The Working Group for Pre-Modern Histories and Cultures

Celestial Globe with Clockwork (Vienna, 1579)

Ashanti Carving

The Working Group for Pre-Modern Histories and Cultures (WG) at Florida International University (Miami/USA) provides a framework for encounters, dialogues, and conversations among scholars and students who have interests in the pre-modern histories of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The Working Group seeks to stimulate increased scholarly examination of the global interactions of peoples and cultures before the middle of the seventeenth century (CE), as well as to encourage the consideration of what kinds of insights might be gained from the comparative study of pre-modern cultural regions even in the absence of the physical interactions of their inhabitants. The Working Group was founded during the Fall Semester 1999. Initially organized by several members of the FIU Department of History, the WG has since expanded to include scholars trained in other disciplines. For more information concerning the group's history, see the article on the Medieval Academy of America website (http://www.medievalacademy.org). The Working Group on Pre-Modern Histories and Cultures offers a Certificate in Pre-Modern Cultures, and produces events aimed both at scholarly and community audiences.