Wednesday, September 28, 2011

University of Birmingham, Early Modern Literature, Culture, and Society

Seminar Programme 2011-12

Autumn Semester

Wed 28 September (Week 1) Jonathan Willis (Birmingham): ‘Laying down the Law: The Ten Commandments in the Early English Reformation’

Wed 12 October (Week 3) Christopher Burlinson (Cambridge): ‘Keeping Texts: Elizabethan Puritans in England and the Netherlands’

Wed 26 October (Week 5) CREMS ANNUAL LECTURE: Lecture Room 5, Arts Building, 5.15 pm, Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge): ‘Visual Cultures of the German Reformation’

Wed 16 November (Week 8) Michelle O’Callaghan (Reading): ‘Collections and Coteries: Reading Verse Miscellanies’

Wed 30 November (Week 10) Jill Francis (Birmingham): ‘Gardening networks and exchanges: the notebooks and correspondences of Sir Thomas Hanmer of Bettisfield’

To take place in Room 103, Arts Building, 4.15 pm, except for the CREMS annual lecture, which will take place in Lecture Room 5, Arts Building at 5.15 pm.

Contacts: Dr Elaine Fulton (e.k.fulton@bham.ac.uk) or Dr Hugh Adlington (h.c.adlington@bham.ac.uk)

THE BRITISH MILTON SEMINAR

BMS 44, AUTUMN, 2011
Saturday 22 October 2011
FINAL NOTICE

Venue: In the Birmingham and Midland Institute [**PLEASE NOTE NEW VENUE**] on Saturday 22 October 2011. There will be two sessions, from 11.00 am to 12.30 pm and from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm

Programme: (am) Mandy Green (Durham), ‘Elegia VI and the Epitaphium Damonis, and Elegia I and the Milton-Diodati prose letters’; Ryan Netzley (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale), ‘What Happens in Lycidas?: Novelty, Possibility, and Events’.

(pm) Islam Issa (Birmingham), ‘Milton and Islam: Paradise Lost in Arabic in Twenty-First-Century Egypt’; a discussion led by Gordon Campbell (Leicester) on ‘Milton and the King James Bible’.

The Birmingham and Midland Institute (BMI) was founded by Act of Parliament in 1854, for ‘the Diffusion and Advancement of Sciences, Literature and Art among all Classes of Persons resident in Birmingham and the Midland Counties’, and continues to pursue these aims. The BMI is located in the heart of Birmingham’s city centre, just a few minutes walk from Birmingham New Street, Snow Hill and Moor Street railway stations:

Birmingham and Midland Institute,

Margaret Street,

Birmingham B3 3BS.

Please follow this link for map of the BMI’s location, and for further information about the BMI and its Library: http://www.bmi.org.uk/

Thomas N. Corns and Hugh Adlington, Co-convenors

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Othello

... is the subject of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s 19 annual
Shakespeare Colloquium, which will be held on Saturday, October 22, 2011,
from 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. in Madison, New Jersey. The colloquium is free
and open to the public. All New Jersey teachers who participate are eligible
for Professional Development Credits.

Speakers will be Allison Deutermann of Baruch College, CUNY; Ian Smith of
Lafayette College; Jeffery Alan Triggs of Rutgers University; and Eric
Johnson-DeBaufre of Drew University.

Allison Deutermann will discuss the significance of the character Iago’s
refusal to confess at the end of the play. Ian Smith’s presentation, “Race,
Comedy, and *Othello*” will examine the role of racism in creating social
harmony for an exclusive majority in the play. Eric Johnson-DeBaufre will
link the issues of male friendship and shared expression as they appear in *
Othello.* The colloquium will conclude with Jeffery Alan Trigg’s comparison
of Shakespeare’s play with Arrigo Boito’s libretto for Giuseppe
Verdi’s 19thcentury opera *Otello*.

The colloquium is supported by Fairleigh Dickinson University, The Columbia
University Seminars office, and individual donations. Organizer and project
director for the colloquiums is Dr. Harry Keyishian, Professor Emeritus of
English. For further information, please call 973-443-8711 or email Dr.
Harry Keyishian at harrykeyishian@gmail.com. Fairleigh Dickinson University
is located at 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940.

