CIRCULATING IDEAS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE

[these details via the LRS list]

NETWORKS, KNOWLEDGE, AND FORMS

*Keynote speakers: Mark Greengrass, Margaret Ezell, and Richard Serjeantson*

*Royal Society, London. 8-10 July, 2010*

*Presented in conjunction with the 350^th anniversary of the Royal Society*

The seventeenth century in Europe was an age of turmoil. As wars, revolutions, and exploration redrew the boundaries of the physical world, a tumult of new ideas shifted the boundaries of the intellectual world. In poetry and in polemics, men and women involved in philosophy, theology, politics, and science created a dynamic knowledge economy.

Ideas were the currency of this economy – but how did writers, thinkers, and agents choose the forms in which that currency should circulate? This conference takes up that question, investigating the relationship between the circulation of ideas and the forms in which they circulated.

*/Forms./ *Ideas might circulate in manuscript or in print; in Latin, or in the vernacular. How were individual writers thinking about the effects or consequences of these choices? How might the language, form, and medium of these texts influence the reception of the content?

*/Networks./* The circulation of ideas involved networks of intelligencers, scribes, printers, publishers, and booksellers. How did particular coteries and networks circulate their arguments? How does this collaborative aspect affect how modern scholarship construes their significance?

*/Knowledge./ *Concerns about censorship and secrecy – or conversely a perceived need for publicity – influenced how ideas in these fields are communicated. How were particular categories of content (scientific, satirical, literary, theological, or political) linked to particular material forms?

Possible panel topics might include:

· Science and medicine in circulation**

· Literary communities/coteries**

· the Republic of Letters**

· Authorship and identity**

· History of the book**

· History of reading and reception**

· Scribal publication**

· Censorship**

· Ciphers and codes**

· Gender and knowledge**

* *

We welcome proposals for either full panels or individual papers.**

Individual paper proposals should be 300 words long. For full panel proposals, please send all paper abstracts with an additional 300-word description of panel itself.

Proposals should be e-mailed to _all three_ conference organizers (Ruth Connolly, Felicity Henderson, and Carol Pal) by *_7 January, 2010_*.

Dr. Ruth Connolly: ruth.connolly@newcastle.ac.uk

Dr. Felicity Henderson: felicity.henderson@royalsociety.org

Dr. Carol Pal: cpal@bennington.edu

* *

See the conference website at: http://tiny.cc/cisce. More details will be posted as available.

Cultures of Correspondence

Sat 24th July 2010

University of Aberdeen

A one-day colloquium on letter writing in the early modern period.

For further information contact a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk

UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD–BRITISH LIBRARY RESEARCH STUDENTSHIP

Letters and Lives: Early Modern Catholic Manuscript Cultures

We offer an exciting opportunity to work on a joint University of Sheffield/
British Library MPhil/PhD project on early modern Catholic manuscript cultures,
supervised by Dr Nicky Hallett, School of English, University of Sheffield and
Dr Frances Harris, Head of Modern (post-1603) Historical Manuscripts at the
British Library. The project will consider the relationships between religious
writing and European literary traditions, and will result in a new critical
study of material and enhanced British Library catalogues.

This is a fully-funded three-year studentship (subject to annual review), with a
UK/EU tuition fee waiver, a maintenance stipend (£13,290 in 2009/10 and rising
incrementally thereafter), and a Research Training Support Grant (£500 per
annum).

The project will focus on manuscripts, life-writing and related material from
the circle of Winefrid Thimelby (1618-90), an Augustinian nun living in exile
in Louvain, a member of the Aston family, prominent Catholics from Tixall in
Shropshire, including Gertrude Thimelby and Constance Fowler, other poets and
writers.

Applicants should have a good first degree in English, History or a related
subject (first class or high IIi) and be familiar with early modern sources,
probably through an MA in early modern literature or cultural studies. They
will join a lively early modern research community, lately further enhanced at
Sheffield by a new AHRC-funded project and two further studentships on ‘Early
Modern Manuscript Poetry: Recovering our Scribal Heritage’, led by Professor
Steven May and Dr Cathy Shrank. The British Library in London houses a unique
collection of manuscripts and early printed books. The successful applicant
will have access to specialist research training at both institutions.

