Thursday, February 19, 2015
Harvard University, Robinson Hall, Basement Seminar Room
Prof. Dr. Cornel Zwierlein (Bochum/Harvard): Short introductory note
History and the State
Chair: Prof. Dr. Joyce Chaplin (Harvard)
9.15-9.45 Prof. Dr. Lucian Hölscher (Bochum): The Construction of and Coping with empty times in Early Modern Historiography
9.45-10.15 Prof. Dr. Cornel Zwierlein (Bochum/Harvard): Borders of Ignorance? Historical knowledge about the Levant regions, 1650-1750
10.15-10.45 Prof. Dr. Jacob Soll (USC Los Angeles): Blind-Spots: The Ambitions, Success and Failures of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s State Information System
10.45-11.15 Discussion
11.15-11.30 Coffee Break
Politics
Chair: TBA
11.30-12 Dr. Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (Cambridge/UK): The Role of the Unknown Superiors in the Emergence of Late Enlightenment Conspiracy Theories
12-12.30 Dr. Albert Schirrmeister (HU Berlin/EHESS Paris): Ignorance before a war: attitudes and action of expectation (Spanish War of Succession)
12.30-1 Dicussion
1-1.45 Lunch
Nature
Chair: TBA
1.45-2.15 Dr.des. Eleonora Rohland (Bochum/Zürich): Dealing with hurricanes and Mississippi floods in New Orleans, 1718-1794. Environmental (non-) knowledge in a colonial context
2.15-2.45 Louis Gerdelan (Harvard): Storms of controversy and the intellectual climate of meteorology in Britain and France in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
2.45-3 Discussion
Friday, February 20, 2015
Harvard University, Robinson Hall, Lower Library Room
Law
Chair: Prof. Dr. Charles Donahue (Harvard)
10-10.30 Prof. Dr. Mathias Schmoeckel (Bonn): The imperfect knowledge of the judge
10.30-11 Prof. Dr. Govind Sreenivasan (Brandeis): Speaking Nothing to Power in early modern Germany: making sense of peasant silence in the Ius Commune
11-11.30 Dr. Will Smiley (Yale): Assertions and Ignorance: Sharia, the Law of Nations, and the Ottoman Empire, 1730-1830
Discussion 11.30-12.00
Lunch 12-1.30
Humanism and Visual representation
Chair: TBA
1.30pm-2 Dr. des. Taylor Cowdery (Harvard): Terra incognita: Theories of Reading and Translation in William Caxton's England.
2-2.30 Dr. Michael Tworek (Harvard): Shifting Ignorance: Civilization and Barbarism in Early Modern Poland
2.30-3 Dr. des. Laura Schäfli (Queens Univ): Ignorance and Knowledge in 17th century Jesuit constructions of the Indigenous peoples’ world view
3-3.30 Prof. Dr. John Hamilton (Harvard): Voluptas carnis: Allegory and Nonknowledge in Pieter Aersten's Det fedde køkken
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This is part I of a two-place conference. Part II will take place at the German Historical Institute Paris, April 23/24, 2015. A separate announcement with detailed schedule and information for registration will be published later. Contributors and titles of contribution (thematic and alphabetical order):
Economy
Prof. Dr. Paul Cheney (Chicago): Science, Empire and (willed) Ignorance
Dr. Giovanni Ceccarelli (Parma): Coping with unknown risks in Renaissance Florence: Insurers, friars and abbaco teachers
Dr. William Deringer (Columbia): Modelling Ignorance: Uncertainty, Secrecy, and Financial Analysis in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Dr. Moritz Isenmann (Cologne): Non-knowledge and perception as factors for trade policy in the Seventeenth Century?
Prof. Dr. Marie-Laure Legay (Lille): L’ignorance dans la culture financière de l’Etat au XVIIIe siècle
Dr. Magnus Ressel (Frankfurt/M): Institutionalization as compensation of market intransparency: The Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice and the Levant Market
Prof. Dr. Daniel Smail (Harvard): Economic Measuring, Estimation and System Uncertainties in Late Medieval City Economies
Prof. Dr. Cornel Zwierlein (Bochum/ Harvard): The unknown nation. Ignorance and Mercantilism in the Mediterranean 1660-1740
Travel, Communication, Politics
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Behringer (Saarbrücken): Knowledge gaps, security and the development of Early Modern Transport communication
Dr. des. Devin Fitzgerald (Harvard): The blind Emperor: long-distance communication in 17th century China
Prof. Dr. Adam Kosto (Columbia): Ignorance about the traveller: Safe-Conduct in the Middle Ages
Dr. Fabrice Micallief (Paris I): Decision-making without knowledge. European powers and the ‘affairs of Provence’ (1589-1596)
Nature
Prof. Dr. Karl Enenkel (Münster): Ignorance in Early Modern Zoology
Dr. Lucile Haguet (Rouen): D’Anville and the specified ignorance: an unexpected but powerful way of promoting maps and geography
Prof. Dr. Sandra Richter (Stuttgart): How Cultivated Ignorance Creates (Non)Knowledge
Welcome note, chairs: PD Dr. Rainer Babel (GHI Paris), Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kaiser (Paris I), Prof. Dr. Christine Lebeau (Paris I), Prof. Dr. Thomas Maissen (Director GHI Paris), Prof. Dr. Philippe Minard (ENS Paris)