In 2020 the Open University’s interdisciplinary Spaces and Places conference will address the theme of ‘Courtly Encounters’ by exploring instances of cultural exchange that shaped the day-to-day and extraordinary experiences of court life.

Since Subrahhmanyam’s seminal book Courtly Encounters, scholars have incorporated the transcultural in courtly studies, but not to the extent it deserves. At a time when scholars across the humanities are embracing a ‘global turn,’ it is an important moment to reassess court studies and consider new approaches that allow us to move beyond Eurocentricism and simple explanations of ‘shared’ tastes.

The early modern court was not a closed entity but was reliant on the movement of people and things, its power being dependent on its relationships with other courts and states. In the early modern period, increased exploration led to fierce competition over the control of trade routes and territories, and inevitably led to diplomatic entanglements that reached from Brazil to Portugal to India. These entanglements brought about hostile relationships, confusion and admiration, giving rise to cross-cultural transfer, exchange and friction as objects, practices and people moved through trade and diplomacy.

This conference will examine courtly encounters during the early modern period to consider the following questions:
- How were courtly spaces adapted and transformed through the movement of material and immaterial things?
- Which particular aspects of political, social, and economic infrastructures enabled the exchange of objects, ideas, and people?
- To what extent do new methodologies and approaches need to be developed to consider courts within a global geopolitical network?
This annual conference is fundamentally interdisciplinary: literary, musical, architectural, artistic and religious spaces will be the subjects of enquiry, not as discrete or separate entities, but ones which overlapped, came into contact with one another, and at times were in conflict.

Registration has now opened: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/courtly-encounters-medieval-and-early-modern-spaces-and-places-tickets-95234375581


Programme:

23 March 2020

9:30-10:15 Registration and coffee

10:15-10:30 Welcome (Leah Clark and Helen Coffey)

10:30-11:30 ‘New’/’Old’ World Encounters
Juan Chiva Beltrán (Universitat de València)
‘A Palace Between Asia and Europe: Luxury Objects in the Court of the Viceroys of New Spain’

C Cody Barteet (the University of Western Ontario)
‘The Maya Court at Mayapán: Gaspar Antonio Chi’s Colonial Reflections and Self-Representation’

11:30-12:00 Coffee

12:00-13:00 Representing Courtly Encounters
Jacopo Gnisci (University of Oxford)
‘The Veiled Emperor: On Courtly Customs in Ethiopia’

Alessandra Bertuzzi (“Sapienza” University of Rome),
‘Urbino “Città in forma di Palazzo” Spaces and Identity between Arts and Science ‘

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 European Encounters
M.A. Katritzky (Open University)
‘Italian stage costumes at German court weddings’

Helen Coffey (Open University)
'Musico-Political Encounters of the Imperial Court of Maximilian I’

Jaroslaw Pietrzak (Pedagogical University in Krakow)
‘The Polish Royal Court as a Common Space of Polish-German-Italian and French encountering between 16th and 17th century’

15:30-16:00 Coffee

16:00 Keynote: Katherine Butler-Schofield (Kings College London)
‘Something borrowed, something new: appropriation and integration in Mughal courtly arts, 1580–1680’

17:00 Drinks reception

19:00 Optional conference dinner


24 March 2020

10:30-12:00 Object Encounters
Isabella Cecchini and Veronica Prestini (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
‘Accepting Ottomans in Florence: Spaces and Objects at the Medici’s Court (15th-17th centuries)’

Leah R. Clark (Open University)
‘Sensing the World: Objects of Exchange in Aragonese Naples’

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:00 Encounters at the Tudor Court
Jonathan Gibson (Open University)
'French Poetry and the Elizabethan Court’

Michael Ohajuru (Institute of Commonwealth Studies)
'The John Blanke Project’

14:00-14:30 Closing discussion

14:30-15:00 Coffee

15:30 Optional Tour of the Museum of the Order of Saint John (80 minutes)