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This series presents studies of the early modern contacts and exchanges among the states, polities and entrepreneurial organizations of Europe; Asia, including the Levant and East India/Indies; Africa; and the Americas. Books investigate travellers, merchants and cultural inventors, including explorers, mapmakers, artists and writers, as they operated in political, mercantile, sexual and linguistic economies. We encourage authors to reflect on their own methodologies in relation to issues and theories relevant to the study of transculturism/translation and transnationalism. We are particularly interested in work on and from the perspective of the Asians, Africans, and Americans involved in these interactions, and on such topics as:
-Material exchanges, including textiles, paper and printing, and technologies of knowledge
-Movements of bodies: embassies, voyagers, piracy, enslavement
-Travel writing: its purposes, practices, forms and effects on writing in other genres
-Belief systems: religions, philosophies, sciences
-Translations: verbal, artistic, philosophical
-Forms of transnational violence and its representations.
By Pinar Emiralioglu
August 26, 2016
Exploring the reasons for a flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, this study analyzes how cartographers, travellers, astrologers, historians and naval captains promoted their vision of the world and the centrality of the Ottoman Empire in it. It proposes a new...
Edited By Anne J. Cruz
April 28, 2008
Separated only by a narrow body of water, Spain and England have had a long history of material and cultural interactions; but this intertwined history is rarely perceived by scholars of one country with a view toward the other. Through their analyses of the various modes of exchange of material ...
By Claire Jowitt
November 16, 2016
Listening to what she terms 'unruly pirate voices' in early modern English literature, in this study Claire Jowitt offers an original and compelling analysis of the cultural meanings of 'piracy'. By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the sometimes hard-to-distinguish ...
By Belén Bistué
November 30, 2016
Focusing on team translation and the production of multilingual editions, and on the difficulties these techniques created for Renaissance translation theory, this book offers a study of textual practices that were widespread in medieval and Renaissance Europe but have been excluded from ...
Edited By Dana Leibsohn, Jeanette Favrot Peterson
October 26, 2016
What were the possibilities and limits of vision in the early modern world? How did political expansion, cross-cultural trade, scientific exploration and discrete religious practices require new ways of rendering the unknown visible, and of making what was seen knowable? Drawing upon experiences ...
Edited By Jason Powell, William T. Rossiter
October 17, 2016
A detailed examination of the relationship between the discourses and practices of authority and diplomacy in the late medieval and early modern periods, Authority and Diplomacy from Dante to Shakespeare interrogates the persistent duality of the roles of author and ambassador. The volume ...
By Elizabeth A. Sutton
October 14, 2016
Using Pieter de Marees' Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602) as her main source material, author Elizabeth Sutton brings to bear approaches from the disciplines of art history and book history to explore the context in which De Marees' account was created. Since ...
Edited By Sabine Schülting, Sabine Lucia Müller, Ralf Hertel
October 11, 2016
An exploration of early modern encounters between Christian Europe and the (Islamic) East from the perspective of performance studies and performativity theories, this collection focuses on the ways in which these cultural contacts were acted out on the real and metaphorical stages of theatre, ...
Edited By John Watkins, Kathryn L. Reyerson
September 09, 2016
The first full length volume to approach the premodern Mediterranean from a fully interdisciplinary perspective, this collection defines the Mediterranean as a coherent region with distinct patterns of social, political, and cultural exchange. The essays explore the production, modification, and ...
By Matteo Salvadore
July 04, 2016
From the 14th century onward, political and religious motives led Ethiopian travelers to Mediterranean Europe. For two centuries, their ancient Christian heritage and the myth of a fabled eastern king named Prester John allowed the Ethiopians to engage the continent's secular and religious elites ...
By Pascale Barthe
June 08, 2016
Focusing on early Renaissance Franco-Ottoman relations, this book fills a gap in studies of Ottoman representations by early modern European powers by addressing the Franco-Ottoman bond. In French Encounters with the Ottomans, Pascale Barthe examines the birth of the Franco-Ottoman rapprochement ...
By Laura Lisy-Wagner
September 20, 2013
Unlike many narratives about the Czech lands, which place them on the periphery of their own history, this study considers Czechs as central characters, looking both east and west to find their place in the early modern world. Islam, Christianity and the Making of Czech Identity, 1453-1683 works ...