Conference: Icons and Iconoclasts: The Long Seventeenth Century, 1603 to 1714

20 July - 22 July, 2006

Contact by email: 1603@abdn.ac.uk
King's College, University of Aberdeen

Plenary Lectures:
Professor Catherine Belsey (Cardiff): ‘Shakespeare as Icon’
Professor Peter Burke (Cambridge): 'Was the 17th Century an Age of Crisis?’
Professor Annabel Patterson (Yale) ‘Swansong: The Human Voice of History’

This international and interdisciplinary conference embraces the long Seventeenth Century in Britain, America, and Europe. We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on any aspect of literature, science, philosophy, culture, and history during the period up to 1714. They should be sent by email to the conference organizer, Professor Derek Hughes, by 28 February, 2006. Every effort will be made to accommodate early applicants who require a decision before that date.

The conference will be held in the King's College Centre, adjacent to the University’s beautiful early sixteenth-century chapel. King's College is one of the last Medieval universities; it amalgamated with Marischal College to form the University of Aberdeen. With its extensive collection of incunabula and manuscripts, it forms a perfect setting for a conference on the Early Modern period. There will be an optional excursion to Fyvie Castle on the afternoon of 21 July.

Aberdeen is situated on the North Sea coast, and a convenient point of departure for the Highlands and the Orkneys. The airport (with direct flights to London) is only five miles from the university, and there are direct trains to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other Scottish cities.

Exploring the Renaissance 2007: An International Conference

San Antonio, Texas
March 8-10, 2007

St. Anthony Hotel

Keynote Lecturer, Asuncion Lavrin, Arizona State University
Louis L. Martz Lecturer, Annabel Patterson, Yale University
William B. Hunter Lecturer, Regina Schwartz, Northwestern University

Papers (15-20 minutes in length) are invited on any aspect of Renaissance studies (history, art history, literature, music, philosophy, science, theology). Abstracts only (400-500 words; a shorter 100-word abstract for inclusion in the 2007 program) must be submitted online no later than December 1, 2006 via the SCRC website's abstract submission form. (See http:www.scrc.us.com for link.)

Sessions: sessions should be proposed no later than November 1, 2006. Abstracts of papers for approved sessions should be submitted online via the SCRC website's abstract form. For further conference information, visit our website
(http://www.scrc.us.com) or contact the program chair:

Christopher Baker
bakerchr@mail.armstrong.edu
Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy
Armstrong Atlantic State University
11935 Abercorn St., Savannah, GA 31419

Phone: 912-921-5618
Fax: 912-927-5399

Program participants are required to join SCRC and are encouraged to submit publication-length versions of their papers to the SCRC journal, Explorations in Renaissance Culture.

A limited number of graduate travel fellowships are available; graduate students presenting a paper at the 2007 conference may apply to the program chair for travel assistance (maximum $250). Complete essays must be submitted electronically by February 1 to be eligible for consideration. See the graduate travel fellowships page for instructions on how to apply. (From the SCRC home page, click "Announcements" and "Graduate Student Travel Fellowships.")

Sponsored by:
* The South-Central Renaissance Conference
* The Queen Elizabeth I Society
* The Marvell Society
* The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
* The Society for Renaissance Art History

A Tudor Question

Mike Pincombe writes ...

Has anyone heard of a mid-Tudor author called Frances NEWPORT? She wrote an epitaph on Dorothy Wynnes in 1560. I am sure somebody must have written about her, but I don’t know where to look. Any guidance wd be gratefully followed.

Mike.Pincombe@newcastle.ac.uk

The Society for Renaissance Studies Conference

Second National Conference at The University of Edinburgh, 6 to 8 July 2006

Plenary Speakers: Prof. Judith Bryce (Bristol), Prof. John Monfasani (SUNY at Albany/Renaissance Society of America), and Prof. William H. Sherman (Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, York)

Plenary Events: National Gallery of Scotland; National Library of Scotland; Old College, Edinburgh

http://www2.sas.ac.uk/srs/

Building on the success of the first national conference in Bristol in 2003 this event will once again provide an occasion for Renaissance scholars to meet and present their research. The conference programme and registration details can be found at: http://www2.sas.ac.uk/srs/SRSConferenceProgramme2006.html

For general enquiries.: Dr Stephen Bowd, University of Edinburgh, School of History and Classics, William Robertson Building, 50 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JY, Stephen.Bowd@ed.ac.uk

Call for Proposals (Special Journal Issue): George GASCOIGNE

With the increased interest in George Gascoigne demonstrated in recent years and with the approach of the 430th anniversary of his death, now seems an opportune moment to gather new essays that focus on the poet's life and work.

To that end, Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) is publishing a special issue on George Gascoigne and invites essay submissions that address his life, work, or influence.

Proposals will be accepted until 21 November 2006, and final articles will be due 15 February 2007. Essays should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words in length, should not be submitted elsewhere, and should not have been previously published. The special issue of EMLS on Gascoigne will be published in either spring or fall 2007.

Please submit proposals to Dr. Stephen Hamrick, hamrick@mnstate.edu. Early Modern Literary Studies (ISSN 1201-2459) is a refereed journal serving as a formal arena for scholarly discussion and as an academic resource for researchers in the area.  http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls

Shakespeare

CALL FOR PAPERS

Fifteenth Annual California State University Shakespeare Symposium
CSU Long Beach, 90840
Saturday November 4, 2006

Abstracts for 15-minute papers are invited for the Fifteenth Annual California State University Shakespeare Symposium.

