# Crossroads of Culture: Material Environments and Fugitive Practices This course prepares and is connected with my blog at H-Ideas, “Premodern Universities” H-Ideas' Blog "Premodern Universities" wants to open a project that started in 2015 with a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant to bring together an international working group scrutinising the nature and scope of higher learning and collaborative networks from the late Middle Ages to the era of Enlightenment. Novel approaches consider topics that university historians have largely ignored: the intense collaboration between university scholars and instructors; printers and providers of teaching objects and tools; administrators and students at academies, independent colleges, gymnasiums and Latin schools; sponsors and scholars; finally the impact of forced and voluntary academic migration, exchange and other forms of travel, of goods, information, and people. I am collecting blog posts scrutinizing the circulation of information and knowledge in pre-1800 CE centres of higher learning that are today situated within UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Thus, the blog wants to discuss the many forms how tangible heritage of building sites and those cultural practices today studied as intangible heritage of higher learning connected. Examples are the Jesuit Colegio Maximo of Córdoba in Argentina, the Old University in the Historic Centre of Vienna, Austria; and the historic town of Zabid in Yemen, with its large number of madrasas an early center for studying Islam and the sciences. I have included a list of possible topics below. Website: Word Count: between 500 and 3000 words (please use in-text references and a bibliography at the end, no footnotes!) Contact, discussion, and submission: Anja-Silvia Goeing anja.goeing (at) gmail.com or agoeing (at) fas.harvard.edu To make the effort worth for you and keep the quality of the posts as high as possible, I offer peer review and copyediting for the elected posts. ## Examples: - the Jesuit Colegio Maximo at Córdoba in Argentina - the Old University in the Historic Centre of Vienna, Austria - The University of Saint Francis Xavier in Sucre, Bolivia - The Preah Khan Temple (for the study of medicine) at Angkor, Cambodia - The Historic Centre of Macao in China - The Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic - The Colonial City of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic - Strasbourg Cathedral as Astronomical Heritage, France - The Benedictine Monastery of Reichenau (as an early repository of knowledge), Germany - The University of Nalanda Mahavihara at Bihar (an archaeological site) in India - The Historic City of Yazd, Islamic Republic of Iran - The Historic Centre of Naples with its University, Italy - The Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico) of Padua, Italy - The 16th century University Ensemble at Vilnius Historic Centre, Lithuania - The Sankore Madrasa at Timbuktu in Mali - Colegio del Espíritu Santo, Puebla, Mexico - Medina of Fez, Morocco - The Ohrid Literary School at Ohrid, North Macedonia - San Marcos University, Lima, Peru - Jagellonian University, Kraków, Poland - Jesuit University of the Holy Spirit at Évora, Portugal - University of Coimbra - Alta and Sofia, Portugal - University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain - University of Salamanca, Spain - Suleyman Pasa Madrasa at Safranbolu, Turkey - Durham Castle and Cathedral with its library, UK - Monticello and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA - The Historic Town of Zabid in Yemen ## Themes: 1) **Politics of Interaction: Colleges, Academies and Universities** National and civic politics conditioned collaborations between different institutions of higher learning. Who was responsible for setting up and maintaining regulations and control of these exchanges? Were goals of the collaborations explained and discussed in governing bodies inside and outside the institutions in question? Did the manner in which professors were selected influence the scope and character of institutions? How relevant were school regulations about admission and scholarships for multi-institutional careers of students? Were schools, academies and universities free to choose other institutions to collaborate with? How did scholars, philosophers and scientists consider memberships in different academies, and how did this help to connect the institutional bodies? Did changing collaborations induce curriculum changes? 2) **Important and Celebrated Individual Encounters** The second theme investigates collaborations between members of colleges, academies, and universities. How do letter exchanges and personal papers help to describe individual collaborations? Do they define types of teacher-student relations, collegiate rivalries or give hints about the exchange of books, objects and common interests? Was there a gender barrier, and was it overcome? 3) **The Venues for Scholarly Output : Collections, Treatises, Textbooks, Archives** The third theme examines co-operative scholarly outputs, including manuscript collections, books and other knowledge commodities. Did dedications connect institutions, such as books that school teachers wrote and dedicated to university professors, and vice versa? Did school teachers use teaching tools designed by university professors? Were religiously induced barriers maintained in all cases of co-operative usage? How did university professors deal with the writings of their colleagues from school? 4) **Co-operative Inter-regional Worlds: Productions, Markets, Travel and Trade** Institutions of higher education could not operate without the supply of different materials that helped every-day learning and teaching. They sought co-operative and inter-regional networks of trade and skills: how did the marketing of book along trade routes reflect the connections between regionally, nationally and internationally-connected universities and colleges? How were objects for natural philosophy courses or the scholarly collection of a university produced and merchandised? See also:- [ Heritage ](/courses/heritage)