Monday, September 26, 2011

UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges

Seminars, Autumn 2012, Wednesdays 4.30pm

5th October: Portraiture and Dolls Houses, FC 114
Maria Loh (UCL, Art History), 'Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye': Early Modern Portraiture, Friendship and Mourning
Hanneke Grootenboer (St Peter's, Oxford), Room for Contemplation: Heidegger, Bachelard and the Early Modern Doll's House

2nd November. Careers in the Early Modern, Galton Lecture Theatre, Torrington Place 1-19
Lucy Worsley (Historic Royal Palaces, presenter of the BBC series If Walls Could Talk)

Laura Massey (Rare Books Seller, Peter Harrington Books).

16th November: Guest Lecture by Jeanne Shami (University of Regina), FC 114
Women and the Early Modern Sermon

30th November: Borderlands: FC 114
Sizen Yiacoup (Liverpool University), Chivalrous Moors: Warfare and Cultural Hybridity in the Castilian Frontier Ballads
Claire Norton (St Mary's College, Strawberry Hill), Blurred Boundaries: the Mediterranean World as a Site of Interaction and Integration

For maps and directions, please see: www.ucl.ac.uk/locations/ucl-maps

For more on the UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, please see: www.ucl.ac.uk/eme

Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies, 12-14 July 2012

Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading

The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early

modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years,

proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on research in any aspect of early

modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world. This year, the plenary

speakers are Professor Paul Yachnin (McGill), director of the ‘Making Publics’ project, and

Professor John Morrill (Cambridge).



We would welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on any aspect of early

modern literature, history, art, music and culture. Panels have been proposed on the

following themes and further panels or individual papers are also invited on these topics or

any other aspect of early modern studies:

• Making publics

• Gathered texts: print and manuscript

• Politics and Biblical Interpretation

• Negotiating early modern women’s writing

• Passionate bodies, passionate minds

• Prince Henry: role, rite, and rhetoric

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers.

Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and

affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together

with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of

a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.



Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the

Conference Committee, Dr. Chloë Houston, by 9 January 2012, c.houston@reading.ac.uk.

Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make

some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial

assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting

their proposal.

Fairfax 400 Anniversary Conference

Call for Papers
Marc Fitch House, University of Leicester
30 June – 1 July 2012

This conference will investigate the impact of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–1671) upon his time and contemporaries. It will combine the approaches of historians and literary scholars to examine afresh his multiple roles as a general, politician, landowner, husband and literary figure. His memory, image and reputation in art, literature, media and film will also be assessed in this exciting weekend conference which will also include an afternoon tour of Naseby conducted by members of the Naseby Battlefield Project.

Please could prospective speakers email the conference organizers by 1 January 2012 with your contact details, a title, and a 300-word abstract of your proposed contribution.

Conference organizers:

Dr Andrew Hopper ajh69@le.ac.uk

Dr Philip Major philip.major@bbk.ac.uk

Friday, September 23, 2011

Job in New York!

Barnard College seeks an entry-level Assistant Professor specializing in
sixteenth-century non-dramatic English literature. We expect that
candidates will have the PhD. in hand by the time of employment. The
appointment is to begin on 1 July 2012.

Preferred qualifications include additional expertise in a sub-field such as
sixteenth-century poetry and prose in a language other than English;
sixteenth-century literature of discovery and colonization (comparative or
English); trans-atlantic studies; women writers of the sixteenth century;
sixteenth-century English and Continental religious culture;
sixteenth-century science studies; sixteenth-century art and poetics; or
interdisciplinary scholarly and critical approaches that engage discourses
of gender, race, and class. Opportunities exist for involvement and
teaching in the Africana Studies and Comparative Literature programs.


Candidates should send only a CV, an application letter, and three letters
of reference to Achsah Guibbory, Chair, Dept. of English, Barnard College,
3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. Applications should be postmarked by 1
November 2011.

