2015.2

EDITORIAL NOTE

 Monica Juneja and Joachim Kurtz .04

ARTICLES

David Mervart
The Republic of Letters Comes to Nagasaki:
Record of a Translator’s Struggle .08

Thomas Ertl
Repercussions from the Far East:
A Comparison of the Catholic and Nestorian Presence in China .38

Themed Section: Re-thinking Artistic Knowledge Production: Global 
Media Cultures—Distributed Creativity

Franziska Koch
Re-thinking Global Knowledge Production:
Global Media Cultures—Distributed Creativity. An Introduction .64

Samantha Schramm
The People’s Choice:
Transcultural Collectivity and the Art of Shared Knowledge Production .70

Cora Bender
Indigenous Knowledge in the Production of Early Twentieth Century 
American Popular Culture:
Distributed Creativity between “Frontier” and “Middle Ground” .86



2 Contributors

Transcultural Studies, No 2, 2015, ISSN: 2191-6411

Editors:
Monica Juneja, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Joachim Kurtz, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Rudolf G. Wagner, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Managing Editor:
Andrea Hacker

Editorial Board:
Christiane Brosius, Antje Fluechter, Madeleine Herren, Birgit Kellner, Axel 
Michaels, Barbara Mittler, Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, Vladimir Tikhonov, 
and Roland Wenzlhuemer.

Transcultural Studies is an open-access e-journal published bi-annually by the 
Cluster of Excellence, “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: The Dynamics 
of Transculturality“ at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. For more 
information see: www.transculturalstudies.org

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE:

David Mervart is a visiting lecturer at the Centro de Estudios de Asia Oriental 
at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a research associate of the Cluster 
of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at the University of 
Heidelberg. He obtained his PhD from the University of Tokyo in the history 
of East Asian political thought and has held fellowships at the University of 
Cambridge, the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Leiden University. He works 
on the intellectual history of Eurasian interactions in the eighteenth century. He 
may be contacted at david.mervart@uam.es.

Thomas Ertl is professor of economic and social history of the Middle Ages 
at the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. 
His research interests include the early Franciscan Order and late medieval 
and early modern economic and social history of Western Europe. He has 
a strong interest in transcultural entanglement and comparisons between 
medieval Europa and Asia, and is the author of Alle Wege führten nach Rom. 
Italien als Zentrum der mittelalterliche Welt (All roads led to Rome: Italy as 
center of the medieval world), Ostfildern :Thorbecke Verlag, 2010.

mailto:david.mervart@uam.es


3Transcultural Studies 2015.2

Franziska Koch is assistant professor to the chair of Global Art History at the 
Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg 
University. Her research centers on contemporary Asian art with a focus on China 
and Korea, and on exhibitions as mediators of transcultural artistic and curatorial 
practices. As a member of the DFG research network “Medien der kollektiven 
Intelligenz” (Media of collective intelligence) (University of Konstanz, 2011–
2014), she co-organized the symposium “Re-thinking Artistic Knowledge 
Production: Global Media Cultures—Distributed Creativity” (Heidelberg 
University, 2013). Her dissertation will be published as Die “chinesische 
Avantgarde” und das Dispositiv der Ausstellung: Konstruktionen chinesischer 
Gegenwartskunst im Spannungsfeld der Globalisierung (The “Chinese avant-
garde” and the exhibition’s dispositif: Constructing contemporary Chinese art in 
the area of tension of globalization), Bielefeld: Transcript, spring 2016.

Samantha Schramm is a post-doctoral researcher working in the field of modern 
and contemporary art history and media theory. She worked as a scientific staff 
member at the Department of Media Studies, University of Konstanz (2010–
2015). She also held a post of visiting professor of art history at the Staatliche 
Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe in 2013. As a member of the DFG research 
network “Medien der kollektiven Intelligenz” (Media of collective intelligence) 
(University of Konstanz, 2011–2014), she co-organized the symposium “Re-
thinking Artistic Knowledge Production: Global Media Cultures—Distributed 
Creativity” (Heidelberg University, 2013). Her dissertation is published as 
Land Art: Ortskonzepte und mediale Vermittlung; Zwischen Site und Non-Site 
(Land art: Site-specific concepts and [their] representation in [different] media; 
Between site and non-site), Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2014.

Cora Bender is an anthropologist specializing in media, medical anthropology, 
and Native North America. Based on long-term field work, her dissertation 
exploring Upper Midwest indigenous media and knowledge cultures was 
awarded the Frobeniuspreis for excellent ethnographic research and published 
as Die Entdeckung der indigenen Moderne: Indianische Medienwelten und 
Wissenskulturen in den USA (The discovery of indigenous modernity: Native 
American media and its impact on knowledge cultures in the United States), 
Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2011. She has held positions in Frankfurt and 
Bremen, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas, at the 
University of Heidelberg’s Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global 
Context,” and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Currently, she 
teaches at the graduate college “Locating Media” in Siegen.

http://transculturalstudies.org