Past FNI International Conferences

FNI has held six past conferences, in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2012, and 2015 each devoted to a particular facet of the historical experience in German Europe. With support generously granted by the Max Kade Foundation, DAAD, Duke University, the Josiah Charles Trent Foundation and other agencies, each of these conferences was a resounding success.

1995
The conference group's founding conference at Duke University took up the theme of Infinite Boundaries. The conference was organized by FNI President, Max Reinhart (German, University of Georgia). A selection of essays from that conference was published under the same title in 1998: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, edited by Max Reinhart (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998).

1998
Convening again at Duke University, FNI President James Van Horn Melton (History, Emory University), organzed the 2nd FNI International Conference: Cultures of Communication. Selected papers, revised and edited by James Van Horn Melton, appeared in 2002:Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, edited by James Van Horn Melton. (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2002.)

2001
In 2001, FNI president Mary Lindemann (History, Carnegie Mellon University) chose the theme of Ways of Knowing for the third conference, which was held at Carnegie-Mellon University. Selected conference papers have appeared in:Ways of Knowing: Ten Interdisciplinary Essays, edited by Mary Lindeman (Boston: Brill, 2004).

2005
In 2005, the fourth conference returned to Duke University. FNI President Randolph C. Head (History, University of California at Riverside) organized a program with nearly seventy scholars from Europe and the Americas that addressed the theme of Orthodoxies and Diversities in Early Modern German-speaking Europe. Selected papers from the conference have been collected in a volume of essays edited by Randolph Head and Daniel Christensen,Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies: Order and Creativity in Early Modern German Culture, 1500-1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

2008
The fifth conference was held at Duke University.  FNI President Lynne Tatlock (German, Washington University) organized the program on the theme of Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany.  Sixteen papers from the conference have been published as Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany – Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. Lynne Tatlock (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 

2012
The sixth conference was held at Duke University.  FNI President Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Art History, University of Texas) organized the program on the theme of Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany.  A selection of papers from the conference is forthcoming from Ashgate Press in 2014. 

2015
The eighth conference was held at Vanderbilt University. FNI President Joel Harrington (History, Vanderbilt University) organized the program on the theme of Names andh Naming in Early Modern Germany. A selection of papers from the conference is forthcoming. See the program for the 2015 conference here.

For details on the published conference essays see our Publications page.