Books by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Page 1. EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION EUI Workin... more Page 1. EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2004/2 Reading, Interpreting and Historicizing: Letters as Historical Sources Edited ...
Paare, Briefe, Körper, Tanz: Die vielfältigen Beiträge dieses Bands nähern sich mit großem Einfüh... more Paare, Briefe, Körper, Tanz: Die vielfältigen Beiträge dieses Bands nähern sich mit großem Einfühlungsvermögen der facettenreichen Vergangenheit Europas seit der frühen Neuzeit. Wie durch ein Schlüsselloch geben sie den Blick frei auf ungewöhnliche Alltagsszenen, unerwartete Machtkonstellationen und neu zu deutende Beziehungsgefüge. Die Konzentration auf die Miniatur und das Vergnügen am Erzählen lassen ein vielschichtiges Geschichts- und Menschenbild entstehen – jenseits der einschlägigen Meistererzählungen.
Paare, Briefe, Körper, Tanz: Die vielfältigen Beiträge dieses Bands nähern sich mit großem Einfüh... more Paare, Briefe, Körper, Tanz: Die vielfältigen Beiträge dieses Bands nähern sich mit großem Einfühlungsvermögen der facettenreichen Vergangenheit Europas seit der frühen Neuzeit. Wie durch ein Schlüsselloch geben sie den Blick frei auf ungewöhnliche Alltagsszenen, unerwartete Machtkonstellationen und neu zu deutende Beziehungsgefüge. Die Konzentration auf die Miniatur und das Vergnügen am Erzählen lassen ein vielschichtiges Geschichts- und Menschenbild entstehen – jenseits der einschlägigen Meistererzählungen.
Klappentext: Feministische Forschung legt seit ihren Anfängen ein besonderes Augenmerk auf Sprach... more Klappentext: Feministische Forschung legt seit ihren Anfängen ein besonderes Augenmerk auf Sprache als einem zentralen Ort des Herstellens und Tradierens von symbolischen Ordnungen. Doch sprechen wir wirklich nur eine Sprache? Trotz der nunmehr großen Aufmerksamkeit für die diskursive und rhetorische Dimension des Historischen blieben Sprachen auch der Geschlechtergeschichte bisher nahezu unsichtbar. Versteht man die Verwendung von Sprachen als soziale Praxis, kann ihre Analyse die geschlechtsspezifische Verfasstheit von Gesellschaften greifbar machen. Die Beiträge des Heftes zeigen, wie der Gebrauch von verschiedenen Sprachen im Laufe der Geschichte je spezifische Handlungsräume von Frauen und Männern mitgestalten, aber auch in Frage stellen konnte.
Editorial, Abstracts, Inhalt: cf. L'Homme homepage
Call for papers by Xenia von Tippelskirch
EMoDiR is an international research group focusing on the history of religious dissent, radicalis... more EMoDiR is an international research group focusing on the history of religious dissent, radicalism, and minorities in early modern times (emodir.hypotheses.org). Since 2011, the group has organized panels at RSA annual conferences on practices and conceptual frameworks of religious conflict, heresy, and groups of radical dissent. The panels are characterized by a multiplicity of methodological and theoretical approaches.
EMoDiR is now planning for the upcoming RSA conference in Dublin (31 March-2 April 2022) a series of panels on this topic: “Under the Power of God: Trembling, Shaking, and Convulsions in Early Modern religious practices and imagination”.
Many early modern religious groups were characterized by an intense spirituality that stressed the importance of the work of the divine Spirit in each and every true believer. One of the most visible and powerful signs of such spiritual possession was the experience of falling under the power of God, as expressed by the bodily manifestation of shaking, trembling, and convulsing.
The idea of a physical display of God’s possession became a marker of identity of the first generation of Quakers, of the persecuted Huguenots of the Cevennes, and of some Jansenist groups. However, the idea of the body as a prophetic theater was not alien to many people and groups in early modern times, as evidenced by the case of the Sabbatians. While these intense charismatic phenomena were perceived by those who experienced them as intense manifestations of the divine, their representation was used to vilify, denigrate, and ridicule these religious nonconformists. The theological and philosophical discussions about religious "Enthusiasm" were at the center of the confessional polemics of early modern times.
