Early Modern Lit. Reading Group (London)

I'm getting together an Early Modern English Literature reading group: we'll meet once a month, mid-week, 6:30-8pm, in a pub near the British Library. We'll alternate between reading literary texts and criticism. All are welcome. If you'd like to take part, please email me (a.smyth@rdg.ac.uk).

'The Stuart Dynasty'

The Scottish Catholic Historical Association and the Scottish Catholic Archives present ''The Stuart Dynasty'
Marking the 200th Anniversary of the death of Prince Henry Benedict, Cardinal Duke of York
16th Annual Conference, 2007
9.45am - 4.30pm, Saturday 9 June 2007
Gillis Centre, 100 Strathearn Road, Edinburgh

MICHAEL BROWN on 'The Accession of the Stewarts ... and other misfortunes': Strong and Weak Kings in late Medieval Scotland

JENNY WORMALD on 'The Stuarts in England' - still Scottish Kings?

CHARLES MCKEAN on James Hamilton of Finnart and the Stuarts

DAN MACCANNEL on Henry Benedict and the Reality of Kingship

DOMHNALL UILLEAM STIUBHART on the Last of the Stuarts: the grandchildren of Charles Edward Stuart

FR EUSTACE SEQUEIRA on the Restoration of the Pallazo Muti-Papazurri, Rome

REGISTRATION #13 (#9 students/OAP/unwaged) includes lunch
Cheques (made payable to SCHA and to arrive no later than 5 June) to:SCHA Conference c/o Scottish Catholic Archives, Columba House, 16 Drummond Place, Edinburgh EH3 6PL

The Association's journal The Innes Review is now published by Edinburgh
University Press.  For subscription details please see: http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/journals.aspx

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, Keele University

The Farmer Chetham MS: An Edition and Case-Study in Manuscript Circulation and Literary and Political Culture (in partnership with Chetham‚s Library, Manchester)

The PhD will consist of an edition of the Farmer Chetham MS at Chetham's Library, Manchester, which was last edited - in a partial and inaccurate edition - in 1873. The PhD will not simply transcribe the MS, but will also provide a detailed investigation into the provenance, physical make-up, and textual connections of the volume. The MS contains a mixture of prose (including letters of Ralegh and Bacon); poems by Davies, Donne, Hoskins, and Jonson; material on Philip Sidney; libels on the Earl of Somerset and on Giles Mompesson, along with a range of Jacobean libels.

A major part of the project will be to relate the manuscript to the wider issues of manuscript circulation and its role in the dissemination of political and cultural information especially in the English regions. Some attempt will be made to explore the difference between the kinds of collections generally located in national collections and the kinds of material found in local archives, by considering not only the contents of the volumes and how they relate to other key MS collections, but also by considering the different types of manuscript forms available and the differing kinds of collections which they might contain.

The studentship offers unrivalled access to the books and manuscripts at Chetham's Library in Manchester, and the opportunity to work closely with the library's staff. 

We are looking for a student with expertise in History or English Literature using manuscript sources, and who has completed a Master's degree or can demonstrate equivalent initial research training. The student will be offered tailored research training.

The AHRC studentship includes the annual tuitions fee for the three years full-time; equivalent in 2007/8 to £3,250 for full-time students. In addition, the award includes an annual Maintenance Grant of c. £ 12,600.

Lead Supervisor: Professor James Knowles, j.d.knowles@engl.keele.ac.uk Tel: 01782 583145
Entry Requirements: 1st class or upper 2.1 honours degree in English or History.
For further details: http://www.keele.ac.uk/research/humanities/AHRCawards.htm
Deadline: 15 June 2007. REF: 2007-02

Manchester Early Modern Texts Workshop: Conversion Narratives

John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester

9:00-9:15 Welcome

9:15-9:45 Jeremy Gregory (U Manchester), "What is a conversion narrative?"

9:45-10:15 Jackie Pearson (U Manchester), "Immortal longings: possession and self-possession in the conversion of Joan Drake (1625 and 1646)"

10:30-10:45 Jerome de Groot (U Manchester), "Prison, self-revelation and Royalist religion"

10:45-11:15 Roger Pooley (Keele U), "Conversion narratives in Pilgrim's Progress"

11:30-12:00 Phyllis Mack (Rutgers U), "Agency and the unconscious: The Methodist culture of dreaming"

12:00-12:30 Crawford Gribben and Naomi Baker (U Manchester), Closing discussion

Detais: Jerome de Groot, jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk

The Autobiography of Elizabeth Isham

My Booke of Rememberance: The Autobiography of Elizabeth Isham
Edited By Isaac Stephens

After the recent discovery of a previously unknown seventeenth-century autobiography written by Elizabeth Isham from the manuscript collections of Princeton University, Isaac Stephens, a PhD candidate in British history at the University of California, Riverside, has produced an online edition of the autobiography and posted it at the following URL:
http://www.history.ucr.edu/people/grad_students/stephens/index.html or http://www.history.ucr.edu/.

