Thursday, 25 November 2010

10am-3pm: Council Chamber, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DR

3pm-5pm: The Studio, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG

Focusing on South America, this interdisciplinary symposium aims to foster discussion on the multiple ways of ordering, representing and ‘othering’ nature and society within different experiences of colonial encounters. In the first part of the symposium, invited speakers will address the following questions: to what extent did the context of an informal empire produce different frames for interpreting different colonial experiences? What were the literary, scientific or aesthetic discourses and practices of Hispanic and Portuguese colonial powers in their attempts to control the apparent ‘disorder’ of the different worlds under their rule? In what ways did South Americans borrow from, resist or reconfigure European classifications?

In the second part, the collection of South American textiles held by the British Museum will provide the focus for a roundtable discussion on weaving practices as a particular way of organizing socio-cultural knowledge and histories.

Speakers include: Denise Y. Arnold (ILCA and Birkbeck), Dana Leibsohn (Smith), Tristan Platt (University of St Andrews), Iris Montero Sobrevilla (Cambridge) and Luciana Martins (Birkbeck).

This Symposium is a collaboration amongst CILAVS, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the British Museum. It is part of the international research network The Disorder of Things: Predisciplinarity and the Divisions of Knowledge 1700-1850.

The Symposium is funded by Birkbeck’s School of Arts Research Fund.

Click on full programme to download a copy.

Admission is free, but booking is required. To book a place, contactLuciana Martins.

Click on Symposium poster to download a copy.