CALL FOR PAPERS
(Deadline: 1 August 2018)
The Society for Confraternity Studies will sponsor a number of sessions at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (17 – 19 March 2019) in Toronto, Canada. Accordingly, it invites proposals for papers on the following theme:
Beyond the Microcosm: The Impact of Confraternities on the Civic Sphere.
Since the formation of the Society for Confraternity Studies, which celebrates it 30th anniversary in 2019, the subject of Confraternity Studies has moved on from what Konrad Eisenbichler once described as an “invisible history” to become an authoritative sub-field of late medieval and early modern scholarship. Accordingly, in order to encourage a discourse that places confraternities at the center of essential historical developments rather than at their periphery, we invite proposals for papers that explore the amplitude and impact of lay sodalities in Europe, the Americas, the East and Asia in relation to the activities of wider late medieval and early modern society. Papers might focus on, but are not limited to the following topics:
· The reach and range of lesser traversed sodalities. For example, slave confraternities.
· The relationships between lay companies and non members. For instance, confraternal liaisons with artisans, food merchants or second-hand clothes sellers.
· Confratelli and consorelle entrusted with public service, healthcare and the custody of people or objects.
· The influence of confraternal ritual and recreation on urban spaces.
· Individual and familial investment in lay companies in order to garner social influence or to gain political power.
· Associations between the devotional lives of non-clerics and the ordained: how these affinities played out in rituals, drama and music.
· The impact of art, architecture and ephemera commissioned by confraternities on public spaces and/or the popular conscience.
Papers should concentrate on confraternal activities between 1300 and 1700. We are however, also particularly interested in proposals that discuss retrospectively, the value of studies that have emerged since the conference in 1989 and consider how Confraternity Studies will advance into the twenty-first century.
Proposals should include the presenter’s name, academic affiliation, email, the paper title (no longer than 15 words), the abstract of the paper (no longer than 150 words), a brief academic C.V. (not longer than 300 words), and a series of key-words that suit the presentation. Please be sure all nine (7) categories of information are clearly provided.
Please submit your proposal to Dr Samantha J.C. Hughes-Johnson at samanthajanecaroline@yahoo.co.uk by 1 August 2018.