Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Monday, September 17, 2018 in HART, News, Vanderbilt University, VRC.

The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities will host a year-long interdisciplinary faculty seminar to explore the significance of printed words and images in Early Modern Europe and North America. Kevin Murphy, Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and professor of history of art, and Mark Hosford, chair and associate professor of art, will co-direct the 2018-2019 Warren Center Fellows Program entitled “The World of Print(s): Multiples and Meanings in Early Modern Europe and North America.”

Other Vanderbilt professors participating in the program are José A. Cárdenas Bunsen (Spanish and Portuguese), Jana Harper (art), Paul C. H. Lim (Divinity School and history), David Price (religious studies), and Rebecca VanDiver (history of art). The visiting fellow is Patricia Fumerton (English) from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Though the current age is often considered unique in terms of the amount of information constantly flooding the airwaves and the Internet, it is important to historicize the current phenomenon in comparison to the Early Modern period when there was an explosion of printed materials that similarly saturated the West. The advent of cheap print in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries meant that larger audiences than ever before had access to the marketplace of written words, some serious and thoughtful, some salacious and sensational. Images on woodblocks combined with moveable type made possible the publication of a variety of illustrated texts as well. The visual culture brought about by the advent of this technology in the Early Modern period was the backdrop to the work of some of the most celebrated printmakers of all time.

The seminar participants will put printed works—comprising both textual and visual elements—at the center of an analysis that sees them as representations of discourses external to the objects and, at the same time, as material things. Seminar participants will draw upon contemporary scholarship through various disciplinary lenses, including literary theory and art history.  By bridging a variety of disciplines, scholars in the seminar will produce a synthetic view of Early Modern visual culture and its role in shaping political and social opinion. This collaborative work will lead to new perspectives on current debates regarding the presentation and circulation of information and images in the twenty-first century.

The group will meet regularly and will have access to generous program funds from the Warren Center that can be used for visiting speakers, conferences, or other appropriate program‑related expenses. The seminar provides an unusual opportunity for scholars with a variety of specializations to work cooperatively on a common issue in a sustained manner.

*Albrecht Dürer (German,1471–1528). Melencolia I, engraving, 1514.