Call For Papers “Rome in The Renaissance” International Conference

John Cabot University will host the international conference “Rome in the Renaissance: Global Projections on Religious Identities and Dissent” on April 5 and 6, 2024. The keynote speakers will be Professor Giorgio Caravale (Università Roma Tre) and Professor Gábor Klaniczay (Central European University).

Religious identity and religious dissent are traditional categories in historiographical debate, incorporating diverse dimensions, from the more properly historical-religious to the social, institutional, devotional, and ecclesiological, to name but a few. The conference aims to discuss these categories with specific reference to Rome in the Renaissance, a relationship of key themes and issues that has not yet been specifically addressed.

Rome will be understood in a narrow sense, as a city and as a papal state, but also as both an irradiation and convergence center of ideals, models and relationships that transcend the urban dimension. The perspective adopted is geographically and ideally global. By Renaissance, the conference means to embrace a long-term chronological span from the early fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century.

This conference invites a plurality of viewpoints and critical approaches to discuss how and why the conceptualization of religious identities and the fight against dissent took shape in Rome and, at the same time, how it was spread throughout the globe during a period as historically and culturally central as the Renaissance.

The topics addressed, centered on Rome in the Renaissance but open to a global perspective and comparison, may include, but are not limited to:

  • The Roman Curia and religious orders
  • Evangelization and “internal missions” as seen from Rome
  • Roman inquisition, justice, and censorship
  • Roman inquisition and witchcraft cases
  • Jewish community and culture in Renaissance Rome
  • Converts and minorities
  • Mystics and saints in – and in relation to – Renaissance Rome
  • Witches and witchcraft in – and in relation to – Renaissance Rome
  • Religious identities and dissent in Roman iconography
  • Heresy, heretics, reformers

Abstract submission
“Rome in the Renaissance” welcomes paper proposals submitted in English. Please submit the title of your paper, an abstract of up to 400 words, and a short CV by November 30 to:

Fabrizio Conti: [email protected]
Paolo Broggio: [email protected]
Andrea Vanni: [email protected]

Organizing committee
Paolo Broggio (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Fabrizio Conti (John Cabot University)
Serena Di Nepi (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Michael Driessen (John Cabot University)
Marina Montesano (Università degli Studi di Messina)
Manfredi Merluzzi (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)
Michaela Valente (Sapienza University of Rome)
Andrea Vanni (Università degli Studi Roma Tre)

The conference is sponsored by The Office of the President, John Cabot University’s Department of History and Humanities, and Università degli Studi Roma Tre’s Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici. 

Routledge expressed interest in publishing the conference proceedings.