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Project Podcasts

We hope you enjoy these videos and audio clips of our public events and plenary lectures.

Cultural Encounters: Travel, Religion, and Identity in the Early Modern World

Between January and March 2013, we have been running a series of public lectures on the theme of 'Cultural Encounters in the Early Modern World'. Warm thanks to the York Medical Society for a wonderful venue, to York Cocoa House for early modern hot chocolate, and a wonderful edible map of the world, to the Hardwick Inn for helping us secure a firkin of 'Bess of Hardwick Bitter', to Les Canards Chantants for a very welcome interruption to the final lecture, and to Hannah Hogan and Claire Canavan for all of their help.

Our first lecture was delivered by project co-director Doctor Simon Ditchfield, whose topic was 'The Circulation of the Sacred in the Early Modern World'. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our second lecture, delivered by Doctor Abigail Shinn, was on the subject of 'Traveller's Tales', and included some ill-advised holiday tattoos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture three came from Professor Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex) who told us the tale of 'Sinan: a Muslim Converts in Early Modern England'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doctor Peter Mazur continued the series with 'Improbable Lives: a One-Eyed Soldier, a Dervish, and other Converts in Early Modern Rome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We returned to the question of Islam in Britain and Europe with Doctor Ziad Elmarsafy's talk: 'Encountering Islam: the Qu'ran in the European Enlightenment'. View the youtube clip that Ziad played in the lecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the final lecture, Helen Smith drew together many of the strands of the series by examining the remarkable example of an Elizabethan powerhouse, Hardwick Hall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Irene Fosi, 'Conversion and autobiography: telling tales before the Roman inquisition'

Professor Irene Fosi of the Università Chieti delivered this stimulating plenary lecture at our conference, 'Conversion Narratives in the Early Modern World'. Irene's article drawing on this research is forthcoming in our special issue of the Journal of Early Modern History, co-edited by Peter Mazur and Abigail Shinn.

 

 

Interview with Professor Craig Harline

Listen to our interview with Craig Harline, author of Conversions (Yale University Press, 2011). For more information about the book and our meeting with Craig, see the project blog.

 

 

  

You may also enjoy:

- two fascinating youtube videos in which Ines Zupanov talks about  her work on Catholic Orientalism (part I) and her earlier books and work (part II). A little background noise, unfortunately!

-the BBC's Heart and Soul on contemporary conversions to Judaism.