Project acronym KnowStudents
Project From East to West, and Back Again: Student Travel and Transcultural Knowledge Production in Renaissance Europe (c. 1470- c. 1620)
Researcher (PI) Valentina LEPRI
Host Institution (HI) INSTYTUT FILOZOFII I SOCJOLOGII POLSKIEJ AKADEMII NAUK
Country Poland
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2019-COG
Summary This project is the first comprehensive study of transcultural knowledge production in early modern Europe. Its underpinning idea is that the students who travelled from central-eastern Europe to attend renowned universities were active agents of this transcultural knowledge. During their stays abroad they created personal hand-written notebooks containing lecture notes and any other texts that attracted their interest. Conserved in the archives of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, these notebooks provide us with unique and first-hand documentary evidence of the impact of multiple cultural stimuli on knowledge. Combining intellectual history, history of migration and physical analysis of documents, the project will consider the period from the rise of this practice among students, due to an unprecedented availability of paper (c. 1470), up to the Thirty Years’ War, which restricted their travels. Its objectives are to analyse: the relationship between academic and non-academic knowledge gathered in the students’ notebooks; the emergence of new forms of self-learning, examining the criteria of text selection; and the contact between humanist culture and the cultures of the countries the students came from. Early modern studies of knowledge production have traditionally focused on academic teaching. Although the cosmopolitan nature of universities is an established fact in these studies, the impact of different cultures (languages, artistic-literary interests, religious practices) on knowledge creation has been neglected, due to lack of evidence. Students’ experience makes it possible to observe links between knowledge and a plurality of languages and traditions which best reflects the European scenario at the time. The project will explore knowledge creation from an unprecedented angle, fostering a rethinking of the notion of centre and peripheries in Renaissance studies and breaking important new ground for research on intellectual history.
Summary
This project is the first comprehensive study of transcultural knowledge production in early modern Europe. Its underpinning idea is that the students who travelled from central-eastern Europe to attend renowned universities were active agents of this transcultural knowledge. During their stays abroad they created personal hand-written notebooks containing lecture notes and any other texts that attracted their interest. Conserved in the archives of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, these notebooks provide us with unique and first-hand documentary evidence of the impact of multiple cultural stimuli on knowledge. Combining intellectual history, history of migration and physical analysis of documents, the project will consider the period from the rise of this practice among students, due to an unprecedented availability of paper (c. 1470), up to the Thirty Years’ War, which restricted their travels. Its objectives are to analyse: the relationship between academic and non-academic knowledge gathered in the students’ notebooks; the emergence of new forms of self-learning, examining the criteria of text selection; and the contact between humanist culture and the cultures of the countries the students came from. Early modern studies of knowledge production have traditionally focused on academic teaching. Although the cosmopolitan nature of universities is an established fact in these studies, the impact of different cultures (languages, artistic-literary interests, religious practices) on knowledge creation has been neglected, due to lack of evidence. Students’ experience makes it possible to observe links between knowledge and a plurality of languages and traditions which best reflects the European scenario at the time. The project will explore knowledge creation from an unprecedented angle, fostering a rethinking of the notion of centre and peripheries in Renaissance studies and breaking important new ground for research on intellectual history.
Max ERC Funding
1 737 225 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-11-01, End date: 2025-10-31
Project acronym NAMO
Project Narrative Modes of Historical Discourse in Asia
Researcher (PI) Ulrich Timme Kragh
Host Institution (HI) UNIWERSYTET IM. ADAMA MICKIEWICZA W POZNANIU
Country Poland
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary Modern historiography produced in Asia belongs to the history-paradigm of the European humanities and it is from within these epistemological confines that Western as well as Eastern scholars of Asian studies view the Asian writing of the past. While source criticism and historicism have today become key parts of historical consciousness in Asia, Asian historical representations are nonetheless firmly embedded in pre-modern Asian literary traditions via specific uses in historical writing of traditional rhetorical structures of narrative, emplotment, tropes, and literary imagery.
Taking such linkage between present and past Asian traditions of historiography as its premise, project NAMO – with four team members consisting of the PI and three Postdocs – will examine the literary features of Asian historiography in India, China, and Tibet across the longue durée of the classical, medieval, and modern periods. First, a new method for the study of the literary forms that characterize historiography in Asia will be established by adapting basic analytical principles from Asian literary theories drawn from twelve classical Indian and Chinese works on poetics. Next, the team will determine the specific literary characteristics of narrative, plot, tropes, and historical explanation found in seventeen classical and medieval histories composed in China, India, and Tibet. Finally, it will be examined to which extent those traditional literary features still function as constitutive rhetorical elements in modern Asian history writing. This will be done by analyzing the literary forms used in a selection of twenty representative histories written in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India during the period 1980-2010.