We invite contributions and papers which investigate and analyze:
· The theoretical and theological implications of putting at the center of the religious experience a suffering and contorting body
· The differences and relations between the traditional view of ecstasy and these radical practices
· The question of the debates and practices on how to discern divine from demonic possession and from natural physical or mental illnesses
· A comparative discussion of charismatic manifestations in a global perspective
· The rhetoric against the “enthusiastic” possessions
· The discussion of the “techniques” used to induce these seizure-like shakings
· The stress on these spiritual intense bodily manifestations as a sign of true conversion
· The relationship between mysticism, prophetism, and charismatic manifestation in a gender perspective
Proposals should be submitted by July 30, 2021 by email to Stefano Villani ([email protected]) and [email protected] with full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title (15-word maximum), an abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, Ph.D. completion date (past or expected), and a brief CV (150 words maximum).
Call For Papers: Mocking the Other and Defining the Self. The Use of Stereotypes, Satire, and Bla... more Call For Papers: Mocking the Other and Defining the Self. The Use of Stereotypes, Satire, and Blasphemy in Early Modern Religious Discourse (the deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 24, 2017)
RSA 2018, 22-24 March, New Orleans
EMoDiR (Early Modern religious Dissents and Radicalism) will sponsor up to three panels at the 2018 annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), to be held in New Orleans, 22-24 March.
Mocking the Other and Defining the Self
The use of stereotypes, satire, and blasphemy in early modern religious discourse
An essential passage in building your own religious identity is the criticism of other confessional or ethnoreligious groups. This criticism has often taken on the character of satire, parody, and sarcasm. This panel wants to investigate how these discursive modes have been used in the early modern age and how they have contributed to building up a definition of the self of churches, sects, religious movements and individuals. We are interested in investigating the social reality of these texts, documenting, wherever possible, the way in which they were read by contemporaries and the direct or indirect responses that they provoked.
Possible paper themes for panels will include:
- the use of satire in Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda and in Catholic anti-Protestant propaganda both in written and caricature depictions
- the use of satire and sarcasm to ridicule radical and mystical movements
- the use of racial stereotypes to attack specific ethnoreligious groups
- the ridiculing of different alimentary, sexual and behavioral costumes to attack religious adversaries
- the use of anti-religious satire
- blasphemy as a creative act to build a libertine, or irreligious identity
- the defensive strategies put in place to respond to this type of attack
- the efficacy of satirical propaganda, investigating how it sometimes contributed to the opposite effect of raising sympathy and solidarity with those who were attacked
We would be happy to receive proposals that address these themes from historical, literary, art-historical, or other perspectives.
Please send to Stefano Villani [email protected] and Federico Barbierato [email protected]:
a paper title (15-word maximum)
abstract (150-word maximum)
keywords
a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). Prose bios will not be accepted.
Sponsorship of panels by EMoDiR signifies that panels are pre-approved and automatically accepted for the RSA annual meeting.
Panels typically consist of three 20-minute papers.
All presenters must become members of the Renaissance Society of America, be committed to attending the conference in New Orleans, and make their own travel arrangements.
For more information about the RSA, please see the conference website:
http://www.rsa.org/general/custom.asp?page=2018NOLA
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 24, 2017
The journal “Genesis” – https://www.viella.it/riviste/testata/6 – calls for contributions to a mo... more The journal “Genesis” – https://www.viella.it/riviste/testata/6 – calls for contributions to a monographic issue that analyse – from a gender sensitive perspective – the impact of crossing confessional and religious borders, of mobility, and of voluntary or forced migration on self-definition and on definitions of religious identity. Contributions may come from periods ranging from the late middle ages to contemporary history.
Emigration and exile, in the dialectic between displacement and opportunity, enable reflections on the very concept of religious identity. The historiographical investigation on the estrangement provoked by confrontation with a different culture, on strategies of adapting to a new context, and on the conflicts generated by encounters between different cultures may contribute to reflection on the 'performative' aspects and fluidity of the construction of confessional identities. In recent historiography on cultural transfers and contact zones, the key role of the go-betweens and brokers has been emphasized. Along the lines of these works, contributions will be accepted which inquire into either 1) the strategies of self-presentation in the religious sphere of men and women who have left their homeland voluntarily or involuntarily, permanently or temporarily; or 2) the historical impact of the presence of foreigners on the re-definition of the host society's religious identity. At the centre of this inquiry are questions regarding the social relations that were built because of mobility and that were maintained or cut off across distance. These include experiences of loneliness, officialised relations, and the creation or reinforcement of emotional and family ties. We invite proposals for case studies or comparative investigations that explicitly pose the question of gender construction and/or analyse the specificities related to gender. Within this framework, it should be taken into account that journey, exile, and migration represent very diverse typologies of mobility. The contributions may present either case studies that reflect on the performativity of religious identity from a gender perspective or more general theoretical reflections, covering a chronological span from the early modern to the contemporary period.
