Early Modern Privacy : Sources and Approaches

Privacy is often considered a modern phenomenon. Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches challenges this view. This collection examines instances, experiences, and spaces of early modern privacy, and opens new avenues to understanding the structures and dynamics that shape early modern societies. Scholars of architectural history, art history, church history, economic history, gender history, history of law, history of literature, history of medicine, history of science, and social history detail how privacy and the private manifest within a wide array of sources, discourses, practices, and spatial programmes. In doing so, they tackle the methodological challenges of early modern privacy, in all its rich, historical specificity.

Contributors: Ivana Bičak, Mette Birkedal Bruun, Maarten Delbeke, Willem Frijhoff, Michael Green, Mia Korpiola, Mathieu Laflamme, Natacha Klein Käfer, Hang Lin, Walter S. Melion, Hélène Merlin-Kajman, Lars Cyril Nørgaard, Anne Régent-Susini, Marian Rothstein, Thomas Max Safley, Valeria Viola, Lee Palmer Wandel, and Heide Wunder.

Michaël Green, PhD (2013, University of Groningen) is professor at the University of Lodz. He publishes widely on early modern education, religious minorities, and social networks, including The Huguenot Jean Rou (1638–1711): Scholar, Educator, Civil Servant (Honoré Champion, 2015).

Lars Cyril Nørgaard, PhD (2017, University of Copenhagen) is assistant professor at the Copenhagen Centre for Privacy Studies. His publications deal with the tension between religious seclusion and societal engagement and the ambiguous nature of pre-modern privacy.

Mette Birkedal Bruun, PhD (2000, Arhus University), dr.theol. (2017, University of Copenhagen) is professor of Church History and director of the Copenhagen Centre for Privacy Studies. She has published widely on medieval and early modern monastic culture and lay devotion.