Further particulars are available from mid-September on the University of
Sheffield School of English website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/ Enquiries
(after 22 September) should be addressed to Dr Nicky Hallett:
n.a.hallett@sheffield.ac.uk, to whom applications should be sent by Monday 5
October 2009. Interviews will be held in Sheffield on Friday 16 October with
appointment as soon as possible thereafter.

Shakespeare and the Actress:

Renaissance Women’s Performance and the Dramatic Canon
14-15 July 2010 at the Queen’s House, Greenwich

*Jointly sponsored by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Centre for Research in* *Renaissance Studies, Roehampton University London*

The Renaissance theatrical woman offers a fresh context for the interpretation of the productions of the public and private playhouses which have for so long dominated critical interest. This interdisciplinary conference will explore the domestic and European theatrical culture of which female masquers, singers, jesters, foreign actresses, dancers, musicians, writers, orators and theatrical labourers were part and will consider the impact of this alternative performance tradition on familiar dramatic works and on the history of early modern theatre. Exploring the range of early modern women’s theatrical performance and participation, it will assess the ways in which the canonical plays of the public and private city stages (including but not restricted to those of Shakespeare) are changed when we take account of the theatricality of the women of early modern England and Europe.

The conference will be held in the Queen’s House, part of the Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site. Designed for the courts of Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria, the House is the architectural expression of a Stuart queenship which fostered a range of female theatricality. The conference itself, though, will range beyond elite culture to discuss the activities of what Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin call ‘the female player’ and to explore the popular, elite, formal, informal, commercial and non-commercial performances of such women as new and important contexts for the theatre of early modern England.

Papers are invited which interpret canonical early modern drama via the context of the Renaissance female performer. Topics might include:

*Approaches to the canon*: recontextualising the all-male stage - the boy actor – reinterpreting transvestism – the children’s companies – theatrical tropes of femininity.

*The woman as performer*: continental women on the English stage – the educated woman – the courtly or aristocratic woman – the commedia actress – the masquer – queens, princesses, consorts – female orators – women reading and women writing – embedded masques / entertainments – the tragic / comic actress.

*Alternative theatrical traditions*: playing spaces and the location of performance – inside and outside the playhouses – the practice of touring theatre.

*Alternative theatrical modes*: music – song – dance – oration – social performance – female theatrical work / labour

*Transnational theatre practice*: the theatrical woman in Europe – the foreign actress – intersections of continental and domestic traditions.

*Paradigms, methodologies and theoretical approaches*: sources – textual, material & visual traces of the performing woman – terminology (actress, female player or theatrical woman?) – feminism and gender studies – performance studies – the archive – a new theatre history?

Please send enquiries and 500-word abstracts to: Clare McManus, Roehampton University by 30 September 2009 (c.mcmanus@rus.roehampton.ac.uk)

Gender and the Family

The Gender and Medieval Studies Conference will be hosted in January 2010, by the Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages (CeSMA) at the University of Birmingham. The programme organisers welcome proposals for 20 minute papers on the following topic by 1st September 2009:

Family is arguably the fundamental and universal unit of gendered experience. Gender identities and embodied understandings of the world are acquired through socialization into family configurations of relatedness. This conference will examine the functions and representations of the medieval family in a range of contexts, addressing the ways in which the family could be used to reinforce or challenge wider forms of association and provide a rich metaphorical language for use in the articulation and legitimization of wider social institutions and hierarchies. It will examine the ways in which gender roles inform the definition of the medieval family and affect its internal economy, emotional dynamics, and links to other institutions and social networks.

