THE GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF EUROPEAN KNOWLEDGE, 1450-1700
B IR KB EC K , U NI VER SI T Y OF L ONDON , 24-5 J UNE , 2011
An international conference sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Renaissance Studies, Birkbeck, University of London,
The Royal Historical Society and the Journal of Early Modern History
FRIDAY, 24 JUN E
09:00-09:45
Registration and Coffee (rooms 415, 416)
09:45-10:55
Welcome by Dr Surekha Davies (Birkbeck, University of London) and
Keynote Lecture 1: Dr Joan Pau Rubiés (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Ethnographic knowledge and the birth of enlightened universalism (room 421)
Short Break
10:55-11:10
11:10-13:00
Session 1A: Framing Others
(room 421)
Chair: Dr Nandini Das (Liverpool)
Dr Daniel Carey (Galway)
Locke and Sati
Session 1B: Dialogues of Form,
Cultures and Knowledge
(room 417)
Chair: Dr Erica Charters (Oxford)
Session 1C: Information, Communication
and Dutch Exp ansion
(room 415)
Chair: Dr Michiel van Groesen (Amsterdam)
Dr Marjorie Trusted (V&A Museum)
Shipwrecked Ivories from a Manila Galleon
Alexander Bick (Princeton)
‘We Dare Not Stick Our Noses Outside the Fort’:
Commercial Intelligence, State Policy, and the
1645 Revolt in Dutch Brazil
Prof. Neil Safier (British Columbia)
Literary Archaeologies: Uncovering
Indigenous Technologies in Early Amazonian
Narratives (1539-1641)
Dr Lia Markey (Pennsylvania)
Non-Naturalistic Nature and Natives in
Aldrovandi’s Albums
Dr Jennifer Spinks (Melbourne)
The Devil in Calicut: The uses of nonEuropean wonders and prodigies in Pierre
Boaistuau’s Histoires prodigieuses
Dr Anne Gerritsen (Warwick)
European Knowledge about Chinese and
Japanese Porcelain Manufactures in the
Seventeenth Century
Limor Mintz-Manor (Jerusalem)
Knowledge, Identity and the Jewish
Discourse on the New World
Ting Xu (London School of Economics)
Western Science in late Ming and Early Qing
China: Accommodation and Diffusion
Margaret Schotte (Princeton)
A Sailor’s Delight: Dutch Navigational Textbooks
and Information Overload
Dr Susanne Friedrich (Munich)
Le Maire contra VOC: How a Conflict between
Two Trading Companies
Affected the Dissemination of Knowledge
Global Dimensions Conference Programme
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13:00-14:00
14:00-15:30
Lunch (rooms 415, 416)
Session 2A: Prophecy and Cosmography
(room 421)
Chair: Prof. Michael Hunter (Birkbeck)
Session 2B: Reading and Knowled ge-maki ng
(room 417)
Chair: Dr Alexander Samson (University College, London)
Prof. Ralph Bauer (Maryland)
Prophecy, Discovery, and the Secrets of the Indies
Prof. Thomás A. S. Haddad (São Paulo)
‘Where the Portingales inhabite and govern’: A reading of Van
Linschoten’s Itinerario (1596)
Prof. Ayesha Ramachandr an (Stony Brook, New York)
Prophecy and Cosmic Translation in Montaigne’s Essais
Prof. Andrea Frisch (Maryland)
Experience and Cosmography in André Thevet
Prof. Dániel Margócsy (Hunter College, CUNY)
Climates, Race And Migration In the Early Modern World: The Case Of
The Horse
Coffee Break (rooms 415, 416)
15:30-16:00
16:00-17:30
Hugh Glenn Cagle (Rutgers)
A Science out of Place: Text, Context, and the Translation of Garcia de
Orta’s Colóquios
Session 3A: Networks of Travel
(room 421)
Chair: Dr Martha Fleming (Natural History Museum)
Session 3B: Global Iberia
(room 417)
Chair: Dr Zoltán Biedermann (Birkbeck)
Dr Anna Winterbottom (Sussex)
Monsters and men of the woods: illustration and interpretation in
seventeenth and early eighteenth century natural histories
Prof. Diogo Ramada Curto (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
A composite typology of imperial knowledge
Dr E.C. Spary (Cambridge)
Writing about coffee in France before 1700: travelling scholars and
the ‘invisible network’ of Philippe Sylvestre Dufour
Heidi Hausse (Princeton)
Cholera, Botany and Authorial Authority in the East Indies
Dr Henrique Leitão (Lisbon)
Travelling at sea and changing knowledge: Long-range sea voyages and the
shaping of scientific knowledge in the sixteenth century
Prof. Josiah Blackmore (Toronto)
Materia Africana: Vehicles of knowledge exchange between Portugal and
Africa
Global Dimensions Conference Programme
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17:30-18:00
Short Break
18:00-19:00
Keynot e lecture 2: Prof. Felipe Fernández-Armesto (University of Notre Dame)
The global Renaissance
Chair: Prof. Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck, University of London) (room 421)
Evening Reception (rooms 415, 416)
Sponsored by the Journal of Early Modern History
19:00-21:30
(approx.)
