Author: efevery

GEMS is hosting a talk by Prof. Dr. David Alvarez (DePauw University) on religion, race, and the formation of the secular in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters.

February 19, 2025
2:30-3:30pm
Auditorium B, Rozier 44

Europe and Islam, feminism and the veil, orientalism, empire, and race: there are few works of eighteenth-century British literature that seem as topical as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s The Turkish Embassy Letters (1763). One of the first women to describe her travels to the Ottoman Empire, and one of the first Europeans to visit women-only spaces there, Montagu praises many aspects of Ottoman culture and society, most notably the liberty of the “Turkish ladies,” who are, she claims, “(perhaps) freer than any ladies in the universe.” Hailed in the last thirty years as a proto-feminist Enlightenment effort to overcome the East/West divide, her literary account of her travels from 1716-18 through Europe, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire has been seen as promoting “peaceful cosmopolitan intercultural exchange” and heralding “the advent of European secularism.” The Letters’ topicality, however, has unfortunately had the effect of limiting scholars’ attention to Montagu’s descriptions of the Ottoman empire, which make up less than half the book. By ignoring her account of her travels through Roman Catholic Europe, we miss seeing how Montagu represents Ottoman alterity by projecting outward from England a distinction that is internal to Christianity: the divide between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. This divide in her work is more fundamental than that between East and West. It grounds not only her criticisms of Roman Catholic Baroque Europe as benighted, backwards, and absolutist but also her celebration of the Ottomans for their polite sociability, tolerant cosmopolitanism, and liberty for women. If it is through these binaries that her work contributes to the formation of the secular, they also explain how Montagu conceptualizes race and anti-Black racism in her letters about North African women, who are represented as having more in common with Roman Catholics than Ottoman Muslims.

Prof. Dr. David Alvarez (DePauw University) is a Fulbright scholar this year at Ghent University, and is currently finishing a book manuscript on “Imagining Global Religion: Secularity, Religious Toleration, and Empire in the English Enlightenment.” He has published internationally on eighteenth-century English literature and philosophy, focusing on religious toleration, aesthetics, and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. With Prof. Alison Conway, he has also edited a book collection of essays, Imagining Religious Toleration: A Literary History of an Idea, 1600-1830. His course on “Staging World Religions and the Formation of the Secular in Restoration Drama” builds on his book project by examining how Restoration drama contributes to changes in the meaning of “religion” and to what ethical, secular, and imperial ends.

Architecture’s Mannerisms, or the Modern Path of an Unstylish Style

The department of Architecture and Urban Planning is hosting a lecture by Andrew Leach (University of Sydney) on the notion of mannerisms in 20^th century architectural culture. This talk reports on a book begun at Harvard’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti. It reflects on the work done by a modern and evolving concept of architectural mannerism for architecture itself. How has mannerism, it asks, shaped architectural values—directly and obliquely? What does it tell us about modern architecture’s relationship with history? Tracking the ebbs and flows of mannerism’s presence in architectural debate offers a way to think about the construction of architecture as a field apart, and as a profession subject to corruption.

The lecture will take place on Tuesday 17 December at 6 pm, in Auditorium C, Plateaustraat 22.

Middle East Studies Research Seminar Series – with Prof. Dr. Nir Shafir (UC – San Diego)

In the seventeenth century, Muslims in the Ottoman Empire became embroiled in a polarizing cultural war over the permissibility of everyday practices like worshipping at saints’ graves, smoking tobacco, and an odd medical procedure called “chickpea cauterization.” This talk traces this widespread religious and political polarization to the rise of a new “communication order,” focusing, in particular, on the advent of “pamphlets”: short, mobile, and polemical tracts, all copied by hand. The talk paints a new picture of the entire ecosystem of books in the manuscript culture of the early modern Ottoman Empire and how it fell into supposed disorder as middling readers stoked polemics, falsified authorship, and fashioned new reading publics.

12 December 2024 (16.00-18.00) – Room 1.2, Faculty of Arts, Rozier 44, 9000 Gent

contact: middleeast@ugent.be

GEMS is organising a feedback session for FWO-applicants in the field of early modern studies*.

