CfP: CAIS 2025. On the Road: Natural Environment and the Challenge of Travel and Circulation of Goods and Ideas in Central and Southern Italy. 16th-18th Centur
The Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples are generally considered separately by the historiography of the early modern period. The political division between the two states thus becomes, from a simple disciplinary boundary, a frontier that divides spaces whose social, intellectual, and religious history is represented as two different entities. The localisms that characterize these historiographies – caused as much by the particularities of local archives as by academic divisions – nevertheless allow to see some coherent spaces: the Adriatic maritime space or the pastoral paths of Abruzzo, for example. While recent works inspired by global and connected history propose to revisit the construction and representation of spaces, as with Atlantic or Mediterranean history, this panel aims to explore the communication routes and points of exchange and the impact of natural environment in the effective circulation of people, goods, and ideas between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples during the early modern period. The objective is to rethink this central Mediterranean territory both in relation to its local environmental particularities, detailing the multiple and polysemic spaces it contains, and in relation to its global context, the Italian peninsula, Europe, and the World.
Possible topics include:
- Environmental history of roads and ways of communication
- Network analyses
- How to define an historical space: theory and methods
- Case studies about travels, pilgrimages, immigration
- Circulation of ideas and religious movements in relation to the territory
- Mapping and digital reconstruction
- Historiography and historiographical issues
- Papal States and Kingdom of Naples: frontiers and connections
- Circulation of books and writings
- Circulation of goods
- Roles of women in networks
- Dialogues and exchanges between religions: Hebraism and Islam
We are particularly interested in papers addressing issues of theory and methodology working with the concept of space, in papers that analyze an unedited, newly founded, or little-known source, or in papers that present an analysis of the environment as an historical protagonist.
Papers should be 15-20 minutes.
Please email your abstract (max 300 words) and a short CV (max 1 page) in English, French, or Italian to Isabel Harvey by the deadline of March 20, 2025.