Location
Aberystwyth University
From letters to newspapers, sermons to stage, art to architecture; the early modern world communicated their ideas in obvious and obscure formats. The continued improvements of the printing press and postal network enabled European writers to communicate more effectively and efficiently. In the backdrop of nation building, high and popular European culture were expressed through the arts, architecture, and performance.
The developments in ecclesiastical, political, and international relations facilitated a broader audience across intellectual, religious and nationals lines. These forms of communication and exchange will be highlighted by this conference, exploring the value of networking and expression in the early modern world.
This conference is available in-person and online.
Registration link to conference google form: https://forms.gle/MUKU8YpszV8K7wbX6.
Provisional Programme – Communication and Exchange in the Early Modern c.1500-1850.
Thursday 30th May 2024
9:00 Opening Remarks.
9:15
Panel: Communication and Exchange in Practise.
- Laura Loporcaro (Ghent University): What Makes a Fake? F. A. Wolf and the Forgotten Debate on the Authenticity of the Pro Marcello.
- Juan Gomis Coloma (Universitat de València): Communicating through Images: Spanish Chapbooks’ Woodcuts.
- Madeleine Bracey (Coventry University): The Afterlives of Letters: Dirt, Handling, and Storage.
Panel: Religious Anxieties in the Long-Eighteenth Century.
- Heather Nicholas (Aberystwyth University) tba.
- James Adams (University of Leicester): The ten righteous men as a communicative tool in times of war and crisis.
- Jim Reilly (University of Edinburgh): Collecting sufferings: Robert Wodrow and the contested memory of religious persecution in early modern Scotland.
10:45 Break
11:00
Panel: Communicating Disaster and Despair.
- Yıldız Deveci Bozkuş (Ankara University): Chronicles as a Means of Communication in the Early Modern Period: The Syriac Chronicle of Mikhail in the VII-XII Centuries.
- Laura Incollingo (University of St Andrews): Communicating a Calamity.
- Nicola Clarke (Birkbeck, University of London): Multimedia newsgathering and transmission networks in England 1658 – 1685: Did accuracy matter and how was it assessed?
Panel: Symbolic Displays of Royal Image and Power.
- María Boluda Abenza (Museo del Prado): The French Royal Entries of Eleanora of Austria (1498-1530).
Constructing the Peaceful Image of the Queen Consort. - Laura Martinez Cayado (Universidad de Murcia): Dynastic defense and political promotion. Margaret of
Austria (1480-1530) and the Genealogie Abrégée de Charles V. - Kristen Engel (University of Connecticut) Culture(s) of Exchange in the Early Henrician Court.
12:30 Lunch
13:15
Panel: Reporting the Enlightenment News.
- Maria Zukovs (University of St Andrews): ‘A French gentleman, now in this city’: the sourcing of French Revolutionary news in the Dublin press, 1789-1794’.
- Nicole Musson (University of Dundee): Scotland’s Colonial Correspondents: The Eighteenth-Century American Frontier in the Scottish Press, 1745-1775.
- Joey Crozier (Aberystwyth University): James Johnstone, Intelligence Gathering, and the War Court of Brandenburg-Prussia (1690 – 92).
Panel: Exchanges of Family and Friendship
- Susan Cogan (Utah State University): Physicality and Materiality of Grandparent-Grandchild Relationships in Early Modern England.
- Kristina Decker (University College Cork): ‘No miser ever view’d his treasure with half the delight that I read over my letters’:
- Mary Delany, Ireland, and Networks of Intellectual Exchange.
- Guillaume Candela (University of Leeds): Women, Friars, Privateers, and Caciques – Examining the Interplay of Correspondence, Network, Religion, and Indigenous Lives in Early Modern Rio de la Plata.
14:45 Break
15:00
Panel: The Global Library: From the Early-Modern to the Present Day.
- John Mark Philo (University of East Anglia): Scholarship Across Borders: English and Scottish Scholars at Libraries Abroad.
- Nailya Shamgunova (University of East Anglia): Libraries and Tourism: A Seventeenth Century Story.
- Fariba Alamgir (University of East Anglia): Library and Refuge: The Role of Public Libraries in Facilitating Integration of Refugees and Asylum Seekers.
Panel: Print, Production, and Type-facing.
- Chiara Campagnaro (Independent Scholar): Making a Good Impression: Margherita Marescotti’s Petitions in the Seventeenth-Century Book Trade.
