News and Announcements https://www.rsa.org/news/default.asp Sun, 14 Jun 2026 20:28:44 GMT Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:17:00 GMT Copyright © 2026 Renaissance Society of America ‘Every Move You Make’: Bridging People, Cultures, Languages (14th-17th century) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729212 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729212 ‘Every Move You Make’: Bridging People, Cultures, Languages (14th-17th Century)

Co-editors: Outi Merisalo, University of Jyväskylä; Roberta Ricci, Bryn Mawr College

This volume explores the literary, artistic, linguistic, and cultural interplay between East and West from the 14th to the 17th century, focusing on the evolution of this dialogue through both continuity and discontinuity. Central to our investigation is the reciprocity between Rome and Constantinople as seen through the dynamic processes of reception of antiquity, including not only the dissemination of Ancient Greek and Eastern Roman heritage in Italian Humanism, but also in Transalpine and Northern Humanism. 

We invite the submission of abstracts of up to 500 words accompanied by select bibliography and a short bio (maximum of 250 words). This material should be sent in one pdffile by September 1, 2026 to the following addresses: • rricci@brynmawr.edu • omerisalo@gmail.com.

Prospective contributors will be notified by October 1, 2026; complete first drafts are expected by May 2027. The publication is planned for end of 2027.

PDF flyer

]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:17:00 GMT Beyond Bobadilla: Greek Learning & Religion in Early Modern Europe (16th-17th centuries) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729025 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729025 CFP: Beyond Bobadilla: Greek Learning & Religion in
Early Modern Europe (16th-17th centuries)
27-28 May 2027, The Norwegian Institute in Rome (University of Oslo)

The Jesuit Nicholas Bobadilla’s (ca. 1509 – 1590) phrase "qui graecizabant lutheranizabant" (whoever was attracted to Greek was also attracted to Lutheranism) is often cited to characterise the association of Greek learning with Protestant movements in Europe, as well as the Catholic suspicion surrounding Greek studies in early modern Europe. Indeed, Protestant scholars often emphasised Greek learning as a first and significant step towards Reform and towards accessing the word of Scriptures, and as distinguishing feature from Catholicism.

At the same time, however, and after a certain recalibration, Catholic circles did not abandon Greek studies, despite this uncertainty surrounding Greek. For example, the Greek language continued to play a role in discussions within Catholicism, particularly among Jesuits, and later, Jansenists. Was there a shift in their approach? Is this shift discernible, either in curricula or in other discourses? Did Protestants favour some Greek authors, works and genres over others? Can we speak of a ‘Protestant’ and a ‘Catholic’ approach to Greek studies? While some of these questions have to some extent been addressed in specialised examples focusing on specific individuals and milieus, there remains a lack of overarching understanding regarding the role of Greek studies in shaping religious intellectual culture during this period. This necessitates an overall evaluation of how knowledge of Greek, Greek literature, and Greek history was used in religious contexts in early modern Europe.

This conference aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the role of Greek learning in religious discourse. 

Deadline: 1 December 2026

PDF flyer

]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:59:00 GMT #REFORC2027 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729020 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729020
The organizers welcome proposals for 20-minute papers (individual or panels) across disciplines, and are open to themed and general topics in Early Modern Christianity (ca. 1400-1700).

Submission deadline: February 15, 2027.

Join an interdisciplinary, international dialogue and submit your proposal!

https://reforc.com/events/sixteenth-annual-reforc-conference-on-early-modern-christianity/]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:45:00 GMT Conference "Early Modern Istrian Inscriptions in the European Context" https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729018 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=729018 Early Modern Istrian Inscriptions in the European Context
Pula, Croatia, 9-10 April 2027

Early modern Istria occupied a distinctive position at the crossroads of Mediterranean and Central European worlds. Divided between the Republic of Venice and the Habsburg domains, the peninsula generated a rich and varied corpus of inscriptions that reflects the complex interplay of political authority, confessional identity, humanist culture, and local tradition. The conference aims to place these inscriptions within the broadest possible comparative framework, bringing together epigraphists, art historians, philologists, and historians working across the wider European context.

