Call for papers:

Winning Hearts and Minds: Multimedia Events, Religious Communication and the Urban Context in the Long Sixteenth Century

Working Group 2 Meeting, Ghent, June 1-2, 2017

During the long sixteenth century a media revolution took place that offered unprecedented possibilities to adopt, express and exchange ideas and opinions, often of a religious nature. Many studies have revealed the importance of media such as script, print, images, theatre, songs, ritual, preaching, rumours, etc. Yet, media, an aspect of early modern communication we fail to grasp due to the institutionalisation of academic disciplines, never function in isolation. A real understanding of how different media interacted and functioned in specific settings is therefore still lacking. In this workshop, we propose to look at the phenomenon of multimediality during the long sixteenth century by focusing on the micro-level of specific multimedia events (or series of events) that took place in an urban setting, such as civic festivals, religious ceremonies, public sermons, urban revolts, executions of heretics and book burnings.

The deadline for proposals is 1 November 2016.

Click here for the document with the complete call for papers (pdf)

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Strategies of Transformation: Translating, Writing, Reading, Collecting and Performing

WG 2a: Texts and textual tradition (manuscripts and prints)
Coordinators: Ian Johnson and Géraldine Veysseyre

The WG will concentrate on the selection of case studies, according to the number of participants and the specific background and expertise of the members, which will be studied during the duration of the Action (e.g. medieval and early modern libraries; manuscript miscellanies; specific texts, such as the vita Christi-tradition; domestic devotions). These can be used as test cases for a more accurate and empirical reconstruction of the strategies of transformation. A wide selection of disciplinary backgrounds and cultural and linguistic competencies will enable new evaluations of a broad range of textual (e.g. specific genres, manuscripts and printed texts) and visual material, with a focus on spaces and places of cultural transmission (e.g. semi-private libraries and book collections), which will be systematically studied in an interdisciplinary and a multilingual setting. Fundamental to the choice of case studies will be a broad geographical and chronological perspective, encompassing textual and visual material spanning the late fourteenth century and the sixteenth century, thereby breaking the traditional "great divides".

Conference: "The Same and Different: Strategies of Retelling the Bible within the "New Communities of Interpretations"" (Prague, 19-20 March 2015). Conference programme (PDF)

Meeting report (PDF)

Conference: "Focusing on the page/book periphery. What do marginalia, marks of ownership and other textual accretions tell us?" (Paris, 23-24 October 2014). Conference programme (PDF)

Meeting Report (PDF)