My research at the Herzog August Bibliothek investigates the antecedents of what became the circulation of Black iconographies in European apothecary culture, grounded in the library’s rich manuscript and early printed holdings. The project examines pharmacological treatises, apothecary manuals, and commercial trade documents alongside related historiographical sources. I intend to explore how exotic medicinal substances such as pepper, saffron, and myrrh circulated through Mediterranean and transregional trade networks, and how these material flows were reflected in medicinal and visual texts. Central to my search are sources that affirm the role of the Hohenstaufen court of Frederick II of Sicily in producing visual and political representations of Black figures. These forms influenced the depiction of Saint Maurice in Magdeburg and the broader proliferation of Moor heads in German heraldic practices and coats of arms.

https://uniosun.academia.edu/TemitopeFagunwa

My project investigates the role of illustrations in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century publications on Siberian fauna, with a particular focus on how expanding exploration influenced the production and dissemination of zoological knowledge.

By tracing how Siberian animals were depicted in early printed books, maps, prints, and ephemera, the project identifies a shift in representational practices. Earlier depictions, shaped by myth and legend, persisted into seventeenth-century travel accounts and scholarly works, where illustrations of local fauna served mainly informative and decorative purposes rather than constituting systematic zoological inquiry. The project also examines how these images circulated beyond scholarly contexts, particularly within the expanding print culture that fostered early forms of mass visual consumption, asking whether they were reshaped through older practices of hybridization and imaginative embellishment, or whether they retained their scientific character, increasingly promoted in later publications, particularly those issued by scientific academies.

Ibn Sallūm al-Ḥalabī (d. 1670) drew in his medical writings on several European medical traditions, in particular those associated with Daniel Sennert (d. 1637) and Nicolaus Myrepsos. The proposed research at the HAB will examine the transmission of medical knowledge from Europe to the Ottoman Empire, with a focus on how these authors were received within Arabic and Ottoman medical traditions. It will do so through a review of relevant studies and sources, with the aim of situating Ibn Sallūm’s work within the context of the transmission of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European medicine and its points of contact with Ottoman practice. The stay will also provide an opportunity to engage with ongoing scholarship in early modern medical history, contributing to a more grounded understanding of the intellectual networks that informed Ibn Sallūm’s writings.

https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/en/pharmaziegeschichte/staff/dr-ayman-atat

Ich arbeite an einem Buch zum Thema “Sklaven und Archive”. Das Buch soll die fundamentale Bedeutung von Kolonialarchiven und Bibliotheken für die Geschichte der atlantischen Sklaverei sowie der Versklavten nachweisen. Unter atlantischer Sklaverei verstehe ich in Afrika versklavte Menschen, die auf amerikanischen oder europäischen Schiffen über den Atlantik in die Amerikas verschleppt worden sind (rund 11 Millionen 1450-1900). Daneben gab es weitere Sklavereien, deren Geschichte ebenfalls in kolonialen Archiven aller Ebenen (von der imperialen Ebene, wie der Archivo de Indias in Sevilla oder The National Archive in London (Kew), über nationale Archive bis hin zu Provinz- und Lokalarchiven) festgehalten sind. Die so genannten slave narratives spielen für die Geschichte der Versklavten eine wichtige Rolle. Allerdings sind sie meist erst nach dem formalen Ende der jeweiligen “nationalen” Sklavereien entstanden (um nur die wichtigsten zu nennen: USA 1865, Kuba 1886, Brasilien 1888). Auch Geschichte der ehemals Versklavten und ihrer Nachkommen bedarf der Archive. Das Buch wird auch ein Kapitel zur afrikanischen Herkunftskultur von Anton Wilhelm Amo (1707-c.1721 in und um Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel sowie Wittenberg, Halle und Jena) und ihren Sklaverei-Regimes enthalten. Einen Sonderbereich meiner Forschungen bildet das Thema “Deutsche Sklavenhalter und ihre Sklavinnen”. Es ist noch nicht ganz klar, ob es mehrere Kapitel unter dem oben genannten Titel oder eine eigenständige Buchpublikation werden wird. Die Ausgangshypothese ist hier, dass deutschsprachige Unternehmer, oft Kaufleute, die amerikanischen Sklavereien als erstrangige Profitquelle nutzen. Den alten kreolischen Eliten in den Amerikas galten sie als nützliche Emporkömmlinge. Die Eliten verhinderten die soziale Integration der reichen Ausländer (extranjeros). Sehr viele deutschsprachige Unternehmer besaßen Sklaven und Sklavinnen. Viele von ihnen hatten junge Sklavinnen als informelle Geliebte. Diesen “geliebten Sklavinnen” und den gemeinsamen Kindern vererbten die Unternehmer oft erhebliche Werte, natürlich nachdem diese frei gelassen worden waren bzw. die Vererber gestorben waren.

During my research stay at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, I will examine primary sources, including seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit accounts and contemporary geographies of East Asia, particularly China, to investigate how they shaped European perceptions and reinterpretations of East Asia, how these ideas were mediated through chinoiserie, and how they informed broader representations of power.

https://as.vanderbilt.edu/history/bio/matei-epure/

https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/en/we07/theater-tanz/mitarbeiter-innen/wimi/drury/index.html

More specifically, I intend to examine whether this latter reading can be substantiated by Scotus’s doctrine of unqualifiedly simple concepts (simpliciter simplex conceptus). Since these are the basic building blocks within the conceptual realm, this seems a promising place to look for clues as to how Scotus might have developed the idea of basic building blocks of creation, give the fact that he did not do so explicitly.

There are, of course, some pitfalls. To mention just one: the main issue concerns not concepts, but things and their modal statuses. If the hypothesis in question is to gain traction, the gap between the conceptual and the real must first be bridged.

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0315-2944