The Phenomenon of the Cross in an Age of Reform

This CFP is seeking abstracts for a panel-proposal to the Sixteenth Century Society Conference (SCSC), to be held October 26-29, 2017, in Milwaukee, WI. <http://www.sixteenthcentury.org/conference/>. Abstracts that are accepted will then be submitted to the SCSC for consideration.

In the sixteenth century, no matter how believers identified themselves in matters of religion, no matter where along the spectrum of religious identity, whatever their shade of Protestant or Catholic, and no matter how they regarded sacred objects, whether as iconodules or iconoclasts, or somewhere in between, the cross was a phenomenon saturated with meaning, making it what some scholars have called “a site of conflict and contest,” that is, an unstable boundary along which beliefs were constituted and reconstituted.

In this panel, we will examine the cross as we discover it in the sixteenth century, not only in the context of religious culture, but more generally as well, in other areas like the fine arts, literature, history, and philosophy. The aim is to gather scholars who are interested in a discussion that cuts across academic disciplines.

By April 9, 2017, please submit abstracts of 250 words, along with a 150-word academic bio that includes affiliation, rank, and one or two important publications or other evidence of scholarship. Send to Paul Stapleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stapleton@unc.edu. Decisions will be rendered shortly after the deadline so that the panel proposal can then be submitted to the Sixteenth Century Society Conference committee by its deadline of April 15, 2017. The SCSC will respond by mid-May. Thank you.