Author: efevery

Cultures of Consumption 1500-1800: Products, Desire and Imagination

International Workshop
15 & 16 January 2026
Ghent, Belgium

On 15 & 16 January of 2026, an international workshop will be organised in Ghent (Belgium) on cultures of consumption, focusing on the relation between products, desire and imagination in Europe from 1500-1800.

We welcome submissions for a presentation of papers that will be distributed to participants beforehand as a (very) short paper of about 1,000 words to stimulate engaging feedback during the workshop (deadline 15 December 2025). Paper proposals of about 300 words can be submitted before 15 September 2025. Please send the proposals to estel.vandenberg@ugent.be. You will be notified by 15 October whether your proposal has been accepted.

Topics that are of interest to our workshop include but are not limited to:

• Consumption in the theatrical imagination
• Consumption in early modern literature
• Consumption in early modern art
• Consumption, the body and desire
• Consumption and disease in the cultural imagination
• Consumption, food and sexuality in the cultural imagination
• Desire, products and affective economy

Keynote speakers

• Prof. Dr. Inger Leemans, about ‘The Sweet Smell of Desire: How the Dutch Created an Affective Economy for Fragrance Consumption’
• Prof. Dr. Daniel Fulda, about ‘Delights beyond Virtue: Consumer Ethics in the German Enlightenment’s Comedy’

Visit the website for more information.

The workshop is organised by the researchers of the FWO-project Displays of Desire. Imagineering consumption in comedies of the Low Countries (1650-1725). This project is a cooperation between Ghent University and the Uiversité Libre de Bruxelles. It will be hosted by the alliance research group VUB-UGent: THALIA – Interplay of Theatre, Literature & Media in Performance – and GEMS, Group for Early Modern Studies at Ghent University. This workshop is made possible with funding from FWO-Flanders.

Themadossier Jaarboek De Achttiende Eeuw 2026: 250 jaar Amerikaanse onafhankelijkheid

‘When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, […]’, zo begint de verklaring waarmee dertien Amerikaanse koloniën zich formeel afscheurden van Groot-Brittannië. De ondertekening van de Amerikaanse Onafhankelijkheidsverklaring op 4 juli 1776 wordt in 2026 uitgebreid gevierd en herdacht. Wat er precies herdacht zou moeten worden, is al 250 jaar voer voor discussie en extra prangend nu onvervreemdbare rechten en democratische beginselen zo onder druk staan in de VS en daarbuiten.

Is de Amerikaanse Revolutie inderdaad het begin van een liberale democratie die gekenmerkt wordt door ‘self evident truths’ zoals de gelijkheid van alle burgers en hun recht op vrijheid en geluk? Maar hoe zit het dan met de uitsluiting van gemarginaliseerde groepen die geen aanspraak konden maken op deze rechten, zoals slaafgemaakten en de inheemse bevolking? Of was de revolutie toch vooral de laatste adem van oude, republikeinse idealen? Moet de Revolutie herdacht worden als een unieke gebeurtenis in de ontwikkeling van de Amerikaanse natiestaat of meer als onderdeel van een breder patroon van revolutionaire processen in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw?

Vooral deze laatste vraag staat de afgelopen jaren wederom in de belangstelling. Daarbij wordt de Amerikaanse Revolutie in toenemende mate bestudeerd vanuit een perspectief waarin transnationale invloeden, uitwisselingen en contacten centraal staan. De relaties tussen de Noord-Amerikaanse koloniën en andere Atlantische gebieden en hun revoluties, met name de Caraïben (Haïti) en West-Europese landen (Frankrijk, Zuidelijke en Noordelijke Nederlanden), komen zo meer en meer aan de oppervlakte. Het Jaarboek Achttiende Eeuw 2026 wil de impact van de Amerikaanse Onafhankelijkheid voor het voetlicht brengen, uitdrukkelijk gebruikmakend van dit transnationale perspectief.

We nodigen auteurs graag uit tot bijdragen over het ontstaan van de Revolutie en haar ideologische en materiële dimensies in politiek, literatuur, filosofie, kunst en economie. Hoe werd de revolutie gerepresenteerd in boeken, wapens, tekeningen, architectuurstijlen en andere vormen van materiële cultuur? Hoe werd zij verbeeld in kunst en literatuur? Welke positie hadden universiteiten en andere onderwijsinstellingen in de vorming en overdracht van revolutionaire waarden? Welke rol bleef de Revolutie en de herinnering eraan spelen in het politieke debat en de culturele identiteit van Amerika? Aangezien de verhouding tussen de Verenigde Staten en de rest van wereld momenteel weer sterk in de aandacht staat, nodigen we auteurs ook uit om expliciet te reflecteren op de resonantie van de Amerikaanse Onafhankelijkheid in de huidige tijd.