Participants are encouraged to consult and draw on the LAPIS database of Istrian lapidary inscriptions (https://lapis.fhs.unizg.hr:4433/wiki/index.php/LAPIS_-_Latin_Inscriptions_in_Istria) — encompassing texts beyond Latin and the early modern period — as a resource for comparative analysis. However, presentations need not be geographically confined to Istria.

Please submit: (1) a title; (2) an abstract of no more than 200 words; and (3) a brief biographical note of up to 100 words via the form (ibit.ly/XbB8P) no later than 15 September 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 15 October 2026.

PDF flyer

]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:42:00 GMT Mineral Expertise: The Rules of Knowing Earthly Matter in the Early Modern World https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728788 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728788 Minerals have been extracted as resources, traded as commodities, ingested as medicine, and examined for knowledge across the early modern world. Their lifecycle was structured by mineral expertise rooted in tradition and trained bodies – a bezoar pulverised by a town apothecary, ore assayed by a company metallurgist, gemstones authenticated by a court jeweller. Minerals were key to medicine, metallurgy, alchemy and magic and thus a site to negotiate and legitimate forms of knowledge. Precisely because so much was at stake – both the value of objects and the reputation of people – mineral expertise was subject to scrutiny by peers and official regulation.

A central concern of the workshop is to critically assess the concept of expertise. Before the emergence of modern credentialing and professional licensing, claims to mineral knowledge were fluid and contested. We therefore approach expertise as a context-dependent process of negotiation and legitimation. It emerged when actors combined specialised skills with claims to generalisable knowledge and obtained some form of formal acknowledgment for it. Yet we are interested not only in those who have come to be recognised as experts, but in the broader topography of knowledge within which such recognition was negotiated. Which empirical practices cut across distinctions of status, and which ones did not? How did expertise relate to shared knowledge (common knowledge, the period eye, a well-indexed archive)? What distinguished experts from experienced state officials, skilled artisans, or shrewd market-goers? What were the rules of knowing earthly matter in the early modern world?

This workshop aims to compare mineral expertise from different angles. We are interested in contributions from historians of science, technology and medicine, economic historians, archaeologists and archaeometallurgists working on the period between c.1450 and c.1850 CE. By using minerals as a boundary object both of historical actors and historians who study them, we aim for a richer account of how early modern people engaged the mineral world. We aim for a history of mineral expertise that is attentive to local practices and alert to the broader structures of knowledge/power and value-making in which these practices were embedded.

The workshop will take place on 4-6 February, 2027 at the University of Bologna. We aim to discuss approximately 12 pre-circulated article-length papers (6.000–8.000 words) over two days. Decisions regarding the publication of the papers in a special issue will be made after the workshop. We welcome creative contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following questions:

What was mineral knowledge?

  • What distinguished expertise in minerals from other kinds of earth-related knowledge (e.g. that of a farmer) and expertise in other materials (e.g. plant matter)? How were historical distinctions asserted, contested, and institutionalised?
  • How was expertise valorised and employed in sites of labour — the mine, the home,the office, the laboratory, the museum? How did artisanal or vernacular knowledge validate or contradict expertise?
  • How was expertise valorised and employed in imperial expansion and long-distance trade? How did different traditions of mineral knowledge interact or clash, adapt or become marginalised in contexts of empire and colonisation?
  • When did specialist knowledge matter decisively? When did social networks, local experience, or consensus prove equally or more powerful?
  • How was mineral knowledge regulated?
  • How did legal and bureaucratic frameworks — testing sites, law courts, guilds, tax regimes — shape the conditions under which expertise was recognised and gain public authority?
  • What role did archives, records, and formal procedures play in transforming knowledge into expertise, or expertise into public information? What do administrative sources reveal — and conceal — about the range of actors involved in the making of mineral expertise?
  • How were conflicts over mineral expertise adjudicated, and what do such disputes reveal about competing epistemologies and claims to authority?
  • Which moral values were invoked in policies seeking to regulate medical, commercial, and occupational practice (e.g. peace, cosmic order, the common good, thrift, charity, godliness, justice)? Whom did experts claim to serve – and whom did they actually serve – when they worked in the ambiance of the state?

