Call for papers
"We are all servants" -- The Diversity of Service in Premodern Europe
International Conference, 20-22 September 2019
to be held at the Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Toronto
Organized by Elisheva Baumgarten, Isabelle Cochelin and Konrad Eisenbichler
with Lochin Brouillard and Emma Gabe
Scientific Advisory Board:
Elisheva Carlebach, Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Diane Wolfthal
If you would like to participate, please send the following
information to [log in to unmask]
before January 3rd, 2019: your name, university, title of paper, 150
word abstract, contact info (address, email and telephone), one-page
CV, and a short biographical blurb (the latter for the session chairs).
Service in premodern Europe was a ubiquitous phenomenon in daily life
but also constituted a key concept for defining relationships between
individuals. Servants were men or women, high or low on the social
scale, poor or wealthy, children or elderly, of different faiths
(Christian, Jewish or Muslim), and with few or great expectations for
their future. For some, service was a lifetime occupation but for many
a finite period in their life cycle. Even kings considered themselves
to be servants in relation to God. In contrast with the diversity and
pervasiveness of service in the past, few today would consider
themselves the servant of another.
The project for this conference is therefore timely and innovative on
many fronts. Our approach seeks to conceive the history of service in
the longue durée, starting around 1000, when primary sources become
more abundant (thanks to the increasing reliance on written texts) and
ending before the turning point of the late seventeenth century, when
the conception of service changed significantly. Our research will
thus cover the medieval period for which no overall study on service
exists so far. We will use an interdisciplinary methodology and bring
together scholars from different fields (History, Literature and Art
History, but also Religious Studies, Anthropology, and History of
Architecture) and with complementary areas of geographical and
chronological focus. In addition, we will take into account religion,
which has been very little considered so far in the studies concerning
service, even though any discourse on service in these centuries was
steeped in religious imagery. For this reason, we will consider the
Christian, Jewish and (when and where relevant also) Muslim
communities of medieval and early modern Europe side by side. Finally,
our approach will be both empirical and theoretical: we intend to
examine service as a socio-historical reality and as a concept to
define human relationships and work relations, a joint approach which
has never been adopted in previous scholarship.
Main themes:
- Domestic servants in distinct surroundings (urban context, rural
context, and within castles)
- Service in different religious groups (Catholic, Jewish, Protestant,
etc.), including service when the servant is of a different religious
faith than the masters
- Service in various religious sources and servants working for
religious individuals or communities (theology and canon law; exempla
literature in Latin and Hebrew; servants of secular clergy and in
monasteries)
- Servants in art
- Service in literary sources
- Service as a model for human relationships, including service as
work, or rather work conceived as service
- Service and issues of gender, sexualities, and kinship
- Service, race and migration
- Spatial distribution of servants within the households
- Service as opposed to slavery
Main disciplines: Social History, Religious History, Art History,
History of Law, Theology, Literature, Economic History, History of
Architecture, and Anthropology
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