 July 2010. A selection of papers will be published as a peer-reviewed
edited collection.
The call for papers is online on a number of web-pages, including:
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hca/staff/surekhadavies (downloadable PdF poster)
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hca/about/conferences/globaldimensionsofknowledge
http://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRSEvents%20(Conferences).html
http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/1706
For further inquiries, please contact Dr Surekha Davies ([log in to unmask]).