Abstracts met voorstellen voor papers (max. 300 woorden, met korte bio van de auteur) graag toezenden vóór 1 juli 2025, aan Mart Rutjes (m.rutjes@uva.nl) en jaarboek@18e-eeuw.nl. Van de geselecteerde voorstellen worden de volledige artikelen van maximaal 6.000 woorden verwacht tegen 1 februari 2026. De artikelen worden aan redactionele peer review onderworpen.

John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1819. United States Capitol, Washington DC.

7-9 May 2025
Het Rustpunt
Burgstraat 110-16, Ghent

More and more exciting research is being produced by scholars of political theory and related fields––such as political science, history, and political philosophy––exploring the contributions of women to the history of political thought. This three-day WHPT conference is an important step towards bringing these scholars together, with the aim of fostering new intersections and inspiring future research.

Find the full conference program below.

This conference is organized by Torrey Shanks (University of Toronto), Mary Jo MacDonald (University of Jyväskylä), and Geertje Bol (Ghent University). It is generously funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Strategic Institutions Partnerships grant from Ghent University, the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, and the Gender in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy project at the University of Jyväskylä.

Visit the website for more information.

GEMS is organising a talk by Dr. Elena Bilancia on ‘New Research Perspectives on Italian Vernacular Rhetorics of the 16^th Century’.

Wednesday 7 May, 2025
5 PM
Camelot (Room 3.30, Blandijnberg 2)

The development of vernacular rhetorical theory played a key role in the intellectual culture of the Italian and European Renaissance. During the 16^th century, the growing need to establish an autonomous set of rhetorical principles, crafted by (and for) literary professionals rather than university professors, extended beyond humanistic pedagogy and the formation of the ideal vir bonus dicendi peritus. It also addressed the changing role of intellectuals and their evolving relationship with cultural, political, and religious institutions, especially in the turbulent period between the end of the Italian Wars and the onset of the Counter-Reformation. Italian intellectuals made an original contribution to rhetorical theory not only through their exegetical work on ancient texts but also by exploring the potential of the vernacular language in the extra-university cultural circuits. It was particularly within the Infiammati Academy of Padua that a defence of the practical and civic function of elocutio was elaborated. The objective of Elena Bilancia’s research is therefore to identify the specific cultural projects that contributed to the foundation of an Italian vernacular rhetoric within the complex framework of European humanisms.

Elena Bilancia obtained her PhD in Philology and in Italian Studies from the universities of Naples Federico II and Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis. She is currently a research fellow at the Scuola Superiore Meridionale and a contract lecturer in Italian Literature at the Department of Humanities at Federico II. Her research interests focus on vernacular dialogue production and Renaissance lyric poetry. She has worked on authors such as Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Torquato Tasso. In 2024, she published the monograph Il dialogo in volgare. Forme dell’argomentazione retorica nel XVI secolo with Bit&s.

GEMS is organising a talk by Dr. Jonathan Schiesaro on ‘Debating Private Censorship and Family Networks from Florence to Flanders: Lodovico Guicciardini’s Letters and the Publication of Francesco Guicciardini’s “Ricordi”’

Monday 26 May, 2025
5 PM
Camelot (Room 3.30, Blandijnberg 2) Hybrid format

This talk explores the epistolary and editorial activity of Lodovico Guicciardini (1521-1589) between the events surrounding the publication of the first edition of Francesco Guicciardini’s History of Italy (1561), edited by Lodovico’s cousin Agnolo di Girolamo (1525-1581), and the Antwerp edition of the Ricordi (1585). Through a close reading of his correspondence and early printed materials within the Flemish context, the talk examines how private censorship and family networks shaped the reception of Italian historical culture and political thought on the periphery of the Counter-Reformation.

Jonathan Schiesaro (PhD, University of Zurich) is a research fellow of the Irish Research Council at Trinity College Dublin, where he works on a project focused on the transmission and manipulation of documentary heritage within Florentine patrician families (including the Vasari, Bandinelli, Buonarroti, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Ammirato) under the early Grand Dukes of Tuscany. His main research interests include Renaissance art treatises, memory writing, and historiography. He published the monograph Baccio Bandinelli e le anatomie degli scartafacci: il “Libro del disegno”, l’archivio di famiglia e la questione del “Memoriale” (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023).

Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Roundtable: 2:30-4pm
Reception: 4-5:30pm

Faculteitszaal (1^st floor, Blandijnberg 2)

This interdisciplinary roundtable will explore the rich and varied afterlives of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature in contemporary media, culture, and criticism. A panel of leading scholars in literary studies will delve into how historical figures and forms—from seafaring pirates and biting satirists to queer protagonists and Enlightenment thinkers—continue to shape cultural narratives today. Our discussion will examine the reimagining of early modern tropes in contemporary literature, film, and television; the resonances of eighteenth-century satire in postcolonial thought; and the legacy of Enlightenment ideals in current debates on religious toleration. By interrogating how the past is adapted and reframed in the present, the roundtable promises to offer fresh insights into literature’s role in navigating ongoing conversations around gender, identity, colonialism, and belief.

The event will conclude a lively Q&A session and an informal reception to encourage further exchange.

Speakers:
Manushag Powell, Arizona State University
David Alvarez, DePauw University
Ros Ballaster, Oxford University
Helen Deutsch, UCLA

Chair: Andrew Bricker, UGent

Sponsors:
GEMS: Group for Early Modern Studies
CEL19: Centre for the Study of 19th-Century Literature
International Summer School of Romanticism at UGent

With the support of:
The Department of Literary Studies, UGent
The English Literature Section, UGent
The Doctoral Schools, UGent, with funding from the Flemish Government

Alexander van de Sijpe and David Alvarez are organising a reading group about postsecular perspectives in literary studies. 

The first session will be held next Monday, March 10.

Traditional secularization narratives suggest that, under the influence of modern trends—rationalization, scientific innovation, increasing prosperity, etc.—religious societies have gradually secularized. However, over the past decades, scholars have increasingly questioned this classical understanding of religion and secularity. Postsecular thinkers such as Charles Taylor (A Secular Age, 2007) and Talal Asad (Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 2003) challenge the conventional conceptualizations of religion and secularity, as well as the binary opposition between them. Taylor critiques “subtraction stories” that assume secular society emerges through the mere disappearance of religion; instead, he argues that secularization is partly shaped by developments within religious traditions themselves. Asad, on the other hand, contends that the concepts of “religion” and “secularity” are the product of discursive shifts in early modernity and are ultimately the creation of a secular ideology.

These insights are also highly relevant for literary studies. They invite us to reconsider religion and secularity—not as fixed categories, but as concepts shaped by literary texts and literary scholars alike. With this in mind, we are organizing a reading group consisting of four sessions, in which we will engage with key postsecular texts and explore how they might enrich our research practices.

The first session will take place on Monday, March 10, at 1:00 PM in Panopticon (Room 2.23, Blandijn, Campus Boekentoren). The first chapter of Taylor’s A Secular Age, titled “The Bulwarks of Belief.”  will be the topic of our first discussion. The following dates can be scheduled by mutual agreement.

If you are interested in participating, please email Alexander.VandeSijpe@UGent.be. A digital copy of the chapter will be provided. The reading group will be conducted in English.

We congratulate the following GEMS-affiliated researches on their remarkable achievements from the past few months!

• Gulia Coppi presented her paper, “Will Spectators Always Be Spectators?”, at the Periodicals, History and Change: a Postgraduate Workshop, hosted at the historic Leeds Library. Her paper focused on the evolving role of 18th-century periodicals as venues for, and sources of, societal critique and change. She argued that for these publications to maintain their role, both their nature and content had to change, at least in part.
  
• Eleonora Serra, postdoc in linguistic studies, received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellow (2024-25) at I Tatti The University Center for Italian renaissance Studies.
• Guylian Nemegeer, FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellow in literature studies, received a Wallace Fellowship (2025-26) at I Tatti at I Tatti The University Center for Italian renaissance Studies
• Cato Rooryck had her first publication last month: “By Birthright their Mother-Tongue”: Shakespeare, Indigeneity, and Cultural Reclamation in Australia: Kylie Bracknell’s Hecate (2020), a chapter in Woke Shakespeare, published by Quibble Academic.
  
  

On Friday 7 February, Contactgroep Vroege Nederlandse Kunst will visit the exhibition Eeuwige Lente. Tuinen en Wandtapijten in de Renaissance in het Hof van Busleyden Museum in Mechelen and the nearby Koninklijke Manufactuur van Wandtapijten De Wit.

Find the programme below.

Participation fee (incl. coffee and lunch): € 30 per person. There is room for a maximum of 40 participants. You can register by transferring the amount due to NL69INGB0000507640, beneficiary Stichting RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, stating “CVNK – Eternal Spring”.
Registration for lunch before 31 January 2025.

This winter, Museum Hof van Busleyden tempers the wait for spring with a lavish exhibition that pays homage to the rebirth of nature. Eternal Spring. Gardens and Tapestries in the Renaissance brings the splendour and magnificence of lush Renaissance gardens to life with imposing tapestries and other art treasures.

