Chair in Early Modern History

UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR
COLLEGE OF ARTS & HUMANITIES
SCHOOL OF HISTORY, WELSH HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY
Chair in Early Modern History / Director of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Salary negotiable in Professorial Range

Applications are invited from candidates with a proven record of research achievement in any aspect of European, American, British or Welsh history, 1450-1750, and with the skills and enthusiasm to serve as the first Director of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), which is one of four collaborations created by the Research and Enterprise Partnership between the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of Wales, Bangor. The successful candidate will be Director of IMEMS for three years and will also be appointed to a concurrent, permanent chair in the School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology at Bangor.  During the tenure of the Directorship, the teaching and administrative work load associated with this professorship will be reduced but after 2010, the successful candidate‚s  role as professor will be full-time in the School at Bangor, with the attendant duties of publication, research leadership, undergraduate teaching and post-graduate supervision.

Directing the institute will include developing a research and publicity strategy for this new venture; encouraging inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of the pre-modern period at Bangor, Aberystwyth and beyond; helping to shape conferences, networks and research projects for external funding; building links with libraries, archives and university departments across the UK and overseas; and helping to establish a joint MA (Bangor-Aberystwyth) in medieval and early modern studies. The director will be helped to achieve these goals by the management board and other members of IMEMS, by the Research and Enterprise Partnership, and by the research support infrastructure of the College of Arts and Humanities at Bangor.

The successful candidate will commence in September, 2007, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Application forms and further particulars should be obtained by contacting Human Resources, University of Wales, Bangor; tel: (01248) 382926/388132; e-mail: personnel@bangor.ac.uk; web: http://www.bangor.ac.uk

Closing date for applications: Friday 30th March, 2007.

[this from the London Renaissance Seminar]

Margaret Cavendish

... the late June meeting of the International Margaret Cavendish Society at the University of Sheffield. 
Dr. Lucy Worsley , "The Making of the Exhibition 'Royalist Refugees: William and Margaret Cavendish at the Rubenshouse (1648-1660).'"

The website for the meeting is: <>http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jbf/CavConfOpen.htm

[details from The London Renaissance Seminar]

Grunting swine

This is how Thomas Larkham, 1650s minister, described his Tavistock congregation: 'dogs, snarling curs, swine, grunting swine, serpents, vipers, devils, rogues, ragged rogues, rascals, scabs, ninnihammers, purguinions, fools, squint-eyed fools, sons of witches, knaves, a pack of knaves, the devils dishclouts …’. Asked by the Committee for Sequestration in Exeter to explain what he meant by 'ninnhimmer’, Larkham said it referred to one who was ‘nine times worse than a cuckold.’ Larkham's sermons would reguarly go on for four hours. Some of his congregation complained ‘they were even ready to vomit when they heard some of it spoken.’

Things to Do with Dwarfs

March 6th, PAMELA BROWN (Connecticut), 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm, Columbia University, New York. Room to be confirmed. All welcome.

Enquires to Prof. Molly Murray (mpm7@columbia.edu) or Prof. Alan Stewart (ags2105@columbia.edu)

Early Modern Witchcraft on Trial

We are now accepting proposals for the 2007 Rocky Mountain MLA convention at the downtown Westin Hotel in Calgary, Canada (4-6 October 2007). The deadline for proposals is March 15, 2007.

The special topic session "Early Modern Witchcraft on Trial" is looking for submissions dealing with the problems of discerning, disputing, and displaying the supernatural on the commercial stages of early modern Europe. While the focus of this panel lies with dramatic literature, we seek to analyze literary interactions between fictional and allegedly non-fictional literatures and to engage cross-disciplinary approaches that consider literatures in the context of historical, political, legal, anthropological and social analyses.

Some of the literary texts that we hope to explore in the context of early modern drama include:

pamphlets and ephemera
legal treatises and decrees
anthologies and compendia
sermons and homilies

Please send 500-word abstracts by March 15th to the panel organizers, Andrew McCarthy (andrew_mccarthy@mail.wsu.edu) and Verena Theile (vtheile@wsu.edu). Attachments should be in WORD or RTF format and include a presentation title and short biographical sketch.

**Note please that all accepted presenters need to join RMMLA by April 1. Consult the RMMLA website (www.rmmla.org) for membership information, travel advice/assistance, and detailed submission/presentation guidelines. Remember that all travelers, including US citizens (!), need to carry a passport in order to enter Canada.**

Verena Theile, Ph.D.
Charles Blackburn Fellow
Department of English
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-5020
Phone: (509) 335-8752
E-mail: vtheile@aol.com
Homepage: www.wsu.edu/~vtheile

Border Skirmishes: At the Edge and in the Margins of 16th- to 19th-Century Books

Presented by The Colloquium on Early Literature & Culture in English.

A workshop with
Patricia Crain, Associate Professor of English, NYU; author of The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter.
&
Juliet Fleming, Lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Trinity Hall; author of Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007
6:00 p.m.
19 University Place, The Great Room, New York University 

Ink in early modern England

... CFP, MLA 2007

Early modern literature is awash, to quote George Herbert, with ‘Oceans of ink’: whether it’s Cleopatra calling for ‘Ink and paper’, or Hamlet’s ‘inky cloak’, or Westmoreland imagining turning ‘your ink to blood’, to cite only well-known instances from Shakespeare. In manuscript miscellanies and commonplace-books, recipes ‘To make excellent Inke’ are common: early modern individuals were aware of ink’s constituent parts, and the process of its production. We invite proposals that consider the role of ink in early modern English culture. What work did ink perform in early modern literary texts, as both material and metaphor? What metaphorical associations surrounded ink? What was the relationship between ink and (im)permanence; between blotting, staining and corruption; between printer’s and writer’s inks; between black and coloured letters; between ink and other liquids? We particularly welcome papers that use archival research to throw new light on literary texts.

