Monday, October 31, 2011

Two early modern posts

We have just advertised at University College Dublin, both starting in January 2012: a one-year Teaching Fellowship (salary E33,645 p.a.) and a one-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship (salary E31, 730 p.a.). Both positions are for one calendar year, and full details can be found on the UCD website. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will work on an exciting new project based on the rich collections of the numerous rare books libraries of Dublin, and IT/website-building skills will be an advantage.

For informal enquiries about the teaching fellowship, please contact Prof. Anne Fogarty (anne.fogarty@ucd.ie); for informal enquiries about the post-doctoral fellowship, please contact Dr Jane Grogan (jane.grogan@ucd.ie).

Please note: the application deadline is 13th November 2011.

Applications must be made online, through the UCD website: http://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/

Dr Jane Grogan,
School of English, Drama and Film,
University College Dublin,
Belfield, Dublin 4,
Ireland

Visiting Professorship

Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professorship of British Literature English Department; University of Connecticut

The English Department at the University of Connecticut invites applications for the Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Professorship of British Literature. The appointment for this one-term visiting professorship is for the spring semester of 2012 (January 9 to May 18).
The applicant should be an established scholar of British literature from a British university. Specific expertise in Scottish literature is preferred. The Neag professor will teach two courses-one undergraduate and one graduate-and will present one public lecture. Generous compensation suitable to a professorship in the United States, supplemented by housing and a reimbursement for transportation up to $2,000 (US). Please send a letter and c.v. to Wayne Franklin, Head, Department of English, NEAG, University of Connecticut, 215 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT 06269-4025 or e-mail your letter and c.v. to robin.worley@uconn.edu. Consideration of applications will begin immediately.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Postdoc ...

Research Associate (80%)

Ref HUM0219

Canterbury

Fixed Term

Salary Type Pro Rata

Salary (£) 30870 - 35788

HUM0219, School of English, Closing date: 13 Nov 2011

The Role

This post has arisen as a result of the award of an AHRC Project Grant to Dr Sarah James, for a large-scale manuscript study of vernacular versions of the Elucidarium circulating in England between the 12th and 15th centuries. The post-holder will assume major responsibility for examining and recording details of the fifty-six extant continental French and Anglo-Norman manuscripts, and will work collaboratively with Dr James on the interpretation of the data collected, in order to better understand the patterns of production, transmission, ownership and use of the vernacular text during this period.

The Person

The successful applicant will have a PhD in some aspect of medieval studies. You will have demonstrable knowledge of Old French/Anglo-Norman. In addition, you will have experience of working with medieval manuscripts.

Full requirements of the role can be found in the attached further particulars.

The School of English

The School of English currently has c. 850 full-time and part-time undergraduate and postgraduate students. Its permanent academic staff of 28 includes an excellent cohort of highly promising and productive early career researchers alongside senior staff with international reputations. The School also employs over 40 part time Assistant and Associate lecturers who are fully integrated into the life of the School.. English at Kent is based on a commitment to the traditional fields of the discipline, to consolidating the School’s distinctive strengths, and to innovation. Key areas of research such as medieval and early modern studies, American literature, postcolonial studies and modernism have been strengthened by recent appointments.

Website: www.kent.ac.uk/english

Further Information – http://jobs.kent.ac.uk

Closing date for applications: 13 November 2011

Interviews are to be held: Week commencing 5 December 2011

Monumental Shakespeares: Remembering Shakespeare in 1916 and after

A work-in-progress colloquium
King’s College London | 10th December 2011

How was Shakespeare ‘remembered’ in opposite hemispheres in 1916? How were memories constructed, fabricated or supplanted by acts/objects of memorialisation or commemoration of Shakespeare, in the wake of the Tercentenary? What do we mean by these categories of ‘remembering’?

