The Republic of Letters in History: Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modernity
International conference organised by Brian Kjær Olesen.
Description
This conference examines the Republic of Letters in history, focusing especially on three different historical periods: Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modernity. The conference is especially concerned with three intertwined, yet distinct themes related to the transformations of the Republic of Letters between the early modern and the modern period.
The first concerns agency within the Republic of Letters. Who are the republicans of letters (men and women of letters, academics, scholars, intellectuals) and how are these figures overlapping or rivalling each other? What sort of persona or ethos is required of these republicans, and how does it relate to the pursuit of truth and knowledge, and to the creation of intellectual, moral, and political authority?
The second theme relates to the Republic of Letters as a space of action. Through what kind of local institutions (academies, universities, learned societies, salons, public spheres) is the republic constituted and what types of practices does these institutions facilitate (scientific and scholarly travels, networks of correspondences, exchanges of knowledge, ideas, and opinions)? How does the republicans of letters interact with other trans-local spaces and communities such as the church, ideological movements, states, and empires? What is the global reach of the Republic of Letters as a trans-local space?
The third theme pertains to the politics and the intellectual contexts that informed the Republic of Letters. What languages or discourses does the republicans of letters speak, in what controversies do they partake, and what agendas do they promote or reject? Reconstructing thus its trajectories in history, the conference aims to provide a better understanding of the intellectual history of the Republic of Letters.
Programme
Thursday, 21/11
09:00 - 09:30 Coffee/Tea
09:30 - 10:00 The Republic of Letters in History: From the Man of Letters
to the Figure of the Intellectual
Welcome and Opening Remarks Brian Kjær Olesen
10:00 - 12:00 Panel 1: Renaissance
Chair: Brian Kjær Olesen
Rabbis, Doctors, and Intellectual Authority in the Sixteenth
Century
Avner Shamir
The Erasmian Republic of Letters and the Rhetoric of
Decorum
Kaarlo Havu
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch
13:30 - 15:30 Panel 2: Enlightenment
Chair: Michael Harbsmeier
The Republic of Letters Between Minerva and Mercury:
Ludvig Holberg, J. H. E. von Bernstorff, and the Useful
Sciences
Brian Kjær Olesen
The Cameralists: Projektmacher and Men of Letters
Ere Nokkala
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee/Tea
16:00 - 18:00 Panel 3: Modernity
Chair: Martin Eyrich
The Republic of Letters vs. Nationalized Intellectuals?
Some Methodological Reflections on a Case Study
Tommaso Giordani
The Authoritarian Republic of Letters. Intellectual Engagement
Between Fascism and Neoliberalism
Daniel Knegt
Friday, 22/11
09:30 - 10:00 Coffee/Tea
10:00 - 12:00 Panel 4: Early Modern Perspectives
Chair: Brian Kjær Olesen
Idols of the End: John Foxe Imagining the Apocalypse
Johannes Huhtinen
The Republic of Letters in Political Action: Andrew Fletcher’s
Activism in its European Context
Giovanni Lista
12:00 - 13:30 Lunch
13:30 - 15:30 Panel 5: Enlightenment
Chair: Martin Eyrich
Naples and the Republic of Letters: A New Glimpse of the
Construction of the Centre-Periphery
Adriana Luna-Fabritius
Travel Literature and Philosophical History: The Figure of
the Ancient and the Figure of the Savage in Joseph-François
Lafitau
Marie Louise Krogh
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee/Tea
16:00 - 18:00 Panel 6: From Enlightenment to Modernity
Chair: Niklas Olsen
Secret Societies and Public Spheres: Relocating Immanuel
Kant in the Republic of Letters between Prussia and Russia
Jonas Gerlings
Glotto-Colonial Debates: Philology as Ideology, Career
Strategy and Intellectual Pursuit of the Gentleman Amateur
the Entwined Cases of William Marsden and John Crawfurd
Martin Müller
18:00 - 18:15 Final Discussion and Closing Remarks
Brian Kjær Olesen
