STEPFAMILIES IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, 1400-1800
Conference in Budapest, Hungary, 30-31 May 2019
CALL FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE 30 SEPTEMBER 2018
Conference Themes:
- Counting stepfamilies – historical demography and the patterns of remarriage by widowed or divorced parents (ages of children, husband or wife and the second spouse, do stepchildren or 1st marriage children stay in the household? how is children’s life expectancy influenced by death of mother/father, remarriage of mother/father, presence of stepmother/stepfather and half-siblings, stepsiblings?)
- inheritance and the position of children of 1st, 2nd or 3rd marriage beds (half-siblings, stepsiblings) how does the legal and social position of heirs by marriage or remarriage compare to half-siblings outside of legal marriage (extramarital children by concubines, or premarital children brought into the marriage, or milk children)
- stepfamily stories in popular culture or cheap prints (fairy tales or religious stories such as Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael or the Golden Legend of Saint Anne and her three husbands or folktales such as Cinderella and Hachikazuki across cultures)
- the role of step–parents in the raising of children, expectations, norms and practices
- early modern stepfamilies in cultures with divorce and remarriage as well as widowhood
- domestic arrangements(coresidence patterns) and household types (stem family, multigenerational family, single family, extended family, spouse and concurrent partners)
- cultural exchanges between family members (the exchange of letters, children, visits, gifts);the dynamics of law and emotions in shaping stepfamily relations
- visual sources of stepfamily life (funerary monuments, epitaph portraits, woodcuts and broadsheets, vernacular paintings of domestic life)
Starting with the conference as a foundation for discussion, there are possibilities for some papers to be… read more