Gepubliceerd op 05-03-2015

Call for papers: Compassion in Early Modern Culture (1550-1700)

VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 18-19 September 2015


Keynote speakers:
Katherine Ibbett (University College London)
Bruce R. Smith (University of Southern California)

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that explore questions such as:

  • What did it feel like to experience compassion in the early modern period? 
  • What is the relation between passion and reason, body and mind, body and self in the experience of compassion?
  • What is the relation between compassion and other passions in early modern culture?
  • Which techniques existed for rousing compassion in art, sermons, or everyday encounters? 
  • How was the experience of compassion thought to impact the public sphere? 
  • Which historical sources can we use to explore the social roles of compassion? 
  • How did the terms used to refer to compassion shift in the early modern period, and how do these shifts relate to changes in the historical phenomenology and/or the social roles of compassion? 
  • How did compassion function to shape communities through shared suffering in different European countries? 
  • Where can we see early modern limits of compassion: who or which groups were (on the verge of being) excluded from compassion? 
  • How was the experience and practice of compassion impacted by cultural-historical faultlines such as the Reformation, and how did these changes affect the social roles of compassion?
  • How do early modern ideas on the experience and role of compassion contribute to a critical assessment of current theories of empathy, compassion and social emotions?

Please submit an abstract (c. 300 words) and a brief bio to the conference organizer, Kristine Steenbergh, k.steenbergh@vu.nl, before 1 May 2015.

One of the aims of the seminar is to submit a proposal for a volume on compassion in early modern culture with Palgrave’s book series Studies in the History of Emotions. 

The seminar is part of a research project on early modern compassion funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and is co-hosted by ACCESS, the Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies and the Faculty of Humanities of VU University, Amsterdam.