Please send paper proposals of 400-words to Karen Britland (k.r.britland@engl.keele.ac.uk) and Adam Smyth (a.smyth@rdg.ac.uk). Deadline: 1 March 2007.

London in Text and History, 1400-1700

13-15 September 2007 at Jesus College, Oxford, UK
Organisers: Ian Archer (Oxford), Matthew Davies (Centre for Metropolitan History, London), Ian Gadd (Bath Spa), Tracey Hill (Bath Spa), Paulina Kewes (Oxford)

Plenary speakers: Caroline Barron, Paul Griffiths, Rob Hume, Mark Jenner, Mark Knights, Peter Lake and Peter Stallybrass

CALL FOR PAPERS

This conference will focus on the variety of metropolitan identities, and how these were constructed, represented, and contested by contemporaries through a variety of media, including text (broadly defined), visual culture, maps, architecture and performance.

Between 1400 and 1700, London expanded hugely in population; it was affected by religious and political upheaval; it emerged from the shadow of its near-neighbour European competitors to become a world metropolis; and its physical face was transformed by the dissolution and the Great Fire. Our concern, however, is not so much with what these political, economic, or religious changes were but rather how they were figured in a range of forms and genres: ballads, drama, civic shows, sermons, pamphlets, poems, urban chronicles, topographical guides, paintings, engravings, and maps.

Lively literatures exist for medieval and early modern London but they rarely engage with each other nor do studies of post-Restoration London connect with the pre-civil war period. Consequently, plenary speakers will range widely to set up the major areas of debate, while the panels will be designed to encompass broad time-spans and to facilitate exchange among scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including history, literature, art history, architecture and cartography. The conference will also reflect on the impact of some 10-15 yearsworth of unprecedented scholarly attention to London.

We would particularly welcome proposals for papers relating to the following topics:

Ideas and beliefs
* The idea of the City. How contemporaries understood the city in local, national, and international terms
* Citizenship. The shaping and contestation of notions of citizenshipin London
* History and civic memory. Chronography, chorography, and civic history. The ways Londonersidentities were informed by their sense of the citys past and by the associations of particular places
* Belief and the citizen. Perceptions of the place of religion in the life of the capital; responses to and interpretations of religious change and controversy

Places and people
* The urban landscape. Ideas of civic/communal/private space; perceptions of boundaries, streetscapes and neighbourhoods; the representation of Londons physical expansion
* Urban deviance. The shaping of languages of deviance by the metropolitan experience; the representation of disorder and criminality
* Visual London. The changing ways in which the city was represented to itself and to others in maps, prints, and paintings
* Inclusion and exclusion: the problem of the stranger. Representations of aliensand foreigners; newcomers and the problem of marginality
* Londons business and commerce. The perception and representation of economic change and the citys position in relation to other cities; consumerism; financial and productive network

Texts and art
* Literary London. The ways in which writings about London were both shaped by and shaped the identities of Londoners
* Civic entertainments. Lord Mayors Shows, royal entries: pageantry, display, and politics
* Communication and information. Licit and illicit communication; the production and consumption of advertising and propaganda; gossip and civic reputation
* Readers, writers and the circulation of texts. Reading communities in the city; the creation of cultural networks

Proposals for papers (300 words max) should be sent by email to ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk or t.hill@bathspa.ac.uk by 1st March 2007.

Marlowe

The Marlowe Society of America still has openings for quality papers on any aspect of Christopher Marlowe's plays, poetry, or biography (including performance-based criticism and theater history, ) for an open-topic session to be held at the MLA Convention in Chicago on Dec.27-30, 2007. Send detailed abstracts or papers of 15-minute reading length by e-mail, e-mail attachment, or hard copy to Bruce Brandt, (Bruce.Brandt@sdstate.edu), President, Marlowe Society of America, English Dept., Box 504, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007.

Deadline: March 1, 2007.

John Milton: Land, Space, and Place

The Milton Society of America is sponsoring a session at MLA 07 in Chicago, "John Milton: Land, Space, and Place," and invites topics that include topography, exterior and interior space, visibilia and invisibilia, spiritual space, etc. Send 1-page detailed proposal by 15 March to Mary Fenton (mfenton@email.wcu.edu).

Music and Poetry in Troubadour Song

Call for Papers for the 2007 MLA Convention
Discussion group on Provençal Language and Literature. Chair for 2007 Session : Agathe Sultan

This panel invites proposals bearing on “music” in the widest sense of the term. Interdisciplinary contributions as well as projects bearing on specific questions in literary theory and analysis will be welcome. Deadline for submissions : 03/ 20 / 2007.

Contact person and address :
Agathe Sultan
Maître de conférences, Université Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux III
Tour Est, Hôtel de Ville
34700 Lodève, France
04 67 88 86 36
06 25 74 18 81
agathesultan@wanadoo.fr

OVID FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE BAROQUE

(from Mike Pincombe's Tudor Mailing List ...)

