Publications

NEW: Special Issue of CHRC

NEW: Special Issue of CHRC

We are pleased to announce the publication of a Special Issue of Church History and Religious Culture (101: 2-3) that will be released in late July 2021. The theme is “Spiritualism in Early Modern Europe.”

The collection features essays by Theo Brok, Michael Driedger, William Cook Miller, Francesco Quatrini, Nina Schroeder, Anselm Schubert, Christine Schulte am Hülse, Nigel Smith, James Stayer, Stefano Villani, Hans de Waardt, and Gary Waite. The guest editorial team consists of Driedger, Quatrini, Schroeder, and Waite. In addition to spiritualist cultures among Protestants in post-reformation England, Germany, and the Low Countries (approx. 1521-1721), the collection will be of interest to scholars of religious dissent and nonconformity, the variety of ways that researchers discuss “radicalism” in early modern religious cultures, and the debates about “the Radical Reformation” and “the Radical Enlightenment.”

You can link to the Special Issue by going to https://brill.com/view/journals/chrc/101/2-3/chrchttps://brill.com/view/journals/chrc/101/2-3/chrc.101.issue-2-3.xml. There you can find free downloads of the Special Issue introduction, plus several other Open Access articles. All of the other articles are available to CHRC subscribers, and the articles will soon be available through university library connections (after the embargo period).

The collection began at a symposium in Amsterdam in the summer of 2019. Other symposium contributors who have published related work in other venues and are therefore worthy of special attention from readers of this collection are:

We recommend their work highly!

The guest editorial team would like to thank the journal’s editors and production staff (Ward Holder and Dieuwertje Kooij in particular) for their work in guiding this collection from a proposal to publication!

Amsterdamnified Working Group Meeting (March 2019)

Amsterdamnified Working Group Meeting (March 2019)

In March 2019 the Amsterdamnified team leaders (Waite and Driedger) hosted a symposium for project members and a small number of guests. The meeting was scheduled for March 15 and 16, that is, the days immediately before the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting in Toronto (March 17-19). The local organization in Toronto was arranged by Sébastien Drouin. A special thanks to Sébastien for his work!

Hair(esy): Hirsute Histories, featuring Gary Waite

Hair(esy): Hirsute Histories, featuring Gary Waite

In previous years we have had a blog post on this site on the theme of “Hair(esy) and Heresy.” A reason for the post was to publicize Gary Waite’s essay on

  • “Early Modern Hair: Religion and Ritualized Belief,” in A Cultural History of Hair, vol. 3: A Cultural History of Hair in the Renaissance (1450-1650), ed. Edith Snook (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018), 17-37, 159-62.

Reflecting on the research behind the essay, Waite writes:

My recent work on the religious and magical beliefs about hair has revealed to me that something that seems so prosaic can have much deeper meaning. From the late medieval witch with her wild hair to the naked walkers of Amsterdam to the Dutch spiritualist David Joris and to English Puritans, for a few examples, hair signified much more than fashion.

Perhaps my interest in the subject is compensation for having very little of the stuff myself?

Gary K. Waite (2018)

September 2017 conference

September 2017 conference

From the 27th to the 30th of September several members of the Amsterdamnified Research Team (Ace Gammon-Burnett, Nina Schroeder, Gary Waite, and Mike Driedger) participated in an international conference organized by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in Toronto. Three team members (Waite, Schroeder, and Driedger) even held an Amsterdamnified panel, which was chaired by friend and advisor to the Project, Prof. Piet Visser of Amsterdam. For details about the conference, go to https://crrs.ca/event/global-reformations-2017/.

2017 Essay Collection

2017 Essay Collection

Below is the table of contents for the just-published collection of essays from a Sept. 2016 conference at London’s German Historical Institute (GHI):

  • Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform, edited by Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2017).

The conference was very productive for promoting dialogue among the invited researchers, but we want to open up the debate. The publication will, we hope, spark a broader set of discussions. Please feel free to join our debates online. (UPDATE 2021: In the introductory essay to the Special Issue of Church History and Religious Culture 101: 2-3, Gary Waite and Mike Driedger revisit many of the issues they began addressing in the 2016 GHI conference; see the announcement elsewhere on this website for details).

Three Amsterdamnified team members have essays in Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform:

  • Gary Waite, “The Drama of the Two-Word Debate among Liberal Dutch Mennonites, ca. 1620-1660: Preparing the Way for Baruch Spinoza?”
  • Mirjam van Veen, “Dutch Anabaptist and Reformed Historiographers on Servetus’ Death: Or How the Radical Reformation Turned Mainstream and How the Mainstream Reformation Turned Radical”
  • Mike Driedger, “Against ‘the Radical Reformation’: On the Continuity between Early Modern Heresy-Making and Modern Historiography”