Barnard College is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages applications
from women and individuals from underrepresented groups.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Tempest Study Day

... hosted by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in association with Jericho House, will take place on Monday 3rd October. The Study Day will interrogate the sound world of the play, drawing on the company’s work reconstructing historical music and investigating its interaction with the performance. Leading Shakespeare and Early Modern Music experts are gathering to explore these themes.

Speakers include:

* Professor Ann Thompson, Director of the London Shakespeare Centre at King’s College, London
* Anthony Rooley, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland and The Consort of Musicke
* Dr Gwilym Jones, Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London and Visiting Lecturer Shakespeare’s Globe
* Jonathan Holmes, Artistic Director of Jericho House and Director of The Tempest
* Emily Baines, Musical Director of The Tempest and The Fellowshippe of Musickers
* Professor Gordon McMullan, Professor of English at King’s College, London

To book, please go to: http://www.barbican.org.uk/education/event-detail.asp?ID=12635

Further information on Jericho House’s The Tempest:

The Tempest premiered in 1611 with the most extensive sound world of any play yet written. Most of the music Robert Johnson wrote for the play has been lost, though some songs famously survive. This project begins from the hypothesis that Johnson transferred musical ideas and techniques from his contemporaneous work on court masques to his design for The Tempest, the most masque-like of plays. If so, these ideas would have included extensive improvisation and unconventional instrumentation by large groups of musicians. The result of doing so is not only a more voluminous use of sound, but rather a startlingly new musical dramaturgy for the time, one which casts sound, text and action in a highly novel light, and one which was not again repeated in the period. It is this dramaturgy which has been the subject of our research, and which has led us to see the play very differently. We view it essentially as a collaboration between two authors, from which substantial areas of musical text are missing, and so very much of a piece with the collaborative nature of other of Shakespeare’s late romances. Jericho House’s production stems from these ideas.

For more information on the production, or to book tickets, see: http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=12493

Please email research@gsmd.ac.uk for any other enquiries.

Monday, September 19, 2011

The representation and role of owners, donors and patrons in medieval art

Friday 11th May 2012
Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies
University of Kent at Canterbury

Keynote Speaker: Dr Julian Luxford, University of St Andrews

CALL FOR PAPERS

Medieval art teems with examples of owners, donors or patrons whose presence is expressed in a variety of ways. Representation ranges in form, frequency and subtlety from heraldry, and actual portrayal, to choice of image subject matter. It is interesting to consider more closely the details of the owners, donors and patrons beyond mere identification and to explore the role and influence of the man or woman, lay or religious, upon the iconography employed in the artwork itself. The ‘Me Fieri Fecit’ symposium seeks to generate discussion not only on the who but also the why of ownership, donorship and patronage of medieval art.

Themes for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

Representation and portrayal Making a statement

Motivations: personal, political, religious Use of evidence

Religious versus lay Levels of influence

Absence of presence in major works Gender trends

Effects of giving & receiving on iconography Identity

This symposium welcomes proposals from doctoral students and established researchers. Expressions of interest and abstracts of 250 words, for a 20 minute paper, should be sent to Jayne Wackett at jaw62@kent.ac.uk by January 15th 2012.

"Formatting Early Modern Culture: Manuscript, Print, Film, Hypertext"

XXIII SEDERI CONFERENCE (SEVILLE, 2012)

"Formatting Early Modern Culture: Manuscript, Print, Film, Hypertext"

CALL FOR PAPERS

We are pleased to announce that the XXIII SEDERI Conference will be held
in Seville (Spain) on 14-16 March 2012.

The Conference aims to centre on topics related to the formatting and
circulation of Early Modern English texts. But contributions on other
aspects of the culture, language and literature of the Renaissance
period are welcome as well. The following plenary speakers have already confirmed their attendance:

Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford University)

Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame)

Deborah Payne Fisk (American University, Washington DC)

Zachary Lesser (University of Pennsylvania)

Henry Woudhuysen (University College, London)

The Organising Committee welcomes proposals for papers (20' presentation
+ 10' discussion) or round-table seminars. Contributors must submit the
following information:

About the paper or round-table:

Full title

A two-hundred word abstract

About the contributor(s):

Full name

Postal address and electronic mail address

Institutional affiliation


Proposals must be sent before 18 December 2011 to sederi23@us.es


Please notice that English is the official language of the Conference.


