Seminar: Going Colonial, Going Global. Gender and Material Culture in Early Modernity

This seminar will present the intimate connection between material culture and gender in the making of the (very) early modern colonial globalization. The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed the rise of historical processes vital in moulding the world to its present shape. While scholars have extensively studied the worldwide translocations of people, goods and ideas, the fact that this globalization also took shape through the cross-continental circulation of gender ideology, gender policies, and engendered knowledge, technologies and skills has not been sufficiently explored. Neither has material culture’s active role in these been sufficiently scrutinized despite its potential to reveal otherwise unnoticed cultural features.

Through and archaeological project currently being developed in Guam (Mariana Islands), focus will be placed at the crossroads of Modern Colonialism, Gender Systems and Maintenance Activities, a concept born in archaeology to highlight the foregrounding nature of a set of routine daily practices that are essential to social continuity.