“Lost in transfer? Misunderstanding, Miscommunication, and the Production of Knowledge in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean

Organizers: Stefania Tutino (UCLA), Andrea Robiglio (KU Leuven), and Eva Del Soldato (UPenn)

The question of how knowledge transfers has become central for understanding the culture of the premodern world in a global perspective. This workshop is interested in exploring the question of what happens when transfer fails: what happens when knowledge is not “translated” properly? What kind of knowledge is produced when the chain of transmission breaks down or malfunctions? We think that miscommunication is as important as communication, and we propose to explore this theme both by examining specific case studies of miscommunication and by investigating what they tell us about the structure and modes by which knowledge is produced, which in turn allows us to get to the question of the very category of “transfer” from a philosophical and theoretical perspective.