Understanding diversity in the 15th and 16th centuries – Deadline Extended
20-21 April 2023
Edinburgh
What did ‘diversity’ mean five or six hundred years ago? How did 15th and 16th century societies across the world deal with difference? What were the attitudes and beliefs that determined inclusion or non-inclusion? What were the factors that offered or withheld choices to groups and individuals? How did diversity coexist with established power bases or exist within hierarchies?
Scholars in a wide range of fields are engaged in the study of historical diversity. It is hoped that this conference will bring together specialists from a correspondingly wide range of disciplines, whose interests may traditionally be seen as separate, with the intention of exploring both the differences and the similarities between them and illuminating new lines of approach. We invite papers that address aspects of diversity in the 15th and 16th centuries in relation to, for example, participation, representation, privilege, discrimination and prejudice. We hope that speakers at the conference will consider two questions: ‘How did people of those centuries regard what we should now see as diversity issues?’, and ‘How can we understand such diversity issues by looking at them in the context of those times?’. We welcome (15-20 minute) papers that engage with topics that include, but are not limited to:
• race
• gender
• sexuality
• social class
• disability
• law
• religion
• philosophy
• politics/ government
• science (including medicine)
• literature, music, painting, sculpture
• family
• property
• education
• trade
• travel
• finance
• public and private spaces
• professions/occupations
• clothing
• food and drink
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words plus a brief biographical note to julia.hart@ddsoc.org by 30 January 2023.