[Bilimsel Haber] CfP: Cultural Encounters and Historical Practice (November 7-9, 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark)

[Onur Inal]

CfP: Cultural Encounters and Historical Practice
Conference November 7-9, 2007, Carlsberg Akademi, Copenhagen, Denmark.

With the third and final conference in the Nordic network for Global
Cultural History we wish to engage scholars studying cultural encounters
in the context of European colonial expansion after 1500 by broaching
questions of theory and methodology.

The study of cultural encounters has been conducted in a variety of
ways, with multiple theoretical and methodological approaches stretching
from ethnohistory and microhistory to new historicism and postcolonial
deconstruction, to mention but a few. In this conference we hope to
explore how the study of cultural encounters is practiced by individual
scholars and how individual histories of specific encounters can be
related to the development of global economic, political, and cultural
structures.

During the conference we will discuss the limits and possibilities of
different methodological and theoretical approaches to historical
cultural encounters. We therefore seek contributions from scholars who
reflect on their own practice: on the methods and theories they employ,
the sources they explore, the contexts they relate to (pre-colonial,
colonial, imperial, postcolonial and so on), and/or the narratives they
have constructed.

Some of the many questions that we want to approach are: What is, or
when is, a cultural encounter? What is the place of cultural encounters
in global history? How does it influence our practice to adopt concepts
like the Atlantic world, globalization, colonialism, or empire? In what
ways is it useful to compare different cultural encounters like mission,
trade, colonial or intimate encounters in order to establish the
specificities of and similarities between cultural encounters? What is
the balance between internal dynamics of specific encounters and the
larger structures by which they are shaped and to which they add? What
are the connections between specific encounters and the mapping of the
larger chronology of colonialism and capitalism? And how does the
history of people who did not produce written documents differ from
those who did and how do we ensure that our analyses of the encounter
deal with both sides?

Sessions may include (but are not limited to):
The concept of cultural encounter
Cultural encounters and structural change
Violent clashes and cultural confrontations
Pre-colonial, colonial, postcolonial cultural encounters
Economic structures and cultural encounters
Legal, intimate, and mission encounters in comparative perspective
Writing encounters with multiple perspectives - the problem of
asymmetric sources
Strategies for writing the history of peoples without written documents
Europeans abroad - non-Europeans in Europe
Counting and quantification as a way of studying cultural encounters
Material culture and cultural encounters
Imperial ideologies as shaping or being shaped by concrete encounters
Please submit proposals for individual presentations or panels to
globalkulturhistorie at hum.au.dk by May 1, 2007. We especially encourage
proposals for panels.

Camilla Abildtrup

Student assistent and website administrator for "Network for Global
Gultural History" 
Department of History and Area Studies
bygn. 1328 lok. 130
Aarhus University 
Denmark 
Phone: +45 89422003
wednesday from 11.00 - 14.00
Email: globalkulturhistorie at hum.au.dk
Visit the website at http://www.globalkulturhistorie.hum.au.dk