PRIVACY Seminar: Privacy in Early Modern Correspondences

Letters were the most important means of communication in Early Modern Europe. In written correspondence, individuals shared scholarly ideas, represented intimate experiences, planned artistic projects, challenged social conventions, and much more.

In such exchanges, writers readily refer to their inner states and to their personal opinions, but always in a socially shared space of communication, defying any notion of a privacy untouched by the public. How do we examine Early Modern correspondences in a way that takes seriously individual aspects as well as social conventions?

At the workshop Privacy in Early Modern Correspondences, a number of prominent international scholars join members of the Centre for Privacy Studies in tackling this methodological challenge. Focusing on individual letter writers, on specific correspondences, and other contexts of epistolary communication, we will examine aspects of Early Modern correspondences as they relate to the private and the public.

List of Speakers

Hubert Bost, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres

Natália da Silva Perez, PRIVACY, University of Copenhagen

Richard Maber, University of Durham 

Ineke Huysman, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands 

Eelco Nagelsmit, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen 

Bram van Leuveren, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews

Mette Birkedal Bruun, PRIVACY, University of Copenhagen

Michaël Green, PRIVACY, University of Copenhagen

Lars Cyril Nørgaard, PRIVACY, University of Copenhagen and CRCV, Versailles

Programme and Registration

The seminar is open and free to all. Please register here.

Picture Credits:
F. van Mieris, De briefschrijfster (The Letter-writer), 1680. Oil on wooden panel.

Cat. Num. SK-A-261

© Rijksmuseum Amsterdam