- Martina Palladino (Ghent University): Planning the Future of Oriental Philology: Eugène Jacquet and His Network.
Yun Xie (Allard Pierson Museum): If Money could talk: Non-Latin typefaces on Java Bank’s Notes in the 19th century.
16:30: Keynote Address.
- Angela McShane (Warwick University): Song and Revolution: performance, communication and exchange in revolutionary Britain.
17:30: Day End.
Friday 31st May 2024
9:00 Opening Remarks.
9:15
Panel: Global Transport and Trade in the Early Modern.
- Lakshmi Krishnan (Independent Scholar): Sails of Power: Ecological Imperialism and Shipbuilding Dynamics in 17th Century Malabar Coast.
- Guy Sechrist (University of Tennessee-Knoxville): “Materials in Exchange: specimen transportation in eighteenth century Europe”.
Panel: Personal Correspondence in War.
- Callie Wilkinson (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): Bearing Witness in Wartime: Unauthorized Disclosures in the East India Company’s Armies, 1780-1850.
- Maria Zecchin (Università di Genova): Revolutionising diplomacy: diplomatie exchanges between France and the Republic of Venice in 1792-1795.
10:45 Break
11:00
Panel: Architectural and Spatial Exchanges.
- William Perry (University College Dublin): Sir Thomas Herbert and Transcultural Exchange in Early Seventeenth Century Isfahan.
- Jake Bransgrove (University of Cambridge): In the Court of British Science Reconstructing the London Home of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820).
- Yihong Zhu (Kings College London): tba.
Panel: Presents, Promotion, and Propaganda.
- Francesca Bisi (University of St Andrews): tba.
- Hanna Mazheika (University of Turku): The Lithuanian Magnate and the English King: Promoting the Protestant Cause in East-Central Europe in the Early Seventeenth Century.
- Conor Bryne (University of Southampton): Communicating the Executions of British Queens in Early Modern Europe.
12:30 Lunch
13:15
Panel: Presentation and Perception of Early Modern Women.
- Gerit Quealy (Independent Scholar): Beauty and the Beast: Penelope, Pérez, and Political Power Plays.
- Chandini Jaswal (University of the Punjab): Insān-i Kāmil: The ‘Perfect Woman’ of the Mughal
Empire: Revisiting the Narrative of the Sufi Princess, Jahanara Begum - Rafael Antonio Conesa Tornel (Universidad de Murcia): “The querelle des femmes in the 17th century. Margaret of Savoy (1589-1655) and the Theatro delle donne letterate”.
Panel: Postal and Network Systems.
- James Kendrick (Nottingham Trent University): Justices of the Peace: The letters of the Earls and Rutland and Shrewsbury.
- Sam Kennerly (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) The postal system of the early Reformation as seen through the correspondence of Marcello Cervini (1501-1555)
- Rocío Moreno Cabanillas (Universidad de Sevilla): Postal Communication in the Atlantic World in the 18th century.
14:45 Break
15:00
Panel: (De)Construction of Gendered Communication.
- Abi Kingsnorth (Canterbury Christ Church University): Crossdressing and Condemnation: Communicating Gender Norms in English Broadside Ballads.
- Caitlin Starkey (University of Liverpool): Communicating Innocence: Gender Performativity, Emotions, Demeanour and Resistance in Early Modern English Witchcraft Pamphlets.
- Amelia Mills (Loughborough University): Platonic thought and seventeenth-century women’s connections.
Panel: Intellectual Exchange and Interpretation.
- Hannah Sparwasser Soroka (McGill University): “I hope ye God of peace and truth would heare him”: Providence, Sociability, and Epistolarity in the Hartlib-Oldenburg Correspondence.
- Tiéphaine Thomason (University of Cambridge): Interpretation and Confrontation: The Oral Communication of Authority to Non-French Speakers in Eighteenth-Century Nantes.
- Ciaran McCabe (Queens University Belfast): ‘“Travelling teaches the value of sympathy”: philanthropic tourism in the north Atlantic world, c.1750–c.1860’.
16:30 Keynote Address
- Sergio Lussana (Nottingham University): ‘Carrying it on Her Shoulder, Like an Irish-woman’: Early Modern English Traveller Perceptions of Women in Ireland, America, and Africa, 1555-1745.
5:30: Closing Remarks