For further information, please check on the Conference webpage, or
write to the email or postal addresses below:

Juan A. Prieto Pablos
XXIII SEDERI Conference
Departamento de Literatura Inglesa y Norteamericana
Universidad de Sevilla
41004 Sevilla (Spain)
email: sederi23@us.es
http://congresos.us.es/sederi23

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Manuscript Identities and the Transmission of Texts in the English Renaissance

Friday 25 and Saturday 26 May 2012, Humanities Research Institute, Sheffield University

As part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Early Modern Manuscript Poetry: Recovering our Scribal Heritage’, this conference will explore the role of manuscripts in the production of individual and corporate identities in early modern culture, including the commissioning, copying, circulation, and collection of manuscripts. The conference welcomes multidisciplinary approaches and is keen to consider the relationships between manuscript and print identities in the period.

Topics might include: ownership and commissioning; selection criteria (authorial, thematic, generic, miscellaneous); scribal identities; collection and donation; manuscripts and place; the construction of poetic, religious, political, and regional identities in manuscript; coteries; circulation and dissemination; manuscript afterlives; editing

Speakers include: Julia Boffey (Queen Mary, London), Arthur Marotti (Wayne State University), Steve May (Sheffield University), Mary Morrissey (Reading University), Fred Schurink (Northumbria University), Jeremy Smith (Glasgow University), and Henry Woudhuysen (University College, London)

Please submit 200-word proposals for 20 minute papers by Friday 30 September to Alan Bryson (a.bryson@sheffield.ac.uk) and Cathy Shrank (c.shrank@shef.ac.uk). Enquiries should be directed to a.bryson@sheffield.ac.uk.

Historicizing Performance in the Early Modern Period

The John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester, January 20, 2012

Plenary Speakers:
Professor Julie Sanders (Nottingham), Professor Tiffany Stern (Oxford)

This one-day academic conference aims to bring together scholars working on all aspects of performance in the early modern period (taken broadly to include the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries). We intend to interrogate what performance and its related terminologies and practices might have meant to early modern readers, playgoers, and congregations; how performance shaped and/or undermined distinctions between private/public bodies and selves. Although drama is an essential point of reference for this discussion, we encourage that “historicizing performance” be taken as broadly as possible. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

- Plays and play-going
- Music and singing
- Public spectacles, ceremonies and architecture
- Ritual, devotional expression, spirituality / the sermon as performance
- Autobiography and Performative Texts
- Performing gender/ sexuality/ the domestic
- Performance and the performative in theory

Please email abstracts (400 words max.) for a 20 minute paper to Michael Durrant and
Naya Tsentourou at: Historicizing.Performance@manchester.ac.uk
Deadline for abstracts: September 23th, 2011
Notifications of acceptance to be sent out by October 14th, 2011

Imaginative Geographies: Travels of the Mind in Early Modern Europe

28th September 2011 at the University of Bristol

While Renaissance and Early Modern Studies are focused on the two and a half centuries between 1500 and 1750, the areas of research that the period encompasses are
multi-disciplinary and wide-ranging. A common thread is the spatial or
geographical dimension. This conference aims to attract a wide audience,
to explore correspondences between geography, literary and historical
fields of research, to enable varied and cross-disciplinary discourses
between scholars and students of the arts and sciences, and to enrich
renaissance and early modern research with methodological and thematic
diversity.

There will be panels on: 'Spiritual Geographies',
'Cartographic Spaces', 'Mapping the Other', 'Mapping the Familiar'.
Please download the application form from the conference website if you
are interested in attending:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/gradschool/community/conferences/imaginative-geographies.html.

Please note, there is a delegate's fee of £10 for applications received
before 14 September 2011, rising to £12 for applications received after
that date. There is an additional £5 charge for those delegates wishing
to attend the conference reception, at which early modern-inspired
refreshments will be served. This conference is organised by
postgraduate REMS researchers at the University of Bristol and supported
by The Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts.