Remembering Shakespeare is a problem. Whatever the popular myth that all the world is Shakespeare’s stage, the evidence of his commemoration is that the public finds it difficult to make up its mind about how to remember Shakespeare and thus how to find appropriate material form for the memorialisation of a key marker of cultural specificity and hegemony. Shakespeare has a foundational role in various discourses of national culture – yet how should he be remembered? With a theatre? A statue? A library? A city square? Published works?

Funded by the Australian Research Council, ‘Monumental Shakespeares’ is a collaborative research project, held jointly by King’s College London and the University of Western Australia, and involving researchers working in London, Perth and Sydney. The project aims to elucidate the processes of commemoration in London and in Sydney for the Shakespeare Tercentenary in 1916, an occasion that gave rise to significant debates over the best ways to memorialise England’s ‘National Poet’ in the British Isles and across the Empire. The project seeks to juxtapose two material outcomes of the Tercentenary: the National Theatre in London – the eventual product, decades after the event, of fractious arguments over the appropriate way to mark the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death – and the Sydney Shakespeare monument – also the result of debates about appropriate forms of public commemoration and, as an inevitable counterpart to engagement with England’s ‘national poet,’ about the politics of imperial relations. It also examines each within the larger contexts both of the varying forms of Shakespearean memorialisation and of the history and theory of commemoration. A comparison of these two drawn-out commemorations and of the debates and contexts from which they emerged will provide a focus for analysis of cultural heritage across nations and across time.

The 1916 tercentenary exemplifies Shakespeare’s perceived value as hegemonic cultural capital, and, drawing on pioneering work by Coppélia Kahn, Clara Calvo and Ton Hoenselaars – all speaking at the colloquium – we seek to explore the event’s afterlife, its influence on the subsequent understanding of Shakespeare in performance, in criticism and in popular culture in the UK, Australia and the wider world. While it focuses on Shakespeare, the project also aims more broadly to address larger issues of commemoration, cultural memory and national identities in the early twentieth century.

The Colloquium

We are very pleased to welcome to King’s an exciting range of international speakers, who join the project’s own researchers for this day of discussion and exchange. The colloquium aims to open up new lines of enquiry and to extend the rapidly developing field of study that the Shakespeare Tercentenary has provoked over recent years. As well as presenting a series of papers around the topic, the colloquium will include – thanks to the generosity of the National Theatre – an exhibition space in which to view rare items relating to the research. as well as a round table discussion with leading experts in the field.

The Speakers

Clara Calvo (Murcia), Gavin Clarke (National Theatre), Ailsa Grant Ferguson (King’s), Ton Hoenselaars (Utrecht), Ann Isherwood (King’s), Coppélia Kahn (Brown), Gordon McMullan (King’s), Philip Mead (UWA), Andrew Murphy (St Andrews), Catherine Silverstone (Queen Mary) and Monika Smialkowska (Northumbria).

Please contact Dr. Ailsa Grant Ferguson atailsa.grant_ferguson@kcl.ac.uk for further details and registration.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Society for Renaissance Studies Book Prize

In 2012 the Society for Renaissance Studies will award for the first time a biennial book prize of £1,000 to encourage original research on any aspect in the field of Renaissance studies and to recognise significant accomplishments by members of the SRS.

The SRS Book Prize for the year 2012 will be awarded to the author of the best monograph in Renaissance Studies published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2011. The winner will be announced at the SRS 5th Biennial Conference, University of Manchester, 9–11 July 2012. To be eligible the monograph must be written in English by a current member of the SRS. The prize will be awarded for a book with a topic where the majority of material is within the chronological period 1300–1650. Books about Renaissance history, art, architecture, philosophy, science, technology, medicine, religion, music, the literatures and languages of Europe, and of the countries in contact with Europe during the Renaissance, are eligible. Books will be judged on the following criteria:

1. contribution to Renaissance Studies;
2. quality and originality of research;
3. clarity and eloquence;
4. thoroughness and accuracy in documentation;
5. methodological skill and/or innovation.

