Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär, an international and interdisciplinary conference and research group concentrating on German-speaking Europe during the early modern era, announces its:

2005 Regular Conference Duke University April 7-10, 2005

The conference brings together approximately 80 scholars from all fields of investigation, most of whom present papers or participate in panels in various formats. Extensive time for discussion and personal contact is also one of our central goals.

Scholars interested in contributing papers on the theme described below should contact Professor Randolph C. Head (contact information below). We will also consider complete panels that are proposed, especially if they bring together contributions that are interdisciplinary in both approach and personnel. Send abstracts and short curricula vitae along with any other relevant information. (Those who have already made proposals are already in consideration, but are welcome to make revisions).

The theme of the 2005 conference will be:

ORTHODOXIES AND DIVERSITIES IN EARLY MODERN GERMAN-SPEAKING EUROPE.

Early modern European culture was rich in tensions, both fruitful and destructive, between efforts to construct or transform normative systems of order on the one hand, and a growing diversity of practices on the other. In German-speaking Europe, growing formalism in state, church and cultural institutions confronted the vibrant diversity of political forms, religious expression and cultural practices that characterized the region. New demands for public conformity confronted new forms of secret knowledge and hidden practice. Ideals of order were subject to both contention among experts and confrontation with realities from other, increasingly interconnected spheres. Classificatory systems that sought to organize nature, human sexuality, gender, and social norms; reformulations of artistic canons in response to novel stimuli and changes in artists' circumstances; villages that reacted with equal vehemence to local dissent and outside pressure for conformity: these and many other situations reveal the terrifying as well as exhilarating predicaments that the people of the Holy Roman Empire faced.

For its Spring 2005 conference, FNI solicits contributions that address normative processes and their contexts in literature, the arts, science, religion, politics or society in the diverse lands of Germanic Central Europe. A generation of research on dissent, heterodoxy and difference have opened the door for new critical approaches to the production and reproduction of structure, canons, and orthodoxy, as well as to the ways various disciplines have discussed these phenomena. We especially encourage papers or whole panels that employ theoretical and substantive interdisciplinary methods to address themes such as:

I. (Not) Keeping Secrets: Concealment, power, dissent
II. Canons and disciplines
III. Representing orthodoxies, reproducing norms
IV. Uncontainable practices: humanity, sexuality, violence

E-mail submissions are preferred (PDF, Word, or
RTF files). Send all proposals and
correspondence to: