Call for papers: Religious Embodiment and Conversion Practices in Early Modern Europe and Beyond, 1500-1800

The purpose of this conference is to discuss various forms of practical religiosity that existed in Europe and the wider World in the Early Modern Period, and sought to enable the performing of one’s faith or the conversion of others to one’s faith. The proposed time frame for papers is approximately 1,500 to 1,800 words.

Keynote speakers

Professor Rebekka Voss, Jewish Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt and Professor Emily Michelson, Early Modern History, University of St. Andrews. 

Call for papers

We encourage submissions for papers related to questions such as which motivations underpinned the creation of religious embodiment and conversion practices and how they were made manifest, as well as about their performative aspects more broadly.

Motivations can include political and social domination (such as practices tied to colonisation, enslavement, or the inclusive exclusion of minority groups), religious enthusiasm, or religious apathy as a form of social protest, missionary and social reform efforts to achieve the salvation of oneself and others, etc.

Manifestations can include different aspects of bodily manifestations, or hexus (appearance, e.g. sartorial, coiffure, non-verbal expressions, e.g. moving, gesturing, physical displays of emotions, etc.), rhetorical manifestations (sermons, speech acts - meditations/prayers, prophecies, etc.), or other types of manifestations that adopt elements of the two formerly mentioned types of manifestations (e.g. descriptions of visual/emotional practices, such as specific forms of mentalization and their bodily or rhetorical expression, including emotional mirroring).

We aim to bring together researchers from a plurality of disciplinary backgrounds, including (but not limited to) cultural and intellectual history, art history, history of emotions, gender, and material cultures (e.g. archaeology), as well as from post-colonial and slavery studies.

We are mostly interested in contributions that centre on practices rooted in monotheistic religions/theosophies, but do not exclude or rule out practices tied to polytheism, or embodiment and conversion practices that focus on atheism as a counter-religion, as well as secularising movements more broadly.

Please submit your proposals, including an abstract of approximately 200-300 words and a short biography, to the organisers, Prof. Juliane Engelhardt, or Dr. Ariane Fichtl by 26 November 2025.

Accommodation and subsistence will be provided.