Workshop: Privacy and Space – Theory and Practice

This workshop will bring together scholars from different disciplines to examine the interaction and links between privacy and space on different scales, from specific rooms and interiors within a house or residence to churches and outdoor spaces in early modern cities. The issues surrounding privacy in the early modern period invite attention to many aspects, including the social use of space, rituals, and boundary markers. In response to the increase of surveillance, different zones within the residence, street, and city become a breeding ground for both the need for and the infringement of private life. We are especially interested in the divergence and overlap between theoretical instructions regulating privacy and the practices of everyday life.

The confirmed speakers are: 

Nuno Senos: Universidade Nova de Lisboa (PT)

Charlotta Forss: Stockholm University (SE)

Lee Palmer Wandel: University of Wisconsin-Madison (US)

Thomas Lyngby: National History Museum Frederiksborg (DK)

Susanne Rau: University of Erfurt (DE)

Johannes Ljungberg: Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen (DK)

Lars Cyril Nørgaard: Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen (DK)

Sanne Maekelberg: Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen and Royal Danish Academy (DK)

Programme

Thursday, 8 June 2023

13.00: welcome from Mette Birkedal Bruun

13.05: intro to the Centre for Privacy Studies

13.30: Susanne Rau – Public and private hospitality in the early modern period. An Approach from a French Perspective

14.15: Thomas Lyngby – Privacy in early modern townhouses

15.00: Coffee break

15.30: Charlotta Forss – Negotiating propriety in the early modern Sauna

16.15: Nuno Senos – Le lever du duc: the sacralization of everyday life

End of day: 17.00

Friday, 9 June 2023

9.00: Lee Palmer Wandel – Church interiors and privacy: William Durand and John Calvin

9.45: Sanne Maekelberg – Rebuilding Chatsworth. Tracing the evolution of private life in the English country house

10.30: Coffee break

11.00 Lars Cyril Nørgaard & Johannes Ljungberg – Three layers of privacy. Historiographical observations on shifting spaces of interpretation.

11.45 Joint discussion

Register here