GEMS (Group for Early Modern Studies) is organising a work-in-progress session for MA students working in early modern (broadly defined) studies. We want to create a low threshold and open setting for students to present their work and receive useful feedback.
In this session, students will give a poster presentation (in English) on their current research. The presentation aims to help students fine-tune their research and is a great opportunity to get feedback from your peers and experienced researchers in the field of early modern cultural history and literature. The presentation can be about a specific chapter or your research methodology, or an outline of your thesis. We don’t expect your research to be in a finalised stage: feel free to come with drafts and invite your peers to think along with you!
The seminar will take place on Wednesday 23 April 2025 from 3pm. We aim for seven-minute presentations with ample time for questions. GEMS will finance the print costs for the posters. Refreshments will be provided.
Register for the Young Researchers Day via this form.
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)
Dit najaar verschijnt Een vrije geest: Het uitzonderlijke leven van Betje Wolff bij Uitgeverij Balans. Elizabeth (Betje) Wolff schreef samen met Agatha Deken de roman Sara Burgerhart die in Nederland onderdeel is van de historische canon. Met dit boek krijgt Elizabeth Wolff haar eerste solo-biografie. Marita Mathijsen komt naar De Krook om er deze biografie voor te stellen en in te gaan op het turbulente leven van de schrijfster. Daarna zal zij in gesprek te gaan met Annelies Verbeke en Tom Verschaffel, over de positie van vrouwelijke auteurs in de achttiende eeuw en nu. Waarom wordt het werk van getalenteerde schrijfsters zo weinig gelezen? Waarom ontbreekt de Verlichting in de Vlaamse literaire canon? En waarom is het voor vrouwelijke auteurs nog steeds lastig om een plek in die canon te krijgen? Moderator: Kornee van der Haven.
Over Elizabeth Wolff
Het leven van de achttiende-eeuwse schrijfster Elizabeth (of Betje) Wolff is ongekend opwindend en haar schrijverschap is meesterlijk. Geen vrouw wist ooit zo spottend tegen het orthodoxe geloof te schrijven. Ze nam ferm stelling tegen de onderdrukking van vrouwen, tegen de slavernij, tegen dierenmishandeling, vóór natuurwaardering, vóór democratisch bestuur. Dat maakt haar uniek, niet alleen toen, maar ook nu nog. Ze stond al in heel letterenland bekend als schrijfster toen ze Agatha (of Aagje) Deken leerde kennen, die nog geen naam had. Samen schreven ze het succesboek Historie van mejuffrouw Sara Burgerhart. Op haar vijftigste vluchtte ze vanwege de politiek met Aagje naar Frankrijk. Negen jaar later kwamen ze gedesillusioneerd terug. Hun succesjaren waren toen voorbij. In 1802 overleden de twee vriendinnen, kort na elkaar.
Marita Mathijsen
Marita Mathijsen is cultuurhistorica en emeritus hoogleraar Nederlandse literatuur aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Ze is bekend om haar werken over vooral de negentiende eeuw: De geest van de dichter, De gemaskerde eeuw, Historiezucht, L: de lezer van de 19de eeuw en haar veelgeprezen biografie Jacob van Lennep: Een bezielde schavuit. Haar werk verscheen op de short lists van de geschiedenisprijs en de biografieprijs.
Annelies Verbeke
Annelies Verbeke schrijft vooral proza en theaterteksten. Ze schreef ondermeer de romans Slaap! (2003), Reus (2006), Vissen redden (2009) en Dertig dagen (2015), de verhalenbundels Groener gras (2007), Veronderstellingen (2012), Halleluja (2017) en Treinen en Kamers (2021). Ze is betrokken geweest bij een podcastreeks van het feministische schrijverscollectief Fixdit over in de vergetelheid geraakte schrijvende vrouwen doorheen de geschiedenis van de Nederlandstalige literatuur (te beluisteren via https://www.de-gids.nl/podcasts/fixdit ).
Tom Verschaffel
Tom Verschaffel is hoogleraar cultuurgeschiedenis vanaf 1750 aan de KU Leuven. Hij is de auteur van De weg naar het binnenland (2017), het deel over de literatuur van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden in de 18de eeuw in de Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Literatuur. Zijn onderzoek betreft de historiografie en de brede historische cultuur van de achttiende, negentiende en twintigste eeuw, publieksgeschiedenis en de visuele voorstelling van het verleden, cultureel nationalisme, de culturele uitwisseling tussen België en zijn buurlanden, en de cultuurgeschiedenis van migratie.
Organisatie: Bibliotheek De Krook & Universiteit Gent (Vakgroep letterkunde, Humanities Academie, Group for Early Modern Studies) m.m.v. Koninklijke Academie voor Taal- en Letterkunde (KANTL)
Talk by Prof. Dr. Allan Potofsky: The Origins of “Greater Paris?” Delimiting, appropriating, and reforming the stone quarries in the outer boundaries of Paris in the eighteenth-century.