In addition, the Northamptonshire Record Society Press is to publish a forthcoming annotated edition of Stephens' transcription. The autobiography is also the foundation of his nearly completed dissertation, 'In the Shadow of the Patriarch: Elizabeth Isham and Her World in Seventeenth-Century Northamptonshire,' a micro-history on Isham's life and world. His dissertation and edition of Elizabeth Isham's autobiography should prove of interest to both literary scholars and historians alike.

East meets West at the Crossroads of Early Modern Europe:

Artistic Inspirations & Innovations
University of Sussex, 6th & 7th September 2007

This conference brings together eminent researchers in the field and provides a unique opportunity to explore Central/Eastern European art and culture of the Early Modern period. The aim of the conference is a re-assessment of this artistic heritage, which will allow us to re-integrate the art of Central/Eastern Europe into the pan-European context. The conference will inform a new interpretation, not only of Central/Eastern Europe art, but also of Western art of the period.

Further information from conference organiser: Dr J.J. Łabno, e-mail: crossroads@sussex.ac.uk

website: www.sussex.ac.uk/arthistory/1-4-15.html

Material Readings in Early Modern Culture, 1550-1700

A Symposium at the University of Plymouth, April 2008

This symposium explores the significance of the physicality of manuscript and printed texts in the early modern period. By comprehensively focussing on the material aspects of texts as a new and valuable way of reading and decoding meaning, it aims to provide a thorough reassessment of the varied cultures of manuscript and print in the period. Avowedly interdisciplinary, a central purpose of the symposium is to foster vigorous dialogues between print and manuscript studies, critical bibliography and history of the book, palaeography and diplomatics, and social and cultural history. It is intended that papers will examine a broad range of texts, both canonical and non-traditional, print and manuscript, and will treat the following key areas:

• The material, practices and processes of textual composition and production; manuscripts, drafting and editions
• The technologies and tools of writing
• Interpreting the uses of paper, quills, ink, desks, presses
• The significance of space and the design of texts; the layout of the manuscript and printed page; script and white space; type and typography; paratextual apparatus
• The space of textual production; the social context and location of writing
• The social signs, codes and cues inscribed within texts
• The distribution and dissemination of texts
• Environments of reading and reception
• Marginalia and practices of reading
• The material text as object or thing

For further details please email: james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk, or peter.hinds@plymouth.ac.uk.

Reading and Writing in Provincial Society 1300-1700

Call for Papers for the Renaissance Colloquium: Canterbury Christ Church University & Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library
Saturday 22nd September 2007

[info from Mike Pincombe's Tudor Mailing]

'...To understand the use of the materials we are investigating within the precise, local specific context that alone gave them meaning. This context might be ritual, political or at once religious and national.' Roger Chartier The Culture of Print (1989)

Papers are invited for the Second Annual Renaissance Colloquium. Working collaboratively with Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, the day will draw together scholars working on a range of source material including, book lists and inventories, literary manuscripts, early printed books, common place books, letters and civic documents. Papers are particularly welcome from but not restricted to scholars who have worked on material housed at Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library.

Key themes include: types of literacy and the status of the literate, orality, dis/continuities between manuscript and print culture, reading and writing practices, issues of methodology, materiality, book ownership/access, coterie writing, reading communities, metropolitan and continental influences.

Please send a 300 word synopsis of your paper to Claire Bartram, cb203@canterbury.ac.uk, by 30th June 2007.

Crime, Criminals, and Criminality, 1500-1700

“Truth Will Out”

[this info from Mike Pincombe's Tudor Mailing ...]

This 2-day international conference aims to provide a forum for scholars who work on various aspects of crimes, the people who commit them, and how such acts and people are imagined in the early modern period. We hope to encourage inter-disciplinary exchange and debate which will contribute to the widening interest and scholarship in these areas. To facilitate diversity in theoretical approaches, interests, and methodologies, the topical, temporal and geographical scope of the conference is purposefully broad.

Papers might address, but are not limited to, the following:

Definitions of Crime
Patterns of Crime
Urban and / or Rural Crime
Crime and Geography
Crime and Punishment
Political Crimes
Crime and Religion
Crime and Philosophy
Crime and the Early Modern Stage
Crime and Printing
The Early Modern Criminal Underworld: Fact or Fiction?
Criminals and Social Class
Criminals and Gender
The Psychology of the Criminal
The Body of the Criminal
Visual Representations of Criminals
Criminal Auto/Biography
Uses of Archetypal Criminals (Biblical and/or Classical)
Writing Criminals: Representations of Criminals in Plays, Poems, Prose Fictions, Diaries, Letters, and Ephemera
Criminals Writing: Writings by Criminals
Rhetoric of Criminality
Imagining Criminals
The After-Lives of Early Modern Criminals
Methodological and/or Theoretical Problems raised by the Multi-Disciplinary nature of Source Materials

Truth Will Out will be held at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, 23-24 August, 2007. Please send abstracts of approximately 500 words to Dr Nadia Bishai nadia.bishai@canterbury.ac.uk and Dr Astrid Stilma astrid.stilma@canterbury.ac.uk by 1 May, 2007.

