How (and where) careers could be made in early modern Europe
A two-day conference at Vanderbildt University, Nashville, TE, investigated the complex and often contradictory ways in which early modern Hispanic women and men constructed, (re-)negotiated, and contested their identities in order to get on in life. Contesting Identities (http://baroque-identities.mcgill.ca/img/Nashville.2.pdf) gathered historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists from the US, Canada, Spain, Columbia, and the UK.
Liverpool historian, Dr Harald E. Braun, explored why the sons of sixteenth and seventeenth Italian noble and patrician families went to study at Spanish universities. To study abroad in early modern Europe was a challenge, very expensive, not without risk, and a real adventure for the curious. First and foremost, though, it was an opportunity to gain necessary qualifications, make useful contacts, and maintain or establish the student and his family more firmly within the powerful networks of the European political and cultural elites. The university could rank with princely courts and courts of law as one of the primary spaces where careers were made in early modern Europe. Contesting Identities was the final colloquium of the Hispanic Baroque Project (http://www.hispanicbaroque.ca/) a major interdisciplinary international research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.