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CfP: Performing Theatricality & Imaging Religious Ceremonies in Early Modern Western Europe

May 15-17, 2024 (Ghent University)

Ghent University’s research groups, Studies in Performing Arts and Media (S:PAM) and Thalia
kindly invite scholars from a wide variety of research areas that may include (but are not limited
to) the following: religious studies, theology, cultural studies, literature, performance studies,
history, art history, history of the book, history of science, anthropology, ethnography, or any other relevant field. Contributions should be in the format of approximately 25-minute
presentations. Proposals might consider, but are not limited to:

  • Performing arts and religious ceremonies
  • Religious customs, rituals, and cults across the globe
  • Religion and Enlightenment
  • Early modern European ethnography and anthropology
  • Cross-cultural and/or cross-religious encounters between (non-)Europeans
  • Idolatry, fetishism, totemism, and exoticism
  • Religious conflict and toleration
  • Religious ceremonies in Reformation- and Counter Reformation- discourses
  • Bernard Picart & Jean Frederic Bernard
  • Sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century depictions of religious ceremonies
  • Ceremonial splendor

To submit a proposal, send an abstract (250 words) and a brief biography to drs. Steff Nellis.
All enquiries should be sent directly to Steff as well (steff.nellis@ugent.be).