Despite the recent upsurge in the study of pre-modern art and culture in central and eastern Europe, historical events and objects from this part of the world are still largely ignored outside the region. This one-day workshop seeks to redress the relative unfamiliarity with the cultural histories of these lands by proposing that their geographic peripherality can act not only as a source of marginalisation, but also as a lens through which to introduce central and eastern Europe to the wider narratives of cultural history. Engaging with east-central Europe’s cultural heterogeneity and geographic liminality, participants will examine the region’s entanglement with the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, western Europe, and beyond. But can positioning central and eastern Europe as a trans-cultural space secure for it a place in dominant historical narratives? Can historians of this region develop new methodological and theoretical approaches that might be of interest also to other scholars? And, above all, can central and eastern Europe ever become mainstream?

Programme
Part 1 - Presentations

CEU, Nádor utca 9, Gellner Room

10:30–11:00
Introduction by Tomasz Grusiecki (Central European University)

11:00–12:30｜Chair Katalin Szende (Central European University)

Robert Maniura (Birkbeck, University of London), The Holy Cross Chapel in Wawel Cathedral and the Art of the Wider Europe

Olenka Pevny (University of Cambridge), Confessional Fluidity and Visual Culture in Early 17th-Century Kyiv

12:30–14:00
Lunch (not provided)

14:00–15:30｜Chair Robyn Radway (Central European University)

Katie Jakobiec (Worcester College, University of Oxford), Soils, Resources, and Other Earthly Delights

Wendy Bracewell (School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London), The Republic of Letters and Cross-Cultural Debates about Travel

15:30–16:00
Refreshments

Part 2 - Workshop

CEU, Nádor utca 13, Room 301

16:00–18:00

Group conversation: Can Early Modern Central and Eastern Europe Have a Global History?

Short presentations by:
Aleksandra Koutny-Jones (Independent Scholar), The Role of Patronage in Polish-Lithuanian Visual Cultures of Death

and Günhan Börekçi (Central European University), Ottoman Studies and Global History

Followed by discussion of three pre-circulated texts (e-mail grusieckit@ceu.edu for the link to readings)