In the Renaissance, sumptuous but meticulously ordered gardens affirmed man’s rule over nature. But time, however, demands humility from every gardener. After all, the beauty of a garden is transient and subject to seasonal change. For that reason, artists try like no other to capture nature in artworks, to create an eternal spring. The most remarkable presentations of the lush Renaissance gardens are to be found in sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries. Thanks to their monumental dimensions, the use of precious materials such as gold and silk and the unparalleled knowledge and skill of the workshops, tapestries are the ideal medium to depict the overwhelming splendour of burgeoning nature.

The exhibition Eternal Spring is built around an extraordinary series of tapestries that adorned the Brussels palace of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle five centuries ago. The tapestries, today part of the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, form an allegorical garden that echoes the fascination with antiquity and the ideals of the Renaissance.

The gardens are a reflection of the viewer looking at them and explore the profound relationship between man and nature. How deep is the human desire to shape the natural world? And to what extent do we continue to see nature as a makeable setting? Like a living masterpiece, the renovated gardens of Museum Hof van Busleyden intertwine the exhibition with the outside world.

In addition to the series of tapestries, Eternal Spring shows other masterpieces from the art collection of cardinal and art collector Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586). His unwavering loyalty to Habsburgian power makes him a controversial statesman in the history of the Low Countries. The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, books and naturalia from his collection.

With Eternal Spring, curated by Carlotta Striolo, Museum Hof van Busleyden once again showcases the finest art from the Northern Renaissance. With their colourful textile fibres, the imposing tapestries bring the lush garden views to life, as if spring is forever. The majestic museum gardens outside, where the first blossoming flowers create a colourful scene, complete this enchanting ode to nature.

(text and image: Hof van Busleyden: Eternal Spring)

Program:

09:30 – 10:00
Registration (30 min)

10:00 – 10:15
Reception and introduction
Kristl Strubbe (director Museum Hof ​​van Busleyden), Suzanne Laemers (CVNK) and Carlotta Striolo (exhibition curator) (15 min)

10:15 – 10:30
Session 1: Granvelles Garden Gallery in Brussels, a digital view
Krista De Jonge (KU Leuven) and Vincent Vanhamme (KU Leuven) (15 min)

10:30 – 10:35
Q&A (5 min)

10:35 – 10:50
Session 2: “Mogen we uw beker dan niet met recht een spiegel van de natuur noemen?” Granvelle as a collector of art and nature
Tine Meganck (VUB) (15 min)

10:50 – 10:55
Q&A (5 min)

10:55 – 11:10
Session 3: Mechelen, a centre for the development of the Renaissance Garden in the former Low Countries
Odile de Bruyn (15 min)

11:10 – 11:15
Q&A (5 min)

11:15 – 11:30
Coffee break (15 min)

11:30 – 12:30
Guided tour of the exhibition “Eternal Spring” by Carlotta Striolo, curator of the exhibition (1 hour)

12:30 – 13:30
Lunch break (1 hour)

13:30 – 13:55
Walk to manufactuur De Wit (approx. 25 min)

14:00-15:30
Guided tour of manufactuur De Wit (1.5 hours)

15:35 – 15:50
End of the tour

GEMS is hosting a talk by Dr. Francesco Caruso on Angelo Poliziano and the encyclopedic ideal.

March 5, 2025
3 – 4PM
Camelot (Room 3.30, Blandijnberg 2)

For early humanists, engaging with the classics was an integral part of their intellectual activity. The inventory of what remained after the shipwreck of the ancient world became the battlefield where “the best minds of three generations” clashed, in the attempt of incorporating this or that author to their range of expertise. In the late 1480s, during the opening of the academic year at the University of Florence, the Tuscan poet and humanist Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494) delivered a prologue, the Panepistemon. This work implicitly certified that the efforts of his predecessors had been short-sighted. Not only did they demonstrate a limited or non-existent knowledge of the Greek language, but they also focused on a narrow range of ancient authors, mostly poets, historians, and orators. For Poliziano, this highlighted the need to create a vast encyclopedic project to reorganize the entire intellectual heritage of Greek and Latin output, including, among others, philosophy, sciences, and the law.

Dr. Francesco Caruso has a double background, legal and literary. He graduated from the School of Law in Palermo and holds a MA from University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. His main areas of  research are the Italian Quattrocento, Neo-Latin literature and intellectual history. He has primarily published on Boccaccio and Poliziano, to whose intellectual biography he devoted his dissertation. He currently teaches Italian language and literature in the International Baccalaureate Program at the Gonzaga Campus in Palermo and works also as a professional translator. His current projects concern Cristoforo Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses but he is also conducting archival research on the Hortus Catholicus, one of Europe’s earliest botanical gardens.