Call for Papers

Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany

The Fifth International Conference
Fruehe Neuzeit Interdisziplinaer
March 27-30, 2008

The fifth international conference sponsored by FNI will focus on the early modern experience of and response to loss, not only personal, emotional responses to loss but loss as a matter of social and communal dynamics, social and economic systems, legal rights, public architecture, etc. The conference will thus investigate not only affective responses such as mourning, melancholy, and lamentation, but also the re-creative responses to loss and the adjustments that follow. Papers might address such responses as conversion, rebuilding, making amends, compensation, memorialization, and restoration. Loss is of course not necessarily experienced as irrevocable or tragic in the Early Modern period; indeed, loss may be conceived as leading to gain.

We imagine five general headings for the conference though it is also clear that some of the most interesting cases of loss may cut across these categories. These five rough categories are spiritual loss (e.g., failed messianic movements, loss of faith, forced conversion, loss of sacred space), material loss (e.g., bankruptcy, loss of a library, loss of property from natural disaster or war, poverty, loss of membership in a corporation, loss of art), loss of place (exile; marginality loss of social place, family, culture or honor; loss of territory; incursions by Turks; loss of a town; fires; shifting of boundaries), loss of self (the self can be conceived in varying ways--e.g., bodily integrity, loss of legal rights, loss of honor, demonic possession, dreaming as loss of self), and loss of life (e.g., death of children, orphaning, war, death of a ruler, mourning and burial practices).

Papers that problematize what it means to speak of loss or to attempt to investigate the experience of loss in the early modern period are very welcome.

In keeping with the founding aims of FNI, the selection of papers will proceed with a firm commitment to dialogue across disciplines. Individual sessions will, moreover, consist of work across disciplines. In this first round, we are looking for individual proposals--not completed sessions--but would be glad to be alerted to links between your proposal and that of others being submitted by colleagues in adjacent disciplines.

Please e-mail the following documents to Lynne Tatlock at fni2008@earthlink.net who will share them with the selection committee and appropriate experts on the executive board of FNI:

Short CV
One page (single-spaced) abstract of your paper proposal that includes your working title. Please make transparent the pertinence of your paper to the themes of the conference.

Deadline for submission of proposals: January 1, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: February 15, 2007

Website: http://www.fni.ucr.edu/