In this session, MA students applying in March 2025 to the FWO (or in the subsequent year, but who have already completed their application) will share their application with the attendees: PhD and senior researchers in the field of early modern studies, and other students. They will also briefly present their research in a 5-minute presentation (in English), followed by ample time for feedback and discussion.

The goal of this session is for students to receive useful feedback on their research and application from different experienced researchers to finetune their project before applying to the FWO.

The session will take place on the 14th of February from 2pm.

Student can register via this form or the QR-code.
If you have any questions, please contact Eru.Fevery@UGent.be or Joris.Verschelde@UGent.be

*Researchers focusing on adjacent time periods are also welcome!

Medieval and Early Modern Studies Spring School: History of Emotions – Groningen, 24-28 March 2025

This Spring School is organised by the University of Groningen, Ghent University, the Huizinga Institute and the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies to stimulate contacts and exchange between PhD candidates and ReMa students in the field of the history of emotions, a flourishing research field that connects different disciplines within the humanities, as well as between SSH and the (neuro)sciences. At least six of these disciplines will be represented in this course: cultural history, neurosciences, literary studies, art history, creative writing and musicology. The aim of the course is not to provide an introduction in the field but to deepen the participants’ knowledge of four topical angles through which emotions in history can be studied. The course will mainly focus on the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, but students working on Antiquity or the Modern Period can attend as well.

Topic

The history of emotions is a scholarly field that came into existence almost 20 years ago and since then has realised major breakthroughs, most notably because of its interdisciplinary character. Unsurprisingly, also among young scholars in the field of medieval and early modern history there is a renewed interest in the history of emotions and its theoretical and methodological framework. The focus of scholars in the field has long been on the investigation of emotional norms, regimes, and communities, with the pioneering work of scholars such as Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy. Monique Scheer introduced the idea of ‘doing emotions’, paying more attention to the performative aspect of emotional language, as well as cognitive processes and the idea of ​​embodied knowledge. Other scholars focused explicitly on the role of emotions in processes of knowledge acquisition, ecological change and in ‘affective economies’. Many doctoral students interested in the field will be familiar with at least some of these approaches. This Spring School will provide them the opportunity to deepen this knowledge and to get familiar with topical debates in the field. Special attention will be given to digital methods, postcolonial approaches and the ´´´´´´relevance of neuroscience for historical research.

Approaches

This course takes four recent lines of research and the concepts associated with them as a starting point: digital approaches, rhetoric, well-being & art and decolonialty. Nine specialists will reflect from their scholarly background (cultural history, medieval history, literary studies, creative writing, art history, musicology, digital humanities and neurosciences) on how they define and apply the above-mentioned concepts in their own research. An accompanying reading list underpins further reflection and discussion with the participants. This will offer students a stepping stone to think these concepts in relation to their own work. Through short pitches the attending PhD students will concretely reflect on the possibilities and difficulties of working with the same concepts in their own research projects. More informal talks about the history of emotions will be possible during a thematic walk through Groningen and a workshop in creative writing and emotions. The Spring School will also provide a workshop on digital approaches of emotions in history.

Programme

Session I: Walk through Groningen: Revolution and Emotions – guide/lecturer: Renée Vulto (Utrecht)

Session II & III: Methodology and Digital Approaches – lecturers: Francesco Buscemi (Groningen) and Lucas van der Deijl (Groningen)

Session IV & V: Emotions and Rhetoric – lecturers: Janne Lindqvist (Uppsala) and Steven Vanderputten (Ghent)

Session VI & VII : Art, Mind and Well-being – lecturers: Jacomien Prins (Utrecht), Nicole Ruta (Leuven) and Gemma Schino (Groningen)

Session VIII & IX:  Writing, Emotion, and Decoloniality – lecturers: Marrigje Paijmans (Amsterdam) and Femke Kramer (Groningen)

Registration

PhD students and ReMa students are invited to register for this course before 10 January 2025 through the link. Please note that there is a limited number of places available for this course.  After your registration you will soon receive more information about whether your registration can be confirmed or not. Some of the participating graduate/doctoral schools will cover tuition and lodging for their participating members (please wait for more information after your registration).

