Intersectional Things in the Early Modern World
An Interdisciplinary Projektpool-Workshop, Nov 19-20, 2026, University of Bern
*** EXTENDED Call: Please submit your abstracts by October 2, 2026 ***
We invite expressions of interest from early modernists at the University of Bern and other Swiss universities whose work engages with material culture.
How did things shape unequal social worlds, and how did unequal social worlds shape what things could do? Different people did not encounter the same things in the same ways. Access to objects (and their uses, meanings, and effects) was shaped by intersecting forms of social distinction and inequality, including gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability, religion, and social status. This workshop examines how such differences governed the roles that things played in everyday life, religious practice, political culture, domestic settings, commerce, medicine, and beyond.
We are particularly interested in close studies of objects, collections, practices, spaces, and archives that explore these questions. At the same time, the workshop provides an opportunity to reflect on broader conceptual implications. What happens when intersectional approaches meet recent work on material agency and/or multispecies history? How may an intersectional approach—designed to analyse inequalities among people—change when the things under investigation are themselves treated as agents, environments, companions, living non-human beings, or spirited things?
Our aim is not to revolve these questions, but to explore them across disciplinary boundaries. To that end, we welcome both theoretically informed contributions and empirically grounded case studies. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Minority and subaltern perspectives on material culture
Objects in Disability Studies and the Medical Humanities
Material culture across the life cycle and between generations
Gendered material cultures
Objects of exclusion, sumptuary marking, and contested access
Human-non-human and multispecies entanglements
Participants will pre-circulate a draft of up to 2,000 words (in English) and give a five- to ten-minute lightning talk, followed by extended discussion. Drafts may take the form of an expanded abstract, paper outline, introduction, or section of a work in progress. Workshop participation is open to all contingent members of the University of Bern, including PhD students/candidates. Permanent members of staff are invited to participate in the discussion and keynote lectures.
Please submit an abstract (max. 250 words), a provisional title, and a short biographical note (max. 150 words) to Lavinia Gambini (lavinia.gambini@unibe.ch) and Andreas Berger (andreas.berger-gehringer@unibe.ch) by October 2, 2026. Drafts will be due by November 6, 2026, and circulated shortly thereafter on November 9, 2026.
This workshop is generously supported by the Promotion Fund (Projektpool) for networking activities for mid-level academic staff of the University of Bern.