Harvard/Paris Teil I: Ignorance, Nescience, Nonknowledge: Late Medieval and Early Modern Coping with Unknowns

Harvard/Paris Teil I: Ignorance, Nescience, Nonknowledge: Late Medieval and Early Modern Coping with Unknowns

Organizer
Harvard History Department; RUB Bochum; GHI Paris
Venue
Harvard University, Cambridge/Mass., Robinson Hall
Location
Cambridge/Mass.
Country
United States
From - Until
19.02.2015 -
Deadline
17.01.2015
By
Cornel Zwierlein

Sponsored by the Harvard History Department, the Harvard German department, the German Science Foundation (DFG) and the Henkel foundation (Düsseldorf), an interdisciplinary two-place conference on Historicizing Ignorance in Late Medieval and Early Modern History will take place at Harvard University, Robinson Hall and the German Historical Institute Paris. The conference seeks to address how ignorance about phenomena in different epistemic fields of the late medieval and early modern world was recognized (or not), used and coped with, differently from modern times. The Harvard part is devoted to the fields of historiography, the information management of early modern states and empires, on decision making under ignorance, political discourses dealing with and reacting to unknowns, early modern natural science, the coping with ignorance and silence from canon law to continental common law, and in several case studies on humanism, coping with ignorances in travel writing and translations as well as in the visual arts.

Attendance is free, but for reasons of calculation please register by January 17, zwierlein@fas.harvard.edu

Programm

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

---

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)

Contact (announcement)

Prof. Dr. Cornel Zwierlein (RUBochum)
Visiting Fellow (Europ. Comm./Henkel)
Department of History
Harvard University
Robinson Hall
35 Quincy Street
Cambridge/MA, 02138
USA
mail: zwierlein@fas.harvard.edu
cornel.zwierlein@rub.de
www.rub.de/umweltgeschichte
http://scholar.harvard.edu/zwierlein/biocv

http://ww.rub.de/umweltgeschichte/forschung/projekte.html.de, http://history.fas.harvard.edu/calendar/upcoming?page=1&type=month&month=2014-12
Editors Information
Published on
Classification
Regional Classification
Subject - Topic
Nobility, History of agriculture, Work and labour, Labour movement history, Archaeology, Historical semantics, Business history, Historical demography, History of education and university , Biography, Middle classes / Bourgeoisie, Digital history, Discipline and subject of history, Remembrance / Collective memory, Ethnology / Historical Anthropology, History of european integration, Women's, men's and gender History, History of leisure and sport, History of ideas, Intellectual history, Didactics / Public History, Historiography, Antisemitism research, History of images, Discourse analysis, History of peace and war, Historical auxiliary sciences, History of empires, Industrial history, history of trade and business, History of international relations, Jewish history, Church history, Colonial history, Consumption history, Crime and deviancy, Culture, Cultural history, Art history, Literature history, Media history, History of medicine, Intellectual history, Micro-, local history, everyday life, Military history, Musicology, History of nazism, History of fascism, History of nationalism, History of natural sciences, No thematic focus, Oral history, History of political parties and organisations, Politics, Political history, Postcolonial history, Geography, Law, History of law and administration, Local and regional history, History of religions, confessions and churches, Reception history, Social history / Social sciences, Social Affairs, Urban history, History of technology, Theory and methodology, Transnational history, Environmental history, Constitutional history, Comparative history, Transport and infrastructure, World and global history, Economy, Economic history, Science, History of science, Science policy, History of knowledge
Additional Informations
Country Event
Language(s) of event
English
Language of announcement