Papers may discuss, but are not limited to: Shakespeare and theory; Shakespeare in a global environment; Shakespeare and non-print media (including film); Shakespeare and performance; Shakespeare and the internet; Shakespeare after 1623; Shakespeare’s contemporaries; Shakespeare and the playing companies; Shakespeare and the visual arts; Shakespeare and London; Shakespeare and the question of Britain; Royal Shakespeare; Shakespeare’s theaters; Transmission of play-texts; Editing Shakespeare.

There will also be one or more pedagogy roundtables, depending on submissions (organized around genre, topic, or method), to discuss teaching Shakespeare at two-year and four-year colleges in survey and specialized courses.

Please send 200-300 word abstracts with a title and clear thesis or working argument and a 1-page resume by Saturday September 16, 2006 to:

Lloyd Kermode at lkermode@csulb.edu
Associate Professor, Department of English, Co-Director, CSULB Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

(Abstracts submitted before September 1 will be acknowledged by return. Abstracts submitted between September 1 and September 16 will all be acknowledged on September 16.)

"Orlando in Love"

Jo Ann Cavallo writes:

I am happy to report that the comedy "Orlando in Love" (my adaptation of M.M. Boiardo's fifteenth century romance epic Orlando Innamorato) will debut in Manhattan this summer as a Special Event under the auspices of New York City's Department of Parks & Recreation. Performances will take place in the open air theater situated in Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell on Sat., July 15th, Sun., July 16th, and Mon., July 17th, at 8:00 pm. Following the New York City English-language debut, in August the play will be performed in Italian in various castles and historical sites of the Apulia region. Mini-seminars and workshops related to the event will also be held in August at the University of Lecce. A number of the actors, musicians, and technicians will participate on both sides of the Atlantic.

WHY "ORLANDO IN LOVE"?
The Orlando Innamorato not only prefigures such recent box office hits as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, but also offers a vision of a world without borders. Writing for a fifteenth century Italian court society hooked on Arthurian romance but also attuned to current world events, Boiardo charts a complex imaginary course in which characters from diverse cultures encounter one another in ways that range from armed conflict to friendship and love. Although knights and damsels from around the globe are gripped by a number of passions, such as erotic desire, ambition, compassion, and the desire for glory or revenge, their actions are never based on religious or ethnic differences.
Boiardo turns the Carolingian epic on its head by creating his own version of the Roland/Orlando story, an unauthorized biography showing how the supposedly chaste paladin had actually abandoned Charlemagne's court to chase a beautiful princess from Cathay across the expanse of Eurasia. Orlando shares the stage with a host of knights, damsels, giants, wizards, fairies, and monsters, in alternating episodes of love, magic, adventure, and warfare, sometimes told through the creative rewriting of classical texts such as Homer’s Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Boiardo’s romance epic has retained its popularity and freshness for 500 years in Italian popular culture. Americans traveling to Italy today, in fact, can still find Orlando and Rinaldo fighting over the dazzling princess Angelica in Sicily's puppet theaters. Boiardo’s characters, further developed in Ariosto’s continuation Orlando Furioso, have also relived their adventures in opera, melodrama, epic maggi (folk operas), as well as in recitations by story-tellers and singers. The current production is the first full-length theatrical adaptation of Boiardo’s masterpiece for a contemporary American audience.

Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441-1494) -- contemporary of Sir Thomas Malory and forerunner of Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis -- provides an important reference point for European and American letters, as well as a context for epic narratives which can be found in diverse cultures through the centuries in all parts of the globe.

The following seminars and workshops will held August 2-10 in conjunction with the production:

1) Four university seminars:
-Prof. Jo Ann CAVALLO, Columbia University, New York: "The ‘Orlando Innamorato’: An Epic Poem for a Global Community."
-Prof. Giuseppe COLUCCIA, University of Lecce, Italy: "Italian Theater in the Renaissance."
-Prof. Antonio MARZO, University of Lecce, Italy: "Literature as Irregularity in the Renaissance."
-Prof. Charles ROSS, Purdue University, Indiana: "The Universality of an Epic Poem: Translating the ‘Orlando Innamorato.’"

2) Five workshops closely tied to the staging of the Renaissance
romance epic in its multiple facets:

a) ACTING (Vittorio CAPOTORTO)
b) TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF STAGING (Ron McINTYRE and Antonio DE CARLO)
c) MUSIC and SONG (Ron McINTYRE and Melanie J.B. CHARLES)
d) DANCE (Quincy A. JUNOR)
e) VIDEO (Mario BLASI)

3) Open rehearsals for a broader public interested in learning about specific technical aspects of production demonstrated by teachers with experience working in the United States.

For further information about the Italian production, including applications for the university seminars and theater workshops, please contact: scenastudio@libero.it.
For further information about the New York production, please contact: teatritaly@aol.com.

Preaching and Politics in Early-modern Britain

CALL FOR PAPERS

A two-day international conference at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, 3-4 November 2006.

The sermon properly considered as theatrical, as fundamentally occasional, as literary art inextricably engaged in the public sphere stands poised to take a wholly new place in literary study, and a better understood one in historical study.
(Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, 2000)

How far have we come in the six years since Ferrell and McCullough‚s prediction?

