Scholarship, Print, and Polemics in Seventeenth-Century Germany – Call For Papers

Scholarship, Print, and Polemics in Seventeenth-Century Germany

Call for Abstracts

This is a call for abstracts or extracts of book chapters that explore scholarly practice in the Holy Roman German Empire of the seventeenth century. The proposed volume is specifically interested in exploring the interactions between scholarly practice, print technology, and the polemics associated with confessionalisation and the rise of the early modern nation state. Potential contributors are encouraged to consider these interactions in the context of early modern interdisciplinarity and the correspondence networks that underpinned the Gelehrtenrepublik.

A rising interest in the early modern republic of letters is apparent in historical scholarship of the last three decades, and the last ten years in particular have seen a surge in this field. Initiatives such as the Cultures of Knowledge project at Oxford, and new journals such as Republics of Letters, sponsored by Stanford University, focus specifically on this unique world and the correspondence networks and scholarly rituals that were so crucial to its success. Nevertheless, scholarly interest in the German context, at least among Anglophone scholars, has been somewhat sporadic. English-language scholarship (particularly monographs) on the early modern republic of letters has tended towards the English and French contexts, with a gap in our understanding of how these experiences translated to and from the German lands. Alternately, one often finds the literature examining the topic with intellectual icons from the Low Countries at the centre and scholars from Germany and elsewhere cast almost at the periphery.

This volume will add to a growing body of work in the German context with contributions that explore scholarship, print, and polemics in the seventeenth-century German lands with a specific focus on the interdisciplinary practices and correspondence networks that supported them. In so doing, it is anticipated that this volume will not only add to our existing understanding of early modern scholarly practice, but will also offer different perspectives on interactions between German scholars and their international counterparts. In this light, contributions that compare and contrast the German experience with the broader seventeenth-century republic of letters, and/or which contextualise their analyses in this context, are strongly encouraged.

Abstracts may be up to one page in length, and final chapters should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words, including notes.

Please submit abstracts, extracts, or drafts to the editor, Christian Thorsten Callisen, via email (christian@callisen.net.au) by 31 March 2015. Successful submissions will inform a book proposal for consideration in Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History. It is anticipated that completed drafts of chapters will be required by the end of February 2016, with revisions to be completed thereafter, though final deadlines will be confirmed.

Christian Thorsten Callisen is based in Brisbane, Australia. His research focuses on interdisciplinary scholarship and the dissemination of ideas in early modern Europe. His work has appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideas and he is editor of Reading and Writing History from Bruni to Windschuttle: Essays in Honour of Gary Ianziti (Ashgate, 2014).