Making knowledge public in early modern Europe: a discussion on actors, theory, methods
Wednesday 07 May 2014 09:00 – 19:00,Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia, Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute. Sponsored by Carleton University.
The workshop aims at bringing together a group of PhD students, postdoctoral and senior researchers interested in the history of scholarship, of the written culture, and cultural institutions, to discuss problems related to the ordering and circulation of knowledge in the early modern period. The workshop seeks to address problems bearing upon the relationship between sites of knowledge (libraries, universities, print houses, botanical gardens, cabinets of curiosity), the exercise of power (patronage, propaganda, censorship), and the mobility of knowledge (media, networks, modes of transmission). In particular, the workshop will address the various methodological problems that arise in attempting to reconstruct the history of cultural practices. We will thus seek to critically evaluate the various actors and agents involved in the production and circulation of knowledge in the early modern world, and explore the role of archives of knowledge in the same time (correspondence, travel journals, notes, catalogues, etc.). Finally we would like to investigate the relationship between the object of historical knowledge (individuals, institutions, practices) and the scale of analysis. What kinds of histories are we able to write in regard to different forms of evidence? What results are obtained when different perspectives intersect and different methodologies are combined?