Call for Papers (Summer School): Empire of Circulation. Habsburg Knowledge in its Global Settings.

 Call for Papers (Summer School): Empire of Circulation. Habsburg Knowledge in its Global Settings. A summer school organized by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Johann Gottfried Herder-Research Council in cooperation with the Institute of Czech Literature of the CAS. 3–6 October 2022

Placing Habsburg knowledge production from the 17th to the 20th centuries afresh in its global settings, this event will serve as a platform for doctoral, post-doctoral and senior researchers who specialise in Habsburg history, the history of science, scholarship and intellectual culture. Our event will allot a special place to Bohemia and its role as an interface between the regions of the Empire and as a switchboard between Central Europe and the globe.

Our re-discovery of Habsburg Central Europe as a clearinghouse for the circulation of ideas, practices and objects aims at a broader historiographical purpose: We do not consider Central Europe as a self-contained space, but encourage approaches that think outside the box, uncovering linkages and channels of exchange that help us to move beyond standard notions of space that undergird national and territorial histories. This implies that we will not treat Central Europe as a self-contained specialism, but as a springboard for the global history of knowledge-making. In pursuing this agenda, we encourage the development of research strategies that combine the study of the global ingredient in Habsburg Central Europe with the Central European lineaments of world history in innovative ways.

We invite papers of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers that contribute to one or several of the following thematic fields:

The study of

 institutions of knowledge-production (learned societies, academies, universities, churches, religious orders, secret societies, museums, theatres etc)

 the interplay of regional and global literature (translations, travelling habits, travelling forms, media and genres)

 the activities of go-betweens, brokers and liason agents

 the shifting political functions and expected pay-off of the knowledge produced

Discussing recent cutting-edge advances in the history of knowledge-circulation, relational history and connected history (e.g. Kapil Raj, Simon Schaffer, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Bernhard Schär), the summer school will also give due weight to postcolonial and decolonial approaches.

Our four-day summer school will consist of two components: an extended seminar hosted by the convenors will permit the participates to discuss a precirculated reader that contains both some of the convenors’ own work as well as other exemplary studies; a subsequent series of workshops will enable doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to present and discuss their projects with the faculty.

We invite applications both by junior scholars from Central Europe who work on the above-mentioned themes as well as by colleagues from other parts of the world whose research deals with our region.

Organizers: Franz L. Fillafer (Vienna), Johannes Feichtinger (Vienna), Steffen Höhne (Weimar-Jena), Alfrun Kliems (Berlin), Michael Wögerbauer (Prague)

Conference Languages: English and German

Location: Campus of the Austrian Academy and Sciences, Vienna.

Audience: Doctoral and Postdoctoral researchers

Conference languages: English and German

Application: Abstract of your contribution/research project (250-300 words) and a brief CV Kurzvita (preferably as PDF). Send to: steffen.hoehne@hfm-weimar.de

Deadline for submissions: 13 March 2022

We plan to cover participants’ travel and accomodation costs.