Call for Papers

Spaces and Practices of Leisure in Early Modern Europe

European Architectural History Network, 1st International Meeting
Guimaraes, Portugal
June 17-20, 2010

Leisure was a concept fundamental to the practices and spaces of early
modern European society. Authors identified books to be studied at
leisure, while architects designed increasingly codified urban and rural
social spaces. Since at least the fourteenth century, leisure suggested
time unoccupied by often public duties and responsibilities – time in
which individuals could pursue entertainment, intellectual and spiritual
enrichment, and physical relaxation. With the renewed fifteenth-century
interest in Antiquity and the simultaneous shift from a landed feudal to
a professional elite, the concept of leisure became both more formalized
and more complex. It became associated particularly with wealthy
elites, assumed learned connections to Antiquity, and encompassed more
identifiable activities in particular spaces. Authors published books
and poems describing the leisured elite life, while exclusive social
circles moved in specific spaces from rural villas to urban pleasure
grounds to late seventeenth-century royal palaces.

Intersections of shifting practices and spaces of leisure, however, have
been studied primarily for the industrialized world and have remained
split among leisure studies, cultural and social history, and analyses
of building types. This session offers a more synthetic and
interdisciplinary approach to early modern leisure; it invites papers
concerning built spaces of leisure, landscape architecture, and visual
and written depictions of villa life or other leisure activities. We
particularly seek proposals that suggest new methodological approaches
or that aim to re-evaluate long-standing approaches and arguments – for
instance, through a new variety of sources or a study of social
alongside architectural context. Themes of especial inter est include:
city-country connections, the relationship of interior to exterior
leisure spaces, the villa’s seemingly paradoxical role as working farm
and site of elite leisure, practices of hospitality and their
connections to architectural design, changing social and architectural
relationships of public to private, the role of the renewed interest in
Classical Antiquity (eg, villa culture, notions of negotium/otium, and
philosophical claims about contemplative v. active life), the
commercialization of leisure, the role of gender, varying ideas of
leisure with social class, court culture, and the relationship of
regional to international in circulating ideas of leisure.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words (including applicant's
name and affiliation), a short CV, and full contact information (email
and postal addresses, telephone and fax numbers) by October 30, 2009 to:
Dr. Freek Schmidt, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, f.schmidtlet.vu.nl tel: 0031 205986372,
fax: 0031 205986500, and Dr. Kimberley Skelton, Brandeis University, 415
South Street, Waltham, MA, 02453, USA, tel: 001-443-253-5529, fax:
001-781-736-2672, KCSkeltonaol.com.

Further information on abstract submission and on the EAHN conference is
available at: www.eahn.org.