Call for Papers: Renaissance In-Betweenness

Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society
Annual Conference
Vancouver, BC
3-5 April 2008

The Annual Conference of the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society (PNRS) will be held from April 3-5, 2008 in downtown Vancouver at the Hyatt Regency (room rates: $141.00 CDN per night, single or double). The theme for this year's conference is Renaissance In-Betweenness, and our plenary speakers will be Fran Dolan (University of California, Davis) and Elizabeth Harvey (University of Toronto).

We invite papers, panels, discussion groups, and workshops that examine Renaissance engagements with various transitional figures and cultural artifacts. The PNRS program coincides with the annual convention of the Medieval Academy at the Hyatt Regency, and both organizations hope that conference participants will engage in fruitful conversation across a range of historical fields and disciplines.

We invite proposals in the following areas for the 2008 conference:

Liminal Spaces: urban liberties, walls, doors, thresholds, docks, rivers and hedges

Figures of the In-Between: stage devils, panders, bawds, pages, hermaphrodites, messengers, angels, scribes, the noble savage, typesetters, publishers, usurers, translators and children

Religious *via media*

Generic Conventions and Hybrid Genres: *in medias res*, interludes, scene changes (jigs and dumbshows) and tragicomedy

Species Boundaries: integuments (skin, bark, pelt) and hybrid creatures

Mixed governments and *interregna*

Arcane Knowledge: zodiacal cusps, equinoxes and alchemy

Suspended States: sleep, trances and exorcisms

Objects of Exchange: letters, coins, gifts, rings, jewelry, potions, clothes and fabric

Places of Exchange: The Royal Exchange and pawnshops

Periodization and Historiography

Please email individual abstracts (250-words) or panel / workshop proposals to Tiffany Alkan (talkan@sfu.ca) and Vin Nardizzi (nardizzi@interchange.ubc.ca) by September 1, 2007.

Doctoral Studentship (3 Years)

Centre for the Study of the Renaissance
£16,238 p.a. (fees and maintenance)

A doctoral studentship starting October 1st 2007 is being offered to work on a PhD within the framework of a three-year Leverhulme Trust funded research project entitled "Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: An Analytical and Annotated Catalogue of Translations, 1473-1640". The Principal Investigator is Professor Brenda M. Hosington, University of Warwick. During the tenure of the doctoral studentship, the student will be expected to collaborate on the preparation of entries in a web-based catalogue for all the translations published in Britain between 1473 and 1640. He/she will also be involved in the organisation, in the final year, of a conference and will be encouraged to participate in collective publishing activities. Applicants should have a good honours degree in the Humanities and an M.A. in a field related to one of the following: Renaissance Studies, History of the Book, Bibliography. Preference will be given to candidates with computer skills and a working knowledge of at least one foreign language.

Candidates should send a letter of application explaining their suitability for the studentship and including a CV and the names of 2 academic referees to Professor Steve Hindle, Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL.

Please quote job vacancy reference number CSRSS-057.

The closing date/time for applications is 17:30 (British time) on Thursday 31 May 2007.

Shakespearean Surfaces (panel session)

The British Shakespeare Association Conference
31st August to 2nd September 2007, University of Warwick, UK

Recent Shakespeare studies have variously explored ways in which a sense of inwardness is constructed through overlapping discourses of anatomy, subjectivity, and psychological character. By contrast, this panel seeks to examine "surfaces" as a means to understand early modern identities in Shakespearean performance and writing. Surfaces are a threshold between the body and the world, inner and outer, private and public, imagination and production, actor and spectator, writer and reader, teacher and students. As such, they are all sites for interpreting Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Permeable, opaque or transparent, surfaces are the material means by which our experience is structured and meaning is translated and mediated. The seminar will further previous critical work that has sought to probe beneath the surfaces by re-focussing attention on surfaces themselves as complex elements in the ways meanings about Shakespeare are generated, by or from the multiple perspectives of directors, editors, actors, critics, readers, spectators, teachers, students. Examples might include (but are not limited to):

* manuscripts
* printed text
* inscription
* skin
* prosthetics
* props
* textiles (including costumes)
* architectural structures
* places of performance
* settings
* design

The 90-minute session will consist of five 5-minute position papers followed by an interactive discussion.

