Shaping Europe: Imagined Spaces and Cultural Transactions 1450 - 1700 is the subject of a series of three summer schools to be held at the Universities of Basel, Sussex and Frankfurt from 2010 to 2012. The summer schools are organised by Susanna Burghartz, Basel, Gisela Engel, Frankfurt, Ina Habermann, Basel, Margaret Healy, Sussex, Tom Healy, Sussex and Susanne Scholz, Frankfurt.

From a historical moment at which Europe – both as a concept and as a geopolitical entity – is redefining its boundaries and its political status, these summer schools will look back to the time when the values, institutions and spatial boundaries of what is today seen as European emerged. The thematic focus will be on ways in which early modern subjects, groups and institutions shaped the spaces they lived in, and how  they produced and negotiated social, cultural and political structures through the interaction of texts and images, the transfer of ideas, values and material objects, as well as rites of inclusion and exclusion.

The summer school aims to bring together graduate students and leading academics who will investigate these issues through a series of seminars and lectures with an emphasis on intense debate and an interdisciplinary approach to literature, history, art history and the history of science.

The Basel summer school is supported by the Basel Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies and the Department of History, University of Basel.

Due to a lack of funding at Sussex and Frankfurt the Basel Summer School will unfortunately remain the only one (in a planned series of three). The other two summer schools would have focused on “Fields of Exchange” (University of Sussex, United Kingdom, early September 2011) and “Contested Spaces” (University of Frankfurt/Main, Germany, early September 2012).

Report on the Summer School by participants Tina Asmussen, Franziska Hilfiker and Anja Rathman Lutz.