Our past iterations have included the Early Modern Workshop, the Western Mediterranean Cultures Workshop, and the Early Modern and Mediterranean Worlds Workshop. While we now call ourselves the Workshop on the Early Modern World, our mission remains the same: to promote and facilitate engaging and critical scholarship on the early modern period, broadly construed, within the University of Chicago.

The Workshop on the Early Modern World brings together a diverse group of students and faculty who engage the early modern period (c. 1400-1800 CE) using a variety of languages, topics, geographies and disciplines. Our discussions emphasize the fundamental and growing connections between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas which characterized the early modern period for its denizens and continue to resound with its scholars. Furthermore, our work within a broad historical scope serves to engender critical engagement with the historical and cultural particularities of early modernity. Our temporal range makes our workshop a particularly compelling space for interrogating understandings of historical periodization and change over time, through the varied topics our presenters bring to our community. The complexity of the early modern era demands we as scholars develop strong interdisciplinary approaches and understandings of the diverse relations which shaped the period; interdisciplinarity and relationality help distinguish our workshop.

Our primary goal is for presenters–graduate students, faculty, university affiliates, and guests–to receive detailed feedback on written work in progress from the workshop’s attendees. Secondarily, we aim to generate interdisciplinary discussion which benefits presenters and attendees alike. Our community is broadly inclusive in terms of period, discipline, methodology, and geography. Most importantly, our workshop prioritizes a collaborative, generous spirit of inquiry which we believe is at the heart of the university’s longstanding workshop system. We strive to make our workshop welcoming to scholars across disciplines, ages, career stages, and points in the research process by creating an environment of substantive, rigorous feedback delivered with warmth and compassion. Our discussions grow through the inclusion of flash talk sessions, panel discussions, and roundtables when appropriate, alongside the traditional presentation format. We welcome attendees and presenters who help us push our scholarly boundaries, and work to develop generative and creative approaches to inquiry about the early modern world.