This conference seeks to gauge the current state of studies in early-modern British sermons by providing a forum for the work of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including literary, historical, and religious studies. Focussing on sermons Œas literary art inextricably engaged in the public sphere‚, potential areas of interest will include: the occasional nature of sermons; pulpit censorship; preaching and ecclesiology; types of auditory (e.g. the royal court, the universities, assizes, Paul‚s Cross, country parishes, sermons commissioned by trading companies); women and sermons; varieties of exegetical method; allusion to current affairs via scriptural typology; links with continental European preaching; sermon preparation, delivery, publication, and reception; rhetorical and oratorical traditions of homiletic prose; the literary representation of preachers in plays, poems and pamphlets; the historiography of sermons.

Confirmed plenary speakers include:
Dr Peter McCullough (Oxford University)
Professor Jeanne Shami (University of Regina, Canada)

Prospective speakers are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers by 1 July 2006 to the conference organisers, Dr Hugh Adlington and Dr Emma Rhatigan, either by e-mail (hugh@adlingtonc.freeserve.co.uk or emma.rhatigan@magd.ox.ac.uk), or by post:
Dr Hugh Adlington
CRASSH
17 Mill Lane
Cambridge CB2 1RX

Dr Emma Rhatigan
Magdalen College
Oxford OX1 4AU

Erasmus and the Republic of Letters

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 5-7 September 2006

A conference to mark the centenary of P.S. Allen‚s edition of the Correspondence of Erasmus

Keynote speakers: Lisa Jardine, J.K. McConica, Hilmar M. Pabel, Jane E. Phillips, Erika Rummel, Mark Vessey

For conference programme and booking form contact: Stephen Ryle, School of Classics, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, U.K. 
e-mail: s.f.ryle@leeds.ac.uk
www.leeds.ac.uk/classics/events.html

READING AND RELIGION: A SYMPOSIUM

FEATURING FACULTY AND POSTGRADS FROM YORK, LEEDS AND SHEFFIELD, WITH A KEYNOTE LECTURE BY LORI ANNE FERRELL

SATURDAY, 24 JUNE 2006, 12-5pm
UNIVERSITY OF YORK
KING'S MANOR K/133

*THE EVENT IS FREE AND THERE IS NO NEED TO REGISTER

SPONSORED BY THE YORKSHIRE FORUM FOR EARLY MODERN STUDIES AND HOSTED BY THE CENTRE FOR RENAISSANCE AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES (CREMS), UNIVERSITY OF YORK

“Shrews” on the Renaissance Stage

A Conference - 26, 27 May 2006
Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, University of York, UK

This is an interdisciplinary conference organised by the Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern studies, University of York. It will focus on: Shakespeare "The Taming of the Shrew", Fletcher "The Woman's Prize" and John Lacy "Sauny the Scott", and speakers include: Sandra Clark (Birkbeck); Michael Cordner (York), Helmer Helmers (Leiden), Graham Holderness (Hertfordshire), Barbara Hodgdon (Michigan), and Leah Marcus (Vanderbilt). Places are limited and early booking is advised.

Contact: Sally Kingsley, sk23@york.ac.uk
Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, University of York, Vanbrugh College, York, YO10 5DD, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1904 433592

Baroque Ballet Weekend Workshop

Teachers, Choreographers, Students and Professionals are Welcomed to join Catherine Turocy for the Baroque Ballet Weekend Workshop

When: Saturday, August 5 and Sunday, August 6, 2006
Tuition: $120
Where: The School of Contemporary Ballet Dallas (in Lakewood), 1902 Abrams Parkway, Dallas, Texas 75214

Classes Saturday, August 5
10-12 Baroque Ballet Technique/Minuet variations
12-12:30 Lunch (please bring a bag lunch)
12:30-1 discussion
1-3 Reading and Choreographing Minuets
Classes Sunday, August 6
10-12 Baroque Ballet Technique/Bouree and Sarabande variations
12- 12:30 Lunch (please bring a bag lunch)
12:30-1 discussion
1-3 Reading and choreographing Bourees and Sarabandes

Join Catherine Turocy, artistic director and choreographer of The New York Baroque Dance Company (www.nybaroquedance.org) and learn the early ballet technique of 18th century Europe. Learn to read their dance notation and to recognize choreographic structures established in the period which are still current today. The goal of the workshop is to get the student started on a road to discovery and to gain practical knowledge of the dance notation short hand used by 18th century ballet masters and amateurs all over Europe and America.

To register for the workshop please send your name, phone and address and a brief description of your dance experience to Catherine Turocy, 2300 Auburn Avenue, Dallas, Texas, 75214. Include a registration fee of $20 which will go toward the balance of the tuition. The remainder of the tuition is due July 5th. It is also possible to pay the full tuition at the time of registration. Checks can be made to Catherine Turocy. For further information please call 214-328-1713.

CFP: "Reading Margaret Cavendish"

"Reading Margaret Cavendish"
Renaissance Society of America
March 22-24, 2007
Miami, FL

Papers welcome on any aspect of Margaret Cavendish and science, including discussions of Cavendish's literary and scientific writings; relations with contemporaries; with the history of science and philosophy; science and politics; science and gender; reason and fancy. Papers that explore new directions in Cavendish studies are
especially encouraged.

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words and a brief c.v. by May 18, 2006 to Graham Hammill (English, University of Notre Dame) at ghammill@nd.edu.

Authority in European Book Culture (1400-1600)

A three-day conference on the above topic will take place from 29 June to 1 July 2006, at the University of Lliverpool. The objective of the conference is to bring together history of the book scholars with interests in late medieval and early modern Europe to reflect upon the questions that authority raises. The participation of postgraduate students is particularly welcomed. Some bursaries will be available for postgraduate students giving a paper.

