Call for Papers
Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany
The Fifth International Conference
Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär
March 27-30, 2008
The fifth international conference sponsored by FNI will focus on the early
modern experience of and response to loss, not only personal, emotional
responses to loss but loss as a matter of social and communal dynamics,
social and economic systems, legal rights, public architecture, etc. The
conference will thus investigate not only affective responses such as
mourning, melancholy, and lamentation, but also the re-creative responses to
loss and the adjustments that follow. Papers might address such responses as
conversion, rebuilding, making amends, compensation, memorialization, and
restoration. Loss is of course not necessarily experienced as irrevocable or
tragic in the Early Modern period; indeed, loss may be conceived as leading
to gain.
We imagine five general headings for the conference though it is also clear
that some of the most interesting cases of loss may cut across these
categories. These five rough categories are spiritual loss (e.g., failed
messianic movements, loss of faith, forced conversion, loss of sacred
space), material loss (e.g., bankruptcy, loss of a library, loss of property
from natural disaster or war, poverty, loss of membership in a corporation,
loss of art), loss of place (exile; marginality loss of social place,
family, culture or honor; loss of territory; incursions by Turks; loss of a
town; fires; shifting of boundaries), loss of self (the self can be
conceived in varying ways, e.g., bodily integrity, loss of legal rights,
loss of honor, demonic possession, dreaming as loss of self), and loss of
life (e.g., death of children, orphaning, war, death of a ruler, mourning
and burial practices).
Papers that problematize what it means to speak of loss or to attempt to
investigate the experience of loss in the early modern period are very welcome.
In keeping with the founding aims of FNI, the selection of papers will
proceed with a firm commitment to dialogue across disciplines. Individual
sessions will, moreover, consist of work across disciplines. In this first
round, we are looking for individual proposals not completed sessions
but would be glad to be alerted to links between your proposal and that of
others being submitted by colleagues in adjacent disciplines.
Please e-mail the following documents to Lynne Tatlock at
[log in to unmask] who will share them with the selection committee and
appropriate experts on the executive board of FNI:
Short CV
One page (single-spaced) abstract of your paper proposal that includes your
working title. Please make transparent the pertinence of your paper to the
themes of the conference.
Deadline for submission of proposals: January 1, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: February 15, 2007
Website: http://www.fni.ucr.edu/
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