GEMS is constantly organizing workshops, seminars, and lectures. Check here what is going on!
Call for papers for the conference ‘aiming to together researchers from a wide variety of fields to discuss the ways in which early modernity related to performing religious ceremonies and customs across the
globe, either in text, print, on stage, or in any other imaginable way.’
You can send in your proposal, containing of an abstract and a brief biography, by the 2nd of October 2023.
Find below the Call for Papers for a international conference on intellectual and authorial self-fashioning of eighteenth century European writers from a multilingual perspective. You can submit a title and abstract (300 words) until the 15th of September 2023.
On June 22, 2023, Prof. Dr. Jeroen Dewulf (UC Berkeley) will present his latest book about the influence of African Catholics on the historical development of Black Christianity in America during the seventeenth century. The meeting will be held at 10.30 am in the Faculty Room. A zoom link is also available and can be found here.
Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of seventeenth-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity. With homelands in parts of Africa with historically strong Portuguese influence, such as the Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé, and Kongo, these Africans embraced variants of early modern Portuguese Catholicism that they would take with them to the Americas as part of the forced migration that was the transatlantic slave trade. Their impact upon the development of Black religious, social, and political activity in North America would be felt from the southern states as far north as what would become New York.
Dewulf’s analysis focuses on the historical documentation of Afro-Atlantic Catholic rituals, devotions, and social structures. Of particular importance are brotherhood practices, which were critical in the dissemination of Afro-Atlantic Catholic culture among Black communities, a culture that was pre-Tridentine in nature and wary of external influences. These fraternal Black mutual-aid and burial society structures were critically important to the development and resilience of Black Christianity in America through periods of changing social conditions. Afro-Atlantic Catholics shows how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to investigate how flowers, and the fruits they produce, represented power in a myriad of ways in the early modern world. The speakers will address the function of flowers (including the flowering process, culminating in fruit) as tools of political, religious, or commercial power, as instruments of global and local knowledge transfer and appropriation, as well as their role in art-making, science, and the construction of gender between c. 1500-1750.
You can find more information and register via this link: https://www.ugent.be/lw/nl/power_of_flowers
On 15-16 June 2023, Elizabeth Merrill (Faculty of Architecture and Engineering, Ghent University) and Nele De Raedt (Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urbanism, UCLouvain) organise an international conference on “Practices of Copying and Imitation in Early Modern Architecture (1400-1700)” in the VANDENHOVE Centre for Architecture and Arts in Ghent. The keynote lecture will be given by prof. Maarten Delbeke (ETH Zurich).
Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. This is possible via the conference website: https://www.ugent.be/ea/architectuur/en/practices-of-copying-imitation-in-early-modern-architecture-1400-1700
You can find the program below.
On 4 May (2pm, Library lab Magnel), Marius Buning will give a talk that may be of interest to GEMS members:
Controlling information flows: Printing privileges in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic
This paper presents an analysis of printing privileges in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. It investigates the impact these privileges had on the dissemination of information, the development of the Dutch printing industry, and the types of publications that were produced. Whereas privileges are often seen of legal means that were primarily important for the local market, this paper will show that the ‘local’ cannot be seen in isolation from intra- and pan-European connections. It thus ties in with a broader discussion of the relationship between knowledge and power in the early modern period, and provides a good starting point for understanding the framework and objectives of the ERC-funded project Before Copyright, which I am currently leading at the University of Oslo.
Biography
Marius Buning (Ph.D, European University Institute, 2013) is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Oslo, Norway. His research interests focus on the nature of intellectual property and the role of the state in shaping notions of scientific and technological progress. Since 2022, he is the PI of the ERC project “Before Copyright: Printing privileges and the politics of knowledge in early modern Europe”.
The Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw is organizing a webinar series that may be of interest to GEMS’ers: “Vroegmodern Babylon? Meertaligheid en vertalen in de Nederlanden in de achttiende eeuw.”
Time: 26 April, 15 May and 14 June, 4-5pm.
On Saturday the 13th of May (17:30-19:30), there will be a performance (in Italian) of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, organized by Teodoro Katinis, with Fabio Busotti (actor), Sara Salvérius (musician) and Wouter Vandenabeele (musician). The performance will take place in the Boekentoren (Belvedère) and is free for UGent staff members and students.
For more info, and to register, visit the link below.
For the “Inspired by…” event, GEMS has invited students to reflect on what or who inspires them in their research for their master’s thesis. The event will take place on the 25th of April, starting at 2pm, in the “Loveling” library lab of the Faculty Library (Rozier 44). Students will give twenty-minute presentations, after which there will be time for questions. This will be followed by a reception, starting around 5pm.