Nominations for the prize may be made by publishers or authors. Three copies of each work must be received by Professor Andrew Hadfield, Chair of the SRS Book Prize Committee, postmarked by or on January 15, 2012. Each entry should be labelled ‘SRS Book Prize 2012’ and addressed to: Professor Andrew Hadfield, Chair of the SRS Book Prize Committee, School of English, Arts B Building, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN.

An announcement of the award will be published in the Society’s publications Renaissance Studies and The Bulletin as well as on the SRS website.


For information about joining the Society of Renaissance Studies please see: http://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRSJoinUs.html

Grants!

The Society for Renaissance Studies intends to make a number of grants of up to £1,500 each to support conferences or colloquia within the field of Renaissance Studies planned for calendar year 1 January 2013–31 December 2013 and held in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. These awards will not be made to individuals to attend conferences, but to the organizers of conferences to provide assistance with organizational support and/or the travel and subsistence costs of certain participants, including postgraduate students. The closing date for the receipt of applications to support conferences in 2013 is 31st January 2012 and further details, including application forms can be found on the SRS website at http://www.rensoc.org.uk/

Professor Claire Jowitt
Conference Officer, Society for Renaissance Studies

Monday, October 17, 2011

Manuscripts in the Secular World

The next Frank Davis Memorial Lecture, which will take place on Tuesday 25 October and which will be given by Dr John Goodall (Architectural Editor, Country Life). This lecture, entitled The Library and the Architecture of the Book: Manuscripts in the Secular World from 1400 to 1650, will be at 5.30pm in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre.

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

tel: 020 7848 2909

Email: researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk

www.courtauld.ac.uk

The John Edward Kerry Prize

The Malone Society has organized a competition for graduate students to celebrate the life work of one of our members, the late John Edward Kerry (1924 – 2008).

The Society is very pleased to announce that Matthew James Kubus (PhD candidate at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon) won the Prize in 2010.

In addition, the Prize has proved to be so popular that the Malone Society Council has decided to run it annually and to award 30 volumes to the best applicant each year.

About the 2011 competition

Postgraduate students who are currenly working on any aspect of early modern English drama and using our volumes as part of their research projects are warmly invited to submit a short statement (max 500 words) to Dr Sonia Massai (Malone Society Publicity Officer – email address:sonia.massai@kcl.ac.uk) by 10 November.

Those wishing to enter this competition should ensure that their statements explain how their work contributes to the development of scholarship in their fields and in what ways the Malone Society editions have facilitated and supported their research.

Statements should also include contact details and academic affiliation, the name of the programme of studies being attended and the year of registration.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Word and Image: Early Modern Treasures at UCL

The current exhibition at the UCL Art Museum is entitled 'Word and Image: Early Modern Treasures at UCL', and is co-curated by the UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. A video and podcast of the exhibition are now available. For an audio-slideshow, please see:

http://www.youtube.com/UCLTV?feature=mhee#p/c/794B0AE51832BE14/0/g2BBhFBTzQw

For a downloadable audio-only version, please see:

http://soundcloud.com/uclsound/word-and-image

The exhibition is open at 1-5pm, Mon-Fri, until 16th Dec 2011. For maps and a routefinder to the UCL Art Museum (formerly the Strang Print Room), please see

www.ucl.ac.uk/locations/ucl-maps/

Helen Hackett and Alexander Samson
Co-directors, UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges

Monday, October 10, 2011

Faith and Doubt on the Elizabethan Stage

CALL FOR STATEMENTS

Workshop at the Shakespeare-Tage 2012 in Bochum ("Faith and Doubt on the Elizabethan Stage")