We welcome papers from all parts of the world and approaches that engage with cross-cultural encounters and wide-ranging knowledge exchange, as well as those that drill deep into a specific place and time. Since early modern categories were fluid and diverse, we are interested in both objects recognized as “minerals” today and more expansive understandings or boundary cases.

The workshop is co-organized by Monica Azzolini, Sebastian Felten and Sarah Seinitzer, as a collaboration between the SCARCE project (ERC StG, Grant number 101076422) and the Department of Philosophy (History of Science) at the University of Bologna. Potential contributors should send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a 200 word bio to scarce.geschichte@univie.ac.at by 10 July 2026. Limited funding is available to cover travel and accommodation in Bologna. Please indicate if you have other funding sources to cover your travel expenses.

]]> Mon, 8 Jun 2026 15:35:00 GMT New Book Series: Connected Worlds in Early Modernity https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728685 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728685
Connected Worlds in Early Modernity explores the cultural, literary, artistic, and devotional works emerging from global networks that interconnected Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa during a transformative era marked by heightened and swift transoceanic exchanges (1450–1700). The series examines how individuals and communities across multiple continents cultivated distinctive, transcultural expressions through connections forged via conquest, trade, diplomacy, and religious contestation. The series publishes monographs and essay collections from across disciplines and methodological approaches.

Series webpage: https://brill.com/page/518510]]> Fri, 5 Jun 2026 13:36:00 GMT Many (More) Antwerp Hands Collaborations Across Media, ca. 1500-1750 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728630 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728630 CfP: Many (More) Antwerp Hands: Collaborations Across Media, ca. 1500-1750

Conference date: April 22-23, 2027
Location: Rubenshuis, Antwerp

In early modern Antwerp, making was rarely a solitary act. Artists and artisans participated in complex processes of production that relied on an array of specialists, materials, techniques, and areas of knowledge. Collaboration as a dominant organizing principle of artistic creation in Antwerp was critically foregrounded in a 2018 Rubenianum conference, which explored how artists pooled their skills, divided their labor, and forged creative partnerships in one of early modern Europe’s most productive artistic centers. An edited volume with its origins in the conference, Many Antwerp Hands: Collaborations in Netherlandish Art, 1400-1750 (Harvey Miller Publishers), was published in 2021. Both the conference and the book positioned painting, and to a lesser extent printmaking, as its primary media.

In the years since, scholarship on early modern Netherlandish art has increasingly turned its attention to media beyond painting and the graphic arts, while also asking new questions about how those media relate to one another. In particular, sculpture and the decorative arts (metalwork, textiles, and glass, among others) have attracted renewed interest. With this interest, there is also a sharper awareness of how these objects rarely emerged from a single hand, discipline, workshop, or material. Instead, artistic production in Antwerp relied on wide networks of contributors whose roles were integral to the conception, execution, and reception of works of art. Collaboration can thus be read across media, among a variety of specialists, and traversing the boundaries imposed by institutional structures and art historical categories.

It is within this context that the Rubenshuis will return to the subject of collaboration in 2027 for the second chapter of Many Antwerp Hands, broadening the conversation to include the full range of media, materials, intermedial exchanges, and actors that shaped artistic life in early modern Antwerp. This conference will take place in the year of the 450th anniversary of Rubens’s birth and look ahead to the planned reopening of the Rubenshuis in 2030, embracing that moment of renewal as an opportunity to imagine a materially diverse and interconnected future for the study of early modern Netherlandish art.

We invite proposals that engage with collaboration across a broad range of media, practices, and perspectives, with early modern Antwerp as their center of gravity. Contributions might address the collaborative making of individual objects, the structures that enabled or constrained collaboration, the movement of designs and materials locally and globally, and the individual actors who shaped Antwerp’s culture of making. Papers may also call into question the spatial or institutional boundaries of artistic collaboration in Antwerp, as well as reconsider the categories through which artistic labor has traditionally been defined and valued. We welcome perspectives from beyond the visual arts, exploring how artisans collaborated with practitioners of the performing and literary arts, or with those working in natural philosophy and the emerging sciences. Finally, we encourage scholarship that sheds light on the contributions of women and underrepresented racial and religious groups connected to Antwerp’s artistic economy.

