Writing the Renaissance North

Northern Renaissance Seminar

Saturday 22^nd June 2013, 10:00am-4:30pm

Sheffield Hallam University, Room 921, Owen Building, City Campus

(http://www.shu.ac.uk/university/visit/find-us/citycampus-map.pdf)

Please contact renaissancenorth@yahoo.co.uk to register.

Keynote Speaker: Professor James Loxley (University of Edinburgh)

This one-day symposium will focus on the ways in which the idea of the north was understood, imagined and represented in the writing of the early modern period. The papers will consider early modern literary and cultural engagements with the north, both as a geographical space and an intellectual concept. The topics explored in the papers will include: the political ideas associated with the north; the roles of Scotland and the north of England in shaping the political landscape of the British isles; the ambivalence of the cultural presence of the north in relation to English and British identity; the ways in which the north figured in debates about transgressive behaviour, such as political insurrection and witchcraft; and the effect of the north upon the afterlives of literary texts in biographical narratives and modern dramatic performances. Professor Loxley’s keynote paper will examine the recently discovered manuscript account of Ben Jonson’s walk to Edinburgh and consider the contrasting topographical constructions of north and south, and of England and Scotland.

There is no registration fee and refreshments will be provided, but we do require you to email us in advance to book a place: renaissancenorth@yahoo.co.uk.

10:00 Arrival and Coffee

10:15 Session One

Harriet Phillips (Cambridge University), ‘York, York, for my money: merry ballads and the Tudor North.’

Dr Chris Butler (Sheffield Hallam University), ‘“Lancastrian Spenser”? How Far North Did He Go?’

Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien (University of Queensland), ‘“Pull for the poultry, fowl, and fish, For empty shall not be a dish”: Descriptions of sabbats and witchcraft in The Late Lancashire Witches.’

11:45 Coffee

12:00 Session Two

Dr Sarah Dewar-Watson (University of Sheffield), ‘History, Tragedy and Mary Queen of Scots.’

James Mawdesley (University of Sheffield), ‘Royalism and the Northern clergy: Exploring clerical allegiances in the Diocese of Carlisle during the English civil wars and republic.’

1:00 Lunch

2:00 Keynote Paper 

Professor James Loxley (University of Edinburgh), ‘Ben Jonson’s Road North.’

3:00 Coffee

3:15 Session Three

Dr Alisa Manninen (University of Tampere), ‘Macbeth, King James and the Anglicization of Royal Power.’

Dr Kate Wilkinson (Sheffield Hallam University), ‘“Impossible for the Production of Shakespeare”: Speaking Shakespeare in Northern and Speaking Northern in Shakespeare.’

4:15 Closing Remarks: Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University).

4:30 End of symposium.

Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy

 This conference to celebrate the life and works of Katherine Philips – poet, dramatist and letter-writer – will take place in Dublin, Ireland, on 27-28 June, 2014. The event will mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of her Poems (1664) and of her death the same year.

The conference venue is to be Marsh’s Library.

Plenary lectures will be given by Professor Elizabeth Hageman (University of New Hampshire) and Professor Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth University).

The conference organisers are Dr Marie-Louise Coolahan (National University of Ireland, Galway) and Dr Gillian Wright (University of Birmingham).

Special event: a visit to Smock Alley Theatre, where the first production of Philips’s play Pompey was staged in February 1663.

For more details see the call for papers. The conference programme will be published in September 2013.

Accommodation is available at numerous hotels throughout the city (Marsh’s Library is near St Stephen’s Green and St Patrick’s Cathedral), or try Trinity College, Dublin. It is advisable to book early.

To contact the organisers, please email katherinephilips350@gmail.com

News and the Shape of Europe, 1500-1750

Queen Mary, University of London, 26-28^th July 2013

Registration open: http://newscom.english.qmul.ac.uk/events/items/83801.html

How did news cross Europe, and how did news make Europe? News in early modern Europe was a distinctively transnational phenomenon; its topics were international in scope; the forms and terminologies of news, as well as the news itself, crossed national boundaries; practices of news-gathering relied on networks of international agents; it was widely translated; it travelled along commercial routes, or through postal networks that were designed to be mutually connected; and the forces attempting to control the press operated (or attempted to operate) well outside of their actual jurisdiction. The spread of news and the appetite for it reflect changes in the geopolitical and confessional maps of Europe, spreading through ethnic and religious diasporas as well as diplomatic, mercantile, and scholarly networks. It helped forge communities on a local, national and international scale. This three-day conference will explore ways in which this history can be written, and features speakers from across Europe and the Americas. 

News and the Shape of Europe is the final stage of the Leverhulme international network, News Networks in Early Modern Europe, a two-year investigation of news communication laying the groundwork for a European history of news.