Susanna Burghartz – författare

This collection embraces the increasing interest in the material world of the Renaissance and the early modern period, which has both fascinated contemporaries and initiated in recent years a distinguished historiography. The scholarship within is distinctive for engaging with the agentive qualities of matter, showing how affective dimensions in history connect with material history, and exploring the religious and cultural identity dimensions of the use of materials and artefacts. It thus aims to refocus our understanding of the meaning of the material world in this period by centring on the vibrancy of matter itself. To achieve this goal, the authors approach the material through four themes, glass, feathers, gold paints, and veils, in relation to specific individuals, material milieus, and interpretative communities. In examining these four types of materialities and object groups, which were attached to different sensory regimes and valorizations, this book charts how each underwent significant changes during this period.

This book explores the dynamic relationships between sites, peoples, objects, and images during the first age of globalization in early modern Europe. It investigates interactions, interconnections, and entanglements on both micro and macro levels, and aims to understand the specific dynamics of processes of translocal and transcultural intersection. Linking global perspectives with the history of material culture, Sites of Mediation highlights the potential of objects, artefacts, and things to connect (urban) cultures and imaginaries. Individual chapters focus on a number of European cities, which all operated on different levels of global and interregional connections and are presented here as sites of connectivity, encounters, and exchange.Contributors are: Tina Asmussen, Nadia Baadj, Benedikt Bego-Ghina, Davina Benkert, Daniela Bleichmar, Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart, Christine Göttler, Franziska Hilfiker, Nicolai Kölmel, Ivo Raband, Jennifer Rabe, Antonella Romano, Michael Schaffner, Sarah-Maria Schober, Claudia Swan, and Stefanie Wyssenbach.

This collection engages with the agentive qualities of matter and it shows how affective dimensions in history connect with material history. It also explores the religious and cultural identity dimensions of the use of materials and artefacts.