Recent historiographical trends of the British Studies (17th-18th centuries) - Cromohs Virtual Seminars

Cromohs (Cyber Review of Modern Historiography) is the result of a project begun in 1995, and is informed by the conviction that information technology applied to communications was destined to play a fundamental role in the field of humanities.

One of the main goals of Cromohs was to join together traditional resources for research (essays, book reviews, bibliographies), converted into electronic and hypertextual format, and new resources offered by the communication network, such as virtual seminars (on-line discussions concerning specific topics or texts, published on the internet site of the review) and a virtual library (Eliohs makes directly available on the www a collection of texts and sources relating to the history of modern historical culture).

Recent historiographical trends of the British Studies‚ will be the first virtual seminar hosted by Cromohs.

I) The promoters of the seminar (four early-career Italian scholars in early-modern British history: Mario Caricchio, Guglielmo Sanna, Giovanni Tarantino, and Stefano Villani) open the debate with a short essay on one of the following topics:

1. Radicalism and the English revolution

2. Britain 1660-1714: competing historiographies

3. The Church of England in the eighteenth century

4. Non-British readings of the English revolution

II) In a second stage (to be completed by June 2006), a series of short contributions (3000-6000 words) by experts in the field will be assembled with the purpose of widening the discussion. We hope to publish not just a bulk of authoritative papers, but a lively and comprehensive discussion, indeed a seminar. At present Glenn Burgess, William Gibson, Ariel Hessayon, Robert Ingram, Mark Knights and Gabi Mahlberg have agreed to participate in the seminar.

The seminar will then be open to new contributions by all interested scholars until the end of 2006.

III) Hopefully, a new ‘panel’ of the seminar will involve an online discussion of some of the more important issues raised by the papers presented at the conference Rediscovering Radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland, c. 1550-c. 1700: movements of people, texts and ideas‚ organised by Ariel Hessayon and Philip Baker and held at Goldsmiths College, University of London, 21 june-23 june,

http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/events/eventdetails.php?eventID=967

IV) Finally, the promoters will hold a workshop within the series of seminars organized by the Dipartimento di Studi Storici e Geografici of Florence “Laboratorio di storia moderna” and addressed to advanced students (8th june 2006), http://www3.unifi.it/dpssge/CMpro-v-p-84.html. Following this, a moderated forum should allow a subsequent enlargement of the debate through the comments and questions of students and scholars, in Italy and elsewhere.

We expect a large number of participants and a stimulating discussion.

Mario Caricchio,

Giovanni Tarantino