Joan-Pau Rubiés will be coming to speak at the Seminar in Cultural History on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. His talk is entitled “Ethnographic Images in the Late Renaissance, East and West.”

Joan-Pau Rubiés is ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Barcelona and his Ph.D. from King’s College, University of Cambridge. Rubiés has been the recipient of distinguished research fellowships from Queens’s College, University of Cambridge, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust. He has published extensively on the intellectual and cultural history of medieval and early modern travel and exploration, including narratives of encounter and ethnography. His most recent essays are “From Antiquarianism to Philosophical History: India, China and the World History of Religion in European Thought (1600-1770)” (in Miller and Louis, eds., Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Early Modern Europe and China, 1500-1800, University of Michigan Press, 2012) and “From the History of Travayle to the History of Travel Collections: The Rise of an Early Modern Genre” (in Carey and Jowitt, eds., Richard Hakluyt and Collected Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe, Ashgate, 2012).

In his talk, Rubiés will consider images of both American and Oriental Indians from the late sixteenth century in the light of manuscript drawings and raise questions about two issues pertaining to these images: their origins in cross-cultural experiences and the creation of distinct stereotypes for America and Asia. After considering more familiar examples from the works of John White and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Rubiés will draw attention to an unpublished Sino-Hispanic manuscript from the Philippines, which helps challenge some of the assumptions that have dominated the historiography of those more familiar examples.

Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.

RSVP is required.

PLEASE NOTE that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. We also have overflow seating available; all registrants who arrive late will be seated in the overflow area.