Believing in Shakespeare:
Faith and Doubt on the Elizabethan Stage

Shakespeare’s plays were conceived and first performed in a climate of religious and political change, when private beliefs always had a public dimension and when religious allegiance had literally become a matter of life and death for many men and women. Our seminar aims at re-assessing the roles of faith and doubt in the public arena of the Shakespearean stage. We are not interested in examining, once again, the question of Shakespeare’s own denomination, we would rather like to enquire into the configurations of belief on the Elizabethan stage: Do the plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries support religious devotion or do they invite distrust and scepticism? How can faith be established, how can it be perceived and proven? When does faith have to be realigned or even recanted? Do the plays themselves require faith on a metatheatrical level, as Paulina famously demands in The Winter’s Tale? And in how far is it possible to differentiate between religious belief and the suspension of disbelief in the playhouse? In what ways do the plays relate to topical religious debates, be it at Shakespeare’s time or today? What stance do they take towards more universal metaphysical questions? And how do they envision non-Christian religion, which stance do they take, for example, towards Jewish and Muslim beliefs? How have specific theatrical (or filmic) performances dealt with the religious aspects of the plays – have they suppressed, emphasised, or altered them?
Our workshop plans to address these and related questions with a panel of six papers during the annual conference of the German Shakespeare Association, Shakespeare-Tage (20-22 April 2012 in Bochum, Germany), which will focus on “Faith and Doubt in Shakespeare’s Plays”. As critical input for the discussion and provocation for debate, panellists are invited to give short statements (of no more than 15 minutes) presenting concrete case studies, concise examples and strong views on the topic. Please send your proposals (abstracts of 300 words) and all further questions by 15 November 2011 to the seminar convenors:
Dr. Felix Sprang, University of Hamburg, English Department: felix.sprang@uni-hamburg.de
Dr. Christina Wald, University of Augsburg, English Department: christina.wald@phil.uni-augsburg.de

See also: shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/publikationen/seminar.html

+++++++++++++deadline 15 November 2011++++++++++++++++

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

The Uses of Space In Early Modern History 1500-1850

Seminar Series 2011-12
International History Department, LSE, London

The study of space and place is an increasingly important research-field in the humanities and social sciences. This series explores how spatial ideas and approaches can be used to understand the societies, cultures and mentalities of the past. Leading scholars from a range of disciplines will reflect on the uses of space in two respects: how spatial concepts can be employed by or applied to the study of history; and how particular spaces were used for practical and ideological purposes in specific periods

Series Organiser: Dr Paul Stock p.stock@lse.ac.uk

Place: LSE New Academic Building, room 2.14

Time: 18.00

All welcome

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/internationalHistory/events/theUsesOfSpaceinEarlyModernHistory1500-1850/homeTheUsesOfSpaceInEarlyModernHistory1500-1850.aspx

Schedule of Speakers

13 October 2011: Dr David Lambert (Warwick) 'Mastering the Niger: Spaces of cartography, accounting and slavery, 1797-1845'.

27 October 2011: Dr Paul Keenan (LSE)

10 November 2011: Prof Matthew Johnson (Northwestern) 'Everyday Living in English Vernacular Houses, 1500-1800'

24 November 2011: Dr Rachel Hewitt (Oxford) 'Mapping History: Cartographic Revolution in the Eighteenth Century'

8 December 2011: Prof Jerry Brotton (Queen Mary) 'The Cartographic Rhetoric of Early Modern Globalism'

12 January 2012: Dr Andrew Rudd (Open University) 'Geographical morality on trial: Edmund Burke and the impeachment of Warren Hastings'

26 January 2012: Prof Robert Mayhew (Bristol) "Relocating Malthus's 'Essay': Reflections on spatio-temporal contexts and narrative history"

9 February 2012: Prof Michael Heffernan (Nottingham) 'Disciplining Space: Geography and Cartography in the Paris Academy of Sciences 1666-1793'

23 February 2012: Dr Amanda Flather (Essex) 'Gender and the use and organisation of sacred space in early modern England'.

8 March 2012: Prof Beat Kumin (Warwick) 'Value added? The spatial turn in the historiography of the Holy Roman Empire'.

The Uses of Space in Early Modern History is organised with the support of the International History Department and LSE IDEAS. The series is funded by the LSE Annual Fund www.lse.ac.uk/annualfund
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