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Podcasts and lectures

We have recorded a number of interviews and lectures. Please click here to view the podcasts (elements of the page can be slow to load, due to the size of the embedded files).

The page features videos of the full set of our public lectures on the theme of 'Cultural Encounters: Travel, Religion, and Identity in the Early Modern World', a podcast of Professor Irene Fosi's plenary lecture from our conference on 'Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World', and a podcast interview with Professor Craig Harline, author of Conversions.

Bibliography

Bibles on shelf

Primary accounts available online

Augustine's Confessions -- in Latin, with excellent commentary, or in English

Petrarch's letter to Dionigi

 

Secondary resources relating to conversion and conversion narratives

Mark Baer, 'Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women: Social Change and Gendered Religious Hierarchy in Early Modern Ottoman Istanbul', Gender and History, 16 (2004), 425-58

Simon Barton (ed.), Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom (2008)

Jonathan Boyarin, The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe (2009)

Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression (1983)

Fenella Canneil (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity (2006)

Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (eds.), Rethinking European Jewish History (2009)

Leondardo Cohen, The Missionary Strategies of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, 1555-1632 (2009)

Martin A. Cohen, Luis De Carvajal: A Secret Jew in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (2001)

Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, a Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (2006)

Eric Dursteler, Renegade Women: Gender, Identity and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)

Richard A. Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity, 371-1386

Anthony Grafton and Kenneth Mills (eds.), Conversion: Old Worlds and New (2003)

idem., Conversion in Late Antiquity and The Middle Ages (2003), particularly the essay by John van Engen

Craig Harline, Conversions (2011)
Listen to our interview with Craig (scroll to the bottom of the page)

Robert W. Hefner, Conversion to Christianity from Antiquity to the Modern Age (2009)

D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (2008)

Monica Juneja and Kim Siebenhüner (eds.), The Medieval History Journal, 12 (2009), special issue on 'Religious Conversion in Medieval and Early Modern Societies'

Richard L. Kagan and Philip D. Morgan (eds), Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800 (2009)

Calvin B. Kendall, Oliver Nicholson, William D. Phillips Jr., and Marguerite Ragnow (eds), Conversion to Christianity from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age (2009)

Tijana Krstic, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (2011)

David M. Luebke, Jared Poley, Daniel C. Ryan, and David Warren Sabean (eds), Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany (2012)

Keith Luria, Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble (1991)

idem., Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern France (2005)

Kathleen Lynch, Protestant Autobiography in the Seventeenth-Century Anglophone World (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Read our review

Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (2008)

Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558-1685 (1998)

Peter Mazur, The New Christians of Spanish Naples, 1528-1671: A Fragile Elite (2013)
Learn more about Peter's book

Molly Murray, The Poetics of Conversion in Early Modern English Literature: Verse and Change from Donne to Dryden (2009)

Martin Mulsow and Richard H. Popkin (eds), Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe (2003)

David Nirenberg, 'Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain', Past and Present, 174 (2002), 3-41

Michael Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580-1625 (1996)

David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (2010)

Jeffrey S. Shoulson, Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England (2013)

Kim Siebenhüner, 'Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition in Italy around 1600', Past and Present, 200 (2008), 5-35

Julia M. H. Smith, Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, 500-1000 (2005)

Lieke Stelling, Harald Hendrix and Todd Richardson (eds), The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature (2012)

Alan Strathern, Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka: Portugese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land (2007)

Guy G. Stroumsa, A New Science: the Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (2010)

Daniel J. Vitkus, Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captive Narratives from Early Modern England (2001)

idem., Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean (2003)

Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: the Marranos, Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (2009)

Web links

The links below connect to a range of projects and resources for the study of conversion and religion in the early modern period. If you would like to add a link to a useful resource please email conversionnarratives@york.ac.uk.

The Conversion Narratives blog

The Catholic Reformation research network

Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting Place of Cultures, Bodleian Library

Treasures of Heaven: a Columbia University site accompanying the international exhibition on relics and reliquaries

Who were the nuns?