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Schooling the Discoveries: A Global Earth in Education

Responsible:

David Salomoni

Associates:

Carmo Lacerda

José María Moreno Madrid

Luana Giurgevich

Introduction/Summary

This research line focuses on the impact of the first globalization on European humanist education. In order to explain the great educational shift occurred in the Sixteenth Century, in fact, historians of early modern schools traditionally emphasized religion and politics. However, the geographical discoveries achieved during the 15th and 16th Centuries by Portugal and Spain exerted a deep influence on the european school system both in the ways of transmitting and producing knowledge. The slow but steady erosion of scientific paradigms inherited by the Middle Ages from the Ancient world, which arrived up to the threshold of the modernity, gave way to new knowledge arrived in Europe thanks to oceanic explorations. This body of knowledge profoundly changed not only the school curriculum but the very foundations of geographical and scientific epistemology. The capillarity of the schools created during the Sixteenth century by religious orders allowed an unprecedented spread and standardization of geographical and scientific literacy, laying the groundwork for the mass dissemination of a new way of thinking the world. Within the framework of a broad time span (15th-18th C.), this line of research aims at exploring these dynamics of knowledge diffusion in the European school context, taking particular account of the differences between the Catholic and Protestant worlds.

Activities

Participation in seminars and international conferences

  • From Atlantic history to Early Modern education: the historiographical importance of integrating local and global dimensions. Conference: Rutter Kick-Off Meeting (17th January 2020, Lisbon)
  • Early Modern Nautical Rutters and the Idea of Europe: New Trends in Global and Digital History. Conference: The Idea of Europe in Literature, Philosophy and the Arts: History and Current Debate (5th March 2020, Virtual – London: King’s College)
  • La función clave de la península ibérica en la ciencia técnica de la primera Edad Moderna global, (May 2020, Virtual – Universidad de Alicante)
  • Schooling the Discoveries: Geographical Literacy in the Early Modern European School System, 16th C. Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (13-22nd April 2021, Virtual)
  • Educazione geografica e espansione marittima tra Italia e Portogallo XV-XVI secolo. Conference: La Relación Hispano-Italiana Moderna: Libro, Literatura y Cultura (22-23rd April 2021, Virtual – Universidad de Alicante)
  • Insegnare le scoperte: L’educazione geografica in Europa tra umanesimo e rivoluzione scientifica. Conference: Lavori in corso: Ricerche di giovani ricercatori in ambito storico-pedagogico, (28th May 2021, Virtual – Università di Verona)
  • L’alfabetizzazione geografica alla corte dei Gonzaga tra umanesimo e rivoluzione scientifica (secc. XV-XVII). Conference: I Gonzaga Digitali 6: I Gonzaga tra Oriente e Occidente. Viaggi, scoperte e meraviglie esotiche (25-26th June 2021, Mantua)
  • The New Shape of the World: Geographic Literacy and Jesuit Education in the Early Modern Global World, 16-17th centuries. Panel: Medieval and Early Modern Global Legacies World History Associaton Annual Conference (5-9th July 2021, Virtual)

Organization of seminars and panels in international conferences

  • – La función clave de la península ibérica en la ciencia técnica de la primera Edad Moderna global, (May 2020, Virtual – Universidad de Alicante)
  • – Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (April 2021, Virtual): 3 Panels
  • La Génesis de la Globalización: Historia, Geografía, Literatura, Filosofía (September 2021, Virtual – Universidade de Lisboa, Universidad de Alicante)
  • Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (April 2022, Dublin): 3 Panel; 1 Roundtable

Missions to Archives

  • Biblioteca da Ajuda
  • Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
  • Archivio di Stato di Modena
  • Archivio di Stato di Mantova

Outputs

  • Blog posts (reading rutter blog)
  • TN03 Jesuits on Board: A Reasoned Bibliography on the Early Modern Jesuit Trans-Oceanic Sailing Experiences
  • TN10 (in production) Brothers of the World: A selection of manuscript travel reports, nautical rutters, and other missionary documents produced by members of religious orders preserved in the archives of Lisbon (XVI-XVIII c.)
  • Book: Magellano 1522: Una storia globale, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2022.
  • Book: (edited volume with Henrique Leitão and Luana Giurgevich, accpeted) Santo Antão: A Global History, Leiden-Boston: Brill.
  • Book: (edited volume with Henrique Leitão, submitted) The Blue World: Nautical Rutters and the New Bodies of Knowledge in the Age of the First Globalization, 1400-1600, Leiden-Boston: Brill.
  • Book: (manuscript project) Schooling the Discoveries: Geographical Literacy at the Dawn of the First Globalization, 1400-1700.
  • Article: “Schooling the Discoveries: Jesuit Education Between Science and Geographic Literacy in the Age of Iberian Expansion, 15th-18th c.” [part 1] (with Henrique Leitão), Educazione. Giornale di Pedagogia Critica, X, 1 (2021), 7-34.
  • Article: (accepted) “Schooling the Discoveries: Jesuit Education Between Science and Geographic Literacy in the Age of Iberian Expansion, 15th-18th c.” [part 2] (with Henrique Leitão), Educazione. Giornale di Pedagogia Critica, X, 2 (2021).
  • Book chapter: (submitted) “A Catholic Conceptualization of the Pacific Ocean: The mental geography of the Franciscan Observant Giambattista Lucarelli on his journey from Mexico to China,” in The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815: A Reader of Primary Sources, eds. Christina H. Lee, Ricardo Padrón, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021).
  • Review (forthcoming): Henrique Leitão and José Maria Moreno Madrid, Atravessando a Porta do Pacífico – Roteiros e Relatos da Travessia do Estreito de Magalhães, 1520-1620 (Lisboa: By the Book, 2020), in Recensión. Revista Internacional de Ciencias Humanas y Crítica de Libros, VI, 2 (2021).
  • Review: Ricardo Padrón, The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 346 pp., in RUTTER book reviews, (2021).
  • Review: Sarah E. Owens, Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 195 pp., in RUTTER book reviews, (2020).
  • Review: David Armitage, Alison Bashford, Sujit Sivasundaram (eds.), Oceanic Histories (Cambridge: at the University press, 2017), 328 pp., in RUTTER book reviews, (2020).
  • Review: Roger Crowley, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), 412 pp.”, in RUTTER book reviews, (2020),
  • Review: “Las colonizaciones española e inglesa de América confrontadas: Civilizar o exterminar a los bárbaros”, Reseña de Muñoz Machado, Santiago, Civilizar o exterminar a los bárbaros (Barcelona, Crítica, 2019, 128 pp., (with D. Mombelli), in Recensión. Revista Internacional de Ciencias Humanas y Crítica de Libros, III, 1 (2020).

Forthcomming

  • Organization of Workshop Rethinking a case of global knowledge circulation: Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the Itinerario (planned for the second week of December 2021)
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