1.  University of Roehampton Postgraduate Research Studentship in Early Modern Literature and Culture. Deadline 31st July.
2. Dante: On The Peak Of Darkness, UCL Special Collections Event Saturday 18th May.
3. London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy), Wednesday 15th May.
4. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014.
5. Birkbeck Medieval and Renaissance Summer School, June 2013.
6. PhD studentship on the experiences of war widows and orphans in the north of England during the 1640s and 1650s, National Archives and University of Leicester.
7. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America New York, 27-29 March 2014
   “Patronage as Evidence for Early Modern Catholic Reform”.
8. Call for Papers: RSA 27-29 March 2014 “Classical Receptions in Early Modern England”
9. Art & Death – workshop 3 ‘Life after Death’, 23rd May, the Courtauld Institute.
10. Call for Papers: ‘Work in Progress: Bringing Art into Being in the Early Modern Period’, 26th October 2013, The Courtauld Institute .
11. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “Early Modern Authorship and Gender”.
12. Registration open, and provisional programme: Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2013, Language Networks in Medieval Britain, Tuesday 16th – Friday 19th July.
13. Registration open: Power Manifest: Structures and Concepts of Ecclesiastical Authority, c.1100-c.1500. A one-day academic conference to be held at the Institute of Historical Research, Thursday 20 June 2013.
14. V&A Project ShaLT (Shakespearean London Theatres).
15. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “Early Modern Women in Public and Private”.
16. UCL Society Culture and Belief seminar, Thursday 9th May 5.30pm, ‘Ritualising Time in an Age of Revolution: Exiled English Nuns, Cyclical History, and the French Revolution’.
17. Call for Papers: Connecting cultures? An international conference on the history of teaching and learning foreign/second languages, 1500-2000, University of Nottingham July 2-5 2014.
18. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “Early Modern Women Philosophers, Theologians, and Scientists”. Deadline extended to 1st June.
19. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “Women’s Writing About Beauty in Early Modern England”.
20. Symposium: ‘The World is Our House’: the seventeenth-century Hereford Cwm Jesuit Library in an international context, Friday 21 June 2013, Hereford Cathedral.
21. Call for Papers: Panels from the RSA Division in Hispanic Literature, the Cervantes Society of America, and/or the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry – “Cervantes’s Library”, “The Intellectual Mileux of Renaissance Spanish Artists”, “Purloined Letters”, “Reimagining Time in the Early Modern Hispanic World”, “Poetry and the City”.
22. Call for Panels: The Society for Early Modern Women, deadline 25th May.
23. Visiting Professor Peter Stallybrass – events 14-16 May 2013, The Courtauld Institute.
24. Forum on Early Modern Central Europe seminar, 9th May 5.15 pm, UCL-SSEES, 16 Taviton Street, London.
25. Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “ The image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain”.
26. Programme of Summer events run by the Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies (CREMS), University of York.
27. Colloquium: ‘Early Modern Approaches to the Imagination’, University of Warwick 17th July.
28. The Renaissance at Birkbeck Events for Artweek, 22-23rd May: ‘Remembering Myself: Memory and Identity in the Renaissance’, Dr Adam Smyth, Dr Gillian Woods, Sue Wiseman; ‘Casta Paintings and the Colonial Body: Embodying Race in Spanish America’, Professor Rebecca Earle (Warwick); and ‘Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures: A Book and Some Afterthoughts’, Professor Leonard Barkan. (Princeton).

1.

 Postgraduate research studentship in Early Modern literature and culture

Following the success of the AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award collaboration with the National Maritime Museum (Royal Museums Greenwich), the University of Roehampton is pleased to announce a fully-funded 3-year postgraduate research studentship to start on 1 October 2013. The studentship will be a full bursary including Home/EU fees plus a Research Council level stipend for three years’ full-time doctoral study. The bursaries will be subject to annual review of student progress. The bursary rate for 2012-13 is currently £15,590. In addition a contribution towards project costs will be made available, with a minimum of £300 allocated.