Papers might address, but are not limited to:

  • Formal networks
  • Guilds, academies, and societies as sites where collaboration is facilitated or constrained
  • Informal networks
  • Collaborations between women and through kinship networks (families, marriages, friendships)
  • The workshop
  • Internal organization, division of labor, and collaborative production
  • Paper as catalyst
  • The role of drawing and design in activating collaborative processes
  • Travel and exchange
  • Antwerp artists collaborating across distances and borders; economic networks as channels for collaboration (trade, supply chains)
  • Conceptual collaboration
  • Shared ideas, programs, and intellectual exchange between makers
  • Material transformations
  • How materials change hands, forms, and meanings across media
  • Interspherical collaborations
  • Exchanges between the visual arts and other spheres of making (i.e. natural philosophy, emerging sciences, performing and literary arts)
  • Paintings as objects
  • The painted surface as a material thing that travels, is reworked, and participates in larger collaborative chains (i.e. frame and panel makers, pigment sourcing and making)
  • Animal materials
  • Substances of animal origin and the collaborative networks their use implies
  • Gender
  • Formal and informal roles of women in collaborative artistic production, including in workshops, religious settings, or the domestic sphere
  • Underrepresented spaces and actors
  • Environments and participants not traditionally recognized as sites of art making

Abstracts of no more than 400 words, accompanied by a short academic bio and up to 2 images (if applicable), should be submitted to manyantwerphands2027@gmail.com by 31 July 2026. Abstracts should clearly articulate the research question addressed, the object(s), artist(s), or material(s) under consideration, and the methodological approaches used to examine them. Speakers can expect to be notified by September 2026. Those whose proposals are accepted will be asked to submit a draft of their paper approximately six weeks before the conference. Papers should be in English and 20 minutes in length.

For any questions about the conference and/or its call for papers, please email manyantwerphands2027@gmail.com.

Organized by the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, with visiting researchers:

  • Emily Hirsch (Brown University, United States)
  • Hanne Schonkeren (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
  • Margot Steurbaut (Rice University, United States)
  • Annelies Verellen (McGill University, Canada)

PDF flyer

]]> Thu, 4 Jun 2026 16:15:00 GMT Negotiating African Christian Pasts in Renaissance Europe https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728425 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728425 This conference, organised by the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, focuses on how knowledge about African Christianities was transmitted and circulated within the intellectual landscapes of Renaissance Europe. It wants to explore how expanding global connections, print culture, and transcontinental encounters shaped European understandings of African pasts and the diverse legacies of Ethiopian, Coptic, Nubian, and Kongolese Christianity. In this context, particular attention shall be given to how and to which ends African and European actors produced, translated, and assessed such knowledge across different media and intellectual traditions.

The conference organisers are Nicole Reinhardt (IEG Mainz), Stanislau Paulau (Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg), and Eduardo Fernández Guerrero (Warburg Institute, London).

We invite abstracts of no more than 500 words by 31 July 2026 at africanpasts@ieg-mainz.de The abstract should outline the proposed paper’s focus, methodology, and relevance to the conference theme. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and contact informationwith the abstract. Travel and accommodation costs of the successful applicants will be covered by the organisers.

PDF flyer

]]> Tue, 2 Jun 2026 15:16:00 GMT Genders and Sexualities in the Early Modern World https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728214 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=728214
Genders and Sexualities in the Early Modern World is a peer‑reviewed series that provides a dedicated venue for advanced research in the late medieval and early modern periods. The series supports scholarship in a range of disciplinary perspectives that enhances our understanding of how genders and sexualities shaped and were shaped by social, cultural, political, and intellectual developments, as well as studies that examine these through the lives of individuals. The series aims to foster high‑quality scholarship that advances current debates and contributes to a deeper appreciation of the complexities and diversities of the early modern world. The editors welcome proposals for both single‑author monographs and edited volumes that address the period between 1400 and 1800.

