Silver, Spices, and the Slave Trade: The Coymans Family and Dutch Entrepreneurship in the Spanish Americas (1580-1700) explains how Amsterdam entrepreneurs, specifically the Coymans family, built prof...

The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War (CRSW) is pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded AHRC doctoral studentship, to be jointly supervised across History and War Studies

CfP: Claiming the Exotic: Negotiating Material Difference in the Early Modern World (RSA Panel Proposal) The Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 11-13 March 2027 When was an object “exotic,” and who got to say so? In the early modern world, foreignness was rarely a settled fact about a thing. It was a claim that could be asserted or downplayed, used to sharpen or blur distinctions, believed, doubted, or ignored, depending on the speaker, audience, and occasion.  This panel explores how individuals put the origins, provenance, and perceived foreignness of things and materials into words and practice, and how social relations—from one-off encounters and intimate exchanges to circles, networks, and wider communities—shaped the terms they chose and were available to them. Building on scholars like Anna Grasskamp, Jessica Keating, Lia Markey, Kate Lowe, and others, this panel investigates the uses (and misuses) of exoticizing and othering terms and vocabulary, asking how these were often variable, situational, and open to contest. Social negotiations could not only shape how objects were described, but also how they were valued, exchanged, collected, displayed, and used. We seek to bring contributors from across disciplines into conversation about what was at stake when people deployed, withheld, or disputed exoticizing claims. We particularly welcome papers from early-career scholars, including graduate students and independent scholars, on topics including (but not limited to): * The availability, precision, and vagueness of exoticizing descriptors * Non-knowledge, uncertainty, and ignorance about the origin and provenance of things * Strategies for making objects more (or less) desirable and acceptable * Who could define a thing as exotic, and how such claims were contested To apply, please submit a short abstract (max. 200 words), a title (max. 15 words), and a brief bio (max. 100 words), along with your PhD or terminal degree date (past/expected), primary discipline, full name, affiliation, email address, and a CV (max. 2 pages) by July 20, 2026. Organisers: Lavinia Gambini, Andreas Berger   Organisiert von Lavinia Gambini, Andreas Berger (University of Bern) EK 16. Juni 2026 [email protected]

As the title suggests, the provocation of this Supplement is simple: that the histories of medicine, transatlantic slavery, and race cannot, and should not