The Conventions of the Unconventional
Materiality, Mediality, and the Making of Knowledge Across Cultures

Convened by

Valentina Sagaria Rossi
Senior Fellow 2025–2026

Rebecca Sauer
Associate Fellow

Details

Venue: University of Zurich, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, room RAA-E-12
Rämistrasse 59, 8032 Zurich

This is a public event. Participation is free of charge and registration is not required.

This interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars from diverse fields to explore how knowledge is materially and medially constituted across cultures, with a particular focus on the conditions that shape its production, transmission, and interpretation.

Conceived as a space for dialogue across disciplines, the symposium fosters genuinely cross-disciplinary exchange among scholars working in fields such as philology, history, manuscript studies, media studies, digital humanities, musicology, and cultural studies. By encouraging engagement across diverse methodological traditions and research practices, it aims to open new perspectives on the study of knowledge.

The symposium examines both conventional and unconventional forms of knowledge expression and cultural practice as dynamic sites in which authority and meaning are actively produced and negotiated. Intellectual works, material artifacts, and digital objects are approached not as neutral containers of information, but as historically situated configurations shaped by cultural assumptions, technological conditions, and scholarly frameworks. Particular attention is given to how interpretive paradigms determine what is recognized as legitimate, canonical, or authoritative knowledge.

The discussion is structured around two closely interconnected perspectives. The first considers how material and digital conditions shape the interpretation, circulation, and cultural practices through which knowledge is produced and transmitted. The second examines how categories such as canon, archive, commentary, authenticity, and literacy structure disciplinary boundaries and hierarchies. By critically reflecting on these conceptual frameworks, the symposium seeks to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange that challenges established taxonomies and opens new methodological directions. The symposium is structured as two roundtables featuring circular and informal discussions between speakers and moderators, and concludes with a transitional dialogue of an epistemological nature.

Program