Collect and Display: Subjects and Objects of New World Knowledge

(Deadline November 4, 2016)
Museo de América. Madrid. April 5-7, 2017
Organized by LAGLOBAL and Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust
Early modern and modern collecting and display practices in and of the New World are the subject of exciting new interdisciplinary research that is pushing the limits of knowledge and complicating the received master narratives of the scientific revolution and the modern ‘knowledge society.’  Nevertheless, the ‘raw material’ and practices of collecting has garnered more attention than the ‘cooked’ results of recording, analysis, and display, in part because a mythical ‘Europe’ has been privileged as ‘the site of calculus’ where global knowledge is produced and recognised.  We seek papers that place New World collecting and display practices in global and imperial rather than merely a ‘Western’ narrative of knowledge.  We understand collecting and display in the broadest terms to include practices of recording, gathering, plundering, diplomacy, purchasing, gifting, drawing, painting, writing, performing, exhibiting, etc.  Submit title, 100-word abstract, and 2-page CV to LAGLOBAL Network Facilitator José Guevara at jose.guevara@postgrad.sas.ac.uk.  Informal inquiries may be addressed to LAGLOBAL Director, Dr Mark Thurner (University of London) at mark.thurner@sas.ac.uk. Visit the LAGLOBAL blog at http://laglobal.blogs.sas.ac.uk/