We invite papers on a range of themes, which may cover: defining the family; the changing meanings of relatedness within the family in the medieval period, including motherhood, fatherhood, sisterhood, and brotherhood, and the wider family; roles of family members – for example, in socializing the young; the link between family and patriarchy, including the family’s uneven distribution of gender roles and opportunities among sons and daughters; images of the Holy Family and their implications for gendered behaviour in medieval society; the queer family and the motherhood of Christ; royal families and the interaction of gender and power; the monastic community as family and the (cross-gendered) mapping of family roles onto ecclesiastical ones; female saints and the dysfunctional family; biblical depictions of the family and their interpretation by medieval cultures; the meanings of family in minority medieval communities, including Jewish and Islamic society.

We hope to welcome scholars and perspectives from a range of disciplines, including history, literature, art history and archaeology, and to promote a productive and interdisciplinary discussion of this area. It is anticipated that proceedings will be published after the conference. Please send your submission to Simon Yarrow and Philippa Semper (gender.family.2010@googlemail.com) by 1 September, 2009.

Material Cultures

A three-day conference at the University of Edinburgh, 16-18 July 2010

With:
ROGER CHARTIER
JEROME McGANN
PETER STALLYBRASS

Following the Material Cultures conferences which took place at The University of Edinburgh in 2000 and 2005, the third in the series is scheduled to take place in July 2010. The key theme of the conference is ‘Technology, Textuality, and Transmission’, though proposals relating to all aspects of Bibliography and the History of the Book are welcome.

MATERIALITY AND TEXTUALITY
ELECTRONIC TEXT
THE CULTURES OF PRINT
CENSORSHIP AND REGULATION
COLLECTIONS AND THEIR PRESERVATION
READERS AND READING PRACTICES
TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSMISSION
THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION
GEOGRAPHIES OF THE BOOK

Proposals of 200-300 words are invited on these or any other topic related to the history of the book, to be sent no later than 30 November 2009, to Material Cultures, Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh, 22a Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW or by email to mailto:materialcultures@ed.ac.uk.

“Timon of Athens, Forms of Payback, and the Genre of Debt”

Amanda Bailey, University of Connecticut

Columbia Shakespeare Seminar.

Date: Friday, September 11, 2009

Time: Social hour, 5-6:00pm; Dinner, 6-7:00 pm; Meeting at 7:00pm

Place: Faculty House

Details: columbiashakespeareseminar@gmail.com

Textual Debates and Editorial Practice

A Folger Spring Semester Seminar directed by Margaret Jane Kidnie

Editorial studies achieved an unexpected celebrity in the late 1980s and 1990s, while occasioning sometimes heated polemical debate. While the scholarly quarrels have recently become more nuanced, there remains uncertainty about the principles of editorial practice. How are editors adapting their methodologies in face of the so-called theory wars, and how might they continue to evolve? How, if at all, are editions designed for use in the classroom, study, and theatre changing? This seminar is designed to engage practitioners new to the field as well as experienced editors who would like to explore current issues at more length. Participants will draw on their own works-in-progress among other examples to investigate the process of preparing an edition for publication, from interpreting manuscripts to establishing substantive editions to making decisions about emendation, lineation, and commentary. Using this practical aspect as a foundation for discussion, participants will explore new possibilities for editorial practice and the larger conceptual issues they raise. Topics will include authors and authority; print evidence of lost manuscript sources; changing canonical boundaries; editing conventions and modern publishing constraints; and editing and theatre as related forms of modern (and always adaptive?) production.

Director: Margaret Jane Kidnie, Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, is the author of Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation (2009). She has edited Philip Stubbes: The Anatomie of Abuses (2002) and Ben Jonson: The Devil is an Ass and Other Plays (2000); her edition of The Humorous Magistrate, an early seventeenth-century manuscript drama, is forthcoming with the Malone Society. She is the co-editor of Textual Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare's Drama (2004), and has written widely on editorial practice, particularly in relation to issues of performance. She is currently working on an edition of A Woman Killed with Kindness.

Schedule: Thursdays, 1 -- 4:30 p.m., 28 January through 15 April 2010, except 25 February and 1 April.

Apply: 4 September 2009 for admission (and grants-in-aid for Folger Institute affiliates); 4 January 2010 for admission only.

