Emily Price

Conversation, Consumption, and Conversion in Early Modern Europe, c. 1580-1700

Emily's project offers a new perspective on how the Reformation affected identity by exploring how English and Scottish Protestants defended their confessional stances while travelling abroad.

It focusses on cross-confessional debates held over meals, encounters that juxtaposed the tradition of affording hospitality to strangers, along with the Eucharistic overtones of sharing food and drink, with fraught, even dangerous, discussions of religious difference.

The idea of gathering to dine, drink, and debate philosophical matters can be traced through the symposia of antiquity to Martin Luther’s Table Talks; Emily's project will explore how early modern Protestants drew on this trope when writing about their experiences in Europe and the New World. Moreover, by focussing on conversations conducted within private dwellings, this project will offer new insights into how reform impacted the home. Crossing a hosts’ threshold, guests entered into a space within which women conducted hosting rituals that exhibited their social status and charity.

Considering women’s roles in interconfessional conversations will further illuminate how religious differences were thought and talked about in Reformation-era Europe. By focussing on intimate moments where conversation and ritual met on the road, this project will complicate scholarly understanding of the intersections between travel, hospitality, and religious identity.