See a PDF of the day’s schedule HERE
View Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE
Organized by Cynthia Fang (UCLA), Drew Lash (UCLA), Sara Sisun (UCI), and Zachary Korol-Gold(UCI)
The study of the “blue humanities,” a term coined by Steve Mentz, has energized scholarship on the physical and symbolic impact of oceans and seas in the history of pre- and early modern Europe. During a time of unprecedented seabound expansion, the sea shaped the global early modern. Boundaries and maps shifted as people navigated multi-linear spaces. The trajectories of mobility, ingenuity, and ecology encompass relevant topics regarding the sea that this conference wishes to explore. Mobility speaks to the trade of goods and ideas, forced and voluntary migration, colonial and decolonial exploration, boundary crossing, and encountering alterity. Ingenuity nods to new methodologies and approaches (New Thalassology, Blue Culture Studies), new archives, resistance to mapping, boundlessness, and virtual seas. Lastly, ecology decenters the human and opens space for the agencies of problems that concern ecosystems, coasts, and climates in historical narratives. The sea itself, the fluidity of its matter, seeps into “blue” methodologies.
Through the maritime experiences that are unique to each civilization, studies of the sea allow scholars to reexamine the relationship that the land and people have to the sea, and prompt questions such as: how does one “collect” the sea, how does one master or conquer the sea, and how does one venture out to an unknown? Is there a terrestrial bias inherent to human nature? What does it mean to manage and contain the tenuous? How have people defined themselves and the category of the human in relation to and/or opposition to oceanic alterity? The Sea presents an opportunity to address these questions by gesturing toward conjectural elements stowed away in a range of methodologies within the interdisciplinary nature of visual and material studies.
Schedule
9:05 – 9:10AM PDT
Welcome & Introduction
9:10 – 9:25AM PDT
Nicolyna Enriquez (UCLA) presents:
“Between Wind and Water: Paintings and Graffiti of Ships in Late Byzantine Cretan Churches””
9:25 – 9:40AM PDT
Margaret Oakley (UCI)
“Expanded Perceptions: Water Through the Microspore and Alternative Notions of Subjecthood”
9:40 – 9:55AM PDT
Abigale Berry (UCLA) presents:
“Containers for Contagions: Water-Adjacent Quarantine in Fifteenth Century Europe”
9:55 – 10:10AM PDT
Discussion
10:10 – 10:20 M PDT – Break
10:20 – 10:35AM PDT
Gregory Sattler (UCLA) presents:
“Rise of Fujianese Sea Merchants and the First Chinese Trans-Asiatic Sea Network”
10:35 – 10:50AM PDT
Kathie Foley-Meyer (UCI) presents:
“Ocean Memory and the Territoriality and Temporality of Blackness”
10:50 – 11:05AM PDT
Discussion
Concluding remarks & thanks
