Date:
Location:
The Harvard Asia Center, Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard Center for African Studies, Harvard History Department, Harvard Early Modern History Workshop, Harvard Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard Center for History and Economics, Mellon Rare Book School, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs present a conference
This event proposes a new concept—“(dis)entanglement”—in order to provide alternative narratives of the early modern world, 1300-1800. Recent scholarship has emphasized the integrative nature of economic, material, and religious developments. In contrast, we will examine what the “global” could mean in intellectual and cultural interactions in terms of both integration and disintegration across multiple continents and oceans. The conference participants will explore how the notion of “(dis)entanglement” allows us to evoke a polycentric early modern world that is simultaneously connecting and disconnecting.
Organized by: Michael Tworek (Harvard), Stuart McManus (UChicago), Devin Fitzgerald (Harvard), and Anja Goeing (Harvard)
Contact, questions and to RSVP: Michael Tworek or Anja Goeing
PROGRAM
Introductory Remarks: 8:45-9:00am
Panel 1: Ideas: 9:00-10:30am
Chair: Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth University)
Xin Wen (Harvard University): "A Periphery Central to All: Hexi Corridor and the Geographical Productions of Eurasia (800-1000)"
Anand Venkatkrishnan (Oxford University): “Love in the Time of Scholarship: Religious Intellectuals in Early Modern India”
Michael Tworek (Harvard University): “The Homnivore’s Dilemma: (Dis)entangling Cannibalism in Dutch Brazil and Central Europe”
Discussant: Carolien Stolte (Leiden University)
Panel 2: Books: 10:45-12:15pm
Chair: Ann Blair (Harvard University)
Holly Shaffer (Dartmouth College): “Canton, Cochin, Java, London: Birds and Books in Flight”
Nir Shafir (University of California, San Diego): “Are Travelogues a Proper Proxy for Connectivity in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire?”
Devin Fitzgerald (Harvard University): “A Boring Book Abroad: Using The Collected Institutions of the Great Ming in 18th-Century Japan and Europe”
Discussant: Alexander Bevilacqua (Harvard Society of Fellows)
Panel 3: Scholarly Practices: 1:30-3:00pm
Chair: Tamar Herzog (Harvard University)
Ananya Chakravarti (Georgetown University): “In What Language Does the Global Speak? (Dis)entangling Marathi Christian Poetry”
Kristen Windmuller-Luna (Princeton University): “Idea over Praxis: Foreign Design and Native Labor in Early Modern Christian Ethiopian Architecture”
Stuart McManus (University of Chicago): “The Bourbon Reforms in the Philippines: (Dis)entangling Colonial Latin America from the Early Modern Muddle”
Discussant: Gregory Afinogenov (Harvard University)
Roundtable Discussion: 3:15-5:00pm
David Armitage (Harvard University)
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra (University of Texas, Austin)
Roger Chartier (University of Pennsylvania and Collège de France)
Eugenio Menegon (Boston University)
Laura Mitchell (University of California, Irvine)
Co-sponsors: Harvard Asia Center, Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard Center for African Studies, Harvard History Department, Harvard Early Modern History Workshop, Harvard Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard Center for History and Economics, Mellon Rare Book School, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Image: Dora Wheeler, Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night, 1886, silk embroidered with silk thread.