Students on full bursaries are required to offer up to 6 hours a week teaching or other support to their departments for 40 weeks per year, or a total of 720 hours support over a three-year award. Candidates are also expected to play a full part in the research culture of their department and the university, and may be called on to act as ambassadors for the University, for example at marketing events.

Preference may be given to proposals that develop on-going work on the cultures of the Stuart courts broadly defined, such as the material, literary, theatrical, or gendered cultures and networks of the court and aristocracy. Interdisciplinary proposals are also welcome, as are projects focusing on literature or theatre.

The successful student will be based in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton, London. The Department has recently appointed 5 new scholars to its teaching staff, consolidating our reputation for both traditional excellence and innovation, and has also benefited from the University’s substantial investment in its postgraduate community. The successful candidate will become part of an active and growing community of postgraduate scholars in a vibrant research culture with a track record of supervisorial success and established external collaborations with London institutions.

The Department is looking for a candidate of the highest quality, capable of submitting a Ph.D. thesis within 3 years. Applicants should have completed an MA degree in a relevant subject prior to the start of the studentship and may be required to complete additional research methods training in their first year of study. Applicants should also be able to demonstrate strong research capabilities and fluency in spoken and written English.

Interested applicants should contact Dr. Clare McManus to discuss their proposed projects (C.McManus@roehampton.ac.uk).

Please visit www.roehampton.ac.uk/courses/graduate-school to find out more about postgraduate research at Roehampton.

For more information about the studentships and to apply visithttp://www.roehampton.ac.uk/Courses/Graduate-School/Funding/

Deadline for applications: 31 July 2013

For all non-academic queries relating to the studentships, please contact the Graduate School on 020 8392 3619, e-mail graduateschool@roehampton.ac.uk.

 ****************************************************

 

Dante: On The Peak Of Darkness, UCL Special Collections Event Saturday 18th May at the Warburg Institute

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia/dante-on-the-peak-of-darkness/

 UCL’s Dante Collection is extraordinarily complete and wide-ranging, with printed editions dating from the 1470s onwards, alongside the archive of Henry Clark Barlow, whose bequest forms the core of the collection. To celebrate the completion of a cataloguing project that gives access to the collection as a whole, and to look in depth at the Divina Commedia, UCL Special Collections, UCL Italian Department and the Warburg Institute invite you to a day devoted to Dante on Saturday 18 May. The programme includes introductions to Dante’s life and works, readings from his Divine Comedy, and an account of how the work survived in print. Early and rare editions from the collection will be on display, and facsimile copies of an Art Nouveau 1911 pocket edition will be available for sale. Details and online booking are available here: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia/dante-on-the-peak-of-darkness/. (Early booking is advised.)

***************************************************** 

 

London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy)

Wednesday 15th May 2013
16.00 – 18.00 | Senate House, Senate Room
Malet Street London, WC1E 7HU

Tzachi Zamir (HUJI)

“The Inner Paradise: Philosophy-Poetry Warfare In Milton’s Paradise Lost“

Recent attempts within Anglo-American aesthetics to delineate an intellectually fruitful relationship between philosophy and literature are usually proposed as compensatory epistemologies: literature overcomes limitations built into the traditional modes whereby philosophers construe knowledge- claims. But what if a major work of literature—as is the case in John Milton’s Paradise Lost—explicitly rejects philosophy’s objectives, holding that philosophy is implicated in the pursuit of a corrupt and unworthy form of knowing? From such a stance, philosophy’s shortcoming is — ironically — philosophical: if one genuinely seeks understanding, philosophy would send one down the wrong track. Poetry of such kind does not invite philosophers of literature to somehow harmonize the philosophy-literature divide. Instead, one is required to sharpen the philosophy-poetry disjunction, clarifying the stakes involved in keeping apart these distinct attitudes to acquiring knowledge, to leading a meaningful existence, and to the non-obvious relationships between these objectives..

The talk will be free and open to all. For more information please visit our websitewww.londonaestheticsforum.org

The London Aesthetics Forum (Institute of Philosophy) is generously supported by the British Society of Aesthetics

 

 4.

 Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014

Interdisciplinary panel exploring the contributions of Renaissance military men and their impact on transregional politics, their intellectual pursuits and the visual arts.

