CfP: The Church and Empire

Church and Empire: Ecclesiastical History Society, Winter Meeting
14 January 2017
Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK

From its beginnings, the Christian Church has had close, often symbiotic relationships with empires and imperial power. Christianity emerged within the Roman Empire; it was shaped amid persecution and martyrdom by imperial power. Then, in 313 AD Constantine granted Christianity toleration, and soon it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, influenced by Roman imperial institutions. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Christianity remained the religion of the Eastern, or Byzantine Empire until its fall in 1453. In the West, the connection of Christianity and imperial power was revived in the ninth century with the Carolingian Empire – which was itself again revived in the tenth century – and with the Anglo-Norman, Genoese and Venetian Empires.

The medieval and early modern periods saw re-conceptualisations of empire as both a theoretical structure of rulership and a political-theological order. This included conceptions of papal dominium through the idea of universal empire and Christ/the pope as dominus mundi – as well as emerging notions of ‘regnal imperialism’, with ‘the king as emperor in his own kingdom’. Henry VIII famously based his claim to supremacy over the Church on the idea that ‘this realm of England is an empire’. The Russian Tsarist Empire was from its beginnings associated with Orthodoxy and conceptions of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’.

From the sixteenth century, the Churches were connected with European empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia – the Spanish Empire, the Dutch Empire, the French Empire and the British Empire. These empires were driven primarily by the pursuit of wealth and power, but they developed Christian and humanitarian missions – women playing prominent roles – including efforts to suppress slavery. The connections between the Bible and the flag were ambivalent; while men and women missionaries sometimes supported empire, they were frequently its greatest critics. Another aspect of empire and its after-echoes was (and still is) the extraordinary mass migration first of European peoples, and then of those they colonized, too, and the resultant growth and diversification of Churches.

The conference will explore the relations of Churches and empires, and Christian conceptions of empire, in the ancient, medieval, early modern and modern periods, as well as the role of empire in the global expansion of Christianity.

Keynote Speakers
Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge)
Tom Devine (Edinburgh)

Proposals of around 200 words should be submitted to ehseditorial@gmail.com by 15 September 2016.

CfP: Maritime Masculinities, 1815-1940

Oxford, UK, 19th-20th December, 2016

Keynote speakers include:
Dr Mary Conley, College of the Holy Cross, USA
Prof. Joanne Begiato, Oxford Brookes University
Dr Isaac Land, Indiana State University, USA

The Department of History, Philosophy & Religion, Oxford Brookes University, and the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group, University of Portsmouth, invite proposals for a conference concerning Maritime Masculinities, 1815-1940.

Whilst much has been written about masculinity in the maritime sphere in the eighteenth century, rather less work has been carried out on this domain of research in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century; a period that saw significant changes in both areas.

The period from 1815 – 1940 saw the demise of the sail ship, and the rise of the machine-driven steam, and then oil-powered ships. It began as a period of both naval and maritime supremacy for Britain, which was subsequently eroded during two world wars. After a century of frequent naval warfare, there was the advent of the Pax Britannica, and the phenomenon of navies which barely fought. Moreover, popular navalism emerged in advertising, pageantry, and popular literature, and was the subject of photography and then film.

Cultural ideals of masculinities also underwent considerable shifts in a period that in civilian life advocated differing styles of manliness including Christian manliness, muscular Christianity, and the domestic man, and in the armed forces deployed tropes of masculinity such as bravery, stoicism, and endurance to the extent that military and maritime models of manliness were held up as aspirational models for all men.

Such an immense array of changes shaped perceptions and representations of masculinity within maritime spheres and beyond. This conference seeks to analyse how such changes influenced change and continuity in popular understandings of masculine identity, manliness, and the seafarer.

Conference themes include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

The effect of technological change, eliminating the skill of sailing, but necessitating the engineer
The end of a century of war, the transition to civilian life and the phenomenon of the non-combative sailor
The growth of maritime empires, and cultural contact with indigenous peoples
The maritime man in material culture, fashion, advertising and the press
Exploration and heroism
Photography, art, and film
Fiction, theatre, and music
Sailors in port and at home
Dockyards and shipbuilding
Heritage, memory, and museums

Proposals are invited for short papers (20 minutes) and panel sessions (60 minutes).

Abstracts of up to 250 words are invited, and should be sent to Dr Steven Gray at maritimemasculinities@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: Friday, 20 May at midnight (GMT)

Further information here.