From Coronation to Chari-Vari: The Many Uses of Ritual and Ceremony in the Early Modern World

A one-day colloquium at Birkbeck, University of London

Thursday 23rd September 2010 6.30 pm
Location: Birkbeck, University of London, room tbc
Key-note speaker: Professor Jeroen Duindam, of Groningen University

Prof. Duindam is an expert on early modern rituals and has published Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780 (Cambridge, 2003) and Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam 1995). At the moment he is co-editing Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective (Brill Leiden, 2010). This event is free to attend and open to all, and will be followed by a party.

Colloquium

Date: Friday 24th September 2010 6.30 pm
Location: Birkbeck, University of London, room tbc

As part of Birkbeck's thriving research culture, this event will bring together scholars to discuss the purpose and reception of ritual and ceremony in the early modern period. Early modern life was shaped by ritual and ceremony. These rites had many functions, such as marking time, denoting power, place and order, and defining the sacred. Ritual could provide a temporary release from the hierarchically ordered world or mark an attempt to assert and confirm social categories which were otherwise potentially unstable.