Author: efevery

This month GEMS is organising a talk by Dr. Eleonora Serra on women and language in late Renaissance Florence.

11 December 10am
Meeting Room 0.1 Simon Stevin
Campus Boekentoren, Plateau-Rozier

Women’s activity as letter writers in Renaissance Italy has come to the fore across a range of fields, including palaeography and cultural, social, and literary history. When it comes to linguistics, research has largely concentrated on the epistolary practice of individual women, while few attempts have so far been made to provide a more comprehensive analysis of early modern women’s epistolary language. However, private letters – both a privileged source to reconstruct language history, and the genre in which women’s participation was wider – represent an ideal locus to reconstruct the language of early modern women. In this talk, I present some results from a project that analyses a corpus of private, autograph letters by writers from over thirty families of the Florentine patriciate (1540–1609), focusing on a diverse range of features (morpho-syntactic features, formulae, forms of address). Drawing on unedited archival material, and adopting historical sociolinguistic approaches that have not been widely applied in the Italian context, this study seeks to compare men’s and women’s language in late Renaissance Florence.

Eleonora is a linguist who studies topics from the early modern period, with strong connections to history, culture, and literature. She has completed an FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship and a one-year fellowship at Villa I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, and has just started her FWO Senior Fellowship at Ghent University.

We welcome Dr. Chiara Monaco as new GEMS member. She has started a FWO Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship at UGent with her project Codifying vernacular Greek: a historical sociolinguistic approach to native and non-native grammars (16th-18th centuries), and has recently obtained a Humboldt Research Fellowship.

Please join us for Prof. Roland Greene’s Inaugural Francqui Lecture and the 2025 Belvedere Lecture: New Perspectives on Early Modern Studies.

March 4, 2026, at 5pm.
Belvedere, Boekentoren, Rozier 9, UGent

Greene’s lecture will trace the decline of universalism: the idea that certain themes, experiences, or values in literature are common to all humans, transcending specific cultural, historical, or geographical contexts. This doctrine ruled the study of literature until about 75 years ago. Its disappearance made possible new canons of experimental, ethnic, and Indigenous writing, but left literary studies with a crisis of authority—and a diminished place in public culture—that remains the topic of countless jeremiads. After sketching a provocative history of this transformative episode in the life of a discipline, Prof. Greene will offer ideas toward the rebuilding of literary criticism’s authority on a sounder basis than what it was established on—in effect, remaking its foundation with a new sense of ethics and justice.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A with the audience and a reception.

Register before 04-03-2026 18:05.

Prof. Roland Greene is the Mark Pigott KBE Professor, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor of the Humanities, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University, and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center. During 2026, he will be a Francqui International Chair at Ghent University.

His research and teaching are concerned with the early modern literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, and with poetry and poetics from the Renaissance to the present. His most recent book is Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago, 2013). His other books include Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas (Chicago, 1999); and Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, 1991). Greene is the editor with Elizabeth Fowler of The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World (Cambridge, 1997), and he is editor in chief of the fourth edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012).

In 2015-16 he served as President of the Modern Language Association. His theme for the 2016 Annual Convention in Austin, Texas was Literature and Its Publics: Past, Present, and Future. At Stanford Greene is co-chair and founder of two research workshops in which most of his Ph.D. students participate. Renaissances brings together early modernists from the Bay Area to discuss work in progress, while the Poetics Workshop provides a venue for innovative scholarship in the broad field of international and historical poetics. Greene has taught at Harvard and Oregon, where for six years he was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Belvedere Lecture: New Perspectives in Early Modern Studies (https://www.belvederelecture.ugent.be) is a joint initiative of various research groups at Ghent University, including the Institute for Early Modern History, the Sarton Centre for History of Science, the Group for Early Modern Studies (GEMS), the Institute for Legal History, THALIA and RELICS

Reading Group: Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women (1600)
(An initiative of GEMS – Group for Early Modern Studies)

Every Monday, 5-7 pm, starting 24 November
Blandijn, room TBC

The Worth of Women by sixteenth-century Venetian author Moderata Fonte is set in Renaissance Venice, where seven women gather to discuss a wide range of topics, asking what it means to be a woman in their time and advocating for equal access to education.

We’ll take turns reading the text aloud (in English translation), enjoy tea and biscuits, and pause for informal discussion as we go along. No prior preparation required. We’ll provide the text. Students very welcome!