Authors are cordially invited to submit book proposals and/or full manuscripts to the Publisher at Brill, Erika Gaffney.

https://brill.com/page/forthcoming_gndr]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 14:24:00 GMT RCSC 68th Annual Conference "Making the Renaissance Political Body" https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727807 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727807 The theme of the 68th Annual Conference is “Making the Renaissance Political Body.” We invite proposals for individual papers and panels that examine how bodies in the Renaissance were visualized, materialized, regulated, and contested across artistic, architectural, cultural and material practices. Contributions may address the processes through which bodies were produced, sustained, transformed, dismantled, or imaginatively constructed, with particular attention to how images, objects, spaces, and technologies shaped political meaning within and across cultures. We welcome work from across disciplines, including literature, languages, history, art history, theater, digital humanities, etc., as well as research that foregrounds cross-cultural exchange, colonial encounter, and the circulation of bodies, images, and objects across imperial, mercantile, and missionary networks. Approaches may understand “the body” expansively, including—but not limited to—human bodies, political bodies, bodies of images and texts, archival and curatorial formations, crowds and publics, automata, affective and sensory bodies, dead or fragmented bodies, imagined and allegorical bodies, celestial and cosmological bodies, and spiritual or devotional bodies.

The Renaissance Conference of Southern California (RCSC), a regional affiliate of the Renaissance Society of America, welcomes proposals for individual papers as well as complete panels on the full range of Renaissance disciplines (Art, Architecture, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Religion, Science). Papers and panels that attend to cross-cultural concerns are especially encouraged, but proposals on any topic pertaining to the Renaissance are welcome. The RCSC promotes the study of the period c. 1300–1800, broadly interpreting the Renaissance within a global framework. We especially welcome papers focusing on non-European contexts, the Global South, and/or public engagement. 

For submission instructions, see the PDF flyer below or visit https://rcsconline.org/annual-conference-2/2022-conference-registration/. The deadline for submissions in 15 June 2026 (11:59 pm PST).

PDF flyer

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 15:20:00 GMT Stuart Drama Conference 6–9 July 2027 Liverpool John Moores University, UK https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727803 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727803
Call for Papers (proposals due 2 October 2026):
https://stuartdrama.com/cfp/stuart-drama]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 15:16:00 GMT Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society (PNRS)-Sponsored Sessions for RSA 2027 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727644 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727644 The PNRS, an Affiliate Organization of the RSA, invites paper and complete session-proposals for RSA's 73rd Annual Meeting, March 11-13, 2027 in Philadelphia, PA.

The PNRS has 4 guaranteed sessions at the RSA each year and seeks to support and promote diverse approaches and provocative directions in Renaissance/early modern studies. We welcome proposals that engage with any aspect of English Renaissance or early modern literature and culture, including literary-critical, social and/or textual history; cultural studies; questions of adaptation; and the value and challenges of teaching this literature today.

Please contact Heather Easterling (easterling@gonzaga.edu) with inquiries and any questions. Submission deadline: July 20, 2026 to easterling@gonzaga.edu; notification by July 31. 

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 20:10:00 GMT Notre Dame Rome & Roma Tre ECR Conference: Boundaries and Intersections in Premodern Italy https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727620 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727620 University of Notre Dame Rome – Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”

Crossing Boundaries, Fostering Dialogue: Humanities, Academia and the City of Rome
October 19-20, 2026

“Crossing Boundaries, Fostering Dialogue” brings together a two-part program: a giornata di studi, Boundaries and Intersections in Premodern Italy (October 19), featuring interdisciplinary presentations by postdoctoral scholars; and a roundtable, Boundaries of Academia: Impact, Careers, and the Postdoctoral Condition (October 20), focused on the professional and structural challenges faced by early-career academics.

Call for papers - Boundaries and Intersections in Premodern Italy
(October 19, 2026)

The postdoctoral giornata di studi invites early-career scholars—especially, though not exclusively, those who are or have been affiliated with Notre Dame and the Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”—to explore the theme of “boundaries” in its broadest sense and to present their work. We welcome contributions engaging historical, theoretical, literary, musical, philosophical, theological, or cultural perspectives. Comparative and transnational approaches are particularly encouraged. The forum is conceived as a space for sustained intellectual exchange; work in progress is therefore warmly welcomed. Possible lines of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

  • Disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinarity
  • Political and cultural borders
  • Religious and secular divides
  • Marginality and centrality
  • Canon formation and exclusion
  • Linguistic, geographic, and intellectual frontiers
  • The human/non-human divide
  • Gendered boundaries, social roles, and structures of authority

Deadline: June 30, 2026

For full CFP see our [1] PDF flyer or visit [2] https://rome.nd.edu/about/post-doctoral-fellows/crossing-boundaries-fostering-dialogue-humanities-academia-and-the-city-of-rome/ 

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 15:11:00 GMT VAHRG Study Day: New Research on Venetian Art (online, 24 Oct '26) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727619 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=727619
The Venetian Art History Research Group (VAHRG) invites submissions for its second virtual conference, open to current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working on any aspect of Venetian art history.

The conference will take place online via Zoom on Saturday, 24 October 2026, and will be hosted by members of the VAHRG committee.

We welcome proposals for short papers presenting current research on Venetian art. Presentations may be given in either English or Italian, be accompanied by a PowerPoint, and not exceed 20 minutes.

Those interested in participating are invited to submit a proposal title and an abstract (maximum 200 words) to venetianahg@gmail.com by Tuesday, 30 June 2026. Please also include your current university affiliation and the contact details of your supervisor(s). ]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 15:09:00 GMT The Networks & Legacies of Ottaviano De' Medici https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=726966 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=726966 THE NETWORKS & LEGACIES OF OTTAVIANO DE' MEDICI

Call for Papers - International Workshop
Palazzo Alberti, Florence, 6 November 2026

The Medici Archive Project, the Gallerie degli Uffizi and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI) are partnering on a broader research initiative dedicated to Ottaviano de’ Medici (1484–1546), a crucial yet still overlooked figure in the political and cultural milieu of early sixteenth-century Florence. This overarching project is connected to the exhibition on Ottaviano’s collection at the Gallerie degli Uffizi (Fall 2027).

Under this aegis, the Medici Archive Project is organizing an international workshop on 6 November 2026. Conceived as a research-oriented and discussion-driven event, this workshop will be held in conjunction with a conference at the KHI in Florence (5 November 2026).

The principal goal of this workshop is to reassess the breadth and gravitas of Ottaviano de’ Medici’s political, economic, familial, artistic, and intellectual networks. Particular attention will be paid to his relations with members of the Medici establishment—including, Leo X, Clement VII, Ippolito, Alessandro, Cosimo, and Catherine—as well as with all those figures that gravitated around epicenters of dissent and anti-Medici tenets. His role as broker in between constituencies, collections, factions, generations, and traditions will also be examined. Another goal of this workshop is to better visualize the extent to which Ottaviano’s contributions have shaped the cultural patterns and political trajectories of the Medici principate. Finally, equal importance will be given to mapping out Ottaviano’s archival legacy, which is still patchy and impressionistic.

The organizers invite proposals for 20-minute papers, in English or Italian, that present new, unpublished, and innovative research. Contributions may address a range of topics, including but not limited to:

  • Diplomatic Strategies and Gift-Giving Culture
  • Collecting Patterns and Display
  • Ottaviano’s Artists and Sites
  • Anti-Medici Allegiances and Medici Partisanship
  • Ottaviano and His Familial Networks
  • Court Engagement and Transregional Trajectories
  • Humanist and Post-Humanist Discourse
  • Medici and Farnese Papacies
  • Ottaviano After Ottaviano
  • Mercantile Activity and Cultural Brokerage
  • Material Culture and Antiquarian Practices

Date and Venue: The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti, via de’ Benci 10, Florence, 6
November 2026.

Submission Instructions: Please send a single PDF including title and abstract (max. 250 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words) by 15 July 2026 to: education@medici.org

Successful applicants will be notified by 1 August 2026.

Publication: Selected papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume in the Medici Archive Project Series (Brepols/Harvey Miller). 

