3:35-5:30P     R     BH335

Topic: Knowledge and Its Objects
A portion of the above section reserved for majors

This course will examine how objects--scientific, literary, scholarly,
artistic--produce and are produced by structures of knowledge. We will
focus on Early Modern Europe, when many of the disciplines familiar to
us were first invented, and we'll try to understand how disciplinary
boundaries are built, what kinds of objects disciplines include and
exclude, and what kinds of knowledge in turn these objects enable. In
short, we'll begin a cultural history of the production of knowledge.

The course will be organized around a set of themes, which will
include, among others: the history of the book and print culture, the
development of the encyclopedia, the history of Renaissance maps and
geography, new visions of art and painting, the influence of New World
discoveries on Old World scholarship, and the history of scientific
instruments. By the end of the colloquium, the student will have a
thorough introduction to the problems and historiographies that
structure Early Modern European cultural history.