CfP: Learned Societies and Academies, Travel and Travellers, Exploration and Explorers, 1600-1900
Learned Societies and Academies
Travel and Travellers
Exploration and Explorers
1600-1900
Call for Papers
15-16 November 2013
Clermont-Ferrand
Sandhya Patel
Département d’anglais,
Université Blaise Pascal,
Clermont Ferrand EHIC (Espaces Humains et interactions culturelles)
Learned
societies and academies, sometimes royal, have been understood as pan-European
cultural phenomena with humanist antecedents originating in the Renaissance
period. These groups variously developed into institutions responding to
political or social pressures whilst promoting learning and knowledge. In all
cases, the societies and academies in question developed particularly close relationships
with travel and travellers of all kinds who were considered as significant
conduits for epistemological progress.
Recent
research on travel instructions in scholarly journals published by these
societies and academies has demonstrated this reliance on and possible direct
rule of, travel/exploration and travellers/explorers.
Thus, a study of the representation within these
periodicals of travel and travellers/explorers, who engage in a “science” defined as “[...]
the temporal/spatial completion of human history” and the “source
of ‘philosophical and secular
knowledge” seems a
particularly fruitful avenue of research if we are to better understand the
discursive power of learned groups.
In her study
of the Americas, Heurta discusses the intellectual networks which progressively
developed into learned societies creating more widely-recognised channels of
knowledge accumulation, transfer and circulation. She considers these groups as
building a form of erudite sociability which found expression within scholarly
periodicals. These latter became the major vectors in the construction of
discourse. She posits a correlation between the degrees of authority these
publications exercised and technological advances such as mechanisation in
printing processes.
Heurta focuses primarily on 19th century French
periodicals while this conference will take a wider approach and focus on
discourses on travel and exploration within European journals from 1600
onwards.
How did directors, editors, individual authors
and artists represent travel and travellers within these journals? Can we
identify the construction of a specific discourse according to place of
publication or period? Withers suggests a “taxonomy”
relating to European societies and academies but this categorisation does not
seem to preclude internal and international differences in terms of ideological
and discursive positioning. Withers points to fundamental divergence between
groups established in protestant maritime countries with relatively democratic
political structures and those in Catholic states operating within more
restrictive, authoritarian regimes. A comparative approach with these
characteristics in mind may prove productive in generating questions as to
whether travel and travellers, exploration and explorers were represented as
mechanisms of empire and expansion, whether they inspired confidence or bred
caution and how these representations changed and evolved over time. Are there
identifiable links between fluctuating political contexts and representations?
How and when does the traveller/explorer acquire “professional”
status?
The conference will be held in Clermont-Ferrand on the
15th and 16th November, 2013 during the Rendez-vous du Carnet de Voyage
festival. Limited funding is available. One-page abstracts or panel proposals should
be submitted to the conference convenor by email
(sandhya.patel@univ-bpclermont.fr)
by June 30th. Notification of
paper/panel acceptance by July 31st 2013.
James E.
McClellan. “Learned
Societies.” Encyclopedia of
the Enlightenment.
Ed. Alan Charles Kors. Oxford University Press: 2002, 2005 (e-reference edition). http://www.oxford-enlightenment.com/entry?entry=t173.e388
J. Hayden, Travel
Narratives, the New Science and Literary Discourse, 1569-1750, London : Ashgate, 2012.
Johannes Fabian.
Time and the Other. Columbia University Press: 2002,
p.146
Ibid., p. 6.
Charles W. J.
Withers. Placing the Enlightenment:
Thinking Geographically about the Age of Reason. University of Chicago Press:
2007. pp.68-70