Daily Archives: 7 November 2014

Rhetorics of Landscape: Court and Society in the Early Modern World – Call For Papers

Rhetorics of Landscape: Court and Society in the Early Modern World

Targeted contributions are sought for an edited volume exploring the role of landscape in the articulation and expression of imperial and elite identities and the mediation of relationships between courts and their many audiences across the early modern world. Through a series of focused studies from Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe, the volume seeks to illuminate how early modern courts and societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscape, including both physical sites, such as gardens, palaces, cities and hunting parks, and conceptual ones, such as those of frontiers, idealized polities, and the cosmos. Please see description of the volume rationale below. Proposals focusing on landscapes from across Asia and the Islamic world from the 16th to the 19th century are welcome, with a particular (though by no means exclusive) interest in Ming and Qing China, Choson Korea, and Tokugawa Japan; pre-colonial Southeast Asia; the Mughals, Rajput states, and other parts of South Asia; Central Asian states; the Ottoman empire; and North Africa. Methodological approaches from art history, the history of gardens and designed landscapes, history and historical geography, as well as other fields, are welcome.

The volume is in preparation for submission to a US-based university press and will be peer-reviewed. Finished essays should be approximately 6,000-9,000 words inclusive of notes. Potential contributors should plan on submitting a first draft for internal editing and comments by the end of January 2015, with drafts for peer review by 1 April 2015 (there may be some flexibility around deadline – please be in touch if you are interested but need a different schedule). Interested scholars should submit a proposal of 250-500 words and CV by Friday 21 November 2014, to stephen.whiteman@sydney.edu.au. Questions and comments are also welcome.

‘Rhetorics of Landscape: Court and Society in the Early Modern World’

Courts and societies across the early modern Eurasian world were fundamentally transformed by the physical, technological and conceptual developments of their era. Evolving forms of communication, greatly expanded mobility, the spread of scientific knowledge, and the emergence of an increasingly integrated global economy all affected the means by which states articulated and projected visions of authority into societies that, in turn, perceived and responded to these visions in often contrasting terms. Landscape both reflected and served as a vehicle for these transformations, as the relationship between the land and its imagination and consumption became a fruitful site for the negotiation of imperial identities within and beyond the precincts of the court. This volume explores the role of landscape in the articulation and expression of imperial identity and the mediation of relationships between the court and its many audiences in the early modern world. Twelve focused studies from East and South Asia, the Islamic world and Europe illuminate how early modern courts and societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscape, including both physical sites, such as gardens, palaces, cities and hunting parks, and conceptual ones, such as those of frontiers, idealized polities, and the cosmos.

Through comparative inquiry, this volume seeks to move away from readings of early modern societies simply as nascent modernities, instead articulating ways of understanding the period as one of contact and mobility that was nevertheless characterized by points of intercultural congruence, coincidence, and distinctiveness, as well. The collected essays expand the meaning and potential of landscape as a communicative medium in this period by putting an array of forms and subjects in dialogue with one another, including not only unique expressions, such as gardens, paintings and manuscripts, but also the products of rapidly developing commercial technologies of reproduction, such as printing, porcelain and textiles. Understanding physical and represented landscapes as ontologically equal, yet rhetorically distinct expressions, the volume invites a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the complexity with which early modern states constructed and deployed different modes of landscape for different audiences and environments.

Rethinking Poverty in Medieval and Early Modern Europe – Call For Papers

Rethinking Poverty in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Newman University, Birmingham
30-31 January, 2015

Conference Website

In a period when modern media outlets and politicians continue to discuss the cost of living in our own time, historians have long appreciated the preponderance and scale of poverty in the premodern world. While recent scholarship has done much to enhance our understanding of the development of centralised systems of poor relief between the late-medieval and early modern periods, historians know far less about continuities in the definition, treatment or legislation of poverty across this period. As a result, the gulf separating developments of the earlier and later part of this period appear even larger and more significant in their impact.

This two-day conference seeks to address poverty over a broadly defined medieval and early
modern period and will provide a forum for medieval and early modern scholars to compare and contrast developments and continuities across Europe. While medieval and early modern are deliberately broad concepts, the definition of poverty is also wide and could encompass a variety of topics. The work discussed here will augment the existing field of study by offering new ways to problematise the concept of poverty and understand the complexity of charitable giving, obligation and kinship in the pre-modern period.

The conference provides a platform where the contributions of postgraduates, early-career
researchers and established scholars exchange their ideas on an equal footing. We hope to
provide a small amount of financial assistance to PhD candidates or unwaged speakers at the
conference. If you would like to be considered for a postgraduate bursary (where available) please indicate so in your paper proposal.

We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers on the following themes:

  • Social, theological, ethnic and physiological definitions of poverty.
  • Centralised and informal systems of charity.
  • Assessing the movement of paupers, vagrants or wage labourers.
  • Riots and unrest.
  • The impact of warfare/epidemic/crisis on poverty.

Submission Documents: 300 word abstracts and CVs to rethinkingpoverty2015@gmail.com.
Deadline for Abstracts: Monday, 1 December 2014.
The cost of the conference is anticipated to be £150 for residential delegates and £100 for nonresidential delegates including all refreshments, lunches and conference meal.
Organisers: Dr Laura Crombie (University of York) and Dr Chris Langley (Newman University,
Birmingham).