Collaboration, Authorship and the Renaissance: Early Modern and

Queen's University, Belfast, January 13-14 2012

Plenary Speakers: Professor Gary Taylor (Florida State University),
Professor Grace Iopollo (University of Reading) and Dr. Deborah Cartmell
(De Montfort University)

Over the past three decades, the increasing attention paid to the
collaborative practices of the early modern theatre has generated new
opportunities for critical enquiry. In particular, it has been possible
to explore more deeply the role of the author and his/her implication in
networks of performance and textual polyphony. In tandem with these
developments, criticism has addressed the multiple ways in which
Shakespearean and other early modern texts have been reconceptualised
and rewritten in modern and postmodern digital technologies-in film,
television and the expanding creative environments of Web 2.0-and how
such appropriations affect received notions of authorship, authenticity
and originality. This conference seeks to initiate a dialogue between
these two crucial schools of thought. It will investigate potential
cross-fertilizations between early modern constructions of authors and
collaborators and postmodern paradigms of auteurs and 'digital
Shakespeares'; in so doing, further areas of interest will be
illuminated, and fresh understandings of texts and their producers will
be facilitated.

The conference invites abstracts on topics which may include, but are
not limited to, the following:

* Authorship in early modern manuscript, material and print culture
* Authorship, collaboration and revision in Shakespearean and
non-Shakespearean playtexts; collaborative practices in early modern
theatres, and wider literary and textual culture
* Shakespeare and auteur theory; Shakespearean texts in
Anglo-American and world cinema
* The 'author' and contemporary theories of textuality, materiality,
gender and intentionality; authorial identity and its 'recovery' via the
early modern and postmodern text
* Shakespeare and the Renaissance in post-modern digital
technologies; videogames, video and sound technology, the Web and
user-generated content
* New and renewed editorial strategies in postmodernity; authorship
and collaboration in the age of hypertextuality

Submit abstracts (250 words) to: collaboration2012@qub.ac.uk

Extended deadline: 27th September 2011

(note: a small registration fee may be required)

http://www.collaboration2012.tumblr.com
twitter @collab2012qub

Monday, September 12, 2011

Dr. Faustus ...

There will be another Marlowe Society lecture at the Rose theatre on Saturday 17th September. Dr. Andy Kesson of Kent University will speak on

'Every merry word a very witchcraft: Dr. Faustus and the supernatural in the early commercial theatres.'

The talk will place the Globe and Rose Theatre stagings of this play in context.

As usual the charge for students will be reduced to £5, the full charge being £10, and coffee and tea will be available at the Rose Theatre from about 10.30, with the lecture commencing at 11 a.m.

Full details are available on the Society website www.marlowe-society.org and while payment can be made on the day, it is helpful to have advance notice of attendees, so please notify Events secretary, Barbara Wooding - contact details on the website.

Call for Papers: Journal of the Northern Renaissance Issue 4: The Legacy of the Will

Submission deadline: March 2012. Expected date of publication October 2012

This special issue of JNR will seek to explore the slippery notion of the ‘will’ and its various semantic permutations in the context of such issues as subjectivity, power, logic, desire, freedom, volition, wit, wisdom, theology and metaphysics. One of its main purposes is to investigate what power and signifying force ‘the will’ possesses, as well as its limitations, and to locate this concept within the aesthetic, political, theological, philosophical and ideological traditions that informed early modern literature and culture.

The issue builds on a symposium held at the University of Strathclyde, and will be guest-edited by Alison Thorne; however, for this issue JNR also welcomes further submissions around this theme.

