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

[Onur Inal]

CFP: Cultural Encounters and Historical Practice - Copenhagen 11/07
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Pernille Ipsen, University of Copenhagen
Gunvor Simonsen, European University Institute
Louise Sebro, Lund University
Anne Folke Henningsen, University of Aarhus 07.11.2007-09.11.2007,
Copenhagen
Deadline: 01.05.2007

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:
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.


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Camilla Abildtrup

University of Aarhus
Ndr. Ringgade, DK-8000 Aarhus


globalkulturhistorie at hum.au.dk