This special issue of Contemporanea aims to reflect on the mobility of political material culture, analysing how its circulation and transformation, both physical and symbolic in time and space, generated connections between contexts and movements, disseminated and popularised images and imagination, and redefined and influenced political sensibilities and practices during the long 19^th century. 

Argument

In recent decades, the 'material turn' in the social sciences and historiography has highlighted how material culture shaped the past social experiences of individuals, their worldviews, and political spheres. This approach has contributed to the renewal of political history by focusing on its most tangible aspects. It has also been shown to be particularly significant for the long 19^th century, a crucial moment in the development of modern politics. Artifacts of common and everyday use, clothing and personal accessories - such as rosettes, medals, and pins - along with various gadgets, technical and scientific instruments, and natural relics, were imbued with political meanings and messages, playing a central role in this process. Research has shown how these objects, operating on multiple dimensions - communicative, emotional, and performative - made political ideas tangible, aroused support and promoted mobilisation. 

A fundamental yet relatively unexplored characteristic of these objects is their intrinsic mobility - both in time and space. Whether handcrafted or more widely manufactured as consumer goods, political objects circulated through domestic and public spaces, often crossing national borders via local and global networks of production and trade. Nineteenth-century activism, driven by diverse demands across various contexts and shaped by transnational and imperial dynamics of mobility, dialogue and exchange, further facilitated and accelerated their movement. These objects circulated both physically - often evading censorship and restrictions - and through the symbols and figurative languages, iconography, and imagery they conveyed. In different contexts, objects and symbols could also be reworked, adapted, and reinterpreted for new uses and practices, which gave their mobility both a spatial and a temporal dimension. They thus became instruments capable of connecting different insurrectional centres across Europe, reaching peripheral areas, and fostering interaction between revolutionary cultures in the Euro-Atlantic space, and globally, while also connecting national and transnational counter-revolutionary movements. They played a significant role in shaping movements for nation-building, colonial and imperial expansion and their oppositions, debates around slavery and abolitionism, liberal, constitutional and democratic movements and their opponents, as well as social and women's rights activism. 

This special issue of Contemporanea aims to reflect on the mobility of political material culture, analysing how its circulation and transformation, both physical and symbolic, generated connections between contexts and movements, disseminated and popularised images and imagination, and redefined and influenced political sensibilities and practices during the long 19^th century. Contemporanea invites proposals that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:

•  Itineraries of moving political objects across local, transnational, imperial, and global scales, and their role in connecting different political spaces;
• Circuits of production, trade and consumption;
• Re-appropriation, re-use and reinterpretation in new contexts, meanings and practices;
• Obstacles to the mobility of objects, censorship, borders and confiscations;
• Objects as instruments of transnational mobilisation and the construction of political networks.

Submissison guidelines

Proposals of approximately 500 words, written in either English or Italian and accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae of the author, must be sent to the editors, Prof. Carlotta Sorba ( carlotta.sorba@unipd.it ) and Dr. Michele Magri ( michele.magri@unipd.it ), copying the journal's editorial office ( contemporanea@mulino.it )

by March 28, 2025

Selected essays must be submitted in their final form by October 4, 2025 and will be subject to a double-blind peer review process. The special issue is scheduled for publication in spring/summer 2026.

About the journal

Contemporanea, one of the most important historical journals in Italy, is indexed by: Web of Science (AHCI), Scopus Bibliographic Database, Historical Abstracts, America: History and Life, ERIH Plus, Articoli italiani di periodici accademici (AIDA), JournalSeek, Essper, Bibliografia storica nazionale, Analecta-Spoglio dei periodici italiani, Dialnet, Catalogo italiano dei periodici (ACNP), Google Scholar, Primo Central (ex Libris), EDS (EBSCO).

For more information about the journal, see: https://www.mulino.it/riviste/issn/1127-3070

Selection committee

• Prof. Carlotta Sorba (University of Padua / European University Institute)
• Dr Michele Magri (University of Padua)
• Prof. Emmanuel Betta (University of Rome La Sapienza)
• Prof. Laura Di Fiore (University of Naples Federico II)