Roxann Prazniak
Biography
Roxann Prazniak is the author of Dialogues Across Civilizations: Sketches in World History from the Chinese and European Experiences and Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels Against Modernity in Late Imperial China. She is associate professor at the University of Oregon where she teaches in the Robert D. Clark Honors College. Her current research interest is cultural exchange during the Mongol Ilkhanate and the co-creation of early modernity across Eurasia.
Title of Paper
Siena on the Silk Roads: Translocal Exchange and Early Modernity
Abstract
The Mongol century (1250-1350) opened a discourse that would shape the terms of early modernity. The period before 1350 witnessed a remarkable cosmopolitantism across Eurasia before the European creation of an east/west divide that polarized and denied the terrain of a reciprocal history. Focusing on Siena and Tabriz and the worlds of artistic exchange that linked them, this paper juxtaposes the work of Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Rashid al-Din to explore the dynamics and conditions that prompted the emergence of secularism, humanism, and naturalism -- hallmarks of early modernity.