Abstract:
Anthropology is a notoriously polysemous term. Within a continental European academic context, it is usually employed in the sense of philosophical anthropology, and mainly concerned with exploring concepts of a universal human nature. By contrast, Anglo-American scholarship almost exclusively associates anthropology with the investigation of cultural and ethnic differences (cultural anthropology). How these two main traditions (and their 'derivations' such as literary anthropology, historical anthropology, ethnology, ethnography, intercultural studies) relate to each other is a matter of debate. Both, however, have their roots in the path-breaking changes that occurred within sixteenth and early seventeenth-century culture and scientific discourse. It was in fact during this period that the term anthropology first acquired the meanings on which its current usage is based.
The Renaissance did not 'invent' the human. But the period that gave rise to 'humanism' witnessed an unprecedented diversification of the concept that was at its very core. The question of what defines the human became increasingly contested as new developments like the emergence of the natural sciences, religious pluralisation, as well as colonial expansion and the resulting confrontation with non-European peoples, were undermining old certainties. The proliferation of doctrines of the human in the early modern age bears out the assumption that anthropology is a discipline of crisis, seeking to establish sets of common values and discursive norms in situations when authority finds itself under pressure.
Program:
Thursday, July 16
15:00
Intro: Andreas Höfele
15:30—16:30
Aleida Assmann:
"Radical Anthropology in Shakespeare's Plays"
17:00—18:00
Richard Wilson:
"The Golden Window of the East:
Shakespeare and the Shah"
Friday, July 17
09:30—10:30
Enno Ruge:
"Golding's Metamorphoses, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Puritan Anthropology"
10:30—11:30
Tobias Döring:
"'Now they're substances and men':
The Masque of Lethe and the Recovery of Humankind"
12:00—13:00
Brian Cummings:
"Among the Fairies"
14:30—15:30
Verena Lobsien:
"The Space of the Human and the Place of the Poet.
Excursions into English Topographical Poetry"
15:30—16:30
Bettina Boecker:
"'Cony caught by walking mort':
Indigenous Exoticism in the Literature of Roguery"
17:00—18:00
Paul Yachnin:
"Shakespeare's Public Animals"
18:00—19:00
Cornel Zwierlein:
"Caring for the self's future: Anthropologies of Insuring
and Insurance-like Practices in the Renaissance"
Saturday, July 18
09:00—10:00
Gideon Stiening:
"Between God and Nature: Thomas Hobbes and
Francisco Suarez on Anthropology"
10:00—11:00
Markus Wild:
"'Confreres et compaignons' / 'fellow-brethren and compeers':
Montaigne's Attempt at Rapprochement between Man and Animal"
11:30—12:30
Ulrich Pfisterer:
"Animal art / Human art. Defining imagination and
Artistic Creativity in Early Modern Europe"
14:00—15:00
Lara Bovilsky:
"Spenser's Robots"
15:00—16:00
Stefan Herbrechter:
"Posthumanist Shakespeares"
Info:
Location:
Thursday — Friday
Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung
Südliches Schloßrondell 23
80638 München
Saturday:
Internationales Begegnungszentrum der Wissenschaft
International Center for Science and the Humanities
Amalienstraße 38
80799 München
Conference Convenor:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Höfele
Contact:
Sonderforschungsbereich 573
Pluralisierung und Autorität in der Frühen Neuzeit
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
Eva-Maria Wilhelm
Telefon 089/2180-2516
sfb573.wilhelm@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