The outcome will be a novel approach for the empirical study of Asian history that will open up a new level of comparative work in the theory of history across non-Western and Western traditions.
Summary
Modern historiography produced in Asia belongs to the history-paradigm of the European humanities and it is from within these epistemological confines that Western as well as Eastern scholars of Asian studies view the Asian writing of the past. While source criticism and historicism have today become key parts of historical consciousness in Asia, Asian historical representations are nonetheless firmly embedded in pre-modern Asian literary traditions via specific uses in historical writing of traditional rhetorical structures of narrative, emplotment, tropes, and literary imagery.
Taking such linkage between present and past Asian traditions of historiography as its premise, project NAMO – with four team members consisting of the PI and three Postdocs – will examine the literary features of Asian historiography in India, China, and Tibet across the longue durée of the classical, medieval, and modern periods. First, a new method for the study of the literary forms that characterize historiography in Asia will be established by adapting basic analytical principles from Asian literary theories drawn from twelve classical Indian and Chinese works on poetics. Next, the team will determine the specific literary characteristics of narrative, plot, tropes, and historical explanation found in seventeen classical and medieval histories composed in China, India, and Tibet. Finally, it will be examined to which extent those traditional literary features still function as constitutive rhetorical elements in modern Asian history writing. This will be done by analyzing the literary forms used in a selection of twenty representative histories written in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India during the period 1980-2010.
The outcome will be a novel approach for the empirical study of Asian history that will open up a new level of comparative work in the theory of history across non-Western and Western traditions.
Max ERC Funding
1 995 162 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-12-01, End date: 2019-11-30
Project acronym OurMythicalChildhood
Project Our Mythical Childhood... The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges
Researcher (PI) Katarzyna Marciniak
Host Institution (HI) UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI
Country Poland
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2015-CoG
Summary The project aims at developing a pioneering approach to the reception of Classical Antiquity in children’s and young adults’ contemporary culture. This newly identified research field offers valuable insights into the processes leading to the formation of the culture recipients’ identities along with their initiation into adulthood. However, the most vital potential of this phenomenon remains unexploited, for the research is still selective, focused mainly on Western culture. With my project, I intend to overcome these limitations by applying regional perspectives without the pejorative implication of regional as parochial or inferior. I recognize regions as extremely valuable contexts of the reception of Antiquity, which is not only passively taken in, but also actively reshaped in children’s and young adults’ culture in response to regional and global challenges. Thus, the essence of this innovative approach consists in comparative studies of differing reception models not only across Europe but also America, Australia & New Zealand and – a bold but necessary step – in parts of the world not commonly associated with Graeco-Roman tradition: Africa and Asia. The shared heritage of Classical Antiquity, recently enhanced by the global influence of popular culture (movies, Internet activities, computer games inspired by the classical tradition), gives a unique opportunity – through the reception filter – to gain deeper understanding of the key social, political and cultural transformations underway at various locations. The added value of this original research, carried out by an international team of scholars, will be its extremely broad impact on the frontiers of scholarship, education and culture: we will elaborate a supra-regional survey of classical references, publish a number of analyses of crucial reception cases, and prepare materials on how to use ancient myths in work with disabled children, thus contributing to integration and stimulating cultural exchange.
Summary
The project aims at developing a pioneering approach to the reception of Classical Antiquity in children’s and young adults’ contemporary culture. This newly identified research field offers valuable insights into the processes leading to the formation of the culture recipients’ identities along with their initiation into adulthood. However, the most vital potential of this phenomenon remains unexploited, for the research is still selective, focused mainly on Western culture. With my project, I intend to overcome these limitations by applying regional perspectives without the pejorative implication of regional as parochial or inferior. I recognize regions as extremely valuable contexts of the reception of Antiquity, which is not only passively taken in, but also actively reshaped in children’s and young adults’ culture in response to regional and global challenges. Thus, the essence of this innovative approach consists in comparative studies of differing reception models not only across Europe but also America, Australia & New Zealand and – a bold but necessary step – in parts of the world not commonly associated with Graeco-Roman tradition: Africa and Asia. The shared heritage of Classical Antiquity, recently enhanced by the global influence of popular culture (movies, Internet activities, computer games inspired by the classical tradition), gives a unique opportunity – through the reception filter – to gain deeper understanding of the key social, political and cultural transformations underway at various locations. The added value of this original research, carried out by an international team of scholars, will be its extremely broad impact on the frontiers of scholarship, education and culture: we will elaborate a supra-regional survey of classical references, publish a number of analyses of crucial reception cases, and prepare materials on how to use ancient myths in work with disabled children, thus contributing to integration and stimulating cultural exchange.
Max ERC Funding
1 489 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30
