The Passages conference series (since 2003) has focused on society and the history of everyday life in the premodern world. Our aim is to bring together scholars from diverse fields to study longer term historical continuities and changes between the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds.
The next conference focuses on the emotions and suffering associated with violence. The aim is to understand what kinds of emotional and affective responses and experiences violence and war cause in individuals, families, and other communities. While premodern violence as such has been studied from various viewpoints, we encourage perspectives considering comparisons between eras and cultures. Emotions, experiences, and everyday life provides novel viewpoints to approach these themes. The conference combines the latest research on emotions and experience with social and cultural historical approaches to the ancient, medieval, and early modern world.
We are particularly interested in what people feel in violent situations, and what the communal responses were to such experiences. We particularly welcome papers, which have a sensitive approach to social differences: gender, status, and ethnicity. We also welcome research on the processes of peace and reconstruction.
Confirmed keynote speakers and their tentative titles:
Professor Justine Firnhaber-Baker (University of St Andrews): Suffering the Unimaginable: Affective Responses to Warfare in an Age of Plague
Professor Marian Füssel (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen): Feelings in a World on Fire: Doing Emotions during the Seven Years War
Professor Edith Hall (Durham university): Women under Siege: the Trauma of the Chorus of Aeschylus’ “Seven against Thebes”
Read the full call for papers and send your abstract by 13 Dec in https://events.tuni.fi/passages2025/call-for-papers/