Project description, leadership, and work to be done

Dear colleagues,

I hope you all had a nice weekend and a safe and pleasant return trip.

Below you will find a description of the work to be done by our sub-group which is intended to appear on our website as a general introduction. Please let me know whether you think it accurately reflects what we discussed on Saturday. If so, I will then forward the description to Paul.

The issue of leadership in our group remains a little bit unclear. In order to get things going, Stephen and I have agreed to act as coordinators/leaders of the group at least during this first year. In my opinion, however, it would be a good idea for us to rotate and share this responsibility. That way we can also ensure that different sensibilities and methodologies are well represented in the work to be done by this sub-group and that we all have a clear say.

As for the work to be done during this first year, I think we can start by posting on this website some of the primary and secondary materials we will be working on for everybody to be able to read them and comment on them. It would be great if they could be preceded by a brief introduction explaining what they are and how they relate to the objectives of this project. If you consider it appropriate, I will be the first to do so in order to start breaking the ice.

Finally, we can continue exploring the possibility of meeting in person in the UK in March/April, an idea that I liked very much, but much will depend on the work that we are able to do before then and on funding availability (access to travel funds for co-applicants and collaborators are different, and we depend on the project management accepting to fund the travel expenses of at least some of us).

I am looking forward to working with all of you.

Best,

José

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – EARLY MODERN CITIES AS THEATERS OF CONVERSION

The “Early Modern Cities as Theaters of Conversion” sub-group will study the way in which the intersection of Renaissance ideas on urban space and the emergence of modern theater allowed cities in both Europe and the Americas to become instruments/agents of religious, political, cultural, and psychological conversion in the Early Modern Period capable of transforming the beliefs as well as the physical and sensorial experiences of different sections of the population. It will initially (and provisionally) focus on the following cities: London, Venice, Madrid, Mexico, and Lima/Cuzco. By selecting these cities as case studies our group seeks to establish a comparative perspective that illuminates the similarities, but also the differences in the way in which those urban centers became “theaters of conversion”. Throughout the year ahead, members of the group will develop and present their chosen case studies from the point of view of their own interests and methodologies, but also taking into account as much as possible the cognitive ecologies and digital humanities paradigms as well as the broader questions that the project seeks to answer about the meaning of conversion in the Early Modern period.

3 thoughts on “Project description, leadership, and work to be done”

Mark Vessey September 3, 2013 at 2:20 AM

Thanks for starting the ball rolling, José. I am perfectly comfortable with the process and the program as you have outlined them. All I would add at this point is that it may be helpful to allow for conversional cityscapes outside the topographical foci that you have named. As we recognized in our initial conversation, cities migrate internally (“London’s Jerusalem,” “Zürich’s Rome”), and so we will want to allow for a plethora of real and really imagined cities even as we “drill down” (DH) into our chosen few. But that goes without my saying, and does not require any revisions to your text above. I will send some bibliographical coordinates of my own in a few days, or once the rest of the term’s work is under way.

Jose R. Jouve-Martin Post author September 5, 2013 at 6:43 PM

Of course, Mark. That is a very good point. Of course, we can take those “migrations” into account. It is a fascinating part of the topic.