“Beyond the Battlefield: Men of War in Early Modern Society” Early modern warfare was conducted by a dynamic breed of military men. Many were educated nobles who regularly crossed back and forth between the battlefield and the court. Their military service provided them with skills that they leveraged into other spheres of life. It also connected them to multiple centers of power and allowed them to build influential transregional networks in which they served as agents of cultural, political, and social exchange. Largely the focus of military studies, these men were engaged in a wide range of activities and interests, and some became important figures in the European-wide Republic of Letters.

Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, this session seeks to reevaluate the figure of the mercenary commander by exploring the multi-faceted lives and contributions of these soldiers beyond the battlefield. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: cross-cultural influences, intellectual pursuits, courtly ambitions, diplomacy, regional and transregional exchange, and patronage of the arts.

To propose a 20-minute paper, kindly send your name, email, affiliation, paper title, abstract (150-word maximum), one-page cv and a list of keywords to Rebecca Norris at rn290@cam.ac.uk and Suzanne Sutherland Duchacek srsuther@stanford.edu. Submission deadline is 30 May 2013.

 ****************************************************

 

Medieval and Renaissance Summer School

The 2013 Birkbeck Medieval and Renaissance Summer School will deliver exciting, cutting-edge research to postgraduates and early-career scholars, and will help participants develop crucial research skills. Hosted by Birkbeck, University of London, and located in the heart of Bloomsbury, the Summer School draws together some of Britain’s foremost scholars of Medieval and Renaissance literature, art, culture and history.Date: 26-28 June 2013 Time: 9.30am – 7.30pm each day Cost: £32 Staff and students at Birkbeck and participating institutions / £62 EU delegates / £140 non-EU delegates Venue: 43 Gordon Square, WC1H Booking: Book your placeThis year’s theme is ‘On the River’. We will, of course, take in Shakespeare’s Bankside and the maritime riches of Greenwich as well as Walton’s fishermen. The programme also includes a hands-on workshop in the British Library map room; lectures by Professor Paul Strohm (Columbia) and Professor Julie Sanders (Nottingham). We hope to have a print workshop (back by popular demand), to visit Greenwich and discuss maps at the British Library. There will be opportunities to talk about your own research interests.Workshops and seminars will be led by Birkbeck staff including Anthony Bale, Zoltan Biedermann, Stephen Clucas, Jess Fenn, Adam Smyth, Sue Wiseman, Gillian Woods. A limited number of scholarships will be available to students from Britain or overseas. These will vary in size but may be up to £100 plus full remission of the fee. Please send a one-page CV and a statement outlining your research interests and your reasons for applying for the scholarship (up to 350 words). These need to be submitted as word documents clearly labelled SCHOLARSHIPS. Please e-mail these to bmrss@bbk.ac.ukby Friday 31 May at 6pm. And, of course, the Summer School will end with a party.

 *********************************************

 PhD studentship on the experiences of war widows and orphans in the north of England during the 1640s and 1650s

 The National Archives and The University of Leicester are pleased to invite applications for a three-year AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD Studentship, to commence on 1 October 2013. This studentship is one of six awarded to the Thames Consortium, which comprises three London-based institutions: the National Portrait Gallery, The National Archives, and the National Maritime Museum.

The collaborative doctoral project will focus on the strategies used by and on behalf of war widows and orphans in the north of England to obtain relief during the 1640s and 1650s. It would examine the language used in the petitions of high and low status women for military pensions, and their efforts at securing the arrears of pay of their deceased husbands. Further research questions would include petitions for redress represented their husbands’ service, in what ways petitions fashioned the widows as deserving, how they played upon magisterial expectations, in what ways petitions reflected feelings of entitlement, and how the information in petitions informs us on the ‘economy of makeshifts’.

The PhD will be based on extensive archival research among county archives in northern England and the State Papers collection in The National Archives. It is intended the studentship will inform knowledge exchange and impact beyond academia through the University of Leicester’s collaboration with the National Civil War Centre at Newark Museum scheduled to open in December 2014.

This project will be of interest to applicants with backgrounds in early modern history and gender studies. Expertise in the fields of women’s history and the British Civil Wars would be an advantage.

