Writing Global Histories Today

 

September 16 – September 17, 2022

Pembroke Hall 305

https://humanities.brown.edu/programs/brownhi/globalhistories

This two-day symposium brings together an international cohort of scholars to discuss the challenges of writing global histories today, including the epistemological difficulties of analogic and comparative thinking and the political implications of such histories for the present and future of global societies. What are the stakes of writing global histories today? Who should write global histories? And how?

The symposium is incited by two recent, ground-breaking publications: David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Macmillan, 2021) and Alain Schnapp’s Ruines: Une histoire universelle des ruines. Des origines aux Lumières (Éditions du Seuil, 2020). Scholars at the symposium will use these texts as a point of departure for reflecting on writing global histories, and each day will end with a conversation with the authors.

Free and open to the public. No registration is required. For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact humanities-institute@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.

Convened by Yannis Hamilakis and Felipe Rojas with the support of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and the Humanities Initiative Programming Fund, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, the Program in Early Cultures, the C.V. Starr Foundation Lectureships Fund, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, and the Center for Middle East Studies.