Cfp: Workshop --- Telling a different story: non-linear narratives in early modern history
Workshop title: Telling a different story: non-linear narratives in early modern history
Organizers: Fabrizio Baldassarri & Matthias Roick
Venue: ICUB-University of Bucharest
Dates: March 19-20, 2020
Invited
Speakers: Francesco Barreca (Museo Galileo), Dominique Brancher (Basel
University), Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (Copenhagen University), Christiane
Frey (Humboldt University Berlin), Christia Mercer (Columbia
University), Iolanda Ventura (University of Bologna)
Deadline cfp: December 15th, 2019
CFP:
The workshop is intended for scholars from different fields of early
modern studies, who want to explore alternative paths in the narration
of early modern culture. Rather than proceeding along well-trodden
paths, non-linear narratives aim to shed new focus on the less
well-known corners, and move in the more ‘secluded’ regions of the past.
When applied to the writing of history, the idea of non-linear
narratives invites, on the one hand, to deliberate the theoretical
nature of narrative structures and temporalities; on the other hand, it
raises practical questions on how to employ non-linear narratives in
historical writings and find alternatives to ‘genealogical’ writings
that track the lineages of new, ideas, practices, and institutions.
Through
several case studies, such as expanding the perspective on outsiders,
heretics, women, and losers, or inspecting new frontiers of knowledge
(from ontology and metaphysics, to cosmology, alchemy and botany, and to
ethics and politics), or constructing alternative (hi)stories and
narrations, such as eclecticism, opposing methodologies, and unearthing
shadows in the age of evidence and light (such as irrationality
enshrined in the age of reason), the workshop is not intended to simply
present one’s own research, but aims to reflect on the role of
alternative narrations while telling a different story.- Interventions aim to both investigate non-linear narratives, their actors, methodologies, and disciplines, and answer these methodological questions.
- How would you describe the ‘grand narratives’ in your field? To which extent do they still dominate your field, explicitly or implicitly?
- How does your own research relate to these narratives? Where do you see the critical, revisionist potential of your research? How much an alternative narration surfaces in your field, and does it reveal more engaging reflections? What is the result of this enlarged perspective?
- Where do you see points of contact between your historical research and present discourses? Why do you think that these points of contact can be best described and analyzed in terms of a non-linear narrative?