Renaissance sovereignty at Stirling

[this via The London Renaissance Seminar]

SINRS ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM on RENAISSANCE SOVEREIGNTY
Saturday, 22 May, 2010.
AT UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING
IRIS MURDOCH CENTRE
CALL FOR PAPERS
And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught –
As my great power may give thee sense,
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us – thou may’st not coldly set
Our sovereign process, which imports at full,
By letters conjuring to that effect,
The present death of Hamlet.
(Hamlet, 4.3.59-66) /
Sovereignty was a hotly debated topic in Renaissance England, in
Scotland and on the continent of Europe during the 16 and 17th
centuries. The issue has resurfaced in the renewed attention given to
the writintgs of Carl Schmidt, and in the work of Giorgio Agamben, as
well as in the work of scholars who have sought to augment and/or revise
the writing of Ernst Kantorowicz. Renaissance contemporaries from Bishop
John Ponet, through Sir Thomas Smith, John Knox, George Buchanan, Fulke
Greville, Jean Bodin, and others, all debated the issues of
‘sovereignty,’ sovereign ‘power’ and responsibility, comparing and
contrasting its procedures of governance with other forms of social and
political organisation. Moreover, many of these issues were dramatised
in the public and private theatres of the period.
Papers are invited for a one-day symposium on ‘Renaissance Sovereignty’
and Proposals should be submitted to the following address by Monday 29
March, 2010 , and papers should be no longer than 15 mins. duration
(10pp. double-spaced typed A4):
Professor J. Drakakis
Department of English Studies
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
Scotland