Sponsored by the Harvard History Department, the Harvard German department, the German Science foundation and the Henkel foundation, an interdisciplinary two-place conference on Historicizing Ignorance in Late Medieval and Early Modern History will take place at Harvard University, Robinson Hall and the German Historical Institute Paris. The conference seeks to address how ignorance about phenomena in different epistemic fields of the late medieval and early modern world was recognized (or not), used and coped with, differently from modern times. Some short points on what is meant is to be found at the end of this CfP. For the Harvard part, taking place on Feb 19/20, 2015, we are searching for up to three papers.

Featured speakers at Harvard are Taylor Cowdery (Harvard), Laura Schaefli (Queens), John Hamilton (Harvard), Lucian Hölscher (Bochum), Andrew McKenzie-McHarg (Cambridge), Eleonora Rohland (Bochum/Zürich), Albert Schirrmeister (Berlin/Paris), Matthias Schmoeckel (Bonn), Will Smiley (Yale), Cornel Zwierlein (Harvard/Bochum).

Priority shall be given to proposals within the Histories of Law, Geography, Natural History, Visualization and specific narratives using and coping with unknowns like conspiracy narratives. Due to budgetary constraints, additional but not exclusive priority will be given to applicants disposing of their own travel grants or to applicants from the Boston area. Proposals from graduate students working in related fields are welcome. Please send an abstract of 250-500 words and a short CV to zwierlein[at]fas.harvard.edu by December 5, 2014. The abstract should outline clearly the sources used and the literature that the paper engages with.

The stage of the conference taking place in Paris, is intended to complement to that taking place at Harvard.The speakers and program for Paris will be published on the homepages of the GHI (www.dhi-paris.fr) and www.rub.de. Information about the Harvard stage will be found on the department’s calendar (www.history.fas.harvard.edu/calendar).

A publication of contributions to both conferences is planned and secured, but the conferences and publication will be managed separately.

A terminology of historicizing ignorance may be derived from the neighboring field of the sociology of ignorance, but for this CfP only some short lines about the fields of Law, Nature, Geography, Visualization, and Narratives thought of may be enough.