Subjects & Objects (Graduate Symposium, April 8, 2016)

full name / name of organization: 
Early Modern Iberia (EMI) Study Group @ the University of Pennsylvania
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KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Mary E. Barnard (Penn State)

How are subjects and subjectivities constructed at the intersection between the human and the non-human world? How did the emergence of new technologies—the microscope, for example—revolutionize the way that humans saw themselves and the world around them? What is the distinction between subjects and objects made by an imperial imaginary that attempted to represent native peoples as non-human animals, and how is this echoed in the remarkable mechanization of the human body and community promoted by courtly treatises like Castiglione's Book of the Courtier? How did this mechanization extend to the natural world, such that the environment and its resources came to be seen as something separate from the human which could be manipulated, exploited and ultimately mastered? In the realm of performance, how did technologies of the theater shape the way that human subjects were represented to mass audiences, and how was the theatrical self extended into public life?

We invite submissions in English from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including but not limited to history and literary studies, philosophy, history of science, Arabic and Judaic studies, colonial studies, historical linguistics, manuscript studies, material culture, geopolitics, and ecocriticism.

We welcome 250-word abstracts for presentations 15-20 minutes in length. Please send your name, email, university and departmental affiliation with your abstract to Víctor Sierra Matute at vics@sas.upenn.edu by January 10, 2016.