Call for Publications: Empires, Beliefs, Emotions: Cross-Cultural Affective Histories (1400-1900)

CROMOHS is an open-access electronic journal, published by Firenze University Press. It has adopted a new format with monographic sections on challenging and fresh topics in intellectual and cultural history. The aim is to promote methodological debates arising from original and creative dialogue between scholarly traditions, as well as innovative archival inquiries.

Each issue will host a thematic section comprising three research articles, opened by a substantial commissioned piece written by a leading international scholar, which will serve as an historiographical introduction to the general topic.

The thematic section of the next issue of CROMOHS (20/2015) will be devoted to the intersection between beliefs and emotions in the context of cross-cultural imperial encounters and interactions. The geographical scope is global and the possible chronology ranges from 1400 to 1900. The opening historiographic piece will be offered by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Given that emotions are determined by context, we might ask to what extent the reconstruction of the language of affect allows us to move beyond the idea of incommensurability among different cultures in a colonial context as well as beyond the limits of Eurocentric approaches. We invite ground-breaking research articles on affective reactions to cultural transformation, to violence and interference in the daily life of native societies, to mission and conversion, to religious confrontation and disputation, as well as on written or iconographic representations of the beliefs and emotions involved in imperial and cross-cultural histories.

Articles should be no more than 7,000 words in length, notes included.

Submissions must be sent no later than March 30, 2016 to: giovanni.tarantino@unimelb.edu.au and/or g.marcocci@unitus.it. Please prepare your essays using the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, using footnotes rather than endnotes. Authors will be informed as to whether or not their articles have been accepted for publication within two months, following evaluation by two internationally renowned referees. The issue will be published online by late October 2016.

Contact Email:  g.marcocci@unitus.it