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Spiritualism/Freethinkers Symposium

Call for participation in the 2nd Spiritualism/Freethinkers Symposium July 10-11, 2019, Amsterdam – Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 

Following the success of the small symposium/workshop at the University of Toronto, March 15-16, 2019, we are aiming to bring together a small group of scholars working on the subject of spiritualists, spiritualism, religious nonconformists, and freethinking from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Our goal is to provide a venue for participants to share their research and test their interpretations in a small group setting. And, of course, to provide all of us in the field with the opportunity to compare and contrast our findings from various places and times.

We are at this moment planning on allowing presenters 30 minutes each for presentation with roughly 20 minutes for discussion. We are also hoping to have at least one roundtable or discussion forum. Your presentations need not, however, be fully formed papers, but can be works in progress. We are not identifying particular themes so as not to impede free thinking (but we all have specific questions in mind).

We are pleased to announce that we will have a keynote address by Professor Nigel Smith of Princeton University.

If you are planning to be in or near Amsterdam in July and would be interested in participating as a presenter or a discussant, please do let us know by May 1 (if you need time after that to develop a title if presenting, just let us know). At the moment we do not have sufficient funds to defray any real travel costs (we are working towards that for a future meeting in Canada), but we could arrange a Skype participation or two for those unable to make the meeting in person.

Future Plans (publication): We are planning one or two more of these symposia, with the ultimate goal of pulling together a number of presentations into a scholarly collection of essays to be submitted to an international academic press, but of course we will have a deadline sufficiently into the future to allow for completion of said pieces.

To indicate your interest in attending and to submit a proposal, or to ask any questions, simply send Gary Waite an email. If presenting, please include your proposed topic and a sentence or two about it (it does not have to be extensive, and can be altered afterward). We will be putting together the program as soon as possible after the May 1 deadline. If you would like to attend but not give a formal presentation, let us know.

Contact: Gary Waite (Amsterdamnified!) – waite@unb.ca


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Isabel Harvey (April 8, 2019). Spiritualism/Freethinkers Symposium. EMoDiR. Retrieved May 20, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/o82o


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