About the Project
The project evolves around a series of Laboratories of praxis. In these, the praxis of reading will take two different forms. Artists, activists and researchers will be delving into medieval cosmology by reading a series of travelling accounts. We will critically engage with works of learned elite of medieval Europe, describing their encounters with the people and cultures at the borders of their ‘world’ through close reading and co-contextualization with counter-narratives and authoethnographies. Historians and theologians like Mary Louise Pratt, Geraldine Heng and Willie James Jennings have identified that these particular stories were at the core of what created and spread the racialised social imaginary that later became a racialised gaze of white Christian Europeans. Jennings further argues that this inverted, distorted vision of creation reduced theological anthropology to commodified bodies at the same time as it disrupted the relationship to land, place and creatureliness of Christian white westerners.[1]By following this formation in the texts spanning from the period of the 11th to the 16th century, we hope that the participants in the circle will gain deep insights into how questions of race[2] and relationship to creation are intertwined.
The second type of reading material will consist of communally engaging with our own texts. By reading and supporting each other in the process of articulating our own learning we envision that the scholarly output is deepened. As our community consists of people from a wide set of scholarly and artistic traditions the praxis for transdisciplinarity will be seen also in our reading and writing practices. Our aim is to co-author articles together with artists and activists in a variety of different media.
In the laboratories, the praxis of listening refers to both the fact that the texts we encounter come from historic and diverse worldviews. The praxis of listening will also take the form of listening to each other's experiences of the joint reading. This includes the expertise of Indigenous peoples.
Finally, the praxis of telling stories arises when both artists and researchers are guided into interpreting how the praxis of reading and listening could be transferred into their particular fields of work. All of the medieval travelling accounts carry, for example, descriptions of dancing, cultural customs, food, weather, and animal and landscape descriptions that we hope will inspire further explorations by both artists and researchers. Our aim is that the praxis of telling stories will lead to artistic collaborations arising from the time spent together. The study circle will create joint article publications, an anthology and artistic exhibitions. For the latter, we are collaborating with events like Aboagora and European Night of Research.
Ongoing research
In parallel with the different symposia of this study circle ethnographic fieldwork is happening. The aim of that study is to follow and examinate the processes of inter- and trans-disciplinary research that arise from the circle meetings. Participation in the events of the study circle does not require participation in the ongoing research. However, due to GDPR regulations we want all the participants to be aware that research is conducted in collaboration with these events. We will thus also ask all participants to sign agreements on data collection. For those that are further interested in being collaborators in the ongoing investigation on inter- and trans-disciplinary research processes, informed consent agreements will be offered.
Who can participate?
The Nordic Summer University (NSU) is open to all who want to engage in transdisciplinary and mutual learning under the values of equality and openness. You can be a student at bachelor's, master's, or doctoral level, and you can be a researcher, a scientist, an artist or work in a cultural or other third sector organization. Our study circle is explicitly open to people of all faiths. As a community investigating historical and living cosmologies, we are welcoming to Indigenous and artistic research with spiritual dimensions.
What do we offer?
First and foremost, we offer a platform for learning and collaboration.
For students, we can also offer study credits for active participation. These can be gained in two different ways. Either the Nordic Summer University offers you a certificate for ECTS points upon active participation in the whole event. With this option you will have to negotiate with your home institution how these points are brought into your study plan. The other option is that you enroll to the course at Åbo Akademi which is linked to these symposia. As a student at Åbo Akademi University (or Turku University or any other university under the JOO sopimus) a previous event was accounted for as the following course (TE00CL12 Medieval Cosmologies and the Art of Sustainability for the Future, 5 sp) in the minor-subject Social Justice and Sustainability which could be taken through Åbo Akademi University. In order to be eligible for a course like this, you need to be an MA or PhD student and sign up at the Moodle platform where further instructions are given.
For scholars, we plan for joint publications in open-access peer reviewed journals. And for artists and academics who want to collaborate, we will organise events to disseminate your works to the public. We have partnered up with forums like aboagora for presenting arts and science collaborations.
We further offer the chance to learn Digital Humanities methods of working with and annotating historical texts, as well as the opportunity to connect with the vibrant Nordic Summer University; a one-of-a-kind, radically non-hierarchical, democratic, and community oriented institution of education and research. Finally, we endeavour to make the study circle accessible to all, including financially. We can provide some financial aid and continue to pursue avenues through which to offer as much financial aid as needed to those who reach out to us to request it.
[1] Jennings 2010, 58.
[2] Our working definition on racism is: In principle, race theory (…) understands, of course, that race has no singular or stable referent: that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content. Heng 2018, 19.