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

A major conference on ‘John Selden (1584-1654): Scholarship in Context’ will take place at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford from 24–26 June 2010. Held in conjunction with the Centre for Early Modern Studies and the Centre for the Study of the Book, and partly sponsored by Cultures of Knowledge, the event will allow over thirty distinguished international, interdisciplinary speakers to converge on the neglected intellectual contributions of one of seventeenth-century Britain’s leading scholars, antiquaries, and jurists, whose correspondence network extended to northern Europe and eastwards to Aleppo. For further information and registration details please visit the conference website.

The intellectual contributions of John Aubrey, one of the best-connected scholars of the seventeenth century, a prolific correspondent, and a main focus of Cultures of Knowledge, will be brought to the fore in 2010. An exhibition entitled ‘‘My wit was always working’: John Aubrey and the Development of Experimental Science’, will run from 28 May–31 October 2010 in the Exhibition Room of the Bodleian Library. The exhibition is curated by Project participant Dr William Poole, who has also written a companion volume, John Aubrey and the Advancement of Learning. To be released by Bodleian Publishing on 1 May 2010, the Project is delighted to have been able to support the book, for which advance information is available here (doc) . The exhibition will also be accompanied by an ‘Aubrey Day’ on Saturday 19 June, and a series of lunchtime talks on Fridays throughout July and August; for full details, see here.

We are pleased to announce the inaugural Cultures of Knowledge seminar series, which will take place in Trinity Term 2010 on Thursdays at 3–5pm in the Colin Matthew Room of the History Faculty. Entitled ‘Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, and convened by Pietro Corsi and Peter Harrison, the seminar features an impressive programme of ten leading international authorities on seventeenth-century correspondents and correspondence networks, and papers and discussion will be followed by a wine reception. For the full programme and further details, please see here. The seminar poster (pdf) can be downloaded on the right.

Exploring the hard copy index in the Selden End of Duke Humfreys Library in the Bodleian

We are delighted to announce that Dr Kim McLean-Fiander will be joining the Project as an Editorial Assistant. Kim will be working intensively with the digitized version of the Card Catalogue of MS Correspondence in the Bodleian Library (which will form an initial core of material for our union catalogue of seventeenth-century letters), proofing the keyed texts and bringing them into conformity with Project standards. Her academic research touches upon the intellectual networks of seventeenth-century women, while she has wide-ranging experience of cataloguing and editing at the Bodleian Libraries and at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. For a full profile see here.