Organising institutions and partners

This Spring School is organised by Ghent University (Doctoral Schools), the University of Groningen, the Huizinga Institute and the Research School for Medieval Studies in cooperation with the following research groups: the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), the Group for Early Modern Studies (UGent), the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (UGent), the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity (UvA), Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies (VU A’dam), the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity (UvA), the Institute for Early Modern History (UGent-VUB) and the Onderzoeksgroep Nieuwe Tijd (KU Leuven).

Organising committee

Estel van den Berg, MA (UGent, Group for Early Modern Studies), Dr. Femke Kramer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Research Institute for the Study of Culture), Dr. Stefan Meysman (UGent, Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies), Prof. Bart Ramakers (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Research Institute for the Study of Culture), Dr. Lucas van der Deijl (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Research Institute for the Study of Culture), Dr. Lies Verbaere (UGent, Group for Early Modern Studies) and Prof. Kornee van der Haven (UGent, Group for Early Modern Studies)

Date: 17th of October 2024 – 1pm
Location: Auditorium VANDENHOVE
Organization by Teodoro Katinis (Dep. of Literary Studies – GEMS) and Elizabeth Merrill (Dep. of Architecture – Sarton Center for the History of Science)

In the years leading to this summer’s Olympics, Parisian and the Île de France regional authorities wielded broad municipal authority to redeploy the Seine for ceremonial and sporting events as well as post-industrial quarters in the outer suburbs for housing and transport. Starting in the eighteenth century, urban reform featured a similar restructuring of the capital city’s core and periphery. Eighteenth-century Paris was a time and a place where urban space was deftly reassigned from historically determined spaces where specific trades had traditionally gravitated: displaced activities included market spaces (increasingly confined to Les Halles) and the leatherwork and chemical works (moved from the Seine to la Bièvre). What a later generation would call zoning, the geographic fixing of life and work to demarcated areas, was practiced in an embryonic form during the ancien régime.
However, some industries were clearly not transplantable. In his paper, Allan Potofsky examines the reforms of the end of the ancien régime that sought to limit the risk presented by an archetypically unmovable industrial site: the stone quarries situated in much of the outer zones of the capital, particularly, in the areas of Montmartre, Belleville, and Ménilmontant in the North and Northeast of Paris. Collapsing buildings and industrial accidents alerted authorities to the hazards of open stone quarries in proximity to encroaching residential areas, rapidly expanding as the overpopulated city grew desperate for livable space. The porousness of Paris and its outer perimeters first posed the challenge of the limitless city, well before the contemporary idea of a Greater Paris was born.

Allan Potofsky (PhD Columbia University, 1993) is an urban historian who specializes in the history of planning and construction of early modern Paris. He is particularly interested in the relationship between social and architectural history, political economy, and intellectual history. He is currently Professeur des universités and was previously Maître de conferences at the Université Paris-8. As a sequel to his Constructing Paris in the Age of Revolution (NY: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012), his current book project is entitled Paris is the World: the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. It focuses on the politics of urban reform, techniques of organization and construction, and the material culture (particularly, the interplay of property right, labor, and resources) that shaped the city in the century before Haussmannisation.

Group for Early Modern Studies, Sarton Centre for History of Science and UGent Doctoral School are organising a seminar by Prof. Dr. Paola Ugolini (University at Buffalo, USA).

The seminar will take place on the 3rd of September at 11am in room Camelot, Campus Boekentoren.

Prof. Dr. Paola Ugolini will present her paper ‘“A Woman Dressed in Gold (…) Holding Out Her Heart.” Sincerity in Early Modern Italy.’, followed by a 10-minutes response given by Prof. Dr. Katinis (director of GEMS). The last 40 minutes will be reserved for open debate with the participants.

