Understanding the New, the Novel, and the Natural in the Global Early Modern Period, session at 2023 Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 9–11, 2023 

This session seeks to explore the myriad ways Early Modern cultures processed and attempted to understand a rapidly expanding and changing world through visual, material, and textual objects. The ways that people process the encountering of other cultures, the natural world, scientific discoveries, and narratives of exploration express global commonalities and differences. These experiences reveal trends in intellectual curiosity and an interest in understanding the new, the novel, and the natural.

We seek a variety of papers that collectively encompass a global scope, a range of media, varying methodologies, and interdisciplinary engagement. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, syncretic visual languages, materials, and ideas, indigenous memories of European contact, fumi-e, discovery treatises, and naturalia texts. 

Session organizers
Allison Kim, The University of Texas at Austin
Kristi Peterson, Skidmore College