The semantic slipperiness of will fascinated the Renaissance: in all manner of texts of the period we find ‘Will too boote, and Will in over-plus’. The structural conceit of the opening lines of John Donne’s poem, ‘The Will’, exemplifies a key thematic construct to be found in much early modern literature and a prevalent intellectual thread in the culture from which this literature emerges: ‘Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breath / Great Love, some legacies’. This poem – this willed enactment of the speaker’s last will and testament to the world he will shortly leave behind – encapsulates the polyvocal qualities of the human ‘will’ and all that it signifies. The rich intellectual legacy of the European Renaissance that we, as critics and researchers, struggle to understand is constructed from the physical and literary legacies that writers such as Donne, Erasmus, Calvin, Elizabeth I, Marlowe, Middleton and others have bequeathed us. It is from these legacies of authorial ‘will’ that our very idea of what represents or constitutes the early modern period is shaped

We would welcome papers of up to 8,000 words on the ‘will’ in the northern Renaissance. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

*
Will as desire or volition: willfulness; will as voluntas; will as membrum pudendum, male or female; possession of one’s will; excessive willing, transgressive will.
*
Theological and philosophical wills: freedom of the will; the negation or undoing of the will; will as futurity; theological debates on the relationship between ‘will’ and ‘fate’.
*
Literary and legal wills: the exercise or abdication of authorial will or intentionality; will as testament; framing legal wills; the interplay between ‘wit’ and ‘will’; Will as a proper name and authoritative mark.

Preliminary enquiries are welcome, and should be addressed to northernrenaissance@gmail.com

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Temporary Lecturership in Reading

Department of English Language & Literature, University of Reading
Full time, Fixed term from 1 January 2012 to 30 June 2012
Grade 7 - £33,734 per annum

We are looking for a Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature, for a six-month position starting on 1 January 2011. You will join a flourishing Department with a great and continuing tradition in your field. You will be a committed teacher in Early Modern Literature, with the ability to collaborate with a strong and supportive team of colleagues. You will have some undergraduate teaching experience (possibly postgraduate too), and want to broaden your experience with a full-time post in an established department. Candidates with a particular specialism in Early Modern Drama would be at an advantage.

For informal enquiries please contact the Head of Department, Simon Dentith on +44 (0)118 378 7459 or email s.dentith@reading.ac.uk Alternatively please contact the Professor of Early Modern Literature, Michelle O'Callaghan on +44 (0)118 378 7003 or email m.f.ocallaghan@reading.ac.uk. Application closing date: 30/09/2011



Apply online for this vacancy via the University of Reading website: http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/jobs/



Alternatively, if you wish to apply using a hardcopy form please email recruitment@reading.ac.uk or contact Human Resources, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 217, Reading RG6 6AH or Telephone +44(0)118 378 6771 (voicemail).

Society, Culture and Belief, 1500-1800

The programme for the academic year 2011-12 is on the theme of TRUTH AND CREDIT

Convenors: Surekha Davies (Birkbeck), Laura Gowing (King’s College London), Kate Hodgkin (University of East London) and Michael Hunter (Birkbeck).

Seminars will take place in the Athlone Room, Senate House (Room 102), London, WC1, on the following Thursdays at 5.30 p.m. All are welcome!

**NB On November 3rd only the seminar will take place in Senate House room STB7.

TERM 1

20 October 2011 Koji Yamamoto (University of Edinburgh)

Reformation and the distrust of the projector in the Hartlib Circle

3 November 2011 Mark Hailwood (University of Exeter/ IHR)

‘The Honest Tradesman's Honour’: occupational identity and credit relations in 17th-century England

17 November 2011 Florence Grant (King’s College London)

Trading on others’ credit: imitation, copying and plagiarism in the business of 18th-century science

15 December 2011 Miruna Achim (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City)

Debate, public truth and natural knowledge in 18th-century Mexico

TERM 2

26 January 2012 Mark Greengrass (Research Fellow, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg)

The experiential world of Jean Bodin



23 February 2012 Michael Hunter (Birkbeck)

The accusation of imposture in early modern witchcraft and possession cases

29 March 2012 Tom Betteridge (Oxford Brookes University)

Reformation truth and doubt in the Dialogue Concerning Heresies and Acts and Monuments.

