What is an Academy? Early Modern Learned Societies in a Transcultural Perspective

The conference sets out to challenge certain broadly accepted assumptions about early modern academies. We propose to revisit the fundamental question of what qualifies an institution of learning as an ‘academy’ in the early modern period. What were the structures, functions, and especially the forms of communication specific to academies and how did they differ from or converge with comparable institutions of learned sociability such as humanist sodalitates, private learned circles, Masonic lodges, salons, or tertulias? What genealogies and models informed the idea of the institution, and how did they relate to the actual practices of a given academy? What was the relationship between academies and the universities and what role did the oft-neglected transfer of knowledge between these institutions play? And how did the Enlightenment affect this history?

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