LATIN AND VERNACULAR IN RENAISSANCE SPAIN: OVID FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE BAROQUE
Lenton Hall, University of Nottingham
Thursday 19 April
9.00 Registration and welcome
9.30-10.10 Jorge Fernández López (Universidad de la Rioja), “Orpheus musicus / Orpheus rhetoricus: recepción y transformación del Orfeo ovidiano”.
10.10-10.50 Barry Taylor (The British Library), “El ingenioso Ovidio: the reception of Ovid’s wit in the Golden Age”.
10.50-11.10 Coffee
11.10-11.50 Carles Gutiérrez Sanfeliu (Oxford University), “Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the many tongues of the poet (C16 Spanish translations of Ovid)”
11.50-12.30 Terence O’Reilly (University College Cork), “The metamorphosis of Ovid in Góngora’s Polifemo y Galatea”.
12.30-13.10 Ramón Valdés (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), “Jasón y las manzanas de oro: ¿error de Lope?”
13.15-14.30 Lunch
14.30-15.10 Lluís Cabré (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), “Ovid’s odi et amo and its presence in the poetry of Ausiàs March”
15.10-15.50 Isabel Torres (Queen’s University Belfast), “Transfiguration and transvaluation: Apollo, Daphne and the ‘I’ of the beholder”
15.50-16.10 Tea
16.10-16.50 Anne Holloway (Queen’s University Belfast), “El Fénix canta al Fénix: The pastoral Phoenix in Soto de Rojas' Desengaño de amor en rimas”
16.50-17.30 Amy Fuller (University of Manchester), “El Divino Narciso: Sor Juana's portrayal of Ovid as Poeta de las mujeres”
17.30-18.10 Andrew Laird (Warwick University), “Ovid in New Spain”.

Friday 20 April
9.00-9.40 María Luzdivina Cuesta (Universidad de León), “Los Integumenta Ovidii de Juan de Garlandia en la General Estoria de Alfonso X”
9.40-10.20 Josep Pujol (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), “Translating and glossing: the medieval Catalan translation of the Heroides”
10.20-11.00 Alejandro Coroleu (University of Nottingham), “Renaissance commentaries on Ovid’s minor works”
11.00-11.20 Coffee
11.20-12.00 Lara Vilà (Universitat de Girona), “La aurea aetas en la época de Augusto y su difusión: las versiones de Virgilio y Ovidio”
12.00-12.40 Stephen Boyd (University College Cork), “Velázquez's Fábula de Aracne and its Ovidian source”
12.40-13.20 Oliver Noble-Wood (University of Nottingham), “Re-examining some of the literary sources for Velázquez's La Fragua de Vulcano”
13.25- Lunch

Organisers:
Dr A Coroleu (alejandro.coroleu@nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr B Taylor (barry.taylor@bl.uk)

Henry VIII

(this from Mike Pincombe's Tudor Mailing ...)

The University of Leicester is offering a three year Postgraduate Scholarship, equal to the amount of an AHRC award, to a Home/EU student to work on a research project leading to a PhD in an aspect of the literature and cultural history of the reign of Henry VIII, under the supervision of Professor Greg Walker. The start date is October 2007. For further details and application form, see www.le.ac.uk/ee/research/documents/phdform2007.doc

Enquiries to englishpg@leicester.ac.uk.

Embodying Shakespeare

This from Evelyn Tribble (evelyn.tribble@stonebow.otago.ac.nz), via The Shakespeare Electronic Conference (SHAKSPER@shaksper.net):

We would like to invite you to attend the next Australia-New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA) conference on the topic of "Embodying Shakespeare." The conference will be held from 7-10 February 2008 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Please send any enquiries to Lyn Tribble (evelyn.tribble@stonebow.otago.ac.nz) or to Penny Gay (penny.gay@arts.usyd.edu.au)

Confirmed Speakers

Bruce Smith, University of Southern California
Gail Kern Paster, Folger Shakespeare Library
Dympna Callaghan, Suny Stonybrook

Call for Paper and Panel Sessions:

Papers are invited on any subject related to the central theme of "Embodying Shakespeare." Possible topics might include, but are not limited to: Shakespeare and histories and theories of the body, representations of the body, the actor's body, cultural appropriations, Shakespeare and the senses, phenomenology, embodiment and gender.

We welcome abstracts of 200 words for 20-minute paper presentations. Please include a brief cv. Panel sessions are also welcome. Please provide a list of participants, a proposal for the entire panel, and brief abstracts for each paper. A cv of no more than 1 page is also required.

Abstracts should be sent to conference@anzsa.org. Please include the phrase "anzsa abstract" in your subject line. Proposals will be acknowledged and accepted on a rolling basis up until 1 September. For more information, see: www.anzsa.org Final Deadline: 1 September 2007

Columbia University Early Modern Seminar

... next Tuesday, February 20, the Columbia Early Modern Seminar welcomes John Kerrigan (St John's, Cambridge), who will be speaking on "Archipelagic 'Macbeth'". The Seminar meets from 6.30 to 8pm in 754 Schmerhorn Extension (the IRWaG seminar room) on Columbia's main campus. All welcome!

Details: Alan Stewart (ags2105@columbia.edu)

Strange Currencies: Dynamic Economies in the Early Modern World

The Third Annual Conference of the Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group
February 16, 2007, 9 am to 6 pm
Segal Theatre, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016

The Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group invites you to join us for a full day of panels on topics ranging from credit to crime and culminating in a keynote address, Foreign Encounters with Domestic Economies, from Professor Kim Hall of Fordham University.