Application information may be found on the Folger Institute's website: www.folger.edu/institute. Please forward any questions to institute@folger.edu.

Bad Behaviour in Medieval & Early Modern Europe

AHRC funded, Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Colloquium
Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury
Thursday, 3rd December, 2009

This is an excitingly different one day inter-disciplinary postgraduate Colloquium supported by the AHRC Beyond Text Programme. Our definition of bad behaviour has been chosen to cover the widest parameters of the transgressive: all aspects of the bad from ludic, mischievous or disruptive to the violently anti-social, sexual, tabooed and/or criminal. Beyond these aims, we will explore transgression through transmission and memory, and ask how and why bad behaviour is remembered and fore-grounded. Tensions and ambiguous interactions between those 'acting' or 'being bad' with those who denounced such behaviour will be addressed, as our comprehension of bad behaviour in the past shapes our understanding of crime now, new perspectives of understanding will be created. Contextualizing different perspectives and approaches on transgressive behaviours, and engaging them in a dialogue, permits a fruitful questioning and challenging of our preconceptions.

We are calling for papers from postgraduates which will forge new relevant research. We offer:
- Personal business cards for speed networking event and a Colloquium Handbook of Bad Behaviour or 'Manuel des Pecchiez'
- Practical archival training session using unique documentary evidence from Canterbury archives
- Evening exhibition on Bad Behaviour at Canterbury Cathedral Archives
- Night Tour of Canterbury Cathedral Crypt with spoken performances
- British Cartoon Archive Collaborative Exhibition launch and interactive website linking early modern and medieval transgression to modern images of bad behaviour
- Selected papers published in the on-line peer-reviewed postgraduate journal /Skepsi//
/- some limited transport and accommodation bursaries available
Please see our website for full details:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/mems/ research/conferences/badbehaviour.html and submit your 250 word abstract to bad-behaviour@kent.ac.uk by 30th September, 2009.

http://www.beyondtext.ac.uk/

SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE BOOK

The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
16-18 October 2009
http://book-conference.com

The Book Conference serves as an inclusive forum for examining the past, current and future role of the book. It proceeds from recognition that although the book is an old medium of expression, it embodies thousands of years' experience of recording knowledge. The pervasive influence of this experience continues to shape newer forms of information technology, while at the same time providing a reference point for innovation.

Keynote speakers include:
* Bill Bell, Director of the Centre for the History of the Book, The University of Edinburgh, UK
* Gobinda Chowdhury, Professor of Information and Knowledge Management, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
* Lorraine Fannin, Board of Trustees, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
* Michael Fraser, Director of the Communications Law Centre, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
* John Man, British historian and travel writer, UK
* Alistair McCleery, Professor of Literature and Culture, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
* Martyn Wade, National Librarian, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK
* John W. Warren, Director of Marketing, Publications, RAND Corporation, USA

The Book Conference not only considers the book and other information technologies as artefacts or discrete objects, it also examines other key aspects of the information society, including publishing, libraries, information systems, literacy and education. Broadly speaking, the Conference engages the interrelation between changes in thought, creation, production and distribution, and the role and meaning of the book and other information technologies. The Book Conference welcomes a wide range of participants from the world of books including authors, publishers, printers, librarians, IT specialists, book retailers, editors, literacy educators, and academic researchers and scholars from all disciplinary traditions.

The Conference includes plenary presentations by accomplished researchers, scholars and practitioners, as well as numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in The International Journal of the Book. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic Journal.

Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this Conference, we also encourage you to present on the Conference YouTube Channel. Please select the Online Sessions link on the Conference website for further details.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 20 August 2009. Future deadlines will be announced on the Conference website after this date. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, are to be found at the Conference website - http://book-conference.com

THE JESUITS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES

Identity and Impact (1540 – 1773)

Leuven, Belgium, 3-5 December, 2009

On December 3-5, 2009, the Jesuitica Project* (*Institute for the Study of Spirituality / K.U.Leuven – Faculty of Theology), together with the Netherlands Institute of Jesuit Studies (NIJS, Amsterdam) is organizing an International Conference, entitled “*/THE JESUITS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES: Identity and Impact (1540 – 1773)/*,”to be held*/ /*at the premises of the Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven, Belgium. The conference is sponsored by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and the Flemish-Dutch Committee for the Dutch Language and Culture (VNC).

