Students and faculty from the Medieval Studies and History Departments joined fellow early modernists from King’s College London, Münster University, and Sabanci University Istanbul to discuss early modern legal history at the annual Early Modern History Workshop that took place at Princeton University this year. The students presented papers on a wide variety of related topics, from old-school German Rechtsgeschichte, through studies of the evolving relationship between law, deviance, and society between 1500-1800, to the study of particular genres of sources (relation, interrogation protocols) and specific legal cases, rituals of legal procedure, trials, the anthropology of law etc. At the heart of the discussions was the evolution of the legal sphere in the early modern period and the way it affected (and was affected by) individuals, communities, and organisations, including empires and states.
The Early Modern History Workshop is a collaborative research experiment, a week-long summer school in which postgraduate students and faculty from leading universities interrogate current approaches to the discipline of Early Modern History and grapple with pressing methodological questions. The Early Modern History Workshop began in 2011 as an informal initiative between the universities of Princeton, Oxford, and Münster. The first workshop was in Oxford, hosted by St John’s College’s Research Centre. Since then, it has expanded to include Sabanci University Istanbul, CEU Budapest and King’s College London. In 2018, already in its eighth year, the workshop returned to Princeton. For more information on previous topics and programmes, see here.
CEU Early Modern Studies (EMS) is supported by the CEU Humanities Initiative.