During a year of research leave, Prof. Beat Kümin has investigated the phenomenon of depositing chronicles and objects into tower spheres on top of prominent buildings like churches, town halls and fortifications. Documented from the Middle Ages to the present, seemingly only in and around territories of the erstwhile Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the custom provides fascinating insights into how local societies saw themselves and what they wished to pass on to successive generations. The project, supported by the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, has so far identified over 1600 sites and thousands of separate deposits (at one Zurich church, there were no fewer than 20 between 1505 and 1996). The funder has just released a video series of six episodes (accessible in both English and German) documenting field work in Switzerland in autumn 2003.

[English Trailer] [Episodes] [Project Homepage]

The conference addresses the material, literary and visual culture associated with ‘corruption’ (broadly conceived). Relatively little attention has been paid to these dimensions of corrupt practices: to the gifts given as bribes, to the various material, artistic and cultural forms of public displays of corrupt wealth, and to the literary and visual representations of corruption. Nor has there been much debate about how to curate material bought or created with ‘corrupt’ money and how explain it to modern audiences.

It is with much sadness that we have learned about the passing of Professor Natalie Zemon Davis on October 21, at the age of ninety-four. A Canadian-American, Professor Davis helped pioneer the genres of cultural and micro-history. Specialising in early modern period, she remained active in the field until her death, publishing a book in 2022 and nearly completing another in September of this year. Over the course of her career, she received numerous accolades and prizes. In 2012, she was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, and in 2013, she was honoured with a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2013.

EMECC is happy to host Visiting Professor Dena Goodman (University of Michigan) in June 2023.

Professor Dena Goodman is Lila Miller Collegiate Professor of History and Women’s Studies (emerita) at the University of Michigan and co-director of ‘The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project’. She is a cultural historian of eighteenth-century France, with particular interests in women and gender, material culture, writing and sociability. Her current project involves a family history during the French Revolution. It explores Enlightenment legacies in the domains of science and technology, intellectual sociability and state service. During her visit, she will work with cultural historians and literary scholars interested in conceptualising the links between sociability and political change

Events surrounding her visit include

A lecture, ‘Peace Dividends: Why French Scientists Travelled to Britain during the Peace of Amiens (1802-1803) and What They Brought Home’ (tba)

A keynote address for a conference on sociability: ‘Exploring the Political Implications of the Family/Friendship Binary for the History of Sociability, 1750-1850’ (June 9)

A meeting with PGRs and Postgraduates - open to all Humanities departments (tba)

A meeting with IAS Fellows (tba)

If you would like to meet with Professor Goodman to discuss research, please feel free to contact Charles.Walton@warwick.ac.uk.

The Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Centre at the University of Warwick, together with GIS Sociabilités/Sociability network in France, aims to explore the intersection of sociability with the themes of food, politics and travel in the early modern period (1550-1850). The conference coincides with the Visiting Professorship of Dena Goodman (University of Michigan), who has devoted much of her career to studying sociability in eighteenth-century France. In her keynote, she will reflect on the political implications of the family/friendship binary for the history of sociability between 1750 and 1850.