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.
Sonja Lavaert, professor in de filosofie van de vroegmoderne tijd en de verlichting aan de VUB geeft woensdag 23 oktober een lezing over Spinoza’s Ethica, gevolgd door een gezamenlijke lezing van een deel uit de Ethica. Het seminarie zal plaatsvinden in het Library Lab Magnel. Centraal in de lezing van Prof. Lavaert staat Spinoza’s begrip conatus, de drang van een wezen om voort te blijven bestaan. In de namiddag geven Prof. Kornee van der Haven, Prof. Karel Vanhaesebrouck en doctoraatsstudenten Thomas van Binsbergen en Estel van den Berg korte presentaties over de plaats die het begrip conatus en Spinoza’s affectenleer innemen in hun onderzoek. Prof. Kornee van der Haven zal presenteren over verlangen en wraak in Claas
Bruins Coriolanus (1720). Thomas van Binsbergen zal presenteren over conatus, historisch-kritisch onderzoek en de liefde voor boeken. De presentatie van Estel van den Berg heeft als onderwerp verlangen en happy objects in Asselijns Spilpenning (1693).
In de namiddag is ook ruimte voor deelnemers om een korte presentatie (ca. 15 min. ) te geven over het belang van Spinoza’s filosofie in hun eigen onderzoek.
Programma:
10.00-11.00 Lezing Sonja Lavaert
11.00-12.00 Gezamenlijke lezing Ethica
12.00-13.00 Lunch
13.00-16.00 Presentaties deelnemers en discussies
Wie wil deelnemen aan het seminarie of een deel van de workshop kan Estel van den Berg contacteren tegen woensdag 16 oktober via estel.vandenberg@ugent.be.
Deelnemers worden vriendelijk verzocht om bij de aanmelding dieetwensen en allergieën door te geven en te vermelden welk onderdeel van het seminarie ze willen bijwonen en of ze een korte presentatie willen geven.
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 Belvedere Lecture is the Ghent annual lecture on early modern history and culture. It sheds light on the early modern period from a multi-disciplinary perspective. ‘Belvedere’ suggests a bird-eye view on early modern history, which is indeed one of the aims of this annual lecture: to invite international scholars in the field of early modern studies to present their research in the light of bigger questions early modernists are dealing with today.
‘Belvedere Lecture’ refers to the Belvedère of the Ghent famous Boekentoren (Book Tower), an iconic building designed in 1936 by Henry van de Velde (more information about this buildng on https://tour.boekentoren.gent). Belvedere is an architectural structure that was especially popular in the renaissance and baroque, but also in modern architecture. It not only refers to the idea of providing an scenic view on early modern history, but it also connects early modernity with modernity.
Speaker: Prof. Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University)
‘From dry milling lakes to the production of sugar: Internal and external colonialism and the issue of legal and historical irresponsibility’
Starting in the early modern period, and in the course of just a few centuries, a so-called plantation culture has come to dominate the relations between humans and their environment, leading up to what Donna Haraway called the Plantationocene. This type of cultivation was not developed especially for the colonies. In the Netherlands, for instance, the dry milling of lakes in the 17th century resulted in commons being turned into the private property of investors who would then rent out the neatly cut up polders to those who had to work the land. More broadly, juridically speaking, the appropriation of land was covered by a tactic of enclosure, as Sylvia Federici proposed: a certain amount of land was marked off from the rest and declared property. When, then, a few European nations engaged in what was to become a colonial endeavor, Europe’s internal form of colonialism was exported to colonies elsewhere. There, likewise, European newcomers brutally created tangible and juridical fences that indicated: “This is now property.” The windmills that facilitated the dry milling of lakes, the le
gal definitions that facilitated the constitution of property, the machines that made the production of sugar possible, they are all examples of what Bernhard Siegert called ‘cultural techniques’. Such techniques take humans up in a loop. They are not techniques that humans consciously use, but media that redefine human subjectivity. As such they pose problems of (ir-)responsibility, both legally and historically. These, in turn, have their implications for a decolonial reconsideration of history.
Landscape History & Ecology – Ghent, 27-31 May 2024
This Spring School is organised by Ghent University (Doctoral Schools), University of Groningen, 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 cultural history, art history, historical geography, urban history, archaeology, early modern history, medieval history, literary studies, environmental psychology, environmental design and engineering, sustainability studies and environmental education. 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
Climate change, depletion of natural resources, loss of natural and cultural landscapes, and many other (ecological) sustainability challenges urge us to (re)evaluate human interaction with the natural world. This renewed environmental consciousness has invigorated not only scientists working on effects in the present and solutions for the future, but also those who study the (distant) past. It has become clear that we need to take the story back(much) further than the industrialisation of the second half of the eighteenth century. Specifically in medieval and early modern studies, scholars have uncovered the deep historical backgrounds of the anthropogenic ecological challenges, including (over)exploitation of natural landscapes, diminishment of open space, deforestation, food production, use of energy and water, fauna and flora extinctions et cetera. Over the past decades, ever more research has been conducted into the ecological impact and implications of practices in different landscapes. Also the traces of environmental mentalities in art and the cultural representation of human interactions with the environment is a flourishing field, strongly influenced by ecocritical approaches. The Spring School will therefore pay attention to a wide range of ecological issues in history related to the landscape of city, country and colony and their mediation in cultural production, most notablyliterature and art. It combines a focus on the medieval and early modern period with an multidisciplinary perspective, attending to the theoretical and methodological background of landscape and cultural history, ecocriticism and archaeology.
