E. Natalie Rothman, University of Toronto, Scarborough
Globalization through Localization? Trans-Imperial Subjects and Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Mediterranean
This paper will interrogate the meaning of early modern globalization through the lens of trans-imperial subjects, persons who straddled and thus helped define political, linguistic, and religious boundaries in the early modern Mediterranean. Specifically, the paper will explore how Venetian dragomans (diplomatic interpreters) engaged an emerging European public sphere in their translations and writings about Ottoman literature, history, and society. The paper will thus posit that early modern European notions of “the global” were in fact constituted in important ways through engagement with societies and cultures that were close at hand, even eerily familiar.