Early Modern Afterlives

The City University of New York Graduate Center
4th Annual EMIG Graduate Student Conference
Conference Date: April 18, 2008
Keynote Speaker: Diana E. Henderson (MIT)
Call for Papers and Panels

Representations of the afterlife haunt the early-modern period, while echoes and ghosts of the early modern period continue to reverberate through subsequent cultures and imaginations. The Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group of the Graduate Center, City University of NY, invites proposals for papers for its fourth annual graduate student conference to be held on April 18, 2008 in New York City. We encourage scholars of all disciplines to submit papers related to the period inclusive of the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, and we especially welcome papers with an interdisciplinary methodology. This conference will focus on both representations of the afterlife in the early modern era as well as later iterations and interpretations of early modern themes and artifacts. Possible topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

Heaven & hell
God and the devil
Religious strife
Saints and angels
Religious iconography
Ghosts
The supernatural
Dreams and prophecy
Body and soul
Funeral and burial rites
Elegies and eulogies
Early modern wills and testaments
Memorial markers (gravestones, monuments, etc.)
Death-bed confessions
Resurrection motifs
Later interpretations of early modern works (film, art, literature, music etc.)
Renaissance and new media
Enduring early modern cultural influences and references
Quotation of Renaissance texts
Early modern archives
After-life conspiracy theories (ex. accounts of Marlowe's death)

Send 200 word abstracts by February 1, 2008 to EMIGconference@gmail.com or mail to Balaka Basu (English Department, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016). Please include your name and institutional affiliation, mailing address, email address, and phone number.

EMIG provides a student-run forum for the exchange of ideas related to the period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. The group serves as a bridge between the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program, Departments at The Graduate Center, CUNY and the Renaissance Studies Association, while also serving the larger community of humanities scholars with an interest in this period. By emphasizing connections between developments in philosophy, theology, politics, rhetoric, law, science, sociology, theater, music, literature, and the visual arts during this important period, EMIG engages scholars from many academic disciplines. In doing so, we hope to broaden not only our knowledge of the period, but our scholarly approaches as well. EMIG meets at The Graduate Center, CUNY during the academic year.