This international conference will be focusing on the Jesuits of the Low Countries (1540-1773), their multiple identities and their impact on society, with particular emphasis on recent research and newly available methodologies. We hope to bring together junior and senior researchers, from all countries, with a special interest in the Jesuits of the Low Countries (Old Society). The topics of the interventions are chosen in such a way that both ends of the information chain should be able to meet: archivists, librarians, and book historians, on the one hand, and researchers, on the other hand.

From its foundation till its suppression in the eighteenth century, the Society of Jesus had a profound impact on the cultural, religious and political life of the Low Countries. The Jesuits contributed significantly to the shaping of the educational curriculum and to the dialogue with the burgeoning new sciences and the arts. Their pastoral and spiritual methods were equally innovative. Their influence can be measured by their huge number of local vocations and the enormous amount of literature printed in the Low Countries.

This conference also sheds light on the largest Jesuitica collection of the world, housed at the Maurits Sabbe Library (Faculty of Theology, K.U.Leuven), and the opportunities it creates for research. This collection comprises works from the major former Jesuit libraries in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Since 2004, these volumes are in the process of being described in depth, and the results have been made available to the scientific community thanks to the Jesuitica Project, operating within the Institute for the Study of Spirituality. The website /www.jesuitica.be/ has gained support and appreciation from a score of researchers worldwide. To mark the closing of the first phase of this project, we want to both evaluate the past achievements and look ahead towards the future.

On the occasion of the conference, a new publication will be launched: /Jesuit Books in the //Low Countries//, 1540-1773. A selection from the Maurits Sabbe Library/, in which more than fifty scholars deal with a well-balanced selection of books – by and about Jesuits – which belong to the collections of the Maurits Sabbe Library. The book will be a showcase of Jesuitica research-in-action.

At the Maurits Sabbe Library, an exhibit of these books, put within their context, is scheduled to be opened on the first night of the conference. The exhibit will be on display till 16 January 2010.

Prior registration is required, before 15 November 2009 – preferably via the Jesuitica website, where all further information regarding registration and accomodation can be found, next to updates and programme details.

Payment of fees (€20,00 for 3 days or €10,00 per single day) by money transfer to

IBAN: BE60 7340 0666 0370 – SWIFT code: KREDBEBB (international transfer – SEPA form)

always mentioning “400/0003/12257” + NAME of participant.

More information can be requested at bernard.deprez@theo.kuleuven.be

www.jesuitica.be

The John Dee Quatercentenary Conference

St John's College, Cambridge, 21-22 September 2009

2009 marks the quatercentary of the death of the great Elizabethan polymath, John Dee (1527-1609). This international and interdisciplinary conference commemorates the occasion by investigating the extraordinary range of Dee's interests and enterprises: his studies in geometry, navigation, and calendar reform; his fascination with alchemy, magic, and divination; his achievement in building England's greatest library; and his place in the wider intellectual world of Renaissance Europe.

Speakers include Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London), Nicholas Clulee (Frostburg State University), Jean-Marc Mandosio* *(École pratique des hautes études, Paris), Glyn Parry (Victoria University of Wellington), Stephen Pumfrey (Lancaster University), and György Szo"nyi* *(Central European University, Szeged, and Anglia Ruskin University). The conference includes the opportunity to examine some of Dee's own books in St John's College Old Library under the guidance of Julian Roberts, co-editor of John Dee's Library Catalogue.

For further details, including registration, please visit the conference website: www.hps.cam.ac.uk/dee

The John Dee Quatercentenary Conference is supported by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (University of Cambridge), the British Society for the History of Science, and the Society for Renaissance Studies. Travel bursaries may be available for student participants. For further details, please email Jennifer Rampling at jmr82@cam.ac.uk.