Keynote speakers will be Adrian Armstrong (Manchester), Jos Biemans (Amsterdam) and Brian Richardson (Leeds).

Details from conference organisers Pollie Bromilow (pollie.bromilow@liverpool.ac.uk) and Godfried Croenen (g.croenen@liverpool.ac.uk).

Call for Papers - Reconstructing Histories, 1550-1850

Call for Papers - Reconstructing Histories, 1550-1850

Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies
February 22-25, 2007
Chicago, Illinois

The 14th Annual Conference for the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies (GEMCS) will be held from February 22-25, 2007, in Chicago at the Palmer House Hilton (hotel rates: $115.00 per night, single or double.) The theme for this year's conference is Reconstructing Histories, 1550-1850 and is intended to foster discussions about the ways in which perceptions of literary, cultural, social, and economic history have changed during the last decades. We invite papers, panels, discussion groups, and workshops that examine both early modern engagements with the making and unmaking of these histories and those that explore our contemporary understandings of our disciplinary narratives. In defining these historical and metacritical questions broadly, GEMCS provides a forum for innovative inquiries into all aspects of early modern culture and we encourage proposals on all aspects of early modern cultural studies.

GEMCS grew out of a need for a truly interdisciplinary organization that spans the early modern period and provides a forum for scholars to explore how our understandings of class race, gender, the body, sexuality, science, trade, colonialism, and nationalism continue to be reshaped by ongoing work in critical and cultural theory. The rubric "cultural studies" encompasses a variety of disciplinary fields--among them literature, history, art history, political science, anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, and philosophy--and it allows for a variety of approaches: feminist, materialist, multiculturalist, gay, lesbian, and queer. GEMCS defines the early modern period broadly to include the Renaissance, the eighteenth century, and the early nineteenth century, and we remain committed to fostering critical dialogues across traditional boundaries of historical specialization and sociopolitical geography. We are particularly interested in expanding dialogues about the relationships between European national and linguistic cultures and their counterparts in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

We invite proposals in the following areas for the 2007 conference, but, as always, encourage papers, panels, and discussions on other topics dealing with the period between roughly 1550 and 1850:

Rethinking the Public and Private Spheres
Nation and National Identity
Transcultural Exchanges within Europe and Beyond
Comparative Imperialisms
European Sciences and Indigenous Forms of Knowledge
Trade, Colonialism, and Gender
Women Writers and the Problem of Genre
Beyond the "New Formalism"
Manuscript and Print in the Early Modern Period
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Studies
Biocultures
Technology and the Body
The Problems of Periodicity: Rethinking the "Early Modern"
Rethinking Character, Rethinking Genre
Teaching Early Modern Cultural Studies
The Nature of the Object
Animals and their Companion Species
Transatlantic Exchanges
Things and their Destinies

Panel organizers should reserve half an hour to forty-five minutes for discussions so please ask each speaker to limit his or her presentation to no more than fifteen minutes. Please send abstracts for complete panels (approx. 500 words) or individual papers (approx. 250 words) to ecti@uiuc.edu using the subject line "Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies." Abstracts should include academic addresses for all panel participants and their e-mail addresses. The deadline for abstracts for individual papers, roundtables (six to eight participants), and paper sessions (three to five participants) is September 15, 2006. We will begin this year a policy of rolling acceptances, so you will hear within six weeks whether your proposal has been accepted. Updates and hotel information will be posted on the GEMCS website: http://english.fsu.edu/gemcs. The registration fee for the annual conference includes membership in the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies and a year's subscription to the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies published by Indiana University Press. For information about the journal, see http://iupjournals.org/jemcs.

Urban Life in Early Modern France

Workshop on 'Urban Life in Early Modern France' to be held 10 June 2006 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon.

A workshop run by the Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies of the University of Birmingham to be held at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, on Saturday 10 June 2006, 10AM-5PM.

This workshop will discuss current research on urban life in early modern France, focussing in particular, but not exclusively, on the second half of the sixteenth century. The urban environment has become a major focus of writing about this period, which takes as a context the developing character of the French state and the impact of confessional division and warfare. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this attention on the urban environment? How well do we now understand the responses of urban elites and communities to the challenges they faced during this period? This workshop will focus on governance and authority, religious life and confessional identities, and gender and society. Speakers will address a particular area of their own research and also reflect more broadly on their perception of the critical themes shaping urban politics, religion and culture in early modern France. Speakers include Robin Briggs (All Souls, Oxford), Kevin Gould (Nottingham Trent), Ray Mentzer (Iowa), Graeme Murdock (Birmingham), Eric Nelson (Southern Mississippi), Wendy Perkins (Birmingham), Penny Roberts (Warwick), Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes), and Liz Tingle (Plymouth). For further details of papers, download the provisional programme by clicking here.

For further information, contact Graeme Murdock: g.murdock@bham.ac.uk

Pepys

I love this: today's date in Pepys's diary, with commentary and more ...

http://www.pepysdiary.com/

Elizabeth I On Tour

Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend is a new traveling exhibition for libraries that commemorates the 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The exhibition encourages audiences not only to reacquaint themselves with the Queen, but also to become more familiar with the historical and cultural forces that shaped her personality and her time and examine the mixture of history and legend that continues to surround her today. The traveling exhibition is based on a major exhibition of the same title, which opened at the Newberry Library of Chicago on September 30, 2003.

