Séance pléniaire: E. Natalie Rothman, "Reframing Entanglement"
A 40-minute plenary talk examining "some of the conceptual and methodological entanglements of notions of community, diversity, coexistence, and, indeed, entanglement itself in the study of early modern lifeworlds." Rothman's focus will be on the role of Dragomans (diplomatic interpreters) in "setting in motion varied circulations of texts and textual practices across imperial boundaries," in order to interrogate the ways we envision cross-cultural contact, or communication, in the early modern period. She will draw on the work of an "ongoing collaborative digital research project, the Dragoman Renaissance Research Platform," which considers these questions in the context of seventeenth-century Venetian-Ottoman diplomacy. What insights do the records of these past entanglements, documented in early modern archives, offer for our present moment?