Final Report Summary - KNOWING (Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature)
Our project has investigated the epistemological negotiations at the thresholds between literary forms and four key, but apparently disparate, areas of thinking on the condition of knowledge, and the ends and means of knowing in early modern England: theology, early economic thinking, natural philosophy and law. For it is at these crossings that resolutions conditioned by disciplinary interests are challenged by the different aims and responsibilities of alternative knowledge systems. We have demonstrated, through systematic research, that literary interventions in a wider conversation about knowledge already ongoing among these more obviously epistemic disciplines can give us insights into the process, psychology and ethics of knowing that are yet to be fully recognised and institutionalised, not least because the disciplinary investments of imaginative literature are distinct. But we have also brought to light the ways in which these cognate fields use literary modes and strategies. We have rewritten the story of early modern knowledge by taking on board the evidence of imaginative writing and practice. Meanwhile, the category of the ‘literary’ has morphed and been reformulated with our incremental research. We have also reformulated the traditional understanding of the relation between what may now seem disparate areas of thinking, and shown that the boundaries between the disciplines we explore are fluid and porous in this period, but sometimes also resistant. Thus, we have forged a radical interdisciplinary approach attuned to the diversity of our interlocking materials, which posits literature as methodologically productive rather than ethically superior, and captures ordinarily unassimilable aspects of the experience and texture knowing that elude existing paradigms. In our final year, we have been radically syncretic, expanding our horizon to explore the material cultures of early modern knowledge-making, and to engage intellectually as well as creatively with migrant knowledge: both its Renaissance manifestations and its subsequent history, bringing us up to contemporary realities of life and art.
The project-team has to date organised and hosted TEN major international conferences covering a unique interdisciplinary range, and galvanised wider and energetic collaboration. Collectively and individually, project members have disseminated their ongoing research through talks and team-presentations. The collaborative research has begun to be published in many forms, including a prestigious stand-alone series of four volumes dedicated to the project by Palgrave Macmillan: Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature. Among several innovations, the research group have set up an international collaboration to supplement their qualitative research with the quantitative approach of computational analysis to test and recalibrate their epistemic mapping of early modern culture; the PI has published a dialogic volume to translate creative collaboration and conversation into print; the team have organising a unique conference on Law and Poetics including an event on ‘Law and the Arts’ which contained a visual artist’s presentation and a theatrical experiment on Staging Trials/Performing Law; the team have designed a unique and innovative event on Objects of Knowledge in collaboration with two museums.
Our most adventurous, visionary and moving initiative came near the end of our project: Migrant Knowledge, Early Modern and Beyond: this game-changing public event brought together scholars, artists and activists to think about migration and what it does with, and to, knowledge. In tune with the Crossroads project, we began in the early modern world, but moved freely across periods to dwell on the increasingly urgent experience of migrancy in our own times, and what it demands of us. We acknowledged the many meanings of ‘migration’ and ‘knowledge’ to probe the history of their interrelation, and to use our imaginative engagement with crossings of knowledge in its many forms. Here is a documentary on our event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOJ117-BA-g(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
We have just earned a publication contract for the mould-breaking book emerging from our collaborative work for this event: Migrant Knowledge: Thoughts and Responses, ed. by Subha Mukherji, Natalya Din-Kariuki and Rowan Williams. To be published in 2022, this will be Open Access, and acknowledge the ERC. The Press’s readers have welcomed it as ‘an enormously important volume’.
Finally, we have created and launched an immersive, multi-media online exhibition hosted by the Fitzwilliam Museum on Renaissance Spaces of Knowing: Privacy and Performance, which is already being accessed and used as a pedagogic resource as well as an output reaching out to the general public across age-groups: http://crossroads-spacesofknowing.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). It is entirely Open Access and is linked to the ERC grant very visibly on the landing page. It has drawn attention and praise from various audiences, both academic and general, and cutting across age groups and cultures. Because it is fully online, its reach is global. It has also been a particularly valuable resource during the pandemic years.
The project-team has to date organised and hosted TEN major international conferences covering a unique interdisciplinary range, and galvanised wider and energetic collaboration. Collectively and individually, project members have disseminated their ongoing research through talks and team-presentations. The collaborative research has begun to be published in many forms, including a prestigious stand-alone series of four volumes dedicated to the project by Palgrave Macmillan: Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature. Among several innovations, the research group have set up an international collaboration to supplement their qualitative research with the quantitative approach of computational analysis to test and recalibrate their epistemic mapping of early modern culture; the PI has published a dialogic volume to translate creative collaboration and conversation into print; the team have organising a unique conference on Law and Poetics including an event on ‘Law and the Arts’ which contained a visual artist’s presentation and a theatrical experiment on Staging Trials/Performing Law; the team have designed a unique and innovative event on Objects of Knowledge in collaboration with two museums.
Our most adventurous, visionary and moving initiative came near the end of our project: Migrant Knowledge, Early Modern and Beyond: this game-changing public event brought together scholars, artists and activists to think about migration and what it does with, and to, knowledge. In tune with the Crossroads project, we began in the early modern world, but moved freely across periods to dwell on the increasingly urgent experience of migrancy in our own times, and what it demands of us. We acknowledged the many meanings of ‘migration’ and ‘knowledge’ to probe the history of their interrelation, and to use our imaginative engagement with crossings of knowledge in its many forms. Here is a documentary on our event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOJ117-BA-g(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
We have just earned a publication contract for the mould-breaking book emerging from our collaborative work for this event: Migrant Knowledge: Thoughts and Responses, ed. by Subha Mukherji, Natalya Din-Kariuki and Rowan Williams. To be published in 2022, this will be Open Access, and acknowledge the ERC. The Press’s readers have welcomed it as ‘an enormously important volume’.
Finally, we have created and launched an immersive, multi-media online exhibition hosted by the Fitzwilliam Museum on Renaissance Spaces of Knowing: Privacy and Performance, which is already being accessed and used as a pedagogic resource as well as an output reaching out to the general public across age-groups: http://crossroads-spacesofknowing.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). It is entirely Open Access and is linked to the ERC grant very visibly on the landing page. It has drawn attention and praise from various audiences, both academic and general, and cutting across age groups and cultures. Because it is fully online, its reach is global. It has also been a particularly valuable resource during the pandemic years.