CfP: 'Encountering Knowledge: Geographies, Concepts and Materials from the Early Modern Period to the Present'
'Encountering Knowledge: Geographies, Concepts and Materials from the Early Modern Period to the Present', Faculty of English, Cambridge 27 September 2018
This workshop invites scholars to discuss the boundaries and defining characteristics of cultural encounters across spaces and time periods though the lens of knowledge. The scope of this event is to tackle issues related to accessing, conceptualizing and exploring different epistemic regimes by looking at past and present encounters of knowledge from an interdisciplinary perspective.
In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in the movement, localization and ecologies of knowledge. The resulting body of scholarly work has made western dichotomies –such as west and east, centre and periphery, nature and culture, global and indigenous—fall short. In addition, cultural approaches to the study of knowledge have moved away from the study of disembodied ideas to stress the role of human agency, material culture, and social practices in the production and circulation of knowledge. The focus placed on processes (and ideas) of imposition, negotiation, appropriation, assimilation, and hybridization –to name a few—have transformed our understanding of the mechanics of knowledge making and interaction. In doing so, these recent insights have questioned long-standing theoretical frameworks and posed new conceptual and methodological challenges. Even more, they have made necessary to reassess what constitutes as encounter and how we categorize and explore knowledge.
To this aim, we invite postgraduates and early career scholars to present contributions that address problems of conceptualization, language and sources (taking into account heuristic methods, epistemic values and political significances) by focusing on singular cases of knowledge encounter. We particularly encourage papers on material culture studies, the history and philosophy of science, sociology and anthropology, art history, environmental humanities, language studies, and cultural and intellectual history.
Applications for 30 min papers may be sent to lp466@cam.ac.uk by 1st August 2018. Abstracts must not exceed 300 words. Applicants should also provide a short bio stating their institutional affiliation, academic position, research interests and other relevant information up to 500 words. Enquiries may be addressed to the same email.