PDF flyer

]]> Mon, 11 May 2026 16:13:00 GMT Painting and Architecture (14th-17th Century) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=725625 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=725625 Opus Incertum
13 (2027)
Painting and Architecture (14th-17th Century)
Edited by Francesca Fiorani

This special issue of the journal is devoted to the interactions between the physical space of buildings and sites and the virtual space of site-specific visual images. While the painted representation of urban settings, architecture, landscapes, and buildings as backdrops to scenes has been amply examined, essays in this volume engage with visual images that that have been purposefully planned and designed to actively interact with the physical space in which they are contained. Consideration is also given to programmatic iconographies the meaning of which is amplified by the real space of the architecture, as well as to modalities by which architectural spaces are enhanced by their wall decoration. Essays may analyze site-specific images in any media—glass, tapestry, painting, tarsia, mosaic—and from any geographical area in Europe and around the Mediterranean, spanning from the late middle ages to the seventeenth century, that interact with urban spaces, or with secular or religious buildings, or with ephemeral structures, always keeping front and central their relation with the physical space. These images may represent architectural spaces, landscapes, buildings, lands, and territories, in any form or system of representation—perspectival views, bird’s-eye views, or plan views. 

Deadlines
15 July 2026: deadline for submission of abstract (max 2000 characters) and a short CV (max 1000 characters)
30 July 2026: notification of acceptance
15 November 2026: essay submission
31 December 2027: publication 

PDF flyer

 

]]> Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:23:00 GMT Letters as Paratexts in the Early Modern World https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=725513 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=725513 This special edition of The Journal of Epistolary Studies takes up the use of letters as supplements and enhancements to the early modern book writ large, and how epistolary, book, and material culture can and did work together in the early modern world. In particular, this edition seeks to consider the socio-cultural functions and meanings of epistolary material embedded in print and manuscript culture. The editors are interested in thoughtful engagement with historical material, close readings of texts and paratexts, the circulation, networks, and behavior of using epistolary material, and critical reconsiderations and complications of these categories.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Dedicatory epistles and epistles to the reader
  • Appended letters
  • Epistolary material in frontispieces and other illustrations
  • Letters, their circulation as books of letters, and informal publications (commonplace books, scribal publications, circulation of books, etc.)
  • Personal dedications in books
  • Graphic, textual, and layout choices in epistolary texts and/or their paratexts
  • The gendered, racialized, and otherwise embodied realities of publication and epistolary culture in early modernity
  • The economics of early modern epistolarity and print
  • Critiques of epistolary and paratextual scholarship conventions

The special edition editors construe early modernity broadly, and welcome submissions concerning the period 1350-1800. They also look forward to submissions with global perspectives and investigations.

Submission guidelines: Please submit a 500-word abstract and a 200 word biography to drbarrytorch@gmail.com and hannah.sparwassersoroka@mail.mcgill.ca with subject line “Journal of Epistolary Studies Submission” by 15 June 2026. 

PDF flyer

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:23:00 GMT Tuscany and the Iberian Empires Migration and Knowledge Transmission in the Early Modern Period https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724588 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724588 CALL FOR PAPERS - International Workshop

TUSCANY AND THE IBERIAN EMPIRES
Migration and Knowledge Transmission in the Early Modern Period

In the early modern period (c. 1500-1700), Iberian religious refugees, scholars, merchants, and diplomats took up residence in Tuscany. In search of protection or fame, they weaved a network that linked Iberia, Tuscany, and wider imperial territories. New Christians, Moriscos, and other communities displaced by persecution—as well as intellectuals, philosophers, medical practitioners, envoys, diplomats, and other intermediaries—mediated the circulation of knowledge, materials, and political interests between courts, universities, and religious institutions.

By taking a broad view of these encounters, this workshop aims to explore the multiple and layered presence of Iberian agents in early modern Tuscany between c. 1500 and 1700. Papers may also address the reception and assimilation of knowledge, materials, and ideas from the Portuguese and Spanish empires within Italian contexts.

WE PARTICULARLY ENCOURAGE CONTRIBUTIONS WHICH ADDRESS TOPICS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO:

  • Mobility, exile, and forced migration networks across the Iberian world–including its overseas possessions—and Tuscany.
  • The circulation of scientific, technical, ethnographic, and medical knowledge among Iberian and Tuscan institutions.
  • The representation and reception of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in Tuscan political thought, literature, science, and art.
  • Diplomacy, espionage, and political brokerage within and between courts.
  • Material and cultural transfers: books, maps, instruments, liturgical objects, and technologies.