Both as a source of anxiety, upheaval and crisis and as a key driver of technological, artistic and intellectual accomplishment, economic influences underline many of the Early Modern periods radically shifting philosophies. This conference promises fruitful discussion on Early Modern market representations and modes of exchange in financial, social, and sexual spheres. We hope to see you there! Co-chairs Louise Geddes, Balaka Basu, and Margaret Robertson

The schedule of speakers is as follows:

9:00am – 10:15am

Seth M. Rudy – NYU: ““By any other name: Socio-Economic Equivalencies in A Caveat To Common Cursetors”

Emily Sherwood – CUNY GC: “The Articulation of Agency in the Early Modern Marriage Market.”

Patrick Derby Scott – CUNY GC: “Playing Favorites: The Economy of Affection and Proximity in the Royal Court of Early Modern Drama”

Shawn Rice – CUNY GC: “Prosthetic Fathers: Obsessional Neurosis, Melancholia, and Timon of Athens”

10:20am to 11:20am

Michael Tratner – Bryn Mawr: “Unfair Conversions: The Basis of Mercantile Economic Value in The Merchant of Venice”

Valerie Allen – John Jay College of Criminal Justice: “Jonson’s Alchemist and the Art of Angels”

 Ruth E. Friedman – University of Chicago: ““Some good comforts”? The Christian Confusion of Money and “Manna” in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice” 

11:25am to 12:25pm

Patricia Rocco – CUNY GC: “Giuseppe Maria Mitelli’s Gambling Prints: the Social Mapping of Leisure in Early Modern Bologna”

Simon Fortin – CUNY GC: “As ‘twixt a Miser and his Fortune”:Promiscuity, Triangulations and the Literality of Expenditure in Shakespeare’s Sonnets”

Donny Levit – CUNY GC: “Criminal Law Epistemology and the Economic Opportunism of Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl" 

LUNCH: 12:25pm – 1:25pm

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Swen Voekel – Wheelock College : “Cuttings, Cannibalism and Common Law: Creating a Space for Market Exchange in Tudor Ireland” 

Dan Venning – CUNY GC: ““To bee solde at the signe of the Gun”: The Printing of James Roberts, 1576-1606”

Gina Grimaldi – CUNY GC: ““Fast bind, fast find”: Contract and Time in The Merchant of Venice”

2:35pm – 3:35pm

Michael LaCombe – Adelphi : ““by shewing power purchasing authoritie”: The Politics of Food Exchange in the English Atlantic World”

Jenn Holl – CUNY GC: “Shakespeare’s Celebrity: Fame, Name and Credit in The Comedy of Errors”

Balaka Basu – CUNY GC: “Stage Business: Selling Belief in Early Modern Supernatural Drama”

4pm

Keynote Address: Kim Hall – Fordham University: “Foreign Encounters with Domestic Economies”

Seminars on Early Modern Preaching: Uses of Secular Language

CALL FOR PAPERS
A One-Day Colloquium
Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading, Saturday 3 November 2007

It is well known that sermons build on, and contribute to, biblical exegesis; less studied is the way that many of their arguments depend upon more worldly discourses, and on knowledge of other disciplines, such as medicine, law, commerce, philosophy, and political theory, to name but a few. A number of questions follow. Are the uses of non-theological terms and precepts found in early modern sermons simply examples of the preacher accommodating himself to his audience by reflecting their interests? Was a sermon more likely to edify via the technique of instantiation, borrowing the vocabulary of worldly wisdom to illustrate religious abstractions? What might the use of terminology drawn from other fields of thought and practice demonstrate about the education of early modern clergymen, as well as their professional and intellectual interests? Can we learn something of the relationship between, and the relative weight accorded to, secular and religious discourses in early modern Britain through the study of the worldly arguments embedded in sacred rhetoric?

This colloquium responds to the burgeoning of scholarly interest in early modern sermons; it also aims to maintain, and build on, momentum achieved at the two-day conference - Preaching and Politics in Early Modern Britain - held in Cambridge in November 2006.

We invite proposals for 30-minute papers. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Please e-mail submissions to Dr Mary Morrissey (m.e.morrissey@reading.ac.uk) and Dr Hugh Adlington (hugh@adlingtonc.freeserve.co.uk).

Due date for submissions: 1 May 2007.

Online Manuscript Research

This from Dr Christopher Burlinson, Emmanuel College, Cambridge ...

I am writing to let you know about a one-day symposium on 'Online Manuscript Research: Resources and Challenges', to be organized by Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online, and held in the Faculty of English (9 West Road), Cambridge University, on 9 July 2007, from 10am to 5pm.

The past years have seen an increasing number of online manuscript resources, as well as new projects to create such resources (many of them funded by large bodies such as the AHRC). Some of these resources have taken the form of digital archives, while others have been more descriptive or bibliographical studies. There has, meanwhile, been great interest in how these electronic resources can be put to their best use, either in the classroom or in research, and how they should reflect the needs, interests and requirements of students and teachers, librarians, conservationists and ICT specialists.

This symposium, then, addresses the special questions, both specifically technical and research-based, posed by the creation of online resources in manuscript studies. It aims to promote good and consistent practice in these resources by allowing those working in ICT and manuscript studies to share information, develop new techniques and respond to new technologies, and to incorporate online manuscript resources into research and the classroom. The emphasis will be on round-table, workshop-style, collaborative discussion.

