This course is both methodological and epistemological: methodological in the sense that it looks at how scholars have approached the production, translation, circulation, and adaptation of knowledge, writ large, in the early modern period; and epistemological in the sense that it considers the conditions and possibilities that make knowledge production possible. Throughout the term we will reflect upon how knowledge was made through objects, objectification, and subjectification, as well as how the translation of meaning occurred in new colonial settings. The role of bureaucracies and archives in creating truths, and understanding how people thought they knew what they knew are also key components of the curriculum. The course is meant to introduce graduate students to a more global perspective of the early modern period without needing a background in a specific geographic area or culture. Specific topics include maps, botany, nature, sense making, translation and translatability, cultural intellectuals, and race and otherness.
