Forthcoming Conference (British Library): Renaissance Old Worlds

Posted on 30 January 2012

The University of Liverpool and the British Library are collaborating to host a conference on the theme of Renaissance Old Worlds, between 29th June and 1st July 2012.

Overarching questions to be investigated by the conference include:
(1) How did English cultural memories of the Old World, from art, literature and political events such as conflicts in the Islamic Mediterranean, influence actual travel encounters?
(2) How did information and expertise about distant places circulate, and who were the agents of such circulation (from missionaries, merchants, administrators, and indigenous informants, to artisans and scholars)?
(3) What form did the information take (from maps and texts to material artefacts)?
(4) How did religion inflect political and social negotiations? (How is anxiety about piracy in the Islamic Mediterranean and North Africa, for instance, connected to anxieties about conversion between Christianity and Islam?)
(5) What role did trading companies, both those established by the English and their European trading competitors, play in determining structures of knowledge and cross-cultural encounters?

For more details visit the conference website, or email row@liverpool.ac.uk.