Conference Organization by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Programm of upcoming EMoDiR Workshop
Newsletters by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Uploads
Books by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Editorial, Abstracts, Inhalt: cf. L'Homme homepage
Call for papers by Xenia von Tippelskirch
EMoDiR is now planning for the upcoming RSA conference in Dublin (31 March-2 April 2022) a series of panels on this topic: “Under the Power of God: Trembling, Shaking, and Convulsions in Early Modern religious practices and imagination”.
Many early modern religious groups were characterized by an intense spirituality that stressed the importance of the work of the divine Spirit in each and every true believer. One of the most visible and powerful signs of such spiritual possession was the experience of falling under the power of God, as expressed by the bodily manifestation of shaking, trembling, and convulsing.
The idea of a physical display of God’s possession became a marker of identity of the first generation of Quakers, of the persecuted Huguenots of the Cevennes, and of some Jansenist groups. However, the idea of the body as a prophetic theater was not alien to many people and groups in early modern times, as evidenced by the case of the Sabbatians. While these intense charismatic phenomena were perceived by those who experienced them as intense manifestations of the divine, their representation was used to vilify, denigrate, and ridicule these religious nonconformists. The theological and philosophical discussions about religious "Enthusiasm" were at the center of the confessional polemics of early modern times.
We invite contributions and papers which investigate and analyze:
· The theoretical and theological implications of putting at the center of the religious experience a suffering and contorting body
· The differences and relations between the traditional view of ecstasy and these radical practices
· The question of the debates and practices on how to discern divine from demonic possession and from natural physical or mental illnesses
· A comparative discussion of charismatic manifestations in a global perspective
· The rhetoric against the “enthusiastic” possessions
· The discussion of the “techniques” used to induce these seizure-like shakings
· The stress on these spiritual intense bodily manifestations as a sign of true conversion
· The relationship between mysticism, prophetism, and charismatic manifestation in a gender perspective
Proposals should be submitted by July 30, 2021 by email to Stefano Villani ([email protected]) and [email protected] with full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title (15-word maximum), an abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, Ph.D. completion date (past or expected), and a brief CV (150 words maximum).
RSA 2018, 22-24 March, New Orleans
EMoDiR (Early Modern religious Dissents and Radicalism) will sponsor up to three panels at the 2018 annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), to be held in New Orleans, 22-24 March.
Mocking the Other and Defining the Self
The use of stereotypes, satire, and blasphemy in early modern religious discourse
An essential passage in building your own religious identity is the criticism of other confessional or ethnoreligious groups. This criticism has often taken on the character of satire, parody, and sarcasm. This panel wants to investigate how these discursive modes have been used in the early modern age and how they have contributed to building up a definition of the self of churches, sects, religious movements and individuals. We are interested in investigating the social reality of these texts, documenting, wherever possible, the way in which they were read by contemporaries and the direct or indirect responses that they provoked.
Possible paper themes for panels will include:
- the use of satire in Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda and in Catholic anti-Protestant propaganda both in written and caricature depictions
- the use of satire and sarcasm to ridicule radical and mystical movements
- the use of racial stereotypes to attack specific ethnoreligious groups
- the ridiculing of different alimentary, sexual and behavioral costumes to attack religious adversaries
- the use of anti-religious satire
- blasphemy as a creative act to build a libertine, or irreligious identity
- the defensive strategies put in place to respond to this type of attack
- the efficacy of satirical propaganda, investigating how it sometimes contributed to the opposite effect of raising sympathy and solidarity with those who were attacked
We would be happy to receive proposals that address these themes from historical, literary, art-historical, or other perspectives.
Please send to Stefano Villani [email protected] and Federico Barbierato [email protected]:
a paper title (15-word maximum)
abstract (150-word maximum)
keywords
a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). Prose bios will not be accepted.
Sponsorship of panels by EMoDiR signifies that panels are pre-approved and automatically accepted for the RSA annual meeting.
