This Spring, the Humanities Council proudly presents a collaborative humanities project and Global Initiative “AMERICAN CONTACT: lntercultural Encounter and the History of Objects.” The conference, originally scheduled to take place on Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania campuses will, in light of social distancing regulations, take place online on Friday, April 24 and Saturday, April 25, 2020.
The collaborative project was conceived and organized by Princeton Professor of History Rhae Lynn Barnes and University Pennsylvania Professor of Music Glenda Goodman.
The conference will examine material texts from the Americas, which including journals, books, maps, musical scores, visual art, wampum, textiles, stone tablets, and various kinds of handwork. Photo: Eric Sucar, University of Pennsylvania Communications
With support from the Council’s David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant, the initiative seeks to explore use of material texts in cross-cultural encounters in the Americas; how texts—broadly defined to include not only books but textual artifacts and material culture including visual art, musical scores, and various kinds of handwork—have facilitated communication across cultural divides, the creation and transmission of knowledge, the performance of both colonization and resistance, and the creation of alphabetic and alternative literacies from the eras of contact, conquest, and colonization through the twentieth century in both North and South America.
In an article published in Penn Today, Glenda Goodman describes how this conference is part of the greater objective of the partnership to create a symposium, a book, and a website about material texts.
Read the full article here.
For more information and to join the conference, go to the American Contact website.
