African and American Indian Knowledge, Transfer and Transformations in the Natural Histories of the Early Modern Atlantic World
African and American Indian Knowledge, Transfer and Transformations in the Natural Histories of the Early Modern Atlantic World
by Prof. Dr. Susanne Lachenicht (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
Thu, December 2, 2021, Zoom 673 1161 5467, Passcode: 575702 (RS Learning)
Abstract
My current book project focuses on knowledge transfer, the clash of knowledge systems (or epistemes) and the formation of new knowledge about the Americas in the so-called Atlantic World in the period between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. For this purpose, it analyses a specific medium: Natural Histories, that is Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, German, Dutch and Italian descriptions of the climate, landscape, flora, fauna and people of the Americas.
My major research questions are as follows: How does this specific medium, a “mass medium” in this period, produce knowledge, transfers and transformations? Where does African and American Indian cultural production come into play, through which practices, which media? How doe Europeans “learn” from African and Native American knowledge? Where, in which passages is this cultural production of knowledge mentioned, how is it represented, narrated? And what do representations of knowledge, knowledge systems in the medium tell us about the cultural production of colonial discourse in its varied and multifaceted ways?