Panels typically consist of three 20-minute papers.
All presenters must become members of the Renaissance Society of America, be committed to attending the conference in New Orleans, and make their own travel arrangements.
For more information about the RSA, please see the conference website:
http://www.rsa.org/general/custom.asp?page=2018NOLA
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 24, 2017
Emigration and exile, in the dialectic between displacement and opportunity, enable reflections on the very concept of religious identity. The historiographical investigation on the estrangement provoked by confrontation with a different culture, on strategies of adapting to a new context, and on the conflicts generated by encounters between different cultures may contribute to reflection on the 'performative' aspects and fluidity of the construction of confessional identities. In recent historiography on cultural transfers and contact zones, the key role of the go-betweens and brokers has been emphasized. Along the lines of these works, contributions will be accepted which inquire into either 1) the strategies of self-presentation in the religious sphere of men and women who have left their homeland voluntarily or involuntarily, permanently or temporarily; or 2) the historical impact of the presence of foreigners on the re-definition of the host society's religious identity. At the centre of this inquiry are questions regarding the social relations that were built because of mobility and that were maintained or cut off across distance. These include experiences of loneliness, officialised relations, and the creation or reinforcement of emotional and family ties. We invite proposals for case studies or comparative investigations that explicitly pose the question of gender construction and/or analyse the specificities related to gender. Within this framework, it should be taken into account that journey, exile, and migration represent very diverse typologies of mobility. The contributions may present either case studies that reflect on the performativity of religious identity from a gender perspective or more general theoretical reflections, covering a chronological span from the early modern to the contemporary period.
Conference Organization by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Newsletters by Xenia von Tippelskirch
Editorial, Abstracts, Inhalt: cf. L'Homme homepage
EMoDiR is now planning for the upcoming RSA conference in Dublin (31 March-2 April 2022) a series of panels on this topic: “Under the Power of God: Trembling, Shaking, and Convulsions in Early Modern religious practices and imagination”.
Many early modern religious groups were characterized by an intense spirituality that stressed the importance of the work of the divine Spirit in each and every true believer. One of the most visible and powerful signs of such spiritual possession was the experience of falling under the power of God, as expressed by the bodily manifestation of shaking, trembling, and convulsing.
The idea of a physical display of God’s possession became a marker of identity of the first generation of Quakers, of the persecuted Huguenots of the Cevennes, and of some Jansenist groups. However, the idea of the body as a prophetic theater was not alien to many people and groups in early modern times, as evidenced by the case of the Sabbatians. While these intense charismatic phenomena were perceived by those who experienced them as intense manifestations of the divine, their representation was used to vilify, denigrate, and ridicule these religious nonconformists. The theological and philosophical discussions about religious "Enthusiasm" were at the center of the confessional polemics of early modern times.
We invite contributions and papers which investigate and analyze:
· The theoretical and theological implications of putting at the center of the religious experience a suffering and contorting body
· The differences and relations between the traditional view of ecstasy and these radical practices
· The question of the debates and practices on how to discern divine from demonic possession and from natural physical or mental illnesses
· A comparative discussion of charismatic manifestations in a global perspective
· The rhetoric against the “enthusiastic” possessions
· The discussion of the “techniques” used to induce these seizure-like shakings
· The stress on these spiritual intense bodily manifestations as a sign of true conversion
· The relationship between mysticism, prophetism, and charismatic manifestation in a gender perspective
Proposals should be submitted by July 30, 2021 by email to Stefano Villani ([email protected]) and [email protected] with full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title (15-word maximum), an abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, Ph.D. completion date (past or expected), and a brief CV (150 words maximum).
RSA 2018, 22-24 March, New Orleans
EMoDiR (Early Modern religious Dissents and Radicalism) will sponsor up to three panels at the 2018 annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), to be held in New Orleans, 22-24 March.
Mocking the Other and Defining the Self
The use of stereotypes, satire, and blasphemy in early modern religious discourse
An essential passage in building your own religious identity is the criticism of other confessional or ethnoreligious groups. This criticism has often taken on the character of satire, parody, and sarcasm. This panel wants to investigate how these discursive modes have been used in the early modern age and how they have contributed to building up a definition of the self of churches, sects, religious movements and individuals. We are interested in investigating the social reality of these texts, documenting, wherever possible, the way in which they were read by contemporaries and the direct or indirect responses that they provoked.
