CONFERENCE
European Visions: American Voices
14 – 16 June 2007, BritishMuseum
In connection with the exhibition
A New World: England’s first view of America
(BritishMuseum, Room 5, Until 17 June 2007)
The exhibition ANew World provides the opportunity to hold an interdisciplinary, international academic conference, bringing together scholars from many different fields – history, ethnography, literature, natural history, art history – all of whom have recently published on related issues. Using new approaches, they will re-examine the work of John White, Thomas Harriot, and Theodor de Bry, the Frankfurt engraver who published their work. In the process, they will hopefully enable us to look at the Old World visions in a way that will help us to recover a missing perspective – that of the Native Americans.
Thursday 14 June
Evening
17.30–18.30Registration in the Clore Centre, outside the BP Lecture Theatre
18.30Welcome by Neil MacGregor, Director, BritishMuseum
18.45Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Julius Silver Professor of History, New YorkUniversity) Keynote Lecture: Roanoke’s achievement
19.45–20.30Drinks Reception
Friday 15June
MorningModerator: Peter Mason (Independent scholar, Rome)
09.00–10.00Registration in the Clore Centre
10.00Welcome
10.15Stephen Clucas
(Senior Lecturer, English and Humanities, BirkbeckCollege, University of London)
Thomas Harriot's Brief and True Report: Knowledge-Making and the Roanoke Voyage
11.00–11.30Coffee/Tea
11.30Michael Gaudio
(Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, University of Minnesota)
“Counterfeited According to the Truth”: John White, Lucas de Heere, and the Truth in Clothing
12.15Stephanie Pratt
(Senior Lecturer inArt History, University of Plymouth)
Truth and artifice in the visualization of native peoples: from the time of John White to the beginning of the 18th century
13.00–14.15Lunch(not provided)
AfternoonModerator: tbc
14.15Deborah Harkness (Associate Professor of History, University of Southern California)
Elizabethan London's Naturalists and the Work of John White
15.00Karen Reeds
(Independent scholar, affiliated with University of Pennsylvania)
Don't Eat, Don't Touch: Native Americans, European Newcomers, and Dangerous Plants of North America
15.45–16.15Coffee/Tea
16.15–17.30New Visions of a New World
Alice Rugheimer
(Paper Conservator, BritishMuseum)
Conservation of John White’s Watercolours
Janet Ambers
(Museum Scientist, BritishMuseum)
Analysis of John White’s Pigments
Timea Tallian
(Research Student at the RCA/V&A Conservation Programme)
Reconstruction of John White’s Materials and Techniques
Saturday 16 June
MorningModerator: Peter Mancall (Professor of History, University of Southern California)
09.00–09.30Registration in the Clore Centre
09.30MichaelLeroy Oberg
(Professor and Chair of History, State University of New York–Geneseo)
Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes
10.15Sam Smiles
(Professor of Art History, University of Plymouth)
John White and British antiquity: savage origins in the context of Tudor historiography
11.00–11.30Coffee/Tea
11.30Ernst van den Boogaart
(Independent Ethno-historian, Netherlands)
UnsettlingImages: The Virginia series published by Theodore de Bry
12.15Joan-Pau Rubies
(Senior Lecturer in International History, LondonSchool of Economics)
Texts, images and the perception of 'savages' in early modern Europe: what we can learn from White and Harriot
13.00–14.15Lunch (not provided)
AfternoonModerator: Christian Feest (Director of the Museum of Ethnography, Vienna) (contributor to exhibition catalogue)
14.15Joyce Elizabeth Chaplin
(James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, HarvardUniversity)
(contributor to exhibition catalogue)
Thomas Harriot and the colonial origins of the dismal science
15.00Audrey Horning
(Lecturer in Historical Archaeology, Universityof Leicester)
Past, Present, and Future: Exploring and restoring native perspectives in the Chesapeake
15.45–16.15Summary and final discussion
Further details and moderators will be confirmed at a later date.
Thursday 14 – Saturday 16 June 2007 in the BP Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre,
BritishMuseum
£45, Members & concessions £35
Students £25 (first 50 student places are free by application to – early application recommended)
Includes evening reception on Thursday, tea and coffee on Friday and Saturday and entrance to the exhibition
Further details from Ute Kuhlemann, Prints and Drawings, BritishMuseum, London WC1B 3DG, and on the exhibition website
Book through the BritishMuseum Box Office on +44 (0)20 7323 8181