Subjects to be covered will include:

- Moving from the library to the digital archive: the capture, storage and preservation of manuscript images
- Manuscript conservation and online resources
- Managing workflow within an online manuscript project
- Constructing an online manuscript resource (file formats, databases, data and metadata, use of TEI, XML, etc.)
- Collection development (usability, viewing, user interfaces, submission, sustainability, etc.)
- Bringing together online manuscript resources (integration, conformability, etc.)
- The role of the bibliographer and palaeographer in constructing online manuscript resources
- Making best use of online manuscript resources: research and teaching
- Intellectual property, permissions, and data security

Participation in the symposium is free of charge, but places are limited, and those wishing to attend are asked to register in advance. Please write to Dr Christopher Burlinson (cmb29@cam.ac.uk) for details.

Please feel free to pass this announcement to other members of your institution who might be interested in attending.

Scriptorium is a 3-year, AHRC-funded project (2006-2009), based in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge, to digitize manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books from the period c. 1450-1720. It will create a secure archive of high-resolution digital images of these manuscripts, and release them to the public, through its website, in lower-resolution format. Alongside these digital images, it will create and store metadata about the images in question, and develop a set of accompanying resources for researchers, teachers and students working in late-medieval and early modern manuscript studies.

Late humanism and political ideology in northern Europe, 1580-1620

10-11 July 2007
University of Cambridge: Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and Trinity College

This conference is concerned with the manifestations of what has been called 'late', 'Tacitean', 'pragmatic' and 'neo-stoic' humanism. Speakers will explore its relationship with Ciceronian humanism; its association with politics, pedagogy, literature and visual culture; its impact on natural philosophy and the applied sciences; its role in seventeenth-century state-building, colonialism and religious and civil conflicts. If there was a prevailing intellectual culture of northern Europe, how did local contexts reflect or complicate that prevalence?

Speakers include Daniel Andersson, David Colclough, Anthony Grafton, Harro Hopfl, Jill Kraye, Brian Ogilvie, Markku Peltonen, Jennifer Richards, Richard Serjeantson, Alan Shepard, Jacob Soll and Malcolm Smuts. A final round-table discussion will be led by Warren Boutcher and David Norbrook.

Organizers:
Dr Aysha Pollnitz < aep33@cam.ac.uk >, Dr Michael Ullyot < michael.ullyot@ell.ox.ac.uk >

Conference web site, including provisional programme:
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2006-7/latehumanism.html

To register for a place, please complete & submit this form (RTF):
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2006-7/latehumanismform.rtf

Ruminating Repasts in Literature

Call for Papers, 2007 MLA Convention in Chicago, Special Session

This session explores conflations of foods and fictions in medieval and early modern culture. How and why do banquets, meals, and food references pervade the literature of this period? How does our understanding of cuisine, dietetics, taste, natural history, and material culture enhance or inform interpretations of literature? Where in effect do literary and culinary discourses intersect and interact?

Please send 250-word abstracts by 5 March 2007 to Tim Tomasik, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Valparaiso University (timothy.tomasik@valpo.edu).  Proposals will only be accepted from active members of the Modern Language Association.

Shakespeare Studentship

... to research 'The value of Shakespeare‚ in 21st century arts and education policy'.

Applications are now being considered for an AHRC PhD studentship at the Shakespeare Institute. The studentship will be the second appointment for the AHRC Project: 'Interrogating Cultural Value in the 21st Century: the case of Shakespeare'. Applications are invited from candidates who have completed a Masters course in Shakespeare Studies, Drama or Cultural Studies.

This thesis will analyse the development of public policy in the arts since World War II and consider its implications for the development of 'Shakespeare' as a locus for the development of the arts, education and tourism. Its key research resource will be the documents of the Arts funding bodies, educational policy documents from HMSO and the sources in the press and arts publications where key shifts in public policy are disseminated and discussed. It will also explore the development and dissemination of the Cambridge 'Shakespeare in Schools' project and explore its educational policy and practice implications through a series of case studies in different types of schools.

It will be informed by the extensive literature on teaching Shakespeare in Schools and Universities as well as the literature on the development of the terms in which the arts are presented as a valued element in compulsory education.

A key element of the thesis will be to map the shifts in the terms of value applied to the role of 'Shakespeare' in arts and educational policy against the changing pattern of public funding available to theatre and education.

Application Procedure
Please apply to the University of Birmingham via their website <>www.apply.bham.ac.uk and indicate in your application that are applying for the AHRC studentship. In addition to your application, you will also need to send us two academic references, confirmation of your degree results and a statement from you indicating what you would bring to the project. Please note that this PhD Studentship is only open to Home / EU applicants only. If you are an EU resident and English is not your first language, then you will need to meet the University of Birmingham's English Language requirements. Deadline for application is 1 March 2007 with interviews being held in April 2007.

[from London Renaissance Seminar list]

Ink in early modern England: CFP, MLA 2007

Early modern literature is awash, to quote George Herbert, with 'Oceans of ink': whether it's Cleopatra calling for 'Ink and paper', or Hamlet's 'inky cloak', or Westmoreland imagining turning 'your ink to blood', to cite only well-known instances from Shakespeare. In manuscript miscellanies and commonplace-books, recipes 'To make excellent Inke' are common: early modern individuals were aware of ink's constituent parts, and the process of its production. We invite proposals that consider the role of ink in early modern English culture. What work did ink perform in early modern literary texts, as both material and metaphor? What metaphorical associations surrounded ink? What was the relationship between ink and (im)permanence; between blotting, staining and corruption; between printer's and writer's inks; between black and coloured letters; between ink and other liquids? We particularly welcome papers that use archival research to throw new light on literary texts.