SATURDAY, 25 JUNE
09:00-09:30
09:30-11:20
Registration and Coffee (rooms 415, 416)
Panel 4A: Anti dotes, venoms, specifics & simples:
Pharmacopeias in the Spanish an d Portuguese
Empires, 1500-1700
(room 417)
Chair: Dr Monica Green (Arizona State)
Panel 4B: Scholars Abroad
(room 421)
Chair: Dr Stephen Johnston (Museum of the History of Science,
Oxford)
Dr Simon Mills (Council for British Research in the Levant)
Dr Isabel Soler (Barcelona) and Dr Juan Pimentel
The Chaplains to the English Levant Company at Aleppo (1625-1695):
(CSIC, Madrid)
Mapping the Geography and Antiquities of Syria in Seventeenth-Century
Painting naked truth: The Colóquios by Garcia da Orta (1563) England
Iris Montero Sobrevilla (Cambridge)
Dr Stephen McDowall (Warwick)
Of fever, syphilis and epilepsy: exploring the medicinal Two English Visions of Late-Ming China, 1598-1614
hummingbird
Prof. Florence C. Hsia (Wisconsin-Madison)
José Ramón Marcaida (CSIC, Madrid)
Missionary, mathematician, Jesuit, spy: the limits of going native
New World transfers: Francisco Hernández in the works of
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg
Dr Ana Carolina Hosne (EUI, Florence) and Pablo Ariel Blitstein
(Institut National de Langues et Civilisations, Paris)
Dr Miruna Achim (UAM, Mexico City)
Letterati, letrados or shi (士) : what´s in a name? Reflections on the concept
From rustics to savants: the uses of indigenous materia
of letterati and its circulation throughout the Early Modern World
medica in colonial New Spain
Global Dimensions Conference Programme
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11:20-11:50
Coffee break (rooms 415, 416)
11:50-12:50
Keynot e Lecture 3: Prof. Pamela Smith (Columbia University)
The movement of knowledge in the early modern world
Chair: Dr Simon Ditchfield (University of York / Journal of Early Modern History) (room 421)
Lunch (rooms 415, 416)
12:50-13:50
13:50-15:30
Plenary session: Oceans, Knowledge and Empire
Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies
(room 421)
Chair: Prof. Claire Jowitt (Nottingham Trent University / Society for Renaissance Studies)
Prof. Nicolás Wey-Gómez (California Institute of Technology)
Passage to India: Europe’s quest for the tropics in the age of exploration
Prof. Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia)
The Pacific Ocean: The Missing Link in Hispanic Globalization
15:30-16:00
16:00-17:30
17:30
Dr Michiel van Groesen (University of Amsterdam)
An ocean of rumours: the Atlantic world and the quest for reliable information in early modern Europe
Coffee break (rooms 415, 416)
Roundtable Session
Led by Prof. Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) and Prof. Pamela H. Smith (Columbia University)
Chair: Prof. Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia) (room 421)
Close of conference