 The thesis will be supervised by Dr Andrew Hopper (Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester) and Dr Katy Mair (The National Archives).

The standard tuition fees and maintenance grant will be paid by the AHRC to the award holders.

Deadline for applications: 24 May 2013

Interviews will be held at the Centre for English Local History, Marc Fitch Historical Institute, 5 Salisbury Rd, Leicester, LE1 7QR in the week commencing the 24 June 2013.

For further information and for details on how to apply please visit:

http://www2.le.ac.uk

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/jobs/internships-info.htm

********************************************************** 

 Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America New York, 27-29 March 2014
“Patronage as Evidence for Early Modern Catholic Reform”

This panel will engage with the possibility of examining the permeation of
reform ideas through patronage. This might include such topics as whether
the artistic patronage of the ecclesiastical and lay elite or the community
patronage of altars and confraternities in rural parishes or how early
modern Catholics chose to spend their money and devotional energy within the
Church, which can tell us something about the culture of early modern
Catholicism. Particularly in the growing popularity of “post-Tridentine”
saints and devotions, historians and art historians can see to what extent
the official reform goals of the Catholic Church spread among both elite and
non-elite Catholics from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The
panel will focus on visual and historical evidence for the permeation of
reformed Catholic ideas by examining confraternities, devotion to new
saints, new devotional activities, parochial and altar dedications, and
artistic commissions.

We invite submissions of abstracts engaging with the spread or permeation of
Catholic reform through patronage from all geographical areas within the
Catholic World from the 16th-18th centuries. Please send abstracts of no
more than 250 words and a brief CV to Celeste McNamara
(celeste.mcnamara@u.northwestern.edu)
and Vesna Kamin Kajfez (vesna.kaminkajfez@gmail.com) by June 5, 2013.

********************************************************** 

 Call for Papers: RSA 27-29 March 2014 New York, NY

Classical Receptions in Early Modern England
This panel will explore the reception of Greek and Roman antiquity in Early Modern England. Papers may discuss editions of ancient authors, translation practice and theory, literary and cultural appropriations, and transformations into new works of art and literature. As necessary, discussions may also explore Continental forerunners and intermediaries.

Confessional Contest and Compromise in Early Modern England
This panel will explore the clashes and accommodations of religious doctrines and devotions in Early Modern England. The main focus will be on Protestant and Catholic expressions, but treatments of Judaism, Islam, and other religions will be welcome. Previous discussions have treated print and manuscript treatises, prayer books, recusant poetry, biography, and prose, the Virgin Mary under duress, and drama (including Shakespeare).

For either panel please send a 150-word abstract and one-page CV by Monday 3 June to Robert S. Miola, Gerard Manley Hopkins Professor of English and Lecturer in Classics at Loyola University Maryland (rmiola@loyola.edu).

********************************************************* 

Art & Death – workshop 3:

‘Life after Death’– which will take place on Thursday 23 May (10.00 – 12.30) in the Research Forum South Room (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

Further information (incl. programme and abstracts) available online here:http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2013/summer/may23_ArtandDeath3.shtml

 

Open to all, free admission. No booking is necessary

*************************************************************** 

 Work in Progress: Bringing Art into Being in the Early Modern Period

Fifth Early Modern Symposium, Saturday 26 October 2013, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

 CALL FOR PAPERS
Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay

To mould me Man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X (1667)

Complex narratives spanning months, years or even decades exist behind the single bracketed date attached to artworks to indicate their moment of execution or completion. This one-day symposium will explore the ‘ante-natal’ development of early modern art from its conception to its ‘quickening’ and eventual birth. The process fascinated contemporary theorists and continues to raise questions for modern art historians. For example, when was an artistic project considered finished or unfinished? What terms were used to indicate the various stages of bringing an artwork into being, and what implications did these terms have for authorship and authenticity? The creation of art is not the work of a moment or achieved at a single stroke; it involves a series of transpositions from idea to study or plan, from sketch to painting, from plan to building and so on. How did early modern art reflect on the process of its own making?