Two copies of the exhibit are traveling to 20 libraries (for a total of 40 libraries) around the country between 2003 and 2006. Each copy consists of six colorful, freestanding photo panels incorporating representations of artifacts from the Newberry's exhibition and new text written for the exhibition by the curator, Clark Hulse, professor of English and art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The sections of the traveling exhibition investigate Elizabeth's life and career as a head of state, reveal the political workings of her court, examine the cultural and diplomatic worlds of England and Europe in the late 16th century, and explore the legacy of Queen Elizabeth from the time of her death to today.

Libraries on the tour host the exhibition for a six-week period. All participating libraries will present at least one program that is open to the public that features a lecture/discussion by a scholar on exhibition themes. All showings of the exhibition are free and open to the public.

May 3 - June 16
Fredericksburg, Virginia
Kansas City, Kansas

June 28 - August 11
Raleigh, North Carolina
Omaha, Nebraska

August 23 - October 6
Bronx, New York
St. Cloud, Minnesota

October 18 - December 1
Bristol, Rhode Island
Columbia, Missouri

December 13 - February 16
Gardner, Massachusetts
Livonia, Michigan

Medieval-Renaissance Conference, Virginia

Medieval-Renaissance Conference
The University of Virginia's College at Wise, Wise, VA, September 14-16, 2006

Keynote Address: E. Donald Kennedy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "King Arthur and Glastonbury"

The University of Virginia's College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts. Abstracts for papers should be 250 or fewer words. Proposals for panels should include: a) title of the panel; b) names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c) abstracts for papers to be presented (250 or fewer words). A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.uvawise.edu/history/medren.html

Deadline for Submissions: June 10, 2006.

Please direct submissions on English Language and Literature and requests for general information to:

Kenneth J. Tiller
Department of Language and Literature
UVA's College at Wise
Wise, VA 24293, USA
+1-(276) 376-4587
kjt9t@uvawise.edu

Ben Jonson cartoon

For a great cartoon featuring Ben Jonson, by Tom Gauld, go to ...

www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/words_in_pictures/ben_johnson.jpg

War and Peace in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

The Twentieth Barnard Medieval & Renaissance Conference
December 2, 2006 at Barnard College, NYC

War and Peace in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

An interdisciplinary conference on the realities and representations of war and peace in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We anticipate sessions in the fields of history, military history, and historiography; literature; art history and visual culture women's studies; theater; and cultural studies. We welcome abstracts related to the topic of war and peace from any discipline or methodology. Please submit abstracts by May 15, 2006 to Laurie Postlewate, Conference Organizer, lpostlew@barnard.edu, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

The Reading Experience Database

The Reading Experience Database (RED) was launched in 1996 at the UK Open University. Its mission is to accumulate as much data as possible about the reading experiences of British subjects from 1450 to 1945.

The RED team would like you to contribute information to the database by completing a RED form. Go to http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/index.html for details.

Oxford in the 1640s and 1650s

Royalist Capital and Commonwealth Melting-Pot: Oxford in the 1640s and 1650s

A conference to be held at St Anne’s College, Oxford
21-23 July 2006

From the time Charles I made his headquarters in the city in the autumn of 1642 to the Restoration in May 1660, Oxford gained extraordinary national importance. For nearly four years, as the royalist capital, it drew courtiers, gentlemen, painters, musicians, diplomats, spies, and bishops and clergy from England and Ireland; it was the seat of an alternative parliament and of a partisan newspaper, coins were struck and college plate melted down at royal command. As a city under siege, its population was swelled by soldiers and controversialists; the loyalties of local people were divided, but disease and fire struck indiscriminately. Following Oxford’s fall to parliamentary forces in 1646, General Fairfax ensured the survival of the university library, but for adherents of the royalist cause this was eclipsed by what they saw as the disastrous purge of academics in the wake of the parliamentary visitations of 1647-1648, and the consequent arrival of dangerous religious and political radicals. Much argument over the settlement of church and state, and over the education of clerical and lay elites, was indeed conducted in Oxford during the 1650s, but the decade also saw the early experiments of the physicians and natural philosophers who eventually became founder members of the Royal Society, and the city continued to draw distinguished foreign scholars. Men and women of all opinions could live quietly, pursuing antiquarianism or reading in the Bodleian Library. Proscribed prayer book services flourished underground, alongside more visible presbyterian and sectarian worship, and some traditionalists took the opportunity to plan the return of monarchy and the episcopal church.

The Oxford conference is an interdisciplinary colloquium, touching on political, religious, military, social, literary and cultural issues, and drawing together local, national and international perspectives. Speakers include Cliff Davies, Barbara Donagan, Ken Fincham, Rosemary Kelly, Anthony Milton, Jason Peacey, Mary Prior, Hugh de Quehen, Ian Roy, David Scott, Nigel Smith, Stephen Taylor, Bob Wilcher and Blair Worden. A provisional programme is available.

The conference will be held at St Anne’s College, where accommodation will be available. Registration forms for residential and non-residential attendance should be returned before 20 June 2006 to the organizer, Dr Vivienne Larminie, C17th Research editor, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP. Any queries may be addressed by email to vivienne.larminie@history.ox.ac.uk.

Conference: Radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland

Rediscovering radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland, c.1550-c.1700: movements of people, texts and ideas
21 - 23 June 2006

Early modern British and Irish history is marked by a succession of fascinating radical movements, ideologies and events. This interdisciplinary conference sets out to explore the role of migration and the exchange of ideas, images and texts in the history of those events, ideologies and movements (or moments). The conference, which will be of interest to historians, literary scholars and members of the public alike, will raise a number of crucial issues. These include problems of definition, the changing face of radicalism and the notion of radicalism in evolution; and the impact of the movement of people, ideas, images and texts across and within geographical boundaries, as well as across time. We very much hope you will wish to participate in this lively debate.

