CFP 14.05.2014

Intersections, issue 2017: The Global Republic of Sacred Things

Eingabeschluss : 30.06.2014

Raphaèle Preisinger

Intersections. Yearbook for Early Modern Studies 2017
Call for Papers
“The Global Republic of Sacred Things:
The Circulation of Religious Art in the Early Modern World”

Sixteenth-century Europe was a time when monarchial territories were redrawn, permanent schisms split a single church, and sustained, repeated circumnavigation of the globe was achieved for the first time. The “globalization” of the early modern world expanded and transformed the “Republic of Things.” While there has been an increasing literature on biographies and itineraries of objects, European religious overseas networks, often at the heart of Protestant Reformation and post-Tridentine political, geographical and theological reform, have received considerably less attention to date. How, for example, did points of contact by agent, merchant and missionary impact the early modern imagination as a social practice? And how did the journeys of images, artifacts, and precious cargoes across intersecting networks affect their value and use? Previously, these webs of communication bore only incidental information about the material cultures their presence at the frontiers of known lands stimulated at home and abroad. Further still, as European systems largely governed by and for Europeans, the things that linked religious and commercial networks have the potential to offer insight into Europe’s initial attempts to grapple with long-distance contact zones. In a challenge to models of individual organizations, cultural comparisons, and post-colonial theories of industrialized societies, this volume seeks to consider how a sacred Republic of Things — material residues of global encounter most broadly conceived (masterpieces, decorative art and functional objects) — can cast light on the dramatis personae of the fifteenth- to eighteenth-centuries as they came to terms with an expanding world.

Objects should give some evidence of the interaction of Europe with Asia, Africa or the Americas, and religious “things,” or objects of devotion, that have not yet had their moment in the sun are ideal. We are particularly interested in the production of artisanal cultures, local accommodation via technologies and materials, shifting currencies of value and objects used against the grain of their intended purpose. Issues at stake could include, but need not be limited to, the globalization of different types of religious subjects or objects, the use of new media (either alone or in conjunction with others), mimesis and memory, spolia and translation, commoditization and mobility.

Working Schedule
Proposals are due June 30, 2014.
Applicants will be notified no later than July 31, 2014.
First drafts of papers (approx. 8,000 words, including endnotes) will be expected by December 15, 2015.
An intensive workshop (pending funding) will take place the week of January 18, 2016.
Final papers should be sent to the editors by July 1, 2016.
Publication is scheduled for 2017.

Proposals
Please send proposals (PDF format preferred) before June 30, 2014 to both editors (Prof. Dr. Christine Göttler, Prof. Dr. Mia M. Mochizuki) with:
1. A one-page abstract (300 words) with at least one exemplary image
2. A curriculum vitae (max. two pages)

christine.goettlerikg.unibe.ch
mia.mochizukinyu.edu

Quellennachweis:
CFP: Intersections, issue 2017: The Global Republic of Sacred Things. In: ArtHist.net, 14.05.2014. Letzter Zugriff 29.03.2024. <https://arthist.net/archive/7710>.

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