CFP: Renaissance Society of America Conference, Philadelphia, March 11-13, 2027
The Social Life of Textiles in the Early Modern Domestic Interior
In “Inalienable Possessions” Annette Weiner argues that “cloth occupies a special place in human history” for it “aesthetically and technologically transforms a natural substance into one that is culturally and symbolically complex.” This panel interrogates the complex cultural and symbolic roles of textiles in the early modern domestic interior. Furnishings, household inventories, prescriptive writings, books of secrets, artworks, letters, and diaries all bear witness to the important work of textiles in the social life of the home and the production of the spaces of domesticity. Within elite and humble dwellings, from its practical role in health and hygiene to its highly symbolic role in death rites, cloth was the fabric of social connection, making domestic life possible. Stored inside often massive household furnishings, cloth was present in family rituals from birth to death, cradle to grave. Subject to “loss, decay, and death” Wiener reminds us that cloth’s “woven-ness, and its potential for fraying and unraveling denote the vulnerability” in the very “acts of connectedness” it seeks to advance. This panel invites paper proposals that uncover the power, paradoxes, and precarity of cloth as place maker and medium of domestic connection within the early modern home.
Proposals must include:
- title (15-word maximum)
- abstract (200-word maximum)
- CV (2-page maximum)
- PhD or other terminal degree completion year (past or expected)
- 5 keywords
- full name, current affiliation, and email address.
Submission deadline: July 20, 2026. Email proposals to: Dr. Erin J. Campbell, erinjc@uvic.ca
Accepted applicants must be members of the RSA by the time they register for the conference. Graduate students must be within two years of defending their dissertations to be considered as speakers. Finally, at the request of the RSA conference organizers, individuals may submit paper proposals to only one CFP for consideration