If you would like to present a position paper, please send a title and a short proposal (150-200 words) to:

Professor Alison Findlay (a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk) and Dr Liz Oakley-Brown (e.oakley-rown@lancs.ac.uk)

Deadline: 1st June 2007

Further details about the conference may be obtained from the British Shakespeare Association website: http://www.britishshakespeare.ws/

Appropriating Shakespeare

The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference 2007
October 11-13, 2007
The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio

The Ohio Shakespeare Conference has changed its name with the addition of West Virginia's Marshall University to its consortium.

Submissions for our first joint theme-focused conference should explore the ways that Shakespeare and other early modern writers invoke sources, both literary and cultural, to create meanings for their original audiences, as well as how these early modern works have been appropriated for use in later eras. We welcome 300 word abstracts or proposals. Proposals for panels are also welcome. Submissions may include treatment of Shakespeare and/or his contemporaries and their culture, and all publications are eligible for submission to the conference's published, juried Proceedings.

Submissions may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

Classical and Medieval sources
Early Modern collaboration
Shakespearean imitators
Shakespeare's borrowing
Misappropriations of Shakespeare
Drama in colonial situations
Digital Shakespeare
Early Modern literature in translation
International Shakespeare
Renaissance popular culture
Shakespeare in the public sphere
Quoting Shakespeare
Film adaptations
Bardolotry
Children's editions
Shakespeare and rehabilitation
Musical Shakespeare
Shakespeare in public education

Submission Deadline: 15 August 2007. If enough interest is shown, we will provide special undergraduate paper sessions.

Please include the following information in your conference proposals or abstracts:

Name, e-mail address, college or university affiliation, mailing address, audio visual needs, and times when it is impossible for you to present your work during the October timeframe. Also please indicate if you are an undergraduate student or if you are part of a pre-arranged panel.

E-mail submissions, sent to both organizers, are encouraged, although mailed submissions will be accepted as well.
Conference Organizers: Hillary Nunn, nunn@uakron.edu, 330-972-7601,
Department of English, 301 Olin Hall, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-1906.
Timothy Francisco, tfrancisco@ysu.edu, 330.941.3425, Department of English, Youngstown State University, One University Plaza, Youngstown, OH 44555.

OVSC Chairperson: Kara Northway, northwayk@xavier.edu, Xavier University OVSC website: http://www.marietta.edu/~engl/OVSC/

Art of War

Dr. David Trim (Newbold College), 'The Art of War: Martial Poetics and Prose from Henry Howard to Philip Sidney'

University of Reading, Early Modern Research Centre
16 May, HUMSS 10
4.30-6 p.m.

Detais: Dr Michelle OCallaghan, m.f.ocallaghan@reading.ac.uk

Shakespeare's 'Foul Papers'

Columbia University Shakespeare Seminar (#581)
Meeting at the Columbia University Faculty House

Friday, May 11, 2007
Cocktails 5:00-6:00; Dinner 6:00-7:00; Meeting commences shortly after 7:00

We are pleased to present:

Paul Werstine
King's University College, University of Western Ontario

"The New Bibliographical Discovery of Shakespeare's 'Foul Papers'"

Respondent: William B. Long

Details: Adam G. Hooks, agh2108@columbia.edu

Sexualities, Textualities, Art & Music in Early Modern Italy

University College Cork, Ireland, 18-19 May 2007

Thanks to the work of scholars of civil and canon law, we now have a fairly nuanced understanding of the complexities of the legal codes governing sexual behaviour in early modern Italy. This international, interdisciplinary conference will explore the integration of sexualities with other aspects of early modern life and the role of writing, art and music in fashioning and even policing early modern Italian sexualities.

Keynote: Suzanne Cusick (New York University), 'Madrigals of Love and War'.

Round Table: Julia Hairston (University of California, Rome Study Centre), Katherine McIver (University of Alabama, Birmingham), Laura Macy (Editor, Grove Dictionaries of Music), Guido Ruggiero (University of Miami)

Speakers: Catherine Baxter (Cambridge University), Bonnie Blackburn (Wolfson College, Oxford), Christophe Brouard, Donna Cardamone (University of Minnesota), Linda Carroll (Tulane University), Elizabeth Cohen (York University, Canada), Laura Giannetti (University of Miami), Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Catherine Lawless (University of Limerick), Covadonga López de Prado Nistal, Katherine McIver (University of Alabama, Birmingham), Flavio Rurale, and Laurie Stras (University of Southampton).

Concert: Four Nuns and a Courtesan. Deborah Roberts (soprano) and Siobhán Armstrong (early harp), with Ian Sexton (organ & harpsichord), give a recital of ravishing solo vocal music by seventeenth-century Italian composers.

Further information and registration forms available from http://www.music.ucc.ie/sexualities/.

Dr Melanie Marshall
Department of Music
University College Cork
Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland

Email: ml.marshall@ucc.ie
Fax: +353 (0)21 421 2507
Tel: +353 (0)21 490 4530