Please send paper proposals of 400 words to Karen Britland (k.r.britland@keele.ac.uk) and Adam Smyth (a.smyth@rdg.ac.uk). Deadline: 15 February 2007.

EVERYDAY OBJECTS: MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN MATERIAL CULTURE AND ITS MEANINGS

[this from Mike Pincombe's Tudor Symposium ...]
Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies, Hilton Shepherd Centre for Medieval Studies
University of Birmingham, 27th – 30th June 2007

Confirmed speakers include: Julian Bowsher, Museum of London; Tarnya Cooper, National Portrait Gallery; Flora Dennis, V&A; Chris Dyer, University of Leicester; Geoff Egan, Museum of London; David Gaimster, Society of Antiquaries; Maria Hayward, AHRC Textile Conservation Centre; Stephen Kelly, Queen’s Belfast; Natasha Korda, Wesleyan; Michelle O'Malley, Sussex; Lena Orlin, UMBC; Giorgio Riello, LSE; Barbara Rosenwein, Loyola; John Styles, University of Hertfordshire; John Thompson, Queen’s Belfast; Jennifer Tiramani, Globe Theatre; Bob Tittler, Concordia; Evelyn Welch, Queen Mary UL.

Panels include: books; music; shoes; pottery; dress accessories; property; clothing and textiles; sacred objects and spaces; personal objects; paintings; reconstructing spaces through objects; the application of modern methods to the study of pre-modern objects.

This conference brings together heritage practitioners and academics from different disciplines to debate the terms of its title. It encourages them to discuss the methods by which they analyse material culture, but also the way they present their findings: how the analytical languages and methods of presentation used within their disciplines reconstruct material culture for a wider audience. Participants will discuss the transferability of modern methodologies to earlier periods and discuss the existence of a specifically pre-modern material culture.

Material culture has become an increasingly important aspect of the study of medieval and early modern societies. Always the foundation of museum practice and the subject of enquiry for archaeologists and social anthropologists, ways of presenting the objects themselves and the findings of research into them have been the focus of increasing critical attention and hence new methodologies. Material culture has more recently become a key feature of scholarly negotiation with a variety of social behaviours across a much wider range of Humanities disciplines. This conference will address the difficulties inherent in a dialogue between diverse disciplinary research agendas, and it is therefore structured in a way which foregrounds such debates. Sessions are arranged around specific objects or categories of object, to which curators and scholars from different disciplines are invited to speak.

The sessions will address the relationship between objects and a range of ‘pre-modern’ concerns, for example, gender, power, status, taste, ideology, space, morality, identity, skill, continental and colonial influence, regional and national identity, inclusion and exclusion, competition and social mobility, location and locality, political climate and legislation. ‘Everyday objects’, a deliberately contentious title, offers a way of questioning the relationship between public and private life and the changing connections between the sacred and the profane.

We still have space in some sessions (see above), and we would welcome suggestions of complete sessions based around different kinds of object. For further information please contact:

Dr Catherine Richardson
Centre for Reformation and Early Modern Studies
University of Birmingham
C.T.Richardson@bham.ac.uk
0121 414 9511
Fax: 01789 414 992

The Wars of the 1640s and 1650s in Britain: Interdisciplinary Approaches

[from the London Renaissance Seminar ...]
The University of Manchester School of Arts, Histories and Cultures with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (CIDRA)

3 May
Sharon Achinstein (Oxford)
Subject tbc

9 May
Blair Worden (Oxford)
'John Milton and the English Republic'

16 May
Ann Hughes (Keele)
Gendering the English Revolution

23 May
Martin Dzelzainis (Royal Holloway)
Milton and Sir Henry Vane

All events take place in Humanities Lime Grove A7 at 5pm
For further information please contact Dr. Jerome de Groot (Jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk)

Renaissance Futures

[this from the London Renaissance Seminar ...]
CFP: Renaissance Futures (edited collection)
Abstracts due: 31 March 2007
Articles (6,000 words) due: 31 March 2008

For more information, see: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~enstaab2/futures.html

We are seeking essays for an edited collection on 'Renaissance Futures'. Topics may include, but are not limited to, early modern conceptions or narratives of the following:

Progress, mutability, predestination, providence, fate, fortune, destiny, personal development; pilgrim's progresses, dreams, visions, intuitions, fortune-telling and soothsaying; personal futures: providing for old age, descendents; linguistics: future tenses; philosophia perennis, architecture, visual arts and culture, prophets and oracles, astrology, almanacs, natural science, astronomical and meteorological portents; medicine, diagnoses, health and mortality; innovation and tradition in science, technology and manufacturing; machines, time-keeping, automata; material culture; economic futures: credit, forecasting, speculation; social, religious, political reform; town planning; history, chronicles; cyclical and linear history; historiography, military strategy and planning, apocalypse, millenarianism, eschatology, utopias...

We would especially welcome essays which approach the idea of the future from a comparative angle, or which consider the conception of the future from non-Western or non-Christian historical perspectives. We are interested in discussions of popular and material culture and history, as well as literary, artistic and philosophical sources.

For more information, please contact the editors, Andrea Brady (Brunel University) and Emily Butterworth (Kings College London), at: andrea.brady@brunel.ac.uk, or emily.butterworth@kcl.ac.uk.

