How did ordinary people acquire and use goods before the modern era’s mass production and the department store? Recent research on the origins of consumerism in Great Britain, France, the Low Countries and North America has shown the ways that it revolutionized those societies. This is a call for individual papers or panel proposals on all aspects of the study of Early Modern German consumption: topical, methodological, and theoretical. Fashion, taste, consumer preferences, consumer aspirations, habits and modes of consumption, individual vs. household consumption, luxury vs. necessity, “new luxury” vs. “old luxury,” moral codes and legal controls on consumer behavior, disposability vs. durability; these are a few of the possible issues this call for proposals hopes to raise.

Please send proposals and a brief CV by January 15, 2011 via email to Ann Le Bar (alebar@ewu.edu). Questions about this CFP may be directed either to Ann Le Bar or Eve Rosenhaft (dan85@liverpool.ac.uk).