Goldsmiths College, University of London

Contact: Ariel Hessayon a.hessayon@gold.ac.uk, History Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW

SOCIETY FOR REFORMATION RESEARCH - CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS : SOCIETY FOR REFORMATION RESEARCH SPONSORED SESSIONS
Kalamazoo: 4nd International Medieval Congress
May 10-13, 2007 , Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan

We are offering three themed Sessions:

1. Reformation I: The Power of the Book

A session about how print and the press expedited the progress of the Reformation. Could be influential books ("The Bondage of the Will"), or THE book (Scripture), or polemical contests. Individuals (Luther or Knox) or groups (Puritans). Social change... censorship issues ... influence of specific books on the progress of the Reformation.

2. Reformation II: The Power of the Sword

A session on force and compulsion, issues of conscience, military history, Peasants Rebellion, armed resistance, church and state. Does the church have the power of the sword? Issues of obedience and resistance, and authority.

3. Reformation III: The Power of the Word

A session on belles lettres, rhetoric, the style of individual authors (reform-minded or anti-reformation), the scriptural 'Word', the influence of texts on religious and spiritual thought.

Send 200 Word Abstracts by email to Maureen Thum, Program Secretary, SRR at Kalamazoo mthum@umflint.edu
Please use subject heading: SRR proposal

****DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: May 14, 2006***
(We need to send in the
program proposal May 15)
We may accept some abstracts after this date if the sessions are not yet full

FORMAT OF ABSTRACTS
The following information should be provided at the beginning of the
abstract
1) name of presenter
2) affiliation (university, emeritus, independent scholar)
3) status (faculty, graduate, undergraduate)
4) complete address, either home or institution where we can best
reach you at all times
5) office phone and home phone
6) e-mail address
8) title of paper
9) Session Theme: >
****TEXT OF ABSTRACT****

****MEMBERSHIP IN THE SOCIETY FOR REFORMATION RESEARCH ****
Membership is required to present a paper. $20 regular, $10 student and emeritus
****Useful contact information****
Maureen Thum, Program Secretary, Society for Reformation Research at Kalamazoo. Department of English, 326 French Hall, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI 48502
810. 235 2016 (home)

Addiction in the Early Modern World

Concepts of Addiction in the Early Modern World
May 13, 2006, USC-Huntington Library, California

10-11am Rebecca Lemon, Department of English, USC
“Addict Identity in Early Modern England.”

11-12pm Tanya Pollard, Department of English, Montclair State University
“Surrendering the self: Imagining narcotic oblivion in Early Modern England.”

1:30-2:30pm Rudi Matthee, Department of History, University of Delaware
“Between Excess and Abstinence: Alcohol in Early Modern Iran.”

2:30-4pm David T. Courtwright, Department of History, University of North Florida
“Global Habit: Changing Patterns of Drug Use and Conceptions of Addiction in Modern World History.”

LOCATION: Overseers' Room, Huntington Library, 10:00-5:00
This event is free and open to the public. We ask that you pre-register by sending a message to emsi@usc.edu with your name and academic affiliation. Lunch will be provided for those who pre-register.

SHARP 2006

SHARP Annual Conference: ‘Trading Books - Trading Ideas’

11-14 July 2006, The Hague, Leiden

The fourteenth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) will be held in The Netherlands, organised by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) in co-operation with the Universities of Leiden, Utrecht, Nijmegen and Amsterdam. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday the venue will be held at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague; on Wednesday at Leiden University.

The keynote speakers are Robert Darnton, Marika Keblusek and Peter Kornicki. Evening activities/receptions include the Peace Palace (The Hague) and the Rembrandt exhibition at the Lakenhal (Leiden).

The conference 'Trading Books - Trading Ideas' will highlight the importance of the European and the North American heritage for the book and print cultures of the world. Special attention will be paid to the history of the trade in books between Eastern and Western European countries, to mark the occasion of ten new Eastern member states joining the European Union on 1 May 2004.

For details: sharp2006@kb.nl

Writing Lives in Early Modern England

Writing Lives in Early Modern England
A Conference at Queen Mary, University of London, July 13th to 15th 2006

"The writing a life is at all times, and in all circumstances, the most difficult task of an historian: and, notwithstanding the numerous tribe of biographers, we can scarce find one, except Plutarch, who deserves our perusal, or can invite a second view" - Dryden, The Life of Lucian (1696)

Biographies fill the review columns of the Sunday newspapers and they remain a familiar scholarly genre. Yet the term biography itself is a late seventeenth-century coinage that signals a turn in the understanding of life and character, an attitude that more approximates the Enlightenment than early modernity, and one that continues to shape the writing of lives. We aim, in this conference, to ask if the Enlightenment biographical project marks a departure from the experience and writing of early modern lives, perhaps even threatening to occlude an early modern sense of the constructions and the fashioning, the contingencies, anxieties, and uncertainties of the self.

'Writing Lives in Early Modern England' seeks to recapture early modern lives as written, perceived and experienced, and to open for discussion all such pre-modern forms of life writing as history, moral inscription, exemplum, performance, story and text.