Dr Kate Hodgkin
School of Arts and Digital Industries
University of East London
4-6 University Way
London E16 2RD
tel. 020 8223 3000 (switchboard) 020 8223 2934 (direct line)

Writing the lives of people and things, AD 500-1700: an inter-disciplinary conference

Chawton House Library, 1st-2nd March 2012

Hosted by the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton

Key-note speaker: Charles Nicholl

[Freelance writer, author of The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street

and The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe]

CALL FOR PAPERS

This conference is intended to push the boundaries of research in biography by bringing together postgraduates and early-career researchers from across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Biography has particular relevance in contemporary scholarship as it encompasses every field of human experience. As a result, scholars are becoming increasingly interested in using the lives of individuals to elucidate the past. In the fields of archaeology and anthropology, too, object biography has been a growing area of theoretical research in the past thirty years. This interest in the stories objects can tell resulted in the British Museum and BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects, broadcast in 2010.

We welcome abstracts of no more than 200 words for 20 minute papers from postgraduates and early-career researchers of the medieval and renaissance periods with an interest in biography. The conference themes will include (but are not limited to):

· Artefact biography and human interaction with physical objects through time.

· The experience of life in settled spaces.

· Biography through portraiture and clothing.

· The imaginative recreation of individual lives and mentalities through micro-history.

· The relationship of the self to society, i.e. through social cultural or economic interactions.

· The exploration of the self through music.

· New perspectives on the ‘discovery of the individual’ during the medieval period and renaissance.

· The cementing of social and creative networks and affiliations through the ownership of manuscripts and objects.

· Scientific approaches to biographical interpretations of manuscripts, objects, paintings and human remains.

Please send abstracts along with your name, affiliation and email address to:

Gemma Watson at glw1g09@soton.ac.uk and Robert Smith at rfws206@soton.ac.uk

The deadline for abstracts is 31st October 2011.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Shakespeare and the Banquet of the Senses

October – December 2011, at Shakespeare’s Globe

A season of events consisting of academic conferences, lectures and staged readings around the theme of the senses in early modern culture and performance. Please follow the link to see the brochure and book tickets or to register for the postgraduate forum and/or the international conference at Shakespeare’s Globe: http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/education/events



Speakers throughout the season (lectures and conferences) include: Dr Tarnya Cooper (National Portrait Gallery), Professor Evelyn Welch (QMUL), Dr Francois Quiviger (Warburg), Professor Stanley Wells and Rev. Dr Paul Edmondson (The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford), Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford), Professor Richard Wilson (Cardiff), Dr Margaret Healy (Sussex), Professor Jonathan Hope (Strathclyde), Dr Lucy Munro (Keele), Dr Joan Fitzpatrick (Loughborough), Dr P.A. Skantze (Roehampton), Professor Laura Farina (West Virginia), Professor Ayanna Thompson (ASU), Professor David Lindley (Leeds), Professor William West (Northwestern), Professor Erica Fudge (Strathclyde).



Readings:

George Chapman, Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (1595): Sunday 9 Ocober

Tomas Tomkis, Lingua (1607): Sunday 23 October



We will also feature a reading of The History of Cardenio by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, recreated by Professor Gary Taylor: Sunday 20 November



For further enquiries, please contact Dr Farah Karim-Cooper farah.k@shakespearesglobe.com

Virgil and Renaissance Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

Virgil and Renaissance Culture / Virgilio e la cultura del Rinascimento
[Website:http://virgil2012.wordpress.com/]

A two-day international conference to be held at the Accademia Nazionale
Virgiliana di Scienze Lettere e Arti, Mantua, Italy, 15-16 October 2012

Organisers: Luke Houghton (University of Glasgow), Marco Sgarbi
(University of Verona)

Confirmed keynote speakers: Craig Kallendorf (Texas A&M University) and
Peter Mack (The Warburg Institute)

Et quis, io, iuvenes, tanti miracula lustrans eloquii, non se immensos
terraeque marisque prospectare putet tractus?

