The event will further GEMSS organization’s goals of creating a community of Early Modern graduate student and faculty scholars on campus. The GEMSS Symposium will entail a day of presentation and workshop events in which students from departments across campus—and from other campuses—will be given the opportunity to present their research and receive feedback from an interdisciplinary audience of their colleagues. We anticipate offering four to six panels featuring three papers apiece, and have invited Professor Jessica Keating as keynote.
Keynote speaker: Professor Jessica Keating, Department of Art and Art History at Carleton College
Professor Keating’s teaching and scholarship focus on the art of early modern Europe and the intertwined histories of collecting; technology; cultural contact and exchange; and empire and sovereignty. Professor Keating’s publications include a monograph entitled Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire and the Early Modern World (Penn State University Press, 2018), in which she discusses how clockwork automata—which were both tools for timekeeping and visual objects tied to temporal movements—served as a means for the specific political ends. Her scholarship also exemplifies the recent academic trend that situates European artworks within a broader global context. Her keynote presentation will instruct GEMSS members and other attendees on the issues of time and temporalities in early modern European society from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines art, politics, and history of science. Both this talk and the Symposium will be free and open to all those interested in early modernity, including undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and members of the public.