Conference Presentations by Heather Muckart
This interdisciplinary panel investigates the ways in which different modalities of conversion—re... more This interdisciplinary panel investigates the ways in which different modalities of conversion—realized as physical, literary, metaphoric, visual, religious, or philosophical processes of transformation—are central to understanding the evolving
conceptualization of the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, the early modern period has often been described in reference to changes resulting from the introduction of ideas that challenged previously accepted scientific, religious, and socio-political perceptions of the world, and the establishment of new ways of making its continuously expanding horizons more visible and seemingly knowable. While the need to precisely date and identify the cause and effect of such epistemological and technological shifts preoccupied twentieth-century scholars, recent studies have begun to question the very nature of change itself, as a finite set of historically contingent and perceptibly novel conditions. In fact, as the presenters will suggest, the movement from one text, religious identity, historical moment, or artistic medium, to another involves many translators, makers, viewers, and believers. The papers in the panel explore how forms of literary, religious, visual, technological, and material conversions could enable meditative, antithetical, affirmative, destructive, or generative processes of transformation.
Taking up case studies from theatre, poetry, history, art, and philosophy--ranging from Shakespeare to ancient artefacts--these papers suggest the multivalent nature of conversion from one way of being, making, or knowing to another. Through different forms of conversions, conceived of as translations, changes, mediations, transformations, and negotiations, early modern writers, theoreticians, and artists challenged and established new forms of spiritual truths, identity politics, epistemological paradigms, artistic traditions, and geographic boundaries. By tracing early modern conversions across divergent subjects, the presenters hope to contribute to a repositioning of our understanding of the early modern period itself.
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Conference Presentations by Heather Muckart
conceptualization of the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, the early modern period has often been described in reference to changes resulting from the introduction of ideas that challenged previously accepted scientific, religious, and socio-political perceptions of the world, and the establishment of new ways of making its continuously expanding horizons more visible and seemingly knowable. While the need to precisely date and identify the cause and effect of such epistemological and technological shifts preoccupied twentieth-century scholars, recent studies have begun to question the very nature of change itself, as a finite set of historically contingent and perceptibly novel conditions. In fact, as the presenters will suggest, the movement from one text, religious identity, historical moment, or artistic medium, to another involves many translators, makers, viewers, and believers. The papers in the panel explore how forms of literary, religious, visual, technological, and material conversions could enable meditative, antithetical, affirmative, destructive, or generative processes of transformation.
Taking up case studies from theatre, poetry, history, art, and philosophy--ranging from Shakespeare to ancient artefacts--these papers suggest the multivalent nature of conversion from one way of being, making, or knowing to another. Through different forms of conversions, conceived of as translations, changes, mediations, transformations, and negotiations, early modern writers, theoreticians, and artists challenged and established new forms of spiritual truths, identity politics, epistemological paradigms, artistic traditions, and geographic boundaries. By tracing early modern conversions across divergent subjects, the presenters hope to contribute to a repositioning of our understanding of the early modern period itself.
conceptualization of the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, the early modern period has often been described in reference to changes resulting from the introduction of ideas that challenged previously accepted scientific, religious, and socio-political perceptions of the world, and the establishment of new ways of making its continuously expanding horizons more visible and seemingly knowable. While the need to precisely date and identify the cause and effect of such epistemological and technological shifts preoccupied twentieth-century scholars, recent studies have begun to question the very nature of change itself, as a finite set of historically contingent and perceptibly novel conditions. In fact, as the presenters will suggest, the movement from one text, religious identity, historical moment, or artistic medium, to another involves many translators, makers, viewers, and believers. The papers in the panel explore how forms of literary, religious, visual, technological, and material conversions could enable meditative, antithetical, affirmative, destructive, or generative processes of transformation.
Taking up case studies from theatre, poetry, history, art, and philosophy--ranging from Shakespeare to ancient artefacts--these papers suggest the multivalent nature of conversion from one way of being, making, or knowing to another. Through different forms of conversions, conceived of as translations, changes, mediations, transformations, and negotiations, early modern writers, theoreticians, and artists challenged and established new forms of spiritual truths, identity politics, epistemological paradigms, artistic traditions, and geographic boundaries. By tracing early modern conversions across divergent subjects, the presenters hope to contribute to a repositioning of our understanding of the early modern period itself.