News from the Global History and Culture Centre
new publication by GHCC member Jonathan Schroeder
On the 25th of October, Jonathan Schroeder, assistant professor in English at Warwick and one of the new members of the Global History and Culture Centre, published an article with the title 'What Was Black Nostalgia?'. It has appeared as an advance publication in the journal American Literary History. The piece deals with the formation of the medical concept of nostalgia and its transformation (ca. 1790-1860) in slavery in the Americas (esp. in non-Anglophone societies). Please take a look!
Classical Connections Seminar Series 2018-19
In 2018-2019 the Classics and Ancient History department will host the Classical Connections Seminar Series, dedicated to explore connections between Greek and Latin antiquity and different geographical and temporal contexts, both ancient and modern. The series especially welcomes lectures that help rethink the role of Greek and Latin Classics in our culture, education and academic practices by comparison and interaction with other disciplines. Thanks to the generous funding of the IATL, the HRC and the IAS, a number of lectures in 2018-2019 will be dedicated to the role of Africa in the making of the Western Classics, especially to the reception of Greek and Latin literature in authors of African descent and to the complicity of classical scholarship in the production and reproduction of colonial and postcolonial configurations of race.
For a listing of the events, see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/news/events/
NEH award for World History Commons
The NEH will be funding the establishment of 'World History Commons', an Open Educational Resource (OER) that will provide high quality, peer-reviewed resources for teaching and research in world and global history. World History Commons will introduce new humanities scholarship and pedagogy while preserving and enhancing widely-used resources from World History Matters and the Global History Reader, a collaboration between scholars at Monash University and from our own GHCC.
History: why it matters
Lynn Hunt, one of the leading thinkers in the disipline of history, has recently published a small book about the importance of studying history 'in a time when politicians lie brazenly about historical facts'. It is gratifying to see that she noted the Warwick Department of History's interest in global concerns: ‘at the University of Warwick, almost two-thirds of the academic staff indicated some interest in global questions…’. Lynn Hunt, History: Why it Matters (Oxford: Polity Press, 2018), p. 81.
Publication: Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia
Book description
This anthology explores the role that art and material goods played in diplomatic relations and political exchanges between Asia, Africa, and Europe in the early modern world. The authors challenge the idea that there was a European primacy in the practice of gift giving through a wide panoramic review of imperial encounters between Europeans (including the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English) and Asian empires (including Ottoman, Persian, Mughal, Sri Lankan, Chinese, and Japanese cases). They examine how those exchanges influenced the global production and circulation of art and material culture, and explore the types of gifts exchanged, the chosen materials, and the manner of their presentation. Global Gifts establishes new parameters for the study of the material and aesthetic culture of Eurasian relations before 1800, exploring the meaning of artistic objects in global diplomacy and the existence of economic and aesthetic values mutually intelligible across cultural boundaries.
Reviews
‘Combining the thriving field of material culture with the intriguing paths of new diplomatic history, this book explores in novel ways the gift-exchange processes between individuals, courts and empires in the early modern era. Global Gifts is an unusually cohesive collective endeavor that truly enriches our understanding of the diverse nexus between Europe and Asia in the period.'
Jorge Flores - European University Institute, Florence
‘This rich collection demonstrates the power of ‘things' to shape cross-cultural relations in formal diplomacy. Gifts of art and material culture were fulcrums around which negotiations were staged in early modern Eurasia. Pushing interpretive boundaries, these trans-cultural histories illuminate the thorny mechanics of gifting, the meanings of gifts and the diplomatic aims these served.'
Beverly Lemire - University of Alberta
‘Asking what made a good gift in the early modern past, Global Gifts explores the intersection of diplomatic history and material culture studies. Textured and deeply researched, this volume traces the itineraries of exotica across a tangle of cultural and geographic boundaries. Whether one is Thailand or Portugal, India, or Italy, this book will prompt new thinking about issues that were crucial in the past yet have resonance in our own time – labor and luxury, politics and trade, generosity and thwarted desire.'
Dana Leibsohn - Smith College, Massachusetts