This activity will only run with a minimum number of participants.
Please register your interest by Thursday 20 November by emailing aretina.bellizzi@ugent.be and eleonora.serra@ugent.be

• Ruben Celani is appointed as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Italian Studies and Zahm Dante Collection Curatorial Fellow at the University of Notre Dame (USA, IN) (2025-26). He also published an article ‘”Come parto imperfetto” : Paratexts and Organization in a Sixteenth-Century Book of Secrets’ in Renaissance Studies.
• Eleonora Serra, postdoc in linguistic studies, won a Senior FWO Fellowship at UGent (2025-28)
• Denise Brazzale received her PhD degree in Italian Language and Literature (Fribourg University, Switzerland), and won a postdoc “assegno di ricerca” at University of Chieti-Pescara, Dipartimento di studi umanistici (2025-26) and a BOF postdoc Fellowship at UGent (2026-29).
• Lies Verbaere won a BOF postdoc Fellowship at UGent and a FNRS postdoc Fellowship (2026-29).
• Maxim Rigaux won a Ramón y Cajal postdoc Fellowship at the University of Seville, Spain (Fall 2026).

16-17 April, 2026
Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Berlin

Keynote Speakers:

• Professor Caroline Levine (Cornell University), author of  The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis
• Dr Marco Checchi (Northumbria University), author of The Primacy of Resistance: Power, Opposition and Becoming

Many contemporary challenges in our divided, unjust, and unequal world – ecocide, authoritarianism, populism, militarism, neo-imperialism, and nationalism – have their roots in the early modern European era.  Early modern European drama – especially tragedy – represents and critiques that era, and tells us a lot about how we got here, and where we might go next.

This matters because our contemporary challenges necessitate an active and resistant response. Dominant approaches to literary analysis have often focused on ‘unsettling’ discourses that stimulate critical thinking, but with an open-ended, ‘anti-instrumentalist’ approach, and without necessarily connecting this to substantial social action.

In contrast, this event takes a transdisciplinary, transnational, and transhistorical approach to a specific historical genre – early modern tragedy – to foster an ‘activist humanism’ by offering an experimental space for contemporary social engagement and resistance, and by engaging literary scholars in dialogue with and to the benefit of activists, educators, and theatre makers. Interpreting early modern plays is therefore not an end in itself but a means to stimulate criticality framing and informing action and resistance.

The organizers invite scholars, dramaturges, and activists to submit abstracts for 20-30 minute papers by 30 January 2025 to Adam Hansen (adam.hansen@northumbria.ac.uk), to whom any queries can be directed, on these issues or the questions below:

• What do early modern tragedies say about activism and resistance, and how can activist and resistant readings and practices alter the uses of early modern tragedies, on stage, on the page, and in the classroom?
• How might tragedies of the past inform readings of and resistances to tragic conditions in the present?
• How can we theorize, historicize, share, and perform resistance?

This Workshop is an initiative of the University of Northumbria, Ghent University, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Network on Political Aesthetics (Working Group on Theatre), UGent-VUB Alliance Research Group THALIA (Interplay of Theare, Literature & Media in Performance)

Please check the THALIA website for updates about this CFP.

Medieval & Early Modern Studies Spring School 2026

Materiality, Material Culture and Materialist Approaches

1 June – 5 June 2026, Ghent, Hotel Den Briel

Material studies has, for several decades now, been a flourishing field within the study of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. The technical study of the materiality of cultural objects draws on various disciplines, such as book history, art history, history of science, archaeology an archeometry. The latest analytical methods from the natural sciences, but also artificial intelligence are being applied in this field. This Spring School explores these technical aspects, advances and challenges but also considers the cultural uses and meanings of objects, with particular attention to the interactions between humans and objects, from the mundane to performative and ritual uses. Material studies often go hand in hand with a materialist approach to culture, which examines historical cultural representations with an eye to the underlying material and ideological interests embedded in those cultural representations. This could also include an ecocritical approach to objects, which critically investigates human interactions with the natural environment and recognises the agency of non-human matter. Participants in this Spring School will be offered a wide range of approaches to material studies. Through lectures, workshops and pitches, they will also be invited to actively engage with these approaches to materiality and material culture in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.

Open to PhD candidates and RMA students who are a member of a Dutch National Research School

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), the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity (UvA), the Institute for Early Modern History (UGent-VUB), the Centre for Urban History (UAntwerp) and the Onderzoeksgroep Nieuwe Tijd (KU Leuven).

Organising committee

Marrigje Paijmans (UvA), Elizabeth Merrill (UGent), Bart Ramakers (RUG), Stefan Meysman (UGent), Maïka De Keyzer (KU Leuven), Marlise Rijks (VUB/UGent), Estel van den Berg (UGent) en Kornee van der Haven (UGent).

More information about the programme and how to register will follow soon!

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.