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Converting Natural Resources: Representations, Performances, Narratives
December 1, 2023 @ 9:00 am - December 2, 2023 @ 1:00 pm
This conference considers visual, textual, material, and performative engagement with processes of commodification in the early modern world. It explores how images, objects, and practices converted environments into resources, natural resources into lucrative items with commercial and tax-yielding significance, and destructive forces and forced labor into idealized landscapes and aestheticized bodies. The conference shifts the focus from the collection and display of phenomena in cabinets of curiosities, to the mechanisms and processes through which raw materials were converted into commodities.
The conference is free to attend with advance registration, and will be held in-person at the Clark Library. Registration will close on Monday, November 27 at 5:00 p.m. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.