Conference: Speculative Endeavors. Cultures of Knowledge and Capital in the long 19th Century, 21.-23.10.2021, virtual space

Katrin Horn and Selina Foltinek (Bayreuth), and Karin Hoepker (Erlangen) (Web)
Time: 21.-23.10.2021
Venue: virtual space
Registration: by 07.12.2021 (workshop & keynotes) or 19.12.2021 (keynotes only)
This conference investigates the ways in which cultures of knowledge and forms of capital intersect in the US during the long nineteenth century. Epistemological and economic concerns complexly intertwine in the US, which by 1900 had emerged as „the land of speculation“ (Stäheli). Influential texts such as Thorstein Veblen’s A Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics (1898) illustrate an altered perception of the significance of market dynamics for all areas of social interaction and a commodification of the private sphere. The rise of Wall Street, the increasing incorporation of America, and the experience of economic volatility drives people to seek potential „insider knowledge“ about the machinations of markets, and different knowledges compete and conflict in the face of uncertainty.
Speculative Endeavors seeks to bring together new perspectives on speculation and knowledge production that include illicit, tacit, oral, unofficial, or subjugated knowledges. Traversing histories of scientific, scholarly, legal, and otherwise official knowledges, scholarship increasingly focuses on forms of “connected knowing” (Adkins) that may contain multiple “small, shared truths” (Spacks). Practices of speculation may be marginalized by … read more (Web).
Program and Speakers

Panels

  • Dealing with Uncertainty: Rumor and Speculation
  • Making it Official: Disenfranchised Knowledge in Knowledge Institutions
  • Trading Private Knowledges
  • Knowledge Production in the Private Sphere

Source: H-Net Notifications