Here’s an overview of the presenters and their abstracts:
Cato Rooryck – Questions of Reconciliation and Indigeneity in Contemporary Australian Adaptations of Macbeth and The Tempest Responding to recent debates about the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as concerns about decolonizing the Western canon more broadly, my thesis will look at how contemporary Indigenous theatre practitioners in Australia engage with Macbeth and The Tempest. In doing so, it builds on the work of scholars such as Elizabeth Schafer (2003) and Emma Cox (2004, 2011), who have pointed to convergences between Shakespeare and Indigeneity in Australia – a phenomenon which international scholarship has failed to pay due attention to. More specifically, I will look at the role of the witches in Macbeth and Caliban and Ariel in The Tempest – which both pose a challenge for contemporary directors – in the negotiations of Indigenous identities in recent Australian adaptations. In my presentation, I will reflect on some insights and passages by Indigenous(-Australian) scholars and writers that have inspired me to combine my interest in Shakespeare, which goes back to my bachelor paper, with my interest in Indigenous studies, philosophies, and cultures. I will consider how my introduction to Aboriginal literature and scholarship by authors such as Kim Scott has challenged me to further my thinking about Shakespearean drama (and its role as the showpiece of the Western literary tradition – and its long history of exclusion) and its contemporary relevance. In particular, I will also discuss Kylie Bracknell’s Hecate (2020) – “the first adaptation of a complete Shakespearean work presented entirely in one Aboriginal language of Australia” (Bracknell et al. 2021), which was the first Aboriginal Shakespeare adaptation I encountered and is central to my thesis.
Amber Kempynck – Warning: Complex Female Protagonist. Redefining Unlikability and Passivity as Feminist Resistance and Female Agency in Millennial Women’s Writing In contemporary women’s writing, there is an influx of complex, “unlikable” female protagonists. This gives rise to two discourses: one about the genre these novels have established, namely “millennial fiction”, and another about the feminist thought they convey, called dissociative feminism. These discourses maintain that the female protagonists are unjustifiably passive and that their behavior is “damaging to the entire feminist movement” (Peyser). This thesis examines these discourses and shows through the analysis of four contemporary novels – Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017), Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (2020), and Lisa Taddeo’s Animal (2021) – that the female protagonists do have reasons for their nihilistic attitudes and are not passive but act with agency. In addition, the novels send a feminist message, as they resist normative femininity, highlight the female experience, and discuss taboo subjects related to womanhood.
Elisabeth Goemaere – Postcolonial Studies and Medieval Anglo-Irish Literature ““Do They Not Still Acknowledge That Submission?”: Figurations of the Irish ‘Other’ in Early-Colonial British Literature. My MA thesis explores the use of ethnic and gendered stereotypes in English literature during two significant periods of Ireland’s early history as a colony: the arrival of the Normans (c. 1169) and the Elizabethan Conquest (c. 1534-1603). The thesis examines how British writers used stereotypes to justify the Anglo-Norman civilising mission, and to metaphorically express both Anglo-Norman and Irish colonisation-related distress. Gender anxieties are prevalent in these texts, and sexual differences occur as a metaphor for political, ethnic, and religious distinctions. The thesis uses medieval accounts of Ireland to explore how Irish inhabitants were demonised through tropes of savagery, monstrosity, and sexual deviance. My study aims to contribute to our understanding of conquest, identity, and societal change in the Middle Ages and suggests that questioning medieval figurations of the Irish Other leads to a more accurate portrayal of one of Britain’s first colonies. Inspiration: postcolonial studies. Overall, my analysis focuses on rhetorical devices that reflected upon and actively shaped medieval Britain, such as debasing the other, (re)negotiating one’s own identity, and affirming or adopting the white man’s burden. These mechanisms have often been considered in postcolonial studies, which is my main framework. The Anglo-Irish contact can be regarded in colonial terms, and the resulting tensions can hence be understood through concepts as Homi Bhabha’s mimicry and hybridity, Franz Fanon’s take on alienation, and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics. Mainly this study field has prompted me to rethink my own (limited) knowledge of medieval Britain and its reflection in contemporary literature.”
Milan Francis – Decolonizing colonial history: The Túpac Amaru Revolution and the Silencing of indigenous culture A recent restoration of a Christ painting “El Señor de los Temblores” revealed its original content: an indigenous noblewoman proudly dressed in traditional Incaic dress. The painting dates to the late 18th century and was overpainted in the aftermath of the Túpac Amaru Revolution (1780-83), the largest indigenous revolution in Andean colonial history, hiding its ‘potentially subversive’ message. The original content, its erasure, and its recent restoration tell the story of power and production of colonial history. This story also represents the process of Silencing that has characterized historiography on the Atlantic Age of Revolutions since its inception. Inspired by Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s now classic study on the Haitian Revolution, which demonstrated how the Silencing of this other non-European revolution did not reflect its unimportance or irrelevance, but rather, a denial of its radical implications. Likewise, the Silencing of of the Túpac Amaru Revolution is no coincidence, and can be traced back to the cultural genocide imposed on indigenous people after it was defeated: prohibiting indigenous clothing, language, traditions and art. If this prohibition tells us anything, it is the importance of material and visual culture in the study of this indigenous revolution, and indigenous culture more broadly. By incorporating decolonial theory, this thesis will attempt to study this indigenous revolution on its own terms: by complementing written sources with a focus on visual culture and public spectacle. By integrating indigenous forms of knowledge, this project will explore the possibility of (anti-)colonial history beyond its Silencing of indigenous culture.
Keeping Flowers Between the Pages: “Preserving” Rare and Curious Flowers through Florilegium Images in the Seventeenth Century
On 27 April (2-4pm), Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen (Utrecht University) will give a talk on the pictorial genre of florilegium. The talk, which is co-organized by GEMS and Sarton Centre, will take place in the Magnel library lab (LWBIB, Rozier 44).
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