Seeing Across Cultures in the Early Modern World

What were the possibilities and limits of vision in the early modern world? How did political expansion, cross-cultural trade, scientific exploration and discrete religious practices require new ways of rendering the unknown visible, and of making what was seen knowable? Drawing upon experiences forged in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, Seeing Across Cultures argues that distinctive ways of habituating the eyes in the early modern period had epistemic consequences: in the realm of politics, daily practice and the imaginary. The essays here consider prints and panoramas, sculpted works of stone and corn pith cane - and their physical presence in the lived world - calling attention to the materiality and sensuality of visual experience. Anchored in writings on art history and visual culture, Seeing Across Cultures also engages histories of transcultural encounters and vision.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: geographies of sight, Dana Leibsohn; Part I Perspective and Mimesis: Perspective and its discontents or St Lucy's eyes, Yoriko Kobayashi-Sato and Mia M. Mochizuki; Perceiving blackness, envisioning power: Chalma and Black Christs in colonial Mexico, Jeanette Favrot Peterson; Competing and complementary visions of the court of the Great Mogor, Saleema Waraich. Part II Blindness and Memory: Visual knowledge/facing blindness, Bronwen Wilson; Blindness materialized: disease, decay, and restoration in the Napoleonic Description de l'Egypte (1809-1828), Liza Oliver; Gone: memory and visuality in early modern West Africa, Mark Hinchman. Part III Colonial Visualities: Without a face: voicing Moctezuma II's image at Chapultepec Park, Mexico City, Patrick Thomas Hajovsky; Markers: Le Moyne de Morgues in 16th-century Florida, Todd P. Olsen; Tourism, occupancy and visuality in North India, ca.1750-1858, Natasha Eaton. Part IV Seeing Across Time: Understanding visuality, Claire Farago; Index.

Dana Leibsohn is Priscilla Paine van der Poel Professor of Art History at Smith College, USA. Jeanette Favrot Peterson is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.