Mary and Elizabeth

[this from the London Renaissance Seminar ...]
CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Partners both in throne and grave: Mary and Elizabeth. Lessons in Tudor Monarchy'
Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton, 10-12 September 2007

Mary is buried beneath Elizabeth in their shared tomb at Westminster Abbey. Their Jacobean inscription reads, Partners both in throne and grave, here we rest two sisters‚. This multi-disciplinary colloquium aims to reassess Mary and Elizabeth in relation to one another, and as Tudor monarchs. By bringing together disciplines as seemingly diverse as history, architecture, law, literature, costume and music, this colloquium seeks to incorporate and move beyond the focus on gender and religion in order to explore the continuities between all the Tudor monarchs, both male and female, Catholic and Protestant. To what extent is it possible to construct a trajectory of Tudor monarchy that focuses on continuities as well as change? And what might we learn from placing the Tudor monarchs in the broader context of European Renaissance monarchy, particularly England's relationship with Spain? Through a combination of papers, roundtable discussions and masterclasses, this conference will engage in a genuine interdisciplinary conversation that rethinks Tudor monarchy.

Topics to include: Historiography; Representations in art and literature; Court music and entertainment; Royal favourites and court intimates; Princely education; Anglo-Spanish relations; Royal supremacy and religious reformation; Law, government and policy-making; War and diplomacy; Political thought and the role of counsel; European monarchies.

Confirmed participants: Karen Hearn, Paulina Kewes, Maria Hayward, Ralph Houlbrooke, Ros King, Jeri McIntosh, Natalie Mears, Charlotte Merton, Anne McLaren, Stephen Rice, Alexander Samson, Christopher Skidmore, Greg Walker.

Abstracts of 300 words, for papers of approximately 20 minutes, should reach the organisers by 16 March 2007.

For more information see:
http://www.rensoc.org.uk/Partners%20both%20in%20throne%20and%20grave/PartnersHomepage.htm

Conference organisers:
Dr Alice Hunt, School of Humanities, University of Southampton a.hunt@soton.ac.uk
Dr Anna Whitelock, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge amw52@cam.ac.uk

"Shakespeare's Letters"

Columbia University Shakespeare Seminar
Meeting at the Columbia University Faculty House
Friday, February 9, 2007

We are pleased to present:
Alan Stewart, Columbia University
"Shakespeare's Letters"

Respondent:
Maurice Charney, Rutgers University

Cocktails 5-6pm; Dinner 6-7pm; Meeting commences shortly after 7pm

TONDAL'S VISION

New York City - February 18th
Corpus Christi Church, 4.00pm, "Music Before 1800", www.mb1800.org
Medieval Music Ensemble Dialogos (Paris, France)
Director : Katarina Livljanic
www.ensemble-dialogos.org

Six women's voices trace the path of Tondalís soul, taken away from his body, following his angel on an initiatory voyage through hell before returning to earth. A performance of musical theatre built around one of the most popular visionary stories of the 12th century, in a reconstructed musical language between plain-chant and polyphony, based on the Glagolitic chant from medieval Dalmatia (with English subtitles).

Stage direction: Sanda Herzic.

Shakespeare and Disability Studies: CFP

The permanent session on Shakespeare and Shakespearean Criticism at the M/MLA, which for 2007 will meet in Cleveland, OH, welcomes papers on the topic of "Shakespeare and Disablity Studies." This panel invites papers that explore the intersections between Shakespeare Studies and Disability Studies. The goals of the panel are not only to broaden our understanding of Shakespeare's various representations of disability, but also to investigate the ways that Disability Studies can inform Shakespeare Studies more generally. Please send 250 word abstracts via e-mail or attachment by April 15, 2007, to Professor David Wood, Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse, wood.davi@uwlax.edu

The Society for Reformation Research ...

... a North American scholarly organization (www.reformationresearch.org), and partner group to the Verein für Reformationgeschichte, is concerned with furthering scholarly research on the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and all other aspects of religious life in the early modern era. Following our mandate, we will sponsor a variety of sessions at the 2007 annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA), from October 24-28 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

We will accept papers and sessions on any theme related to Reformation research, but are particularly interested in sponsoring a series of sessions this year on the theme of "Reformation Encounters with the Other." Papers could treat any number of themes involving encounters between differing groups in the area of theology, religion, social and political relationships and arrangements, travel narratives and literature, and so on, in any context or period affected by the Reformation or the long sixteenth century (c. 1450-1650). We also seek papers for a series of panels entitled "Religion on the Brink of Reformation," intended to bring medievalists and early modernists together for comparative and epoch-bridging discussion.

Finally, as always, we would like to sponsor a limited number of sessions on approaches to teaching the Reformation.

We encourage proposals both for individual papers as well as full sessions; we particularly welcome panels that offer closely focused comparisons across national borders or those that include scholars and scholarly approaches from different continents. Papers should not have been previously presented at any other scholarly meeting nor have been published. The deadline for submitting paper proposals (by mail or email) is March 15th.

If you would like to present a paper under the auspices of the Society for Reformation Research, or for more information about our programs,please contact:

Susan R. Boettcher
c/o Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit
Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften
Humboldt Universität
Unter den Linden 6
D-10099 Berlin
Germany

Email: susan.boettcher@mail.utexas.edu

More information about the conference is available at the website of the SCSC: http://www.sixteenthcentury.org

Shakespeare and the law

[this from the SHAKSPER listserv ...]

