Making Worlds: Global Invention in the Early Modern Period (UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series)

"Taking into account the destructive powers of globalization, Making Worlds considers the interconnectedness of the world in the early modern period. This collection examines the interdisciplinary phenomenon of making worlds, with essays from scholars of history, literary studies, theatre and performance, art history, and anthropology. The volume advances questions about the history of globalization by focusing on how the expansion of global transit offered possibilities for interactions that included the testing of local identities through inventive experimentation with new and various forms of culture. Case studies show how the imposition of European economic, religious, political, and military models on other parts of the world unleashed unprecedented forces of invention as institutionalized powers came up against the creativity of peoples, cultural practices, materials, and techniques of making. In doing so, Making Worlds offers an important rethinking of how early globalization inconsistently generated ongoing dynamics of making, unmaking, and remaking worlds."-- Provided by publisher Cover Half-Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1 Introduction Part I: Material Flows 2 The Early Modern Fold: Pleated Media in Japan’s Encounter with Europe 3 From Textile to Text: Cloth, Slavery, and the Archive in the Dutch Atlantic 4 Drawing Worlds: Bodies and Smoke in the Courtly Ballet Il Tabacco (1650) 5 From Hot Reverence to Cold Sweat: Christian Art and Ambivalence in Early Modern Japan 6 Eggs, Cheese, and (Francis) Bacon Part II: In-Between Spaces 7 The Production of Imprecision: Reframing Non-EuropeanObjects in Early Modern European Collections 8 Le Jeu du monde : Games, Maps, and World Conquest in Early Modern France 9 The World Contained in an Imperial Ottoman Album 10 World Building, the Folger Folios, and the University of British Columbia Part III: Other Worlds 11 Ascetic Ecology: Landscape of a Desert Saint 12 The End of All: Worldliness, Piety, and the Social Life of Maps in the Post-Reformation English Household 13 Enlightenment Cosmology: A Medialogical Interpretation 14 Masked Alliances: Global Politics and Economy in the Artand Performance Rituals of Mexico’s Indigenous People 15 Unease with the Exotic: Ambiguous Responses toChinese Material Culture in the Dutch Republic List of Contributors Index Making Worlds explores how early globalization fostered new ways of knowing and shaping the world.