Michaël Green

Michaël Green is professor at the Filip Friedman Centre for Jewish Studies and director of the Centre for Self-Narratives at the University of Lodz, as well as co-head of the International Egodocumental Network and fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain. His specialisation lies at the intersection of social, cultural, and religious history of the early modern period, with particular emphasis on the notions of privacy and personal sources. He is currently working on source edition of an early modern Danish text, as well as on synthesis of egodocumental approaches from across Europe.

The project

Title: "Private Writings in Early Modern Europe: A Comparative Approach to Practices of the Self and the Formation of Subjectivity"

"This project forms part of a broader reflection on the nature of private life in the early modern period, understood not as a self-evident category but as a historical, social, and cultural construct. Ego-documents, including personal diaries, correspondence, memoirs, autobiographies, and other forms of self-writing, constitute a particularly valuable source base in this respect. They make it possible to examine how individuals perceive and narrate their own experiences, while also revealing the normative and collective frameworks within which such narratives are shaped. One of the project's central assumptions is that these writings should not be viewed solely as individual testimonies, but rather as complex social objects situated at the intersection of multiple logics: religious, cultural, familial, and institutional. As such, they provide an especially rich entry point for exploring processes of self-formation, modes of subjectivation, and the relationships between the private and public spheres. From this perspective, particular attention will be paid to the religious dimension of personal writings. In early modern societies, self-expression was often profoundly shaped by confessional frameworks, which influenced writing practices, modes of introspection, and ways of narrating experience."

Hosting Institution(s): Centre Roland Mounier - Sorbonne Université

Selective Bibliography

• M. Green, “Looking for Early Modern Egodocuments as Sources for Privacy Research in the Archives: Some Observations”, in Privacy in Early Modern Egodocuments: Personal Lives in Historical Perspective, M. Green, J. Orzeł, Anna Kowalcze-Pawlik (eds.), series: Studies in the History of Privacy, vol. 1, Leiden: Brill, 2026, 18-39.
• M. Green, “‘For My Personal Use’: Notions of Privacy in Egodocuments from Early Modern Amsterdam”, in Private Life and Privacy in Early Modern Low Countries, M. Green, I. Huysman (eds.), series: Early European Culture, vol. 19, Turnhout: Brepols (2023): 27-62. Peer-reviewed.
• M. Green, “Public and Private in Jewish Egodocuments of Amsterdam (ca. 1680–1830)”, in Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches, M. Green, L.C. Nørgaard, M. Birkedal Bruun (eds.), Leiden, Boston: Brill (2022): 213-242. Peer-reviewed.
• M. Green, “Private and Public Decisions of the Walloon Consistories in the United Provinces”, in Reformation & Renaissance Review, vol. 26: 1 (2024): 38-53. Peer-reviewed.
• M. Green, “Jean Crosnier and the Image of Amsterdam in L’Année Burlesque (1682)”, Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, vol. 47: 3 (2023): 210-225. Peer-reviewed
• M. Green, An Interreligious Dialogue: Portrayal of Jews in Dutch French-Language Periodicals (1680-1715), Lodz: Lodz University Press, Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2022. 126pp.