We invite 20-minute papers considering artistic ‘work in progress’ in the early modern period (c.1550-1800):

– what processes of translation and transposition were involved in moving art out of the realm of ideas into the material world? Papers might analyse and discuss the evolution of an artwork from concept to creation or construction and consider each phase of development in turn. This could involve close examination of plans, drawings, studies, sketches, maquettes or bozzetti for the same artistic project and consideration of how each stage shaped the end product

 – what did contemporary ideas, religious beliefs, and philosophical theories (those of Spinoza, for example) have to say about creativity – and how might these have informed the conception of the early modern work of art? As Peter Conrad (Creation: Artists, Gods & Origins, 2007) has suggested, ‘any investigation of art has to ponder the notion of God’s creation’. Vasari paid homage to the ‘ultimate initiator’ in his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects and described Genesis as the adventures of a ‘creative intellect’

 – how might the early modern preoccupation with the idea of progress have been relevant to the creation of art?

 – was creativity gendered in the period? Did the early modern version of sexual reproduction – in which women simply encased the precious, implicitly masculine kernel of creativity – affect contemporaries’ understanding of the way art was generated?

 – can current theories and methodologies illuminate the process of art-making in the period? What can material data and scientific research methods, such as infra-red reflectography, dendro-chronology and chemical analysis of pigments, tell us?

 – what happened when artistic aspiration collided with social and political realities or encountered financial and practical constraints? Papers might describe artistic indecision and frustration and examine the choices and creative opportunities that resulted. How did projects come to be altered or radically revised in scale and ambition? What were the implications of rejection in such cases as Caravaggio’s ‘St Matthew and the Angel’ for the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi?

 – drawing on Victor Stoichita’s study of ‘meta-painting’, papers could explore how early modern artworks reflected on their own bringing into being and making. Vermeer’s ‘The Painter in his Studio’ (c.1666), ‘Las Meninas’ by Velázquez (1656-7), and Panini’s ‘Modern Rome’ and its pendant ‘Ancient Rome’ (1757) are examples of the many artworks from the period that take the process of artistic creation as their subject.
We invite proposals from graduate students, junior scholars, curators, and conservators for papers that explore one or more of the above-mentioned issues in any artistic medium (painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, print media, graphic arts and the intersections between them). Theoretical and technical approaches are equally welcome.

 We do not at present have a budget for travel and accommodation for speakers. Students from outside London are encouraged to apply to their institutions for funding to participate in the symposium.

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words along with a 150 word biography by 21 June 2013 to anya.matthews@courtauld.ac.uk  and giulia.weston@courtauld.ac.uk

 Organised by Anya Matthews and Giulia Martina Weston (The Courtauld Institute of Art)

 **************************************************

 11.

Call for Papers: Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014, NYC: “Early Modern Authorship and Gender”

Early work on literary authorship stressed the concept’s associations with men and masculinity—and, hence, its difficulties for women. Recent scholars have nuanced such claims, focusing not only on early modern women’s widespread involvement in literary culture, but also on the slippages and tensions that arise in Renaissance discussions of authorship and gender. What happens to our understanding of the early modern literary field when we consider the gendering of authorship as shifting and contested?

 This panel, sponsored by the Rutgers Medieval-Renaissance Colloquium, welcomes papers that investigate the roles that gender plays in early modern theories, practices, and representations of authorship. How are the gendered aspects of such theories depicted, and how are they unsettled, reaffirmed, and reshaped in literary discourses? What changes did Renaissance writers make to the models of authorship that they inherited from the ancient and medieval worlds, and how did gender factor into these adaptations and appropriations? To what uses were various figures of gendered authorship, or of the female author in particular, put in the Renaissance? How might we conceptualize cross-gendered writing (men writing as women, or vice versa) beyond the usual metaphor of “ventriloquism”?

 Please submit a 150 word abstract and a one-page C.V. to Brian Pietras (bpietras@eden.rutgers.edu) by June 1st.

 *************************************************************

 12.

Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2013: Language Networks  in Medieval Britain

Convened by Mary Carruthers

Tuesday 16th – Friday 19th July 2013, Harlaxton Manor, Harlaxton, Lincs.

