09.04.2025

Call for Submissions for the European History Yearbook, thematic issue on "Writing and Reading Letters in the Global Renaissance"

The co-editors Nicole Reinhardt (Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz) and Kaya Şahin (The Ohio State University) are pleased to publish the Call for Submissions:
In a thematic issue of the European History Yearbook Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte / European History Yearbook, we aim to look at the wide variety of transitions and transformations in the reading and writing of letters brought on by, and having contributed to, the Renaissance in Europe and beyond.

We aim to start our inquiry around 1400, with the rediscovery and adoption of ancient models, such as Ciceronian letters and to extend our coverage to 1700 to address the emergence and expansion of new reading publics under the impact of humanist education, religious reformations, the emerging dynastic states, and long-distance trade and conquest. Yet the parallel expansion of historical and geographical horizons, at the heart both of the Renaissance as a cultural phenomenon and of the expansion of letter writing, was not confined to Europe. We therefore intend to bring the European case into conversation with developments in the Ottoman Empire, the Atlantic World, Muscovy, Asia or India.
Please read more in the Call for Submissions, see link below.

We invite the submission of abstracts of up to 500 words accompanied by select bibliography and a short bio (maximum of 250 words). These elements should be sent in one pdf-file to Sahin.53@osu.edu and reinhardt@ieg-mainz.de by 1 June 2025. Prospective contributors will be notified by 15 June 2025; complete first drafts are expected by 15 October 2025 and will be discussed and reviewed further in an online workshop in December 2025. The publication of the thematic issue is planned for 2026. The European History Yearbook is fully open access.