April 20, 2009
McNeil Center for Early American Studies
3355 Woodland Walk, UPenn Campus
Philadelphia, PA, 19104
This symposium will bring together a group of eminent scholars working in literature and history (roughly 1550-1800) to discuss issues concerning the methodological, theoretical and institutional aspects of doing comparative, transnational work in the early modern period. Exciting work on transnationalism has emerged with regard to the premodern period from economic historians such as R. Bin Wong and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Such economic historians have acknowledged the need to bring questions of culture into their discussions. On the other hand, literary critics have long spoken about the need to engage with economic history. However, as yet such dialogues between literary studies, literary history, history and economic history are in their infancy. Transnational Pasts will stage such a dialogue by bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines whose work has been consequential for discussions of transnationalism and global relations in the early modern period, as well as faculty and graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania.
The symposium will focus on the question of disciplinary change; the “global” turn in the field of English and Comparative Literature as well as in South Asia, East Asian and other “area” studies; new ways of conducting literary and historical studies across cultural and linguistic divides. Possible areas to address might include: economic historians’ models of the “Great Divergence” or world systems theory; synchronic comparison of empires; global processes of cultural integration; translation, structural similarity, incommensurability or false equivalences; imitation and influence models of literary studies; how to do collaborative work. We are particularly interested in discussing how these issues can be pursued from within departments of English or by those in Comparative Literature whose training is largely within the European archive, and we want to encourage a conversation between literary-cultural and economic history.
We envision this as an engaged discussion over the course of the day between the panelists and respondents from several UPenn departments. The format will be be as follows: we circulate selected papers chosen by the participants (published or works in progress) that speak to the topic. These pieces are available on the website. On April 14 all interested individuals and groups on campus are invited to a meeting to discuss the pieces and generate discussion questions for the panelists. At the symposium speakers will present a 20 minute reflection on issues raised by the papers, followed by general discussion.
The symposium is free and open to the public. All are welcome, no pre-registration required.