Space and Conversion in Global Perspective: (35 Intersections)

Space and Conversion in Global Perspective examines experiences of conversion as they intersect with physical location, mobility, and interiority. The volume’s innovative approach is global and encompasses multiple religious traditions. Conversion emerges as a powerful force in early modern globalization. In thirteen essays, the book ranges from the urban settings of Granada and Cuzco to mission stations in Latin America and South India; from villages in Ottoman Palestine and Middle-Volga Russia to Italian hospitals and city squares; and from Atlantic slave ships to the inner life of a Muslim turned Jesuit. Drawing on extensive archival and iconographic materials, this collection invites scholars to rethink conversion in light of the spatial turn. Contributors are: Paolo Aranha, Emanuele Colombo, Irene Fosi, Mercedes García-Arenal, Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Aliocha Maldavsky, Giuseppe Marcocci, Susana Bastos Mateus, Adriano Prosperi, Gabriela Ramos, Rocco Sacconaghi, Felicita Tramontana, Guillermo Wilde, and Oxana Zemtsova.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Notes on the Editors Notes on the Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction: Space, Conversion, and Global History GIUSEPPE MARCOCCI, WIETSE DE BOER, ALIOCHA MALDAVSKY, ILARIA PAVAN PART ONE: CITY AND COUNTRY Granada as a New Jerusalem: The Conversion of a City MERCEDES GARCÍA-ARENAL Conversion on the Scaffold: Italian Practices in European Context ADRIANO PROSPERI The Incas of Cuzco and the Transformation of Sacred Space under Spanish Colonial Rule GABRIELA RAMOS The Spread of Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Palestinian Villages FELICITA TRAMONTANA Christian Missionaries and Jewish Spaces: British Missions in the Kingdom of Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century AGNIESZKA JAGODZIŃSKA PART TWO: SEGREGATION AND PERMEABILITY The Citadel of the Lost Souls: Spaces of Orthodoxy and Penance in Sixteenth-Century Lisbon SUSANA BASTOS MATEUS The Hospital as a Space of Conversion: Roman Examples from the Seventeenth Century IRENE FOSI The Political Dimension of Space-Time Categories in the Jesuit Missions of Paraguay (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) GUILLERMO WILDE The Social and Physical Spaces of the Malabar Rites Controversy PAOLO ARANHA PART THREE: DISTANCE AND MOBILITY Saltwater Conversion: Trans-Oceanic Sailing and Religious Transformation in the Iberian World GIUSEPPE MARCOCCI Giving for the Mission: The encomenderos and Christian Space in the Late Sixteenth-Century Andes ALIOCHA MALDAVSKY Telling the Untellable: The Geography of Conversion of a Muslim Jesuit EMANUELE COLOMBO AND ROCCO SACCONAGHI Confessional Rivals: Conversions and Apostasies in the Middle-Volga Region of the Russian Empire (Nineteenth Century) OXANA ZEMTSOVA   Index

About the Author :
Giuseppe Marcocci, Ph.D. (2008), Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, is Assistant Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Tuscia. He has published widely on the Portuguese world, including L’invenzione di un impero: Politica e cultura nel mondo portoghese, 1450-1600 (Carocci, 2011). Wietse de Boer, Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of History at Miami University (Ohio). His publications are focused on the Italian Counter-Reformation, most recently Religion and the Senses in Early Modern Europe (Intersections 26, 2013), co-edited with Christine Göttler. Aliocha Maldavsky, Ph.D. (2000), is Assistant Professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. She has published Vocaciones inciertas. Misión y misioneros en la provincia jesuita del Perú en los siglos XVI y XVII (CSIC-IFEA-Universidad Ruiz de Montoya, 2012). Ilaria Pavan, Ph.D. (2003), Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, is Assistant Professor of Late Modern History. She has published monographs, and many articles on Italian Jewish History in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Review :
"The editors are to be congratulated for bringing together a truly global range of perspectives and insights to stimulate what is still a new and vital field." – Simon Ditchfield, University of York, in: Journal of Jesuit Studies 2/3 (2015), pp. 493-499 [DOI: 10.1163/22141332-00203005-07]