Entangled History

The Leibniz Institute of European History invites international PhD students to a workshop on European history across boundaries from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including Europe's relations with the world. We encourage researchers working in this field to present their dissertation projects and to discuss the transcultural and transnational scope of their findings in a stimulating environment. Topics that aim to cross and reflect boundaries and borders are of particular interest. Projects can employ a variety of methodical approaches such as comparative studies, the study of transfer processes and entanglements, or the histoire croisée. The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), an independent research institution in Mainz (Germany), contributes to this new approach from an interdisciplinary perspective. It fosters research on the religious, social, and political dynamics in Europe from the early modern period into the 20th century and focusses on processes of establishing, coping with and enabling difference. The Graduate Workshop 2017/18 takes place in cooperation with Lyndal Roper, Regius Chair of History at the University of Oxford. At the workshop, we will discuss pre-circulated papers based on archival research (max. 8,000 words, written in English, submitted by 7 January 2018). The institute will provide accommodation for the duration of the workshop and contribute to travel expenses within Europe. Proposals should include an abstract of the overall project and its archival sources (500 words) plus a brief biographical note (including institutional affiliation, thesis supervisors, and contact details). These documents should be sent in one pdf-file to Gregor Feindt – feindt@ieg-mainz.de – by no later than 16 July 2017. For any questions, please contact the organisers.

This book presents the story of a unique collection of 140 manuscripts of ‘learned magic’ that was sold for a fantastic sum within the clandestine channels of the German book trade in the early eighteenth century. The book will interpret this collection from two angles – as an artefact of the early modern book market as well as the longue-durée tradition of Western learned magic –, thus taking a new stance towards scribal texts that are often regarded as eccentric, peripheral, or marginal. The study is structured by the apparent exceptionality, scarcity, and illegality of the collection, and provides chapters on clandestine activities in European book markets, questions of censorship regimes and efficiency, the use manuscripts in an age of print, and the history of learned magic in early modern Europe. As the collection has survived till this day in Leipzig University Library, the book provides a critical edition of the 1710 selling catalogue, which includes a brief content analysis of all extant manuscripts. The study will be of interest to scholars and students from a variety of fields, such as early modern book history, the history of magic, cultural history, the sociology of religion, or the study of Western esotericism.

http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319595245
http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319595245

“This is a tremendously valuable contribution to the study of a pivotal period in the development of modern magic. Undoubtedly, it will become a standard point of reference not only in understanding Enlightenment magic, but also the transmission and transformation of medieval and renaissance traditions. It is also a highly useful bibliographic tool. On that ground alone, no library of modern magic traditions should be without it.” (Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and President of Societas Magica)

“This book will provide a valuable resource for the increasing number of scholars working in the field of post-medieval literary magic.” (Owen Davies, Professor of History, University of Hertfordshire, UK)

It all began with a serendipitous crossing of the paths of four scholars working on the transmission of knowledge and the history of science in European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian societies. We all share an abiding interest in the composition of finding aids between 1400 and 1800, when the transformation of feudal societies into territorial states prompted the ruling elites to invest into the construction of imperial libraries and archives, whose design projected transregional connections and supranational ambitions to the world at large. Although new cataloging principles emerged for the collections housed within these new physical spaces, their compilers did not explicitly break with the already recognized knowledge traditions, attempting rather to harmonize the established authoritative epistemes into new classificatory regimes. The finding aids of early modern societies are fascinating objects in their own right: As artifacts they are primarily paper tools and, yet, their written contents can also be understood as a graphic representation of ideas. Therefore, we made finding aids the workshop's focus, and invited colleagues – from historians to practicing librarians and catalogers – to reflect on catalogs within their own disciplines. On the one hand, we asked how catalogs were employed as instruments for transforming collection's idiosyncrasies in a possible or impossible library's order. On the other hand, we inquired how cataloging ventures were expressions of a ruler's sophistication through the effective control of precious, rare assets. In the daily business of doing research cataloges are usually experienced as humble tools and inevitable intermediaries that operate as transparent, and thus seemingly neutral interfaces between readers and written texts. We proposed to invert this logic and look at them as if they had suddenly changed into unexplored territories.

Transkulturelle Phänomene haben in den letzten Jahren zunehmend die Aufmerksamkeit der Forschung auf sich gezogen und werden aller Voraussicht nach auch in den nächsten Jahren Gegenstand geistes-wissenschaftlicher Debatten sein. Als Ergebnis eines kollaborativen Schreibaktes versteht sich der vorliegende Band sowohl als Einführung in die Untersuchung transkultureller Verfl echtungsphänomene wie auch als Versuch einer systematischen Durchdringung dieses Forschungs-feldes aus unterschiedlichen mediävistischen Perspektiven. Er befasst sich zunächst auf theoretischer Ebene mit der Entwicklung und den Entstehungshintergründen des transkulturellen Paradigmas. In zahlreichen Quellenstudien erörtert er ferner, wie transkulturelle Verfl echtungsprozesse in mittelalterlichen Quellen unterschiedlicher Herkunft und Art benannt, beschrieben und bewertet werden. Auf dieser Grundlage wird der Versuch unternommen, unter Nutzung der Begriffe ‚Netzwerk', ‚Gewebe', ‚rhizomatisches Gefl echt' und ‚Fusion' verschiedene Modelle transkultureller Verfl echtung zu defi nieren und anhand der Quellen auszuarbeiten. Ergänzend erfolgt eine ebenfalls quellen gestützte Beschäftigung mit den reziproken Beziehungen zwischen Verfl echtungs-und Entfl echtungsprozessen. Sie mündet in abschließende Überlegungen zu der Frage, welchen methodischen Chancen und Risiken sich eine historisch arbeitende Forschung aus-gesetzt sieht, die das transkulturelle Paradigma für die konkrete Arbeit an den Quellen nutzen möchte. Indem der Band die Genese aktueller methodischer Diskussionen nachzeichnet und diese anhand von mehr als fünfzig kurzen Quellen-analysen konkretisiert, eignet er sich in idealer Weise für den Einsatz in Studium und Lehre. Darüber hinaus bietet er durch die systematische Darstellung sowie die Refl exionen zu Theorie und praktischer An wen-dung des transkulturellen Ansatzes zahlreiche Anregungen für die weitere Forschungsdiskussion.