 Provisional programme:

 Tuesday, 16th July

 2:00 Welcome by Gordon Kingsley (Principal of Harlaxton College) and Christian Steer (Symposium Secretary)

2.10-2.15         Introduction to the Programme, Mary Carruthers

2.15–3.30        Languages in the Professions: I

Linda M. Voigts, ‘Mixing and melding English and Latin in medical writings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’

Peter M. Jones, ‘The language of surgery in 14th century England: John of Arderne’s innovations’

3:30 Tea

4.15- 6.00        Multilingual Texts and Manuscripts

Ad Putter, ‘Macaronic Love Letters from an Abbot to a Nun’

Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Macaronic Writing in England and on the Continent: A Comparative View’

Neil Cartlidge, ‘Cultures in Confrontation in a 13th c Multilingual English Anthology (BL MS Harley 978’)

6:15 Supper

7.30 Visit to Grantham church (own arrangements) (arrive approx. 7.45)

9:00 Bar

 

Wednesday, 17th July

7:00 – 8:30 Breakfast

8:45- 10:30      Images and Words at Play

Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Word Images in the British Library Bohun Psalter and Hours’ (British Library MS Egerton 3277)

Kathryn Smith, ‘Word and Image in the Taymouth Hours (British Library MS Yates Thompson 13)’

Ann Payne, ‘Canting or allusive heraldry (armes parlantes) in manuscript illumination’

10:30 Coffee

11.15 – 1:00     Languages in the Professions: II

ChrisWoolgar, ‘The language of food and cooking’

Alex Buchanan, ‘Professional practices?  Architectural vocabulary in England in the later Middle Ages’

Paul Brand, ‘The languages of the courtroom in England c.1300’

1:00 Lunch

2:00- 3.00 Nicholas Orme, ‘Schools and Language in Medieval England’

3.15 – 4.00  David Griffith, ‘Texts and readers in later medieval England: an epigraphical perspective’

4.00 – 4.30 Tea

4:30- 6:15        Multilingual inscriptions

Elizabeth New, ‘Signed with a Seal: text and image on personal seals from medieval England and Wales’

Michael Carter, ‘Latin and vernacular inscriptions: Cistercian monasteries in northern England at the end of the Middle Ages’

Sarah Macmillan, ‘Women’s words? Gendered speech and silence in the medieval English parish church’

6:30 Supper

8:00- 9:00 Concert

9:00 Bar

 

Thursday, 18th July

 7:00- 8:30 Breakfast

9:00 – 10:30     Music and literature I (with singers): ‘Multilingual networks in England and northern Francophonia’

Ardis Butterfield, ‘Reading Lyric Networks’

Helen Deeming, ‘Multilingual networks in twelfth- and thirteenth-century song’

10:30- 11:00 Coffee

11:00- 1:00      Music and literature II (with singers): ‘Multilingual networks’

Yolanda Plumley, ‘The transmission and circulation of Machaut’s lyrics, north and south’

Janet van den Meulen, ‘A Call to Arms or the Art of Framing Ballads in Jean de le Mote’s Regret Guillaume’

Elizabeth Eva Leach, Response and Comments (to both sessions)

1:00 Picnic lunch at Harlaxton

2:00 Excursion to Marholm and Castor churches

7.00 Reception in bar

7:30 Symposium Dinner in the Great Hall (black tie optional)

 

Friday, 19th July

 7:00- 8:30 Breakfast

9.30 – 10.30  Alastair Minnis, ‘Discourse beyond death: The Language of Paradise in Middle English Poetry’

10.30 – 11.15: Coffee

11.15 – 1.00    Translations and macaronic works

Roger Dahood, ‘Medieval Scribes, Modern Translations, and Supposed Jewish Ritual Cannibalism in the Anglo-Norman Hugo de Lincolnia’

Aisling Byrne, ‘Religious Orders and the Translation of Secular Narratives in Fifteenth-Century Ireland’

Jessica Brantley, ‘Language Mixing in the English Book of Hours’  

1:00 Lunch and departure

 13.

 Power Manifest: Structures and Concepts of Ecclesiastical Authority, c.1100-c.1500
A one-day academic conference to be held at the Institute of Historical Research, Thursday 20 June 2013.

