‘What Counts as Knowledge? Sources, Methods, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period.‘

We are pleased to invite you to the upcoming round table discussion entitled  ‘What Counts as Knowledge? Sources, Methods, and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period.‘ 

This event will convene on Thursday, 1 October, at 10:30 a.m. in the Barbara Skarga Room (Room 268) at the Staszic Palace (ul. Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw).

Below, you will find a brief overview of the event. 

This round table brings together scholars from the many disciplines that engage with the history of knowledge in the early modern period — not only historians of knowledge in the strict sense, but also epistemologists, intellectual historians, and historians of culture, of reading, of the book, and of ideas.

The starting point is a deliberate broadening of the field’s usual objects of study. Working within the ERC project KnowStudents—“From East to West, and Back Again: Student Travel and Transcultural Knowledge Production in Renaissance Europe (c. 1470–c. 1620)”—we have come to recognize the student notebook as a privileged lens through which to explore the dynamics and processes underlying the production of knowledge.. This perspective can—and should—be extended to other objects and phenomena, including material artifacts as well as collective human practices such as assemblies, festivals, rites, and religious occasions. 

• Bringing these varied sources and perspectives into a meaningful dialogue requires sustained methodological reflection. It raises a number of questions, including:
• What makes a centrain literary genre, an object, a practice, or an event a meaningful source for the history of knowledge? Where should the boundaries of the field be drawn?
• Does shifting attention from a textual genre to another of from a texts to objects, practices, and performances fundamentally change the kinds of historical questions we are able to ask?
• How can scholars from different disciplines move beyond simply working alongside one another and instead develop genuinely shared analytical frameworks?
• How should this broader history of knowledge position itself in relation to existing methodological traditions, such as microhistory, the history of the book, or the anthropology of ritual?
• Can this broader perspective reshape our understanding of knowledge itself—not simply of how knowledge circulated, but of how it was produced, embodied, negotiated, and transmitted? 

These questions are intended not to define a new orthodoxy, but to open a discussion about possible future directions for the history of knowledge.
This event also marks the conclusion of six years of work on the ERC project KnowStudents, and aims to highlight the fruitfulness of collaboration extending beyond the project team itself, to include those interlocutors who have been a particular source of stimulus for the research, and with whom we hope to continue a dialogue in the future.
The event is conceived as an informal conversation rather than a series of prepared papers, encouraging an open exchange of ideas among scholars — a launch pad for sharing research experiences and identifying themes and tools for the near future.

The round table will feature:

• Prof. Giancarlo Casale (European University Institute) — Professor of Early Modern History of the Mediterranean and Head of the Department of History at the EUI, and Executive Editor of the Journal of Early Modern History. His research explores the intellectual connections between the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Italy, cartography, and early modern science.
• Dr hab. Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, prof. UJ (Jagiellonian University) — Professor at the Jagiellonian University and Editor-in-Chief of Terminus. Journal of Early Modern Literature and Culture. She has held fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Her research focuses on early modern literature, book history, and the visual culture of the Renaissance and Baroque.
• Dr hab. Valentina Lepri, prof. IFiS PAN (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, PAS) — Professor of History of Philosophy and Director at the IFiS PAN, where she leads the Center for the History of Renaissance Knowledge and serves as Principal Investigator for the ERC project KnowStudents. 

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 864542)

For any inquiries, please contact Szymon Nawrocki (szymon.nawrocki@ifispan.edu.pl).

classic-editor-remember:

block-editor