Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

The Early Modern Center of the University of California at Santa Barbara invites paper proposals for their eleventh annual conference, Early Modern Social Networks, 1500-1800. The conference will take place on March 16-17, 2012 at UCSB, and will feature keynote speakers Ann Blair (Harvard University), Elizabeth Eger (King’s  College London), and James Raven (University of Essex). Possible topics include: knowledge networks, (such as the Royal society, libraries, salons, and coffeehouses); secret societies; clubs; literary coteries; epistolary correspondents; religious communities (including sacramental practices); print and publication networks; gift communities (patronage, the ward system); trade networks (such as the East India Company, the Royal Exchange, workers’ guilds, black markets); colonial administration; infrastructure expansion (the post, turnpikes, canals); financial organizations (stock markets, insurance); and others. The deadline for abstracts of 250-500 words in length is January 6, 2012. For further details and submission instructions, see the conference website.

We are pleased to announce that booking is now open for Intellectual Geography: Comparative Studies, 1550-1700, the second Project conference, which will take place at St Anne’s College, Oxford, on 5-7 September 2010. Organised by Howard Hotson, the event brings together case studies and digital projects exploring the roots of local, regional, and national intellectual traditions and networks within concrete features of political, economic, confessional, and physical geography. For provisional programme information, a steadily growing lists of speaker profiles and abstracts, and to book online, please visit the conference website. The deadline for registrations is Wednesay 31 August.

Further to the CFP (which is now closed), full details are now available for the conference The Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700, which will take place at Birkbeck, University of London on 24–25 June 2011. The conference will investigate the impact of European exploration and travel on the structures, contents and sources of authority of European knowledge c.1450-1700, seeking to explore connections between the making of knowledge and a broad range of intellectual, political, cultural, religious and mercantile encounters between Europe and the wider world. For keynotes, panels, abstracts, and speaker biographies, please visit the conference website.

Updated to include confirmed speakers and link to full CFP

Papers are invited for a conference on ‘The Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700’, which will take place at Birkbeck, University of London on 24-5 June 2011. The conference will investigate the impact of European exploration and travel on the structures, contents and sources of authority of European knowledge c.1450-1700, seeking to explore connections between the making of knowledge and a broad range of intellectual, political, cultural, religious and mercantile encounters between Europe and the wider world. It aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines working on any aspect of European knowledge that included an extra-European dimension. Forms of knowledge under consideration include ethnology, natural history, botany, natural philosophy, geography, cartography, medicine and chronology. Confirmed speakers include Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto (Notre Dame), Professor Pamela Smith (Columbia), Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés (London School of Economics), Professor Ricardo Padrón (Virginia), Professor Nicolás Wey-Gómez (Brown), Dr Michiel van Groesen (Amsterdam), and Professor Peter Burke (Cambridge). The deadline for proposals is 31 July 2010; for further details and submission instructions, see the full call for papers.

Further to the CFP, registration is still open for the international conference Circulating Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Networks, Knowledge and Forms, which will take place at the Royal Society (London) on 8–10 July 2010. The conference will explore the dynamic intellectual economies brought into being by wars, revolution, and international exploration (with particular reference to the forms in which ideas circulated), and features plenary talks from Margaret Ezell, Richard Serjeantson, and Mark Greengrass and Howard Hotson (who will jointly present some of the aims and ambitions of Cultures of Knowledge). For the schedule, abstracts, and a registration form, please see the conference webpage.

Contributions are sought for the launch conference of the recently established UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, which will take place at UCL on 15–17 September 2011. Proposals for individual panels or papers should address aspects of intercultural exchanges 1450–1800, and ‘contributors are encouraged to focus on Centre’s themes: travel, exile and migration in early modern Europe and the New World; trade and flows of material as well as cultural goods within and beyond Europe; translation, translators and language learning; literary influence across national, provincial and linguistic borders; representations of intra- and extra-European ‘others’ in literature and art; religious and political interactions in the wake of the Reformation; occasions of significant cultural contact and/or heightened national anxiety; the production, circulation, and collection of books and manuscripts across Europe, the emergence of libraries and the book trade; dissemination and development of scientific and medical knowledge; Old worlds and New worlds, colonialism and ethnography; interplay between past and present, historiography, classical and medieval pasts, archaeology and material cultures’. The deadline for proposals is 17 January 2011; for full details, please see the conference webpage.