The Center for Renaissance Studies is developing a multi-year, international research collaborative together with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World at the University of Minnesota devoted to a highly influential yet surprisingly understudied book: Bernard and Picart's Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde. The book, published in nine volumes between 1723 and 1743 and then re-issued in multiple translations and editions over the next hundred years, was a blockbuster bestseller. Based around a lavish set of illustrations made by Bernard Picart, a leading European engraver, the book describes the world’s religions as understood by Europeans at the time, contributing through its text and images to the emerging Enlightenment understanding of universal civilization and history and the place of religion within it.
The research group aims to build upon UCLA’s digital resource devoted to the book by assembling a team of scholars, including graduate students, who will advance research about the book and contribute to the construction of a new state-of-the-art digital research site devoted to the book and its images. The symposium, which will also serve as the launch of the research group, will present new research on Bernard and Picart and their book, explore the development of the web resource and examine editions of the volume at the Newberry first-hand. The graduate symposium aims to focus in more depth on the role of digital humanities to disseminate and present new methods to study this significant Enlightenment book.
Graduate students are required to apply for participation in the research collaborative and graduate student workshop.
Schedule
Thursday, March 15 at Loyola University Chicago
6 pm Keynote
"Idol to Art: Conceptualizing Artifacts and Images of the World in Europe before Picart"
Ulrich Pfisterer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich
Beane Hall, Lewis Towers, Loyola University Chicago Water Tower Campus
111 East Pearson Street, Chicago, IL
Cosponsored with Northwestern University's Department of Art History and Loyola University Chicago.
Friday, March 16 at the Newberry
9 am "The Strange Path to the Rediscovery of Bernard Picart"
Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles
9:30 am Introduction to Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses
JB Shank, University of Minnesota
10 am Coffee break
10:15 am Roundtable discussion
Tomoko Masuzawa, University of Michigan
Ellen McClure, University of Illinois at Chicago
Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington
11 am Rare books session
12 pm Lunch on your own
1:30 pm Session of 20-minute papers
"Copies and Edition of Picart and Bernard in European Libraries: Towards the Creation of a Corpus for Study"
Luke Freeman, University of Minnesota
"Translating Matter from India to Amsterdam in the Eighteenth Century"
Caroline Fowler, Yale University
"Dancing in Circles: Ethnography and Animation in the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses"
Michael Gaudio, University of Minnesota
2:45 pm Coffee break
3 pm Digital humanities session
Saturday, March 17
Graduate workshop with collaborators
Research project collaborators
Sunil Agnani, University of Illinois at Chicago
Justin Biel, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Dawn Childress, University of California, Los Angeles
Caroline Fowler, Yale University
Luke Freeman, University of Minnesota
Michael Gaudio, University of Minnesota
Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles
Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles
Jeanne Kilde, University of Minnesota
Howard Louthan, University of Minnesota
Lia Markey, Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies
Tomoko Masuzawa, University of Michigan
Anton Matytsin, Kenyon College
Ellen McClure, University of Illinois at Chicago
Mary Helen McMurran, University of Western Ontario
Wijnand Mijnhardt, Utrecht University
Michelle Molina, Northwestern University
Andreas Motsch, University of Toronto
Martin Muslow, Universität Erfurt
Ulrich Pfisterer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
Marguerite Ragnow, University of Minnesota
Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington
JB Shank, University of Minnesota
Mark Valeri, Washington University in St. Louis
Benjamin Wiggins, University of Minnesota
Faculty and graduate students of Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions may be eligible to apply for travel funds to attend CRS programs or to do research at the Newberry. Each member university sets its own policies and deadlines; contact your Representative Council member in advance for details.
This program is part of Religious Change, 1450 - 1700, a yearlong multidisciplinary project