The School of Law at the University of Warwick (in conjunction with the Capital Centre and the RSC) is organising a major conference on Shakespeare and the law, to be hosted by the University of Warwick from July 9th to July 11th 2007. The conference has already attracted many speakers of international reputation in the fields of law, history, literature, and theatre studies (including Jonathan Bate, Christian Biet, Peter Goodrich, Germaine Greer, Andrew Hadfield, B.J. and Mary Sokol and Ian Ward); as well as the participation of leading theatre practitioners, including actor, director, and writer, Michael Pennington, and RSC associate director, Gregory Doran.

The conference will launch the publication of a major academic journal, "Law and Humanities" (Hart Publishing). This is the first UK journal whose purpose is to provide a forum for multidisciplinary debate and discourse between the legal academy and the humanities' disciplines, such as classics, history, literature, music, philosophy, theology, theatre and film studies.

There will be a full programme of associated social events, including a reception at nearby Kenilworth Castle (with a talk on the visit by Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth in 1575); a conference dinner (with eminent guest of honour and speaker); and the possibility of a theatre trip to the RSC in neighbouring Stratford-upon-Avon.

Full details and a booking form can be found on our website: www.shakespearelaw.org

Dr Paul Raffield
Associate Professor, School of Law
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

Renaissance Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Renaissance Studies Certificate Program
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
364 Fifth Avenue (34-35 Street)
New York City
Martin Elsky, Coordinator

We are pleased to announce the schedule of Renaissance and Early Modern events at the CUNY Graduate Center for

SPRING 2007
All events are free and open to the public

Tuesday, February 13
6:30-8:00pm, Skylight Room 
"Undoing Jews: The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice
A conference in conjunction with Theater for a New Audience's simultaneous productions of Christopher Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Panelists include actor F. Murray Abraham, director David Herskovitz, James Shapiro (Columbia University), and Richard McCoy (The Graduate Center, CUNY). Sponsored by the Center for the Humanities. For more information about the plays, please visit: http://www.tfana.org

Thursday, February 15
6:00-7:30pm , Room 9207
Karen Robertson (Vassar College), “Pocahontas: Conversion and Cloth.” Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Women in the Renaissance.

Friday, February 16
9am-4pm, Segal Theatre
Graduate Student Conference :"Strange Currencies: Dynamic Economies in the Early Modern World."
Keynote address: 4:00pm, Segal Theatre
Kim Hall (Fordham University), "Foreign Encounters with Domestic Economies." Organized by the Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group.

Friday March 9
4:00-6:00pm, Skylight Room
The Medieval & Early Modern Culture of the Book: A Conference in Honor of W. Speed Hill
Seth Lerer (Stanford University), “From Medieval to Early Modern: Books and Readers of the 1550s.”
Margreta de Grazia (University of Pennsylvania), "Common-placing Shakespeare's Sonnets"
Co-sponsored by Ph.D. Programs in English and Comparative Literature and the Medieval Studies Certificate Program

Thursday, March 15, 2007
6:00-7:30pm , Room 9207
Betty Hageman (University of New Hampshire), “Introducing Heroic Women to the Restoration Stage: Katherine Philip’s Pompey.” Sponsored by SSWR.

March 30-31, April 12
“Worlds Apart? Early Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire” I
A Conference Jointly Sponsored by the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program (CUNY Graduate Center) and the Medieval and Renaissance Center (NYU). Co-sponsored by the Ottoman Studies Program(NYU), the Ph.D. Program in Art History and the Office of the Provost (The Graduate Center), and coinciding with the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797.”

Speakers will include:
Nancy Bisaha (History Department, Vassar College)
Richmond Barbour (Department of English, Oregon State University)
Jonathan Burton (Department of English, West Virginia University)
Eric Dursteler (Department of History, Brigham Young University)
Molly Greene (History Department, Princeton University)
Natalie Rothman (Department of History University of Toronto)
Baki Tezcan (Department of History, University of California, Davis)
Daniel Vitkus (English Department, Florida State University)

Friday, March 30
4:00-5:30, Segal Theatre
Papers to be announced
Keynote address
5:45-7:15, Elebash Recital Hall
Deborah Howard (Cambridge University), “The Role of the Ambassador in East-West Early Modern Cultural Exchange."
Reception to follow program.

Saturday, March 31, 9.30am-7pm
Program to be held King Juan Carlos Center, NYU (53 Washington Square South, NYC)
Papers to be announced  
Keynote address, 4:30pm (tentative):
Robert Irwin, (author of Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents [2006]), "Enlightened Despots, Gallant Indians and Rococo Harems: Aesthetic Orientalism in the Early Modern Period"

Thursday, April 12
“Worlds Apart? Early Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire” II
6:30-8pm, Skylight Room
Stefano Carboni (Curator of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and curator of the Met’s exhibition “Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797”)
“Moments of Vision: Venice and the Islamic World”
Co-sponsored by Ph.D. Program in Art History and the Office of the Provost.

Thursday, April 19
6:00-7:30pm , Room 4406
Elena Ciletti, (Hobart and William Smith College), “Artemesia Gentileschi and the Exemplarity of Judith in the Counter Reformation.” Sponsored by SSWR.

Friday, April 20
4:00-6:00pm, Segal Theater
Annual Shakespeare Birthday Lecture
Dympna Callaghan (Syracuse University), "Art and Life in Hamlet and The Comedy of Errors." 
Organized by the PhD Program in English. Cosponsored by The Renaissance Studies Certificate Program.

Thursday, May 17
6:00-7:30pm , Room 9207
Ellen Belton (Brooklyn College, CUNY), “Female Eloquence and Male Authority in Shakespeare’s Comedies.” Sponsored by SSWR