This conference will address ecclesiastical authority in diverse permutations during the High and Late Middle Ages, investigating new directions in church history in Europe and the Latin East by interposing institutional scholarship, and work on cultural history and the arts. Particular focus will be on the period between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. 

Keynote speakers are Brenda Bolton (London), David d’Avray (UCL) and Malcolm Vale (St John’s, Oxford). Further information: powermanifest.wordpress.com.

Poster (including full programme of speakers) attached.
 
Please register before 5 June: powermanifestconference@gmail.com (conference fees: £12 postgraduates; £22 full rate).

With the kind support of Ashgate Publishing, IHR, RHUL, UCL, SSCLE.

 **************************************************************

 Here is some information about a project run by the V&A that may be of interest:

It is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project called ShaLT (Shakespearean London Theatres) that aims to make people aware of all the theatres in the Early Modern period. There are a number of different outputs, including the main one which is a map (in online, paper and app form) that takes you on different walks around central London to see where the theatres would have been. There is also going to be filmed documentaries and scenes demonstrating different theatre spaces and repertoires. You can find out more at www.shalt.org.uk. The thing that may be of most interest is the series of lectures taking place over the summer at the V&A, details of which can be found on their website.

 **********************************************************

 Early Modern Women in Public and Private

A session at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America,

27-29 March 2014, New York City.

This session explores the relationship of early modern women to shifting conceptions of the public and private realms as well as domesticity. How did early modern women, especially early modern women writers, articulate their own place in the public realm or different spheres that were conceived as public to varying degrees? How, when, and why did women see themselves as members of “counterpublics”? How did they represent public and private spaces in different types of writing or in visual arts and objects? Conversely, how did men represent women in these spaces? Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches are welcome.

 Please e-mail an abstract and a brief curriculum vitae to Martine van Elk at Martine.vanElk@csulb.edu as soon as possible, but no later than June 1, 2013.

This session will be sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at California State University, Long Beach

************************************************************ 

 REMINDER UCL Society Culture and Belief seminar on Thursday

Just a reminder that we will have our final Society Culture and Belief seminar of the year this Thursday 9 May, 5.30; Caroline Watkinson will be speaking on

Ritualising Time in an Age of Revolution: Exiled English Nuns, Cyclical History, and the French Revolution.

Please note we will be in a different room for this session: Torrington Room (104), on the first floor of Senate House.

Hope to see you there!

 ********************************************************

 Connecting cultures? An international conference on the history of teaching and learning foreign/second languages, 1500-2000, University of Nottingham July 2-5 2014

This conference will be the first in the United Kingdom dedicated to the history of modern language teaching and learning. We invite submissions for papers on any aspect of the history of foreign/second language teaching and/or learning. Comparative approaches, exploring commonalities and differences between different language teaching traditions, and/or between different countries, are particularly welcome.

The keynote speakers will be Michael Byram (Professor Emeritus, University of Durham), Giovanni Iamartino (Professor, University of Milan) and Marcus Reinfried (Professor, University of Jena)

The conference will include a lead strand on Culture in the teaching of Foreign/Second Languages: Theoretical Conceptions, Curricula and Textbooks.

 We warmly welcome proposals for further themed panels (minimum of three papers) on any aspect of the history of teaching and/or learning languages.

 Please send abstracts of around 300 words (and proposals for themed panels) to historyofmfl@nottingham.ac.uk by December 1, 2013. The conference languages are English, French and German, but papers are welcome on the history of teaching/learning any language. 

 Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Research Network project (2012-14) ‘Towards a History of Modern Foreign Language Teaching and Learning’) and supported by the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, SIHFLES (Societé internationale pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde), APHELLE (Associação Portuguesa para a História do Ensino das Línguas e Literaturas Estrangeiras), CIRSIL (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulla Storia degli Insegnamenti Linguistici), PHG (Peeter Heynsgenootschap) and SEHEL (Sociedad Española para la Historia de las Enseñanzas Linguísticas)

 *************************************************************

 

Renaissance Society of America

Call for Papers

New York, NY, 27-29 March 2014

Early Modern Women Philosophers, Theologians, and Scientists

Organizers: Julie Campbell, Anne Larsen, and Diana Robin

 We would like to propose a series of panels on women’s participation in the areas of philosophy, theology, and science (natural philosophy) in the early modern period.

