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

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.