Possible paper themes for panels will include:
- the use of satire in Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda and in Catholic anti-Protestant propaganda both in written and caricature depictions
- the use of satire and sarcasm to ridicule radical and mystical movements
- the use of racial stereotypes to attack specific ethnoreligious groups
- the ridiculing of different alimentary, sexual and behavioral costumes to attack religious adversaries
- the use of anti-religious satire
- blasphemy as a creative act to build a libertine, or irreligious identity
- the defensive strategies put in place to respond to this type of attack
- the efficacy of satirical propaganda, investigating how it sometimes contributed to the opposite effect of raising sympathy and solidarity with those who were attacked
We would be happy to receive proposals that address these themes from historical, literary, art-historical, or other perspectives.
Please send to Stefano Villani [email protected] and Federico Barbierato [email protected]:
a paper title (15-word maximum)
abstract (150-word maximum)
keywords
a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). Prose bios will not be accepted.
Sponsorship of panels by EMoDiR signifies that panels are pre-approved and automatically accepted for the RSA annual meeting.
Panels typically consist of three 20-minute papers.
All presenters must become members of the Renaissance Society of America, be committed to attending the conference in New Orleans, and make their own travel arrangements.
For more information about the RSA, please see the conference website:
http://www.rsa.org/general/custom.asp?page=2018NOLA
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is May 24, 2017
Emigration and exile, in the dialectic between displacement and opportunity, enable reflections on the very concept of religious identity. The historiographical investigation on the estrangement provoked by confrontation with a different culture, on strategies of adapting to a new context, and on the conflicts generated by encounters between different cultures may contribute to reflection on the 'performative' aspects and fluidity of the construction of confessional identities. In recent historiography on cultural transfers and contact zones, the key role of the go-betweens and brokers has been emphasized. Along the lines of these works, contributions will be accepted which inquire into either 1) the strategies of self-presentation in the religious sphere of men and women who have left their homeland voluntarily or involuntarily, permanently or temporarily; or 2) the historical impact of the presence of foreigners on the re-definition of the host society's religious identity. At the centre of this inquiry are questions regarding the social relations that were built because of mobility and that were maintained or cut off across distance. These include experiences of loneliness, officialised relations, and the creation or reinforcement of emotional and family ties. We invite proposals for case studies or comparative investigations that explicitly pose the question of gender construction and/or analyse the specificities related to gender. Within this framework, it should be taken into account that journey, exile, and migration represent very diverse typologies of mobility. The contributions may present either case studies that reflect on the performativity of religious identity from a gender perspective or more general theoretical reflections, covering a chronological span from the early modern to the contemporary period.
The Religious Experience of the ‘Disease of the Soul’ and its Definitions in the Early Modern Period
The conference on religious Melancholia has gathered fifteen scholars from France, Germany, Italy and England. The participants to the conference have discussed the several meanings of the term ‘melancholia’ in the Catholic and Protestant worlds emphasizing the elements of cultural continuity and investigated cultural transfers. The seminar has analyzed the category of ‘melancholia’ in terms of religious experience, intersecting it with the historic-religious, socio-cultural, political, geographical and linguistic levels. The result has been to offer a more complex view of this category, not confining it only to the ‘medical’ sphere as most of the previous historiography has previously done.
The proceedings of this conference have been published on Etudes Epistémè 28 (2015).
