Who is interested in joining a panel on ‘Embodied Human Rights’ with me and Josephine Hoegaerts @singingarchives.bsky.social at ESSHC 2027 in Lyon?
Contact me at w.g.ruberg@uu.nl
esshc.iisg.amsterdam/en
14 maart presenteren Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, @jorritstee.bsky.social en ikzelf het boek 'De Utrechtse Historische Studentenkring 1926-2026: een eeuw verenigd door Geschiedenis'. Kom je ook naar de boekpresentatie in de Neudebieb? Meld je hier aan: forms.uu.nl/universiteit...
"Provincialising Weimar Culture" is out! @nwbaer.bsky.social, Britta Schilling and I edited a special issue for German Life and Letters on "local and global perspectives on interwar Germany": onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14680483....
Giving 2 talks today. First for our departmental seminar on shame, together with Zeger Verleye. And tonight in Amsterdam at Spui 25 I will be giving comments at the book launch of @singingarchives.bsky.social's new book Speaking, Stammering, Singing, Shouting: A Social History of the Modern Voice.
CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.
Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.
Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!
*to submit an abstract before 21/3
Early Modernists on Bluesky! Can someone provide me with bibliographical indications on fur trade in Central- and Eastern Europe in the sixteenth century?
Last week, I talked to Jana Byars about our book about the history of commercial sex in Belgium - have a listen (or read the book!) if you're interested!
In mijn nieuwste column voor @delagelanden.bsky.social gaat het over hersenwapens, waarheidsserum en menticide. Is de dreiging van hersenspoeling terug van nooit weggeweest? www.de-lage-landen.com/article/over...
To be fair, this particular tailor was not rich at all.
I just had to think very deeply how to translate "tailleur" in English, and, well, clearly the Assimil method is not so effective after all.
How do you know whether a suspect of a crime is guilty? Maybe, jurists & psychologists proposed around 1900, with a word association test. My new article on a predecessor of the lie detector in NTM @springernature.com has murder, jealous scientists and CG Jung! link.springer.com/article/10.1...
How do you know whether a suspect of a crime is guilty? Maybe, jurists & psychologists proposed around 1900, with a word association test. My new article on a predecessor of the lie detector in NTM @springernature.com has murder, jealous scientists and CG Jung! link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Heerlijk die foto!
‘𝐎𝐧𝐳𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐮𝐫 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐧: 𝐥𝐚𝐚𝐭 𝐎𝐧𝐬 𝐄𝐫𝐟𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐤𝐞𝐧’
de Volkskrant publiceert onze open brief waarin ruim 100 prominenten uit de cultuur- en mediasector, de academische wereld en het bedrijfsleven hun bezorgdheid uiten over de besparingen van Vlaanderen en Nederland op onze middelen.
Two hand-drawn images from a booklet. On the left page, a woman lies passed out next to a table with drinks and the text 'Ebria fui'. On the right page, a woman is vomiting, with an interested pig next to here and the text: 'Ebria fui usque ad vomitum'
You might have seen pictures from booklets depicting sins (including 'I drank so much I had to vomit'). But what was the purpose of these booklets and how many of them are there? Tine Van Osselaer and I sought it out in a new article that is now published: journals.lub.lu.se/STK/article/...
And some pictures of hell so you know why confessing is important.
For your pleasure, so more vomiting drinkers
Two hand-drawn images from a booklet. On the left page, a woman lies passed out next to a table with drinks and the text 'Ebria fui'. On the right page, a woman is vomiting, with an interested pig next to here and the text: 'Ebria fui usque ad vomitum'
You might have seen pictures from booklets depicting sins (including 'I drank so much I had to vomit'). But what was the purpose of these booklets and how many of them are there? Tine Van Osselaer and I sought it out in a new article that is now published: journals.lub.lu.se/STK/article/...
Screenshot of acknowledgments in an academic article, reading 'He even benefited from criticism by Professor Leonard Levy, although he cannot pretend that Levy found any part of the Article worth admiring.'
Always acknowledge your enemies.
VACATURE voor een doctoraatsonderzoeker aan de VUB (onderzoeksgroep Social History of Capitalism) en de UGent (Vakgroep Geschiedenis) in het FWO-project “Beschuldigingen en smaad op de dorpsvergadering: rurale perspectieven op sociale controle in Vlaanderen, ca. 1400–1600”.
Preliminary table of contents time!
A history of criminal interrogation in Europe, from Inquisition to AI. (Coming to you in the distant future.)
Preliminary table of contents time!
A history of criminal interrogation in Europe, from Inquisition to AI. (Coming to you in the distant future.)
@willemijnruberg.bsky.social
Oak, Samuel. "Pikachu." In: Pokédex. Pallet Town (Kanto): Oak's Lab, 1996.
(op de foto laat ik mijn innerlijke politieman bovenkomen)
Afgelopen nacht was ik terwijl u sliep te gast bij De Nacht van NTR Wetenschap op @nporadio1.bsky.social. Gelukkig is radio tegenwoordig multimediaal en kan je dat gewoon terugluisteren: over martelingen, leugentests, sigaretten en valse bekentenissen in de afgelopen 700 jaar
Ik schreef een recensie van de nieuwe boeken van @manongarcia.bsky.social en van Mathilde Levesque over het proces-Pelicot in de @groene.nl.
Het proces-Pelicot, of: hoe 51 verkrachters dingen zeiden als: ‘ik had geen keuze’ www.groene.nl/artikel/heel...
If you want to practice your Dutch 🙂 cultuurgeschiedenis.be/een-kleine-g...
Are you looking for a publisher for your manuscript in cultural history or heritage studies? We are setting up a new book series with Bloomsbury, titled Cultural History and Historical Culture.