Speakers will include:

Julia Marciari Alexander, Yale Center for British Art, Painting a Life: The case of Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland
Alastair Bellany, Rutgers University, 'Naught but Illusion'? Buckingham's Painted Selves
Thomas Corns, University of Wales Bangor, The early biographies of John Milton
Andrew Hadfield, Sussex University, Public and Private Spenser in Print
Frances Harris, British Library, Men, Women, Religion and the Meaning of Lives: Sir Robert Moray and his Networks
Lisa Jardine, Queen Mary, University of London, An Irregular Life: Not a Biography of Sir Constantijn Huygens
Paulina Kewes, Jesus College Oxford, Two Queens, One Inventory
Peter Lake, Princeton University, Confessions and Lives
Leah Marcus, Vanderbilt University, Elizabeth I: Beyond Martyrology
Michael McKeon, Rutgers University, Biography into Fiction
Steven Pincus, Yale University, Ralph Thoreby and Urban Biography
Kevin Sharpe, Queen Mary, University of London, Writing Royal Lives and the Case of James II
Andrea Walkden, Yale University, The Anglican Plutarch: Izaak Walton and his Lives
Steven N. Zwicker, Washington University, Dryden and Antiquity: The Meaning of Ancient Lives
Dr Stella Tillyard will give an opening talk on Writing Lives. Annabel Patterson will give closing comments.

For details, contact Alistair Daniel: a.daniel@qmul.ac.uk

"Sitting on the Cat": Renaissance Readers and Archives Symposium

"...Sometimes as I work at a series of patent and close rolls. I have a queer sensation; the dead entries begin to be alive. It is rather like the experience of sitting down in one's chair and finding that one has sat on the cat...' [F. M. Powicke, Ways of Medieval Life and Thought

Saturday 3rd June 2006

A one-day symposium on Renaissance Readers and Archives from the AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters
Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

Arrival: 10/10.30am Papers: 10.30am-5pm

Professor William Sherman (University of York) will preside over the day

All those attending will also be invited to dinner in the evening

Places must be reserved and a fee of £15 (to cover the cost of lunch and coffee) paid in advance

For further information please contact Alison Wiggins: a.e.wiggins@qmul.ac.uk.

University of Reading Research Seminars

Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading, UK

TWO RESEARCH SEMINARS for SUMMER TERM 2006

Wed 10 May 2006 4.30 p.m. Alan Cromartie, University of Reading
'How to write the history of seventeenth-century England'

Wed 21 June 2006 4.30 pm Arnold Hunt, British Library
'Hat Honour in Early Modern England'

All enquiries to Professor Ralph Houlbrooke, r.a.houlbrooke@reading.ac.uk

Martin Luther

Martin Luther and the Sixteenth-Century Universe: A Fall Semester Seminar directed by Euan Cameron

Martin Luther and the Reformation movement forever linked with his name, have often been understood as crucial factors in the rise of “modernity.” Yet Martin Luther was also in a profound sense a product of the later Middle Ages. He interpreted many of the conflicts and struggles of the era in terms of cosmic warfare between the realms of God and the devil. At critical moments in his career he seems to have expected the imminent second coming of Christ. This seminar will explore some of the many ways in which the message of Martin Luther and the early Reformation intersects with the natural and supernatural world of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In successive weeks, participants will explore late medieval explanations of misfortune; predictions of the end of time at the eve of the Reformation; the interpretation of portents; the relationship between theological debate and demonology in the Reformation; theories of divine providence; the relationship between Reformation and “disenchantment”; and other themes introduced by participants’ research. Where possible, surviving pamphlets and illustrations from the period and from the Folger’s Stickelberger collection will be consulted to illustrate the
themes of the seminar. Original source texts will be supplied in translation for discussion.

Director: Euan Cameron is Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. His publications include The European Reformation (1991), Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (2000), and Interpreting Christian History (2005).

Schedule: Fridays, 1 – 4:30 p.m., 29 September through 15 December, except 10 November and 24 November 2006.

Application Deadlines: 1 June 2006 for admission (and grants-in-aid for Folger consortium affiliates); 5 September 2006 for admission only. Visit www.folger.edu/institute for application forms and guidelines, as well as a link to our online application form.

Please contact the Folger Institute (institute@folger.edu) with any questions.

Francis Bacon

The Advancement of Francis Bacon: A Fall Semester Seminar directed by Alan Stewart

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was one of early modern England’s leading thinkers. Bacon’s range was immense: in his own life he was at the very least a lawyer, a judge, a diplomat, a parliamentarian, a politician, a courtier, a natural philosopher, an historian, a biographer, an essayist, a writer of myth, and an experimental scientist. Indeed, one of the few things he was not was a commercial playwright, although, notoriously, many have tried to pin Shakespeare’s plays on him, too. His work, which is only now being published in its entirety (by the Oxford Francis Bacon edition), covers a bewilderingly wide terrain, and study of it traditionally has been divided into discrete disciplines that Bacon would not have recognized: law, history of science, literature, history, natural philosophy, rhetoric, dialectic. This seminar aims to bridge some of these disciplinary boundaries to attempt a more rounded, in-depth vision of Bacon’s life and works. Participants will study (in English) many of
Bacon’s major works, including the various editions of Essays, The Advancement of Learning, The Wisdom of the Ancients, Novum Organum, History of Henry VII, and The New Atlantis, alongside less familiar but important texts and letters, and, where appropriate, writings by other contemporary authors. Materials generated by new research on the Oxford Francis Bacon edition will be available to participants, and participants will be encouraged to draw upon their own projects for materials and interpretive contexts, as well.

