This conference announcement was sent to us by the Conference convener and our Network member Daniel Bellingradt. More information can be found here.
What is the history of communication? This conference aims to approach and discuss possible answers to this question, focusing on early modern Europe (1400-1800). While being a forum for discussing recent and on-going research on this broad topic, the conference highlights especially approaches and trends within German and Italian historiography.
Although there is as yet no chair for the history of communication either in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Italy (‚Storia della comunicazione’ – ‚Kommunikationsgeschichte’), communication history is a well established field of research within historiography. In fact, an early modern history of communication remains to be written: the scope and limits of a communicational approach to historiography are still unclear and under-theorized.
Some aspects of communication history have been addressed fruitfully, both on an empirical and theoretical level. These components derive from different historiographical backgrounds and schools of thought, for example ranging from narrow perspectives on certain forms of media only (e.g. on speeches, newspapers or books) to wider examinations into the intermediality of the communication landscape, or from the ‘public’ dimension of certain acts of communication to the accompanying non-public or clandestine aspects.
By adopting a wide understanding of ‘communication’ this conference sets out to evaluate the scope, concepts, and approaches of an inclusive history of (early modern) communication.
Conference Schedule
6 December 2018
15.00-15.30 Introduction: What is the history of communication?
Daniel Bellingradt (Erlangen) – Massimo Rospocher (Trento)
15.30-18.00
Approaches
Rudolf Schlögl (Constance): Public Sphere in the Making in Early Modern Europe
Mario Infelise (Venice): Information and communication in Early Modern Europe: from national historiographies to a European model
7 December 2018
9.30-13.00 Intermediality of Communication
Alexandra Schäfer-Griebel (Mainz): News on the French Wars of Religion. An intermedia perspective
Chiara De Caprio (Naples): A linguistic perspective on intermediality in Early
Modern Italy. The Regno, 1450-1700
Carla Roth (Basel): Speaking of Print: Oral Informants on the Marketplace of News
Sabrina Corbellini (Groningen): Shaping Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century: Intermediality of Communication
Comments by Jan-Friedrich Missfelder (Zurich)
14.30-17.30 Communication as Information Acquisition
Paola Molino (Munich-Padua): From street to paper? Language, translation and communication in late Renaissance German and Italian newsletters
Andreas Flurschütz da Cruz (Bamberg): The Republic of Venice and the German Princes as Military Allies: A German-Italian History of Communication in Times of War (17th and 18th century)
Davide Boerio (Cork-Teramo): Communication and Emergency: Information gathering in times of crisis in the early modern period
Isabella Lazzarini (Molise): Tutto serve a sapere: gathering, ordering and using information in diplomatic communication (Italy, 1350-1520 ca.).
Comments by Matthias Pohlig (Berlin)
17.30-18.30 Roundtable coordinated and with comment by Heiko Droste (Stockholm)
Book History and Print Culture Network 