Comparative, micro-historical, and transregional approaches are especially welcome. We also encourage interdisciplinary perspectives that draw on the history of science, the history of medicine, religious studies, economic history, diplomacy, literature, art history, and Jewish studies.

ORGANIZERS:

João Covolan (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa); David Soares Mesquita (Centre for Classical Studies – University of Lisbon)

APPLICATION PROCESS:

The conference will take place at the Medici Archive Project in Via de’ Benci 10, Florence, on Friday, 30 October 2026.

To apply, please submit a PDF with an abstract( max 200 words), along with a short Bio (max 100 words), by July 15, 2026 to: education@medici.org.

Successful applicants will be notified by August 1, 2026.

Papers may be read in either English or Italian, and presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.

PUBLICATION:

Selected papers will be included in an edited volume published by the Medici Archive Project Series with Brepols/Harvey Miller. 

PDF flyer

]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:05:00 GMT Multiple Hands: Shakespeare and Collaborative Creation (SFS Conference, Paris, March 2027) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724448 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724448 The French Shakespeare Society ("Société Française Shakespeare") is organising its 2027 annual conference on the theme "Multiple hands: Shakespeare and Collaborative Creation." The event will take place on 18-20th March 2027, in Paris (France).

We welcome contributions that focus on Shakespeare and his contemporaries and that investigate possible aspects of collaborative practice in connection with early modern literary and artistic production. Paper proposals (paper title, keywords, and a 300-word abstract) should be sent by September 1st, 2026, together with a short bio-bibliographical note, to the following addresses: societefrancaiseshakespeare@gmail.com; johann.paccou@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

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]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:08:00 GMT From Imagination to Remains, From Remains to Imagination (14th-19th Centuries) https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724447 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724447 International conference ERC AGRELITA (Université de Caen Normandie) co-organized with the French School of Athens

February 25-26, 2027 at the French School of Athens

This conference aims to explore representations of the material realities of ancient Greece in literary works written between the 14th and 19th centuries, and to examine how authors constructed images of ancient Greece based on its materiality, as they appropriated and incorporated it into various texts. Its purpose is to analyze how the materiality of ancient Greece (monuments, buildings, ruins, works of art, objects, clothing, etc.) was imagined or reproduced, reconstructed, reinterpreted and re-imagined, both before and after the discovery of material remains during travels, explorations and archaeological excavations. It thus focuses on the shifts and, above all, the interactions between, on the one hand, the constructions of the imagination and thought, and, on the other, the material remains of ancient Greece discovered over the centuries, which are reflected in literature. 

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]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:06:00 GMT Growing Up in the Early Modern World https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724446 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=724446 CFP: Growing Up in the Early Modern World: Children, Institutions and Belonging
🗓 Thursday 26 November 2026
📍 Macquarie University, Sydney

How did children experience institutional life in the early modern world? From foundling hospitals and orphanages to schools, workhouses, religious and military settings, this workshop explores institutions as spaces where children lived, learned, laboured, formed relationships, and moved toward adulthood.

We invite 20-minute papers, as well as panel, roundtable, and innovative format proposals. Hybrid participation is available. Please send a title, 200-word abstract, and short bio (in one document) by 15 July 2026 to paula.plastic@mq.edu.au

We look forward to your submissions! 

PDF flyer

]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:02:00 GMT European Ass. for Urban History Confrernce 2026: Session 34: Narrated Cityscape https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=709785 https://www.rsa.org/news/news.asp?id=709785 We invited all colleagues interested in spatial history, history of migration and travel, historical topography, and early modern and modern European cities, who are keen on sharing digital methods of analyzing and visualizing itineraries, to submit paper proposals for the session 34: Narrated Cityscape: Personally recorded routes versus itinerary guidebooks and travel manuals
We intend to explore and invite all participants to share their experience with private and/vs. objective records of routes through towns and cities of pre-modern and modern Europe, preferably analyzed and/or visualized by methods of digital humanities.

https://www.eauhbarcelona2026.eu/sessions/#session34
Eva Chodejovska (Czech Republic), Keti Lelo (Italy)]]> Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:15:00 GMT