(Angelo Poliziano, Manto 351-3)

For scholars and intellectuals of the Renaissance, the poetry of Virgil
was not merely a pervasive presence in their world; it was in many
respects an embodiment of that world. In addition to the traditional
status enjoyed by the Aeneid as a 'mirror for princes', a guide to
virtuous and reprehensible conduct, and a repository of spiritual and
allegorical wisdom, poets and rhetoricians, artists and composers,
philosophers and theologians, political theorists and educators all sought
and found in Virgil's works models of good practice and expert instruction
in their respective fields. The poet's sway over Renaissance thought and
imagination was by no means confined to the library: throughout the
courts, the palaces and the public buildings of Europe, the rich
mythological apparatus of the Aeneid was harnessed to convey imperial and
dynastic claims, to assert proud traditions of civic liberty, and to
associate rulers and their subjects with particular social, moral and
ethical values, as well as to advertise the learning, taste and culture of
individual patrons.

In literate society, Virgil was everywhere; but the extent of his
influence reached far beyond the wide circle of his readers, through the
appearance of scenes and motifs from his poems - and sometimes also the
figure of the poet himself - in frescoes, sculpture and woodcuts, and even
on objects for domestic use and display. Contact with Virgil and his texts
took many forms and was shaped by a variety of external factors, in
addition to being filtered through countless previous literary and
artistic adaptations, a long tradition of critical and pedagogical
engagements, and strident expressions of both devotion and censure from
different quarters during the centuries between the poet's own day and the
age of the humanists. Among these successive interventions, a place of
particular honour is occupied by Dante, whose choice of 'the sea of all
knowledge' as his guide and master through the caverns of the Inferno and
along the slopes of Purgatory was to have a lasting impact on perceptions
of Virgil, not only as a literary character and aesthetic model but also
as a poet and historical figure.

Proposals are invited for papers in English or Italian, of no more than 30
minutes' duration, on any aspect of the place of Virgil in Renaissance
culture, in any medium. Abstracts should not be longer than 500 words, and
should include the author's name, institutional affiliation (if
applicable), and current e-mail address.

Proposals should be sent to one of the conference organisers, Marco Sgarbi
(marco.sgarbi@univr.it) or Luke Houghton (luke.houghton@glasgow.ac.uk),
before 31 December 2011. It is hoped that papers from this event will in
due course form a substantial publication.

Monday, September 05, 2011

Three early modern jobs!

West Virginia University

The Department of English at West Virginia University invites applications for three positions in pre-1800 British literature: (1) Shakespeare, (2) History of the Book, and (3) Poetry and Poetics. Applicants must have a PhD by August, 2012. The successful applicant must demonstrate an active research agenda as evidenced by conference papers and publications and the ability to teach at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The teaching load for research-active graduate faculty is two courses per semester. The ability to teach the survey of British Literature to 1800 is required for all three positions. The successful applicant will have opportunities to teach a broad range of undergraduate courses and to develop graduate courses and seminars in her/his field. The Department of English has a faculty of 41 in literature, creative writing, socio-linguistics, and composition and rhetoric, and we offer a full range of academic programs (B.A., M.A., M.A. in Professional Writing and Editing, M.F.A., and Ph.D.). WVU is a member of the Folger Consortium, and our department’s faculty benefit from significant ties with the Folger Institute. Our Center for Literary Computing offers opportunities and support for digital humanities projects. West Virginia University is designated a “research-high activity” university with more than 29,000 students. The city of Morgantown, which is often ranked among the best small cities in the United States, is conveniently located within driving distance of Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Washington, D.C.

West Virginia University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer and the recipient of an NSF ADVANCE award for gender equity. Especially encouraged to apply are candidates capable of developing or enhancing our commitment to international, interdisciplinary, and/or multicultural studies.

The position begins August 16, 2012. Screening will begin November 1, continuing until the position is filled. Interviews will be conducted at the MLA convention in Seattle. Alternative arrangements will be provided for candidates not attending the convention.

Submit your letter of application and CV to: Search Committee/British Literature, Department of English, West Virginia University, Box 6296, Morgantown, WV 26506-6296. We will request full dossiers and writing samples from selected candidates through November, so please don’t send these materials at this time.

Direct further inquiries to John Ernest: John.Ernest@mail.wvu.edu
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