International kickoff conference of the SFB ‘Practices of Comparing. Ordering and Changing the World’

The act of comparing has become the focus of scholarly attention worldwide. Comparing matters at all societal levels, be it comparatively established world orders or literary adaptations of cultural contact. The emerging research field ‘Practices of Comparing’ transcends the boundaries of disciplines within the humanities. The Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1288 analyses comparing by understanding it as a practice: What do actors do when they compare? The keynotes will be held by historian Ann Laura Stoler, ‘On the Limits of Comparison’, and by literary scholar Haun Saussy, who asks, ‘Are we comparing yet?

Program:

THURSDAY, 5 October 2017

14:00
CONFERENCE OPENING
Opening Address by Gerhard Sagerer, Rector Introduction by Convenors: Angelika Epple, Walter Erhart, Johannes Grave

14:15 –15:00
Angelika Epple, Bielefeld: The Practices of Comparing as a New Research Paradigm: the Anatomy of White People
Chair: Antje Flüchter

PANEL I: COMPARING AND THE EMERGENCE OF INTERNATIONAL RANKINGS
Chair: Mathias Albert

15:00–17:00
Leopold Ringel, Tobias Werron, Bielefeld: The Emergence of Rankings: on the History and Institutionalization of a Modern Practice of Comparison, 1700–1980

Matthias Kranke, Warwick: Practices of International Comparison and the Indirect Power of Global Benchmarking

18:00–19:30
KEYNOTE: ANN LAURA STOLER, NEW YORK: ON THE LIMITS OF COMPARISON
Chair: Bettina Brockmeyer

FRIDAY, 6 October 2017

9:30
Walter Erhart, Bielefeld: Odysseus, Blackbirds, and Rain Barrels. Literature as a Comparative Practice
Chair: Kai Kauffmann

PANEL II: ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS COMPARED: THE MARGINS OF COMPARISONS
Chair: Kirill Postoutenko

10:00–12:00
Hartmut von Sass, Zürich: The Non-Comparable. A Report from the Margins of Comparing

Carlos Spoerhase, Bielefeld: The Quantification of Comparison. Practices of Ranking Artistic Achievement in Early Modern Europe

PANEL III: COMPARING ART AND THE ART OF COMPARING
Chair: Christina Brauner

13:00–15:00
Peter Geimer, Berlin: What Happens Between Two Pictures? On Comparative Seeing

Joris Corin Heyder, Bielefeld: ‘Goût de Comparaison’. Practices of Comparative Vision in 18th Century Connoisseurship

Britta Hochkirchen, Bielefeld: Genealogies of Modernity. Curatorial Practices of Comparing in 20th Century Art Exhibitions

PROJECT INF: DATA INFRASTRUCTURE AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES
Chair: Willibald Steinmetz

15:00–16:00
Anna Maria Komprecht, Silke Schwandt, Bielefeld: Comparing in the Digital Age: about the Transformations of Practices

PANEL IV: COMPARING IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE AND HISTORY
Chair: Marcus Hartner

16:30–18:00
Andrea Frisch, Maryland: The Challenge of Comparative History in the European Renaissance: the Case of Louis Le Roy

Kirsten Kramer, Bielefeld: Comparing Worlds. Modern French Travel Writing and World Literature

18:00
KEYNOTE: HAUN SAUSSY, CHICAGO: ARE WE COMPARING YET? AN ASIANIST REVISITS MARCEL DETIENNE
Chair: Walter Erhart

SATURDAY, 7 October 2017

PANEL V: THE MAKING OF ‘COMPARATA’ ACROSS PERIODS
Chair: Ralf Schneider

10:00–12:00
Alexander Martin, Notre Dame: ‘Venice‘ on the Baltic, ‘Amazons‘ in Crimea, ‘Columbus‘ in Siberia: the Use of Transnational Comparisons in the Construction of Imperial Russian Culture

Longxi Zhang, Hong Kong: Comparison and East-West Encounter in the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Centuries

Gary Shaw, Middletown: The Weight of Comparison across Periods: some Medieval English Evidence

PANEL VI: POLITICS AND PARADOXES OF COMPARISONS
Chair: Silke Schwandt

13:00–15:00
Thomas Müller, Bielefeld: Assessing and Negotiating Military Balances: the Politics of ‘Force Comparisons’

Peer Vries, Amsterdam: Comparing the Wealth of Nations: the Case of Meiji Japan

Kirill Postoutenko, Bielefeld: Paradoxes and Patterns of Comparions in Poetry, Political Speeches and Religious Pamphlets

15:00
CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
Chair: Johannes Grave