Early modern culture is known for devoting a unique amount of attention to accessing and revealing one’s interiority. Poets dreamed of a “crystal heart” that would show the authenticity of their feelings. Authors of physiognomic manuals explained how physical features could help understand a person’s moral character. In medical texts, dissected bodies were portrayed as lifting their skin, disclosing the secrets of human anatomy. Studies such as Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity and John J. Martin’s “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence” have formulated the assumption that the notion of sincerity as a moral value is a creation of the Renaissance, while in earlier societies the term “sincere” was used exclusively to refer to a substance or an object that was pure or unadulterated. Prof. Dr. Paola Ugolini intends to put this assumption to the test, while also trying to identify the reasons that could have prompted such a change. Furthermore, she plans to investigate the contrast between the urge for sincerity and the need for simulation and dissimulation that characterized early modern society. In her research, she also explores the claims of sincerity expressed by the authors of early modern scientific texts, and how this intersects with the idea of accessing the secrets of Nature

Prof. Ugolini holds a doctorate from New York University. Since 2020 she has been an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, where she teaches Italian and Global Gender and Sexuality Studies. She has also been a visiting professor at the University of Bologna in 2021, and has been invited to give lectures at universities across North America and Europe. She has published on a wide array of Renaissance Italian writers, including Pietro Aretino (on which she also co-edited a volume; (2021)), Ludovico Ariosto (2017; 2022; 2024), Veronica Franco (2024), Veronica Gambara (whose poems she edited and translated; (2014)), and Gaspara Stampa (2024). She is currently co-editing a volume titled Women Warriors in the Early Modern World (under contract with Amsterdam University Press) and working on a book project on the history of sincerity in early modern Italy.

The yearly conference of Werkgroep Zeventiende Eeuw will take place on Friday the 30th of August at Stadscampus Universiteit Antwerpen. This year’s theme is ‘Ambacht en ambachtelijkheid’.

See the conference program and registration form for more information.

Rebellie in de Gentse letteren: een podcastserie over rebelse verhalen uit, in en door de stad

Gent is een rebelse stad en er woont een weerspannig volkje. Dat is althans het typische imago van de Arteveldestad en haar Stroppendragers. Ook de literatuur heeft aan dat imago bijgedragen. Literaire teksten uit Gent schoppen regelmatig tegen de gevestigde orde en bevestigen of ondermijnen juist het rebelse imago van de stad. Journalist Marieke Martens gaat in deze serie in gesprek met onderzoekers van de vakgroep letterkunde aan de UGent over die relatie tussen Gentse literatuur en rebellie sinds de middeleeuwen.

Je kunt deze zes podcastafleveringen natuurlijk rustig thuis beluisteren, maar je kunt ook de stad in trekken want al die literaire rebellen hebben hun sporen nagelaten in de Gentse straten. Bij elke aflevering vind je een wandelroute die je langs de plekken die in de podcast worden besproken voert.

Meer informatie vind je op de website.

Aflevering 3: De rebelse jaren ‘60: zingende rebellen tijdens de Beelden- en Boekenstorm

De Beeldenstorm woedde in 1566 ook in Gent en literatuur was daarbij betrokken! Naast beelden werden er in dat jaar ook veel boeken vernietigd. Voorafgaande aan de geweldsuitbarsting werden er liederen met opstandige teksten in de Gentse straten gezongen.  Dat verkennen we met prof. dr. Kornee van der Haven en prof. dr. Samuel Mareel.

De aflevering is te beluisteren via Spotify.

Gasten van deze week

Kornee van der Haven in professor vroegmoderne Nederlandse letterkunde. Zijn onderzoek is voornamelijk gericht op vroegmoderne lyriek en theater van de 17de en 18de eeuw en verkent de verwevenheid van literatuur, politiek, geweld en identiteit.

Samuel Mareel is doctor in de letterkunde, met een specialisatie in de vroegmoderne Nederlandse literatuur. Hij is gastprofessor aan de UGent en senior curator 15de- en 16de-eeuwse kunst bij het KMSKA. Zijn onderzoek focust op de interacties tussen literatuur, stad, hof en individu.

Deze podcastserie kwam tot stand dankzij financiële steun door de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte en het Maatschappelijk Valorisatiefonds van de UGent.