François Soyer is a Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of New England (Armidale, NSW, Australia). From February 2016 until early 2018, he was a Partner Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions based at the University of Southampton where he was an Associate Professor in Late Medieval and Early Modern History. He initially joined the Centre in January 2012 as a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Adelaide, conducting research for his project 'Cultivating Fear and Hatred of the "Other": Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Vernacular Propaganda in Catholic Southern Europe (1500–1800)'. He is currently studying books and pamphlets that were published with the aim of promulgating fear and hatred of Jews and Muslims, analysing the development and nature of the rhetoric, arguments, images and vocabulary used to depict Muslims and Jews as inherently alien and hostile groups during the early modern period. He intends to demonstrate how the language of demonisation used in 'Hate literature' in modern-day Australia, Europe and North American has deep roots running back to early printed propaganda works. He is currently preparing the first critical edition, study and translation into English of the highly-influential seventeenth-century Spanish anti-Semitic bestseller and polemic of Fray Francisco de Torrejoncillo, Centinela contra Judios puesta en la torre de la Iglesia de Dios (Madrid, 1674).
Contact
francois.soyer@une.edu.au
The University of Southampton Staff Profile
Research
Cultivating Fear and Hatred of the "Other": Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Vernacular Propaganda in Catholic Southern Europe (1500–1800)
Selected Publications
Books
Soyer, F. J. Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Soyer, F. J. Popularizing Anti-Semitism in Early Modern Spain and its Empire. Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Centinela contra Judíos (1674). Leiden: Brill, 2014.
Soyer, F. J. A Perseguição aos Judeus e Muçulmanos de Portugal - D. Manuel I e o Fim da Tolerância Religiosa (1496‒1497). Lisbon: Edições 70, 2013.
Journal Articles
Soyer, F. J. ‘The Recycling of an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory into an Anti-Morisco One in Early Modern Spain: The Myth of El Vengador, the Serial-Killer Doctor’. eHumanista/Conversos 4 (2016): 233‒55.
Soyer, F. J. 'The Public Baptism of Muslims in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Forging Communal Identity through Collective Emotional Display'. Journal of Religious History 39.4 (2015): 506–23. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12270
Soyer, F. J. ‘Faith, Culture and Fear: Comparing Islamophobia in Early Modern Spain and Twenty-First-Century Europe’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 36.3 (2013): 399–416.
Book Chapters/ Encyclopedia Entries
Soyer, F. J. 'Ritualised Public Performance, Emotional Narratives and the Enactment of Power: The Public Baptism of a Muslim in Eighteenth-Century Barcelona'. In Emotion, Ritual and Power in Europe, 1200–1920: Family, State and Church, edited by M. Bailey and K. Barclay, pp. 103‒21. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Soyer, F. J. ‘Racial Othering – Jews’. In Early Modern Emotions: An Introduction, edited by S. Broomhall, pp. 297‒300. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.
Soyer, F. J. ‘Androgyny and the Fear of Demonic Intervention in the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula: Ecclesiastical and Popular Responses’. In Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100–1800, edited by S. Broomhall, pp. 245-62. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
‘Blood Purity Laws’. In Encyclopaedia of Race and Racism 2013, ISBN: 9780028661957.
‘Spain and its Empire, Migration and Emigration, c.1450-c.1750’. In Encyclopaedia of Global Human Migration 201, Online ISBN: 9781444351071, DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.
Selected Presentations
Montefiori Lecture: ‘Adapting Religious Hatred for a New Readership: Continuity and Change in Anti-Jewish Propaganda Printed in Early Modern Europe', Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish relations, University of Southampton, 14 February 2017.
Listen to the Montefiori lecture
Lecture: 'The Affective Politics of Fear in Early Modern Spain: The Recycling of an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory into an Anti-Muslim One’, The University of Sydney, 24 August 2016.
Seminar: ‘The Affective Politics of Fear in Early Modern Spain: The Recycling of an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory into an Anti-Muslim One’, The University of Adelaide, 19 August 2016.
Seminar: ‘The Affective Politics of Fear in Early Modern Spain: The Recycling of an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory into an anti-Muslim One', The University of Western Australia (UWA), 12 August 2016.
Public Lecture: 'Anger, Envy and Hatred: “Jewish Emotions” in Early Modern European anti-Semitic Polemics', UWA, 10 August 2016.
