C.IAS Lecture Series: Inter-American History and Culture
"Pirate Scientists? : Narratives from the Isthmus of Panama, ca.1700”
Guest Lecturer:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alexandra Ganser (Universität Wien)
Towards the close of the 17th century, Anglophone narratives emerging from pirate expeditions in the Caribbean and the American isthmus partook in both the discourse of sensational travel writing, including scenarios of cultural contact, and emergent scientific discourses in the context of a fledgling empiricism that revolutionized European models of science. Along these lines, this talk examines these narratives’ functions in epistemological empire-building as well as the faultlines of this process, resulting from the positionality of the pirate as a liminal agent of cultural encounter between legitimate and illegitimate orders, Europe and America, "wilderness" and "civilization," and ethnic and national allegiances.
Alexandra Ganser is professor of North American Literatures and Cultures at the University of Vienna and head of the research platform/FWF doc.funds "Mobile Cultures and Socities." The talk is based on her monograph Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy, 1678-1865 (Palgrave Macmillan 2020, available open access here).
Wednesday, December 15, 2021 (18.45-20.15)
Online via uniMeet (uni-graz.at)