 As more information comes to light about women’s participation in philosophical debates, activities involving religion and religious controversy, and their engagement in natural philosophy during the early modern period, it becomes clear that we have much to learn about the women who incorporated such interests into their lives, and, in some cases, dedicated their lives to such pursuits, whether in convents or secular society.

 From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, from Italian humanists such as Laura Cereta, Ippolita Sforza, and Cassandra Fedele, to the German reformer Katharina Schutz Zell, to French and Dutchsavantes such as Marie de Gournay and Anna Maria van Schurman, to French salonnières whose salons were in large part dedicated to politics, religion, and natural philosophy, such as the Vicomtesse d’Auchy, Mme de Loges, Mme de la Sablière, and Mme Deshoulières, to English women engaged in protestant or recusant causes, such as Mary Sidney’s work on the Psalms, Anne Vaughan Locke’s engagement in Calvinism, Gertrude More, Mary Ward, and Elizabeth Cary’s recusant writings, and Margaret Cavendish’s pursuit of natural philosophy, we can see how women were critically involved in these areas of interest.

 How were such women accepted or rejected in the contexts of their activities? What means of participation did they utilize—writing, conversation, oratory, experimentation?  Where do recipes and medical experimentation intersect? What other figures have work that has been “lost” and only recently recovered in these critical areas of early modern history? Where did natural philosophy and religion intersect for such women? What sorts of educations enabled such women to participate in these areas?

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words and a one-page C.V. By Sat., June 1, 2013, by email attachment, to each of the following:

 Julie D. Campbell

Professor of English
Eastern Illinois University
jdcampbell@eiu.edu

  Diana Robin

Scholar-in-Residence, Newberry Library

Diana.robin@ren.com

 Anne R. Larsen

Professor of French
Hope College
alarsen@hope.edu

**************************************************************** 

 CALL FOR PAPERS

Women’s Writing About Beauty in Early Modern England

Renaissance Society of America, New York, March 27-29, 2014.

New York, NY, The New York Hilton

 Female beauty—often codified as fair skin, rosy cheeks, red lips, and blonde hair—is the frequent subject of literature in the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England.  Critics have explored how male writers used beauty’s signs to articulate poetic identity, male subjectivity, dominance, competition, fear, desire, and political ambition, amongst other things.  Much less has been said about women’s writing about beauty, although English women also wrote about appearance in poetry, fiction, and drama, in letters, prayers,  meditations, advice, and life-writing and recorded its practices in account books and recipe collections.

 This panel will explore the complexities of how women contemplated, used, rejected, or revised early modern beauty ideals and practices. Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that explore how women writing in England between 1550 and 1650 responded to some aspect of early modern beauty culture. Papers might consider, but are not limited to, issues around race, colonialism, class, politics, religion, material culture, aging, ugliness, marks, health, disguise, sexuality, literary history, knowledge, or social relationships.

 Please send a 150-word abstract, the paper’s title, and a CV of not more than 300 words to Edith Snook (esnook@unb.ca) by 22 May 2013.

 ************************************************************

A Midsummer symposium on international Jesuit culture, 1540–1700, with an evening concert of early Jesuit music, to celebrate the re-evaluation of the Cwm Jesuit Library, housed at Hereford Cathedral since 1679.  The library, the largest surviving seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary library in Britain, is currently being analysed in depth as part of an exciting joint project between Swansea University and Hereford Cathedral, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The study day will place the library within its larger international context by exploring the rich and fascinating world of seventeenth-century Jesuit culture.

The symposium and concert have been made possible thanks to generous sponsorship from the Jesuit Institute in London, the British Province of the Society of Jesus, and a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.

 10.00 – Registration and coffee in College Hall, Hereford Cathedral, HR1 2NG

 10.30 – Welcome and setting the context

             Canon Chris Pullin, Chancellor, Hereford Cathedral

             Professor Maurice Whitehead, Swansea University

 Panel One: Jesuