The Medieval and Renaissance Studies program will host Charles Parker, a professor of history at St. Louis University, for a lecture, “Geographies of Salvation: Sacred Landscapes, Conversion, and Early Modern Religion, 1400-1800,” at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 29 in the Dudley Bailey Library, second floor of Andrews Hall.
The event is free and open to the public.
Parker’s talk will come from his new research project, which focuses on conflicts over space, including sacred space, in early modern missionary encounters. Parker will explain how the expansion of Christianity and Islam into new lands in the early modern period transformed expressions of religious belief and observance throughout many parts of the world.
Parker’s research suggests that missionary encounters affected the sites and people of conversion and brought important changes within Islam and Christianity.
Over his career, Parker’s work has focused primarily on the complex ways that individuals and communities in early modern Europe experienced and appropriated religious belief. His focus most recently has sought to find the global entanglements that reshaped all regions of the world.
As part of that aim, Parker is now working on multiple projects to find the influence of physical and cultural space on knowledge production and religious encounters.
Parker's recent book, "Global Calvinism: Conversion and Commerce in the Dutch Empire, 1600-1800," published in 2022, includes this research and focuses on Dutch Calvinism’s commitment to overseas missions and entanglements with commercial empire.
Parker's previous book, "Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400-1800," published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, serves as an introduction to cross-cultural encounters in the early modern age and their influences on the development of world societies.
Recently, Parker became the recipient of a Huntington Library fellowship, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University also recognized him as a Felix M. Gilbert Member of the School of Historical Studies.