Director: Alan Stewart is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His publications include Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon, co-authored with Lisa Jardine (1998), Philip Sidney: A Double Life (2000), and The Cradle King: A Life of James VI and I (2003). He is currently editing two volumes of the new Oxford
Francis Bacon edition.

Schedule: Thursdays, 1 – 4:30 p.m., 28 September through 14 December, except 26 October and 23 November 2006.

Application Deadlines: 1 June 2006 for admission (and grants-in-aid for Folger consortium affiliates); 5 September 2006 for admission only. Visit www.folger.edu/institute for application forms and guidelines, as well as a link to our online application form.

Please contact the Folger Institute (institute@folger.edu) with any questions.

Shakespeare on BBC World Service Radio

This week on BBC Radio's The Word: a special programme on the international significance of Shakespeare.

Broadcasting from Stratford-upon-Avon, Harriett Gilbert will be meeting prominent members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, including the South African actress Janet Suzman, to mark the RSC’s Complete Works Festival. It will be the first time theatre companies from around the world will come together to perform all of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets and long poems in one venue.

From the Japanese Titus Andronicus to the Mandarin King Lear, from the pan-Arab Hamlet to the all-male Russian version of Twelfth Night, we’ll be exploring how the English playwright became the world’s favourite wordsmith.

For this, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/the_word.shtml

Heather James at Columbia University, New York

THE COLUMBIA EARLY MODERN SEMINAR

May 4 HEATHER JAMES (University of Southern California)

Ben Jonson's Purloined Letters: Sources of Slander in Poetaster

Professor James will speak broadly about her current research on the political Ovid of the early modern period and especially the relationship of Ovid's wanton verse to the political liberty of speech (parrhesia). The book project, entitled "Taking liberties: Ovid in renaissance poetry and political thought", discusses the political significance of Ovid to Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, the Caroline poets, and Milton.

The Columbia Early Modern Seminar is a forum for new and exciting work in early modern studies.

Seminars run on Thursday evenings from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm in 612 Philosophy Hall. All welcome.

Any enquiries, please contact: Prof. Molly Murray (mpm7@columbia.edu), or Prof. Alan Stewart (ags2105@columbia.edu)

Bibliographical Society of America: NEW SCHOLARS PROGRAM

Each year the Bibliographical Society of America invites three scholars in the early stages of their careers to present twenty-minute papers on their current, unpublished research in the field of bibliography as members of a panel at the annual meeting of the Society, which takes places in New York City in late January. The New Scholars Program seeks to promote the work of scholars who are new to the field of bibliography, broadly defined to include any research that deals with the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, and subsequent history of texts as material objects. Papers of New Scholars are published in the December issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America as part of the proceedings of the annual meeting.

Junior (i.e., untenured) faculty and advanced graduate students are eligible, as are professional librarians, members of the book trade, and book collectors, who are at the beginnings of their careers. New Scholars may nominate themselves or be nominated by others. Candidates should submit a letter of application, an abstract of not more than 250 words, and a curriculum vitae. For submissions to be considered for the following January, materials should be received by July 31. Please address and send applications (preferably via email) to:

New Scholars Program, Bibliographical Society of America, P.O. Box 1537, Lenox Hill Station, New York, NY 10021
email: bsa@bibsocamer.org

New Scholars selected for the panel receive a subvention of $500 toward the cost of attendance at the annual meeting and a complimentary one-year membership in the Bibliographical Society of America. For further information on the Society, see http://www.bibsocamer.org. Inquiries regarding the program may be directed to Gregory A. Pass, Chair, New Scholars Program, at passga@slu.edu

Romantic Shakespeare

CFP: Romantic Shakespeare. Shakespeare Yearbook, Winter 2007.

Henry James once noted that to the English an outing to Stratford was not just a day out, not just a visit to a pretty old town with a famous dead author, but a pilgrimage to "The Holy of Holies"; the scene itself of the "nativity." James was being ironic, but to many editors, and writers, and theatre personalities working in the era of the English Romantic Movement, grappling with the works of Shakespeare became a serious devotional duty.

Shakespeare's plays and poems can be said to have become objects of religious reflection for the Romantics, a kind of mirror up to the "mystic." For Shakespeare's nineteenth-century British editors, one of their principal tasks was to prepare readers to find deeper meanings in Shakespeare's plays and poems, and they viewed the reading of his works as a cornerstone of English culture. Concomitantly, writers such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats constructed Shakespeare as a figure from whom it was possible to acquire something like spiritual and poetic wisdom. For many of these writers, his plays and poems were foundational to their own efforts to write.

In conjunction with theme of the Winter 2007 issue of the Shakespeare Yearbook, "Romantic Shakespeare," the journal seeks essays from scholars of Renaissance or English Romantic literature that explore the editing or interpretation of Shakespeare and early modern literature in the Romantic period, as well as the impact of early modern literature on the literary production of writers associated with the English Romantic Movement.

Please submit title and 200-word abstract of proposed essays along with a brief scholarly bio by August 15, 2006 to Douglas A. Brooks (dbrooks@tamu.edu). Digital submissions as e-mail attachments in Rich Text Format or Microsoft Word only. Do not send CVs. Final essays will be due May 15, 2007.

The Shakespeare Yearbook is a broadly based international annual of scholarship relating to Shakespeare, his time, and his impact on later periods. Maximum length for contributions is 35 double-spaced pages in Times New Roman 12 point. Illustrations are welcome. Citations should be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style. The name of the author/s should only appear in an accompanying cover letter. All essays are reviewed anonymously by two readers. All essay submissions must be as digital attachments in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format.