Catholicism in Transit: Exploring Mobility and Exchange in the Early Modern World.

This workshop aims to generate discussion on how Catholicism moved in the early modern world. The social, cultural, religious, and intellectual transformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries changed the ways that Catholicism was lived and experienced. Developments in communication transformed practices of idea circulation and exchange, the redrawing of national and confessional lines influenced the movement of Catholic people across them, and missionary efforts transformed Catholicism into the first global religion. We understand mobility and exchange to involve very literal things: travel, trade, the exchange of material things. It is also important to account for intangible forms of movement – shifts in worldviews, the exchange of ideas, movement between confessions and faiths through conversion.

We welcome proposals therefore for papers of 20 minutes related to the Catholic world. We also welcome shorter papers of 10 minutes which give presenters the opportunity to share on a specific primary source in a ‘show and tell’ format and plan to dedicate a session to these. We aim for this to be an informal event with plenty of opportunity to network with others working on these themes. Please indicate which format you would like to present in when sending in your abstract.

Papers may relate to, but are not restricted to some of the following:
- Travel, such as voluntary mobility, exile and migration, pilgrimage culture and leisure;
- Catholic expansion, such as the activities of missionaries, religious orders, colonialism and Catholicism, global Catholicism;
- The mobility of objects, such as trade, material culture, relics, artistic works;
- The exchange of ideas and identity, such as print culture, preaching, conversion, and proselytising, and inter-confessional and interfaith relationships, Catholicism ‘on the borders’;
- Conceptual and historiographical approaches to movement: ‘migrations of the holy’, enchantment and disenchantment, secularisation, and current ‘movement’ of research.

‘Catholicism in Transit’ will be a virtual event held on Zoom on Friday 20 September 2024 and there will be no cost associated with attendance. Please email abstracts c. 300 words and speaker bios of c. 100 words to catholicismintransitgmail.com by Wednesday 31 July. Accepted papers will be notified by mid-August.
Please note that we plan to prioritise papers that will result in a diverse range of geographical regions related to the Catholic world being represented at the workshop.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us the conveners at the above address with any questions.

Mattia Corso (University of Roma Tre)
Joshua Rushton (University of Leeds)
Giulia Zanon (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)