Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University.
Workshop at Trinity College Dublin, 14-15 May 2009.
The notion that university academics recognised themselves as a distinct social category in the early modern period is one that has typically received a cautious response from historians. This is in large part a consequence of a general lacuna in existing scholarship on questions of academic social identity. In recent years, however, scholars investigating various facets of early modern academic culture have begun to fill this gap. New research presents much evidence of an increased self-consciousness among university scholars during this period and an awareness of academic social distinction and difference. This growth in academic self-consciousness coincides with the rise in the importance of the university within the confessional state. In the Holy Roman Empire, for example, the frequency of university foundation increased considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sign of the perceived and actual utility of such institutions. Inevitably, this new prominence resulted in a dispensation of agency to those responsible the university’s operation, namely the professoriate (loosely defined).
This increase in institutional power was no doubt an important factor in affecting a change in the social disposition and self-perception of university academics. Professorial social networking in this period, for example, has been found to reveal efforts to consolidate distinctly academic social power, reflecting a high level of self-recognition. Certainly, during this period a significant increase in representational output from universities is evident. Academic self-characterisations are ubiquitous in this output which has a wide formal range from the ceremonial to the architectural, from printed pamphlets to funeral monuments. It will be the purpose of this workshop to explore these representational practices. In particular, participants will be asked to consider the relationship between the fashioning of individual scholarly identities, representations of an academic social category and the generation of university-based academic communities in this period.
The workshop is being sponsored by the Trinity Long Room Hub and is held in association with the International Commission for the History of Universities.
Workshop Programme
Location: Arts Building, Room A6.009
Thursday, May 14
9.00 – 9.15: Registration
9.15 – 9.30: Welcome/Introduction
Session 1
Chair: Elizabethanne Boran, Edward Worth Library, Dublin.
9.30 – 10.15:
Kenneth Austin, University of Bristol
Corresponding Values: Letters, the Protestant Reformation and Academic Self-Fashioning
10.15 – 11.00:
Richard Kirwan, National Univeristy of Ireland, Maynooth
Representation and the Construction of Academic Community in Early Modern Germany
11.00 – 11.15: Coffee
Session 2
Chair: Thomas O’Connor, National Univeristy of Ireland, Maynooth
11.30-12.00:
Bruno Boute, University of Louvain / University of Münster
Academic Practices and Academic Politics of Reality in the 17th Century Habsburg Netherlands
12.00-12.45:
Marian Füssel, University of Göttingen
A struggle for nobility. “Nobilitas literaria” as discourse and practice of academic self-fashioning in 16th and 17th Century Germany
12.45 – 2.00: Break for lunch
Session 3
Chair: Graeme Murdock, Trinity College Dublin
2.00 – 2.45:
Andreas Corcoran, European University Institute, Florence
‘When fighting this hellish beast’: Divine Providence, Academic Charisma, and Witchcraft.
2.45 – 3.30:
Ingo Trüter, Univeristy of Giessen
Johannes Eck (1486-1543). Academic career and self-characterisation around 1500.
3.30 – 3.45: Coffee
Session 4
Chair: Crawford Gribben, Trinity College Dublin
3.45 – 4.30:
Cinzia Maria Sicca, Università di Pisa
The Duke and his professors. Funerary monuments supported by the prince in the Studio of Pisa (1500-1690).
4.30 – 5.15:
Steffen Hoelscher, University of Göttingen
The irritant spectator – King George II´s visit at Goettingen University 1748
Friday, 15th May
Session 5
Chair: Amanda Piesse, Trinity College Dublin
9.00 – 9.45:
Helen Cooney, Trinity College Dublin
The Case of John Skelton: An Inkling of Thinks to Come
9.45 – 10.15:
Gráinne Mc Laughlin, Trinity College Dublin / University of Ulster
Hegemony in Cromwell’s Oxford: Greek and Latin Versification as Supremacist Discourse
10.30 – 11.15:
Elizabeth Hanson, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
‘Scholastical Squitterbooks’; Display, Derision and Shame in Early Modern Academic Performance
11.15 – 11.30: Coffee
Session 6
Chair: Richard Kirwan, NUI, Maynooth
11.30 – 12.15:
Jason Harris, University College Cork
The Bees and the Drones: Irish-Scottish Rivalry at the University of Paris
12.15 – 1.00:
Shams Tabrez, University of Delhi
Religious Discourse onto the Production of Knowledge: Intellectual Community in Mughal North India, Circa 1550-1720 AD
1.00 – 1.15: Coffee
1.15 – 2.00: Closing Discussion. Chair: Helga Robinson-Hammerstein.
For further information contact Dr Richard Kirwan (Richard.Kirwan@nuim.ie) or Dr Crawford Gribben ( crawford.gribben@tcd.ie).
