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Call for Papers
International Workshop
The Cultural Legacies of Corruption in Europe, 1500-today
New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study
Bucharest
April 5-6, 2027
Keywords: Corruption, Material Culture, Artistic culture, Cultural legacies, Infrastructure, Early Modern Europe, Modern Europe.
The workshop addresses the material, literary and visual cultures associated with ‘corruption’ (broadly conceived) and their legacies based on three main themes:
1. The materiality of corruption. Priority will be given to studies that reflect on monuments, gardens, and buildings—both public and private—, small objects (jewellery, art) and billy-clubs used for electoral influence or fraud that have resulted from illicit enrichment (gifts, misappropriation of funds, bribery).
2. Infrastructure and corruption. Here, the focus will be more specifically on the relationship between corruption and state-building, examining how public concessions (railways, maritime routes, road networks, or airports) were awarded, as well as the close entanglement between public officials and financial groups, speculators, and lobbying interests. Accordingly, approaches that highlight the conduct of these actors will be particularly valued.
3. The visual and literary representations of corruption. In this section, the aim is to highlight the cultural dimension of corruption from a twofold perspective. First, the value of caricatures, visual satire, and artistic and literary works and representations as sources for the historicization of corruption. Second, the various representations of figures such as the speculator, the nouveau riche, the plutocrat, or the corrupt politician.
Relatively little attention has been paid to these dimensions of corrupt practices. Nor has there been much debate about how to explain such cultural legacies to modern audiences. We hope that papers will address and reflect on some of the following questions:
- An interdisciplinary dialogue among historians, literary scholars, art historians, and social scientists on corruption.
- Whether a distinct material culture of corruption existed, including objects, sites, and spaces linked to illicit practices.
- How such markers of corruption evolved over time and how “corrupt” assets were concealed or legitimized.
- The role of gifts, bribes, and their display, as well as the material legacy of corrupt wealth in buildings and landscapes.
- The connections between corruption and infrastructure, including public concessions, scandals, and shifting notions of public vs. private.
- How corruption was denounced, narrated, and compared across contexts, including language, emotions, and perceptions of failure.
- Cultural representations of corruption in art and literature, their transnational circulation, and their impact on public opinion and reform movements.
If necessary, the organizers will reimburse travel expenses and provide accommodation. In such cases, please contact Gențiana Avrigeanu ([email protected]) in order to follow the required procedures.
We welcome proposals of ca. 500 words (for 20-minute presentations) concerning these topics, to be submitted, along with a short CV, by 1 September 2026. The submissions should be sent to [email protected].
The organisers intend to collect selected papers into an edited volume to be published with an international publisher.