Fri, April 1, 8:30 to 10:00am, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Newbury Room
Chair: Stefano Villani
- Marion Deschamp, Université Lumière Lyon 2: The Sound of Silence: Refusing to Speak as an Expression of Dissent in Sixteenth-Century German Anabaptism
- Carmen Font Paz, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Prophecy and the Language of Isolation in Lady Eleanor Davies’s Tracts
- Alessandro Arcangeli, Università degli Studi di Verona: Early Puritanism and the Vocabulary of Affections
Languages of Dissent II: Translating, Labelling, Persecuting Dissent
Fri, April 1, 10:30am to 12:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Newbury Room
Chair: Alessandro Arcangeli
- Alessandra Celati, Università degli Studi di Pisa: Irenism, Nicodemism, and Philosophy in Girolamo Donzellini’s Remedium Ferendarum Iniuriarum sive de Compescenda Ira (1586)
- Eva Del Soldato, University of Pennsylvania: A Reluctant Heretic? Antonio Brucioli, the Bible, and His Trials
- Bernard Cooperman, University of Maryland, College Park: Available Labels for Jewish Deviance
- Stefano Villani, University of Maryland, College Park: Defining the Church of England in Early Modern Italy
Languages of Dissent III: Heterodox Britain
Fri, April 1, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Newbury Room
Chair: Federico Barbierato
- Paul C. H. Lim, Vanderbilt University: Naked Gospel or Cloaked Christianity? The Quest for Primitive Faith in Early Enlightenment England
- Ariel Hessayon, Goldsmiths, University of London: The Most “Dangerous and Infectious of All Heresies”: Allegations of AntiTrinitarianism during the English Revolution
- Catie Gill, Loughborough University, Judith Roads, University of Birmingham: Early Quaker Prose (1650–95) and the Primacy of Inward Learning
Languages of Dissent IV: Power, Dissent, Radical Politics
Fri, April 1, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Newbury Room
Chair: Bernard Cooperman
- Angela De Benedictis, Università degli Studi di Bologna: For the Glory of God: The Sacred Example of Libna’s Resistance in Bèze and Althusius
- Federico Barbierato, Università degli Studi di Verona: The Theory and Practice of the Repression of Blasphemy in Early Modern Venice
- Holly Brewer, University of Maryland: Sedition, Treason, Censorship, and Slavery in England and Its Empire
Languages of Dissent V: Art, Heritage, and Biography as Dissent
Fri, April 1, 5:30 to 7:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Newbury Room
Chair: Stefano Villani
- Jutta G. Sperling, Hampshire College: Religious Art, Religious Dissent? Examples from Gossaert, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio
- Helena Wangefelt Ström, Umeå University: Rusty, Overgrown, Extinct, and Forgotten: Domesticating Catholicism Through Heritage Language in Post-Reformation Sweden
- Xenia Von Tippelskirch, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Ways of Communication and the Construction of Religious Dissent: The Case of Madeleine Vigneron
A presentation of Emodir published in Italian in the journal of the Società di Studi Valdesi (Society of Waldensian Studies).
EMoDiR (Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism) is an international research group dedicated to the study of religious differences, conflicts and plurality during the early modern period, constituted at Pisa (Italy) by a group of European scholars based in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK in 2007.
After four years, during which the members of the group met regularly and organized a series of workshops in Italy, EMoDiR has formally instituted a scientific organization, based in Verona in 2011. Since then, several scholars of European, North American, Australian Universities and research centers have joined the group.
The aim of the research group is to examine the early modern discursive constructions of religious dissent and the socio-cultural practices of radical movements, transcending traditional historiographical boundaries (notably national and/or confessional). Since the ‘construction of the dissenter’ is the outcome of a complex process, it is necessary to analyze this process both in terms of internal and synchronic dynamics, and in external and diachronic ones. Therefore EMoDiR is committed to gathering together a variety of research projects on early modern religious culture which, given its multifaceted nature, is conceived as a dynamic system. One moreover, which was essential in forging complex identities and encouraging dialogue between them. Analysis, both at local and transnational level (from a predominantly European perspective) is intended to contribute to a cultural and social history of dissents.
From its very beginning EMoDiR has promoted research on the social networks of individuals and specific groups, as well as on the dynamics involved in constructing socio-cultural identities. By considering dissent as a socio-cultural construction rather than doctrinal position, the first objective of the group consists in deconstructing and historically contextualizing such commonly used categories as dissent, radicalism, dissidence, libertinism, heresy, heterodoxy as prerequisite to a critical and problematic use of them.
Between 2008 and 2017 EMoDiR has established formal institutional agreements with the EHESS of Paris, the LERMA – Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone dell’Università Aix-Marseille, the research center Formes et idées de la Renaissance aux Lumières (FIRL–EA174) of the University Paris III – Sorbonne in France; the Department of Humanities (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici) of the University of Venice, the Time, Space, Image, Society Department of the University of Verona (Dipartimento Tempo, Spazio, Immagine e Società) in Italy; the Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, the Historisches Institut of the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany; the Department of History of the University of Maryland College Park (Usa), the Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies of the University of Tel Aviv (Israel), the Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation of the University of Geneva (Switzerland).
EMoDiR has already promoted national and international research projects and organized a series of seminars, conferences and workshops and is an affiliate organization to the Renaissance Society of America (presenting since 2011 multiple panels at the Annual conference of this organization).