Approaches
This course takes four topics and methodologies related to historical landscape and ecology as a starting point:
(A) History of the city and the country,
(B) Archaeology and landscape history,
(C) Artistic representation and ecocriticism,
(D) Ecology and economy.
Ten specialists will reflect from their scholarly background (landscape history, archaeology, literary studies, cultural history) on ecological issues in their own research. An accompanying reading list gives rise to further reflection and discussion with the participants. This will offer students a framework to think theoretical concepts and methodologies through in relation to their own work. Through short pitches the attending PhD students will reflect on the possibilities and difficulties of working with the same concepts and methodologies in their own research projects. A guided bike tour on the ecology of the city Ghent and its surroundings will be part of the programme, as well as an excursion to the Zwin-region and Zeeland Flanders, with presentations and discussions ‘in the field’.
Programme
Session I: Visit Exhibition ‘Ghent’s Lands’ & Bike Tour – Guide: Esther Beeckaert (Ghent Museum for Urban History STAM)
Session II & III: History of the City and the Country- Lecturers: Tim Soens & Iason Jongepier (UAntwerpen)
Session IV: Archaeology and Landscape History – Lecturer: Wim De Clercq (UGent)
Session V: Landscape History and Garden Culture – Lecturer: Willemieke Ottens (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Session VII: Artistic Representation & Ecocriticism – Lecturer: Joana van de Löcht (Universität Freiburg)
Session VIII & IX: Ecology and Economy – Lecturers: Marrigje Paijmans (University of Amsterdam), Charlotte Kießling (University of Cologne) & Thijs Lambrecht (Ghent University)
Registration
PhD students and ReMa students are invited to register for this course before 12 January 2024 through the following link: https://forms.gle/hQUuu4SVfs4wTRsq9 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 Group for Early Modern Studies (UGent), the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (UGent), the Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity (UvA), the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), the Centre for Urban History(UAntwerpen), the Institute for Early Modern History (UGent-VUB) and the Onderzoeksgroep Nieuwe Tijd (KU Leuven). The Spring School was also made possible by the Rudolf Agricola School for Sustainable Development (University Groningen).
Organising committee
Caroline Baetens, MA (UGent, Group for Early Modern Studies), Dr. Femke Kramer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Research Institute for the Study ofCulture), Dr. Stefan Meysman (UGent, Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies), Dr. Marrigje Paijmans (UvA, Amsterdam Centre for Studies in Early Modernity), Prof. Jeroen Puttevils (UAntwerpen,Centre for Urban History), Prof. Hanneke Ronnes (UvA / Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Landscape History), Prof. Kornee van der Haven (UGent, Group for Early Modern Studies)
Join GEMS on the 22th of February for a Book Presentation by dr. Sarah J. Adams. She will present her new bookRepertoires of Slavery: Dutch Theater Between Abolitionism and Colonial Subjection, 1770-1810 (University Press Amsterdam, 2023). Through the lens of a hitherto unstudied repertoire of Dutch abolitionist theatre productions, Repertoires of Slavery prises open the conflicting ideological functions of antislavery discourse within and outside the walls of the theatre and examines the ways in which abolitionist protesters wielded the strife-ridden question of slavery to negotiate the meanings of human rights, subjecthood, and subjection.
For more information and to order the book, you can follow this link
Please let us know if you can attend by the 16th of February via this link
Join GEMS on the 22nd of April for the Young Researcher’s Day, a work-in-progress session by MA students where they will be presenting their research through a short poster presentation, with ample time for questions. The presentations aim to help students fine-tune their research and are a great opportunity to get feedback from their peers and other researchers in the field of early modern cultural history and literature.
Location: Library Lab, Magnel Wing – 11am-3pm
Presentations:
Widow Immolation (Sati) as a Religious Practice: Crystallisation of a European Image of India in the 18th Century
The Late Medieval and Early Modern in Macbeth: The Transgressive Power of Blood, the Body and the Supernatural
European Science Theories in 18th Century Latin America: The Almanacs of Cosme Bueno
Early Modern Death: The Function and Form of Death in Everyman, The Faerie Queene, “Death Be Not Proud”, Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim’s Progress
Trauma and Cognition in 20th Century Fiction
Asexuality in Media
We encourage researchers who are interested to attend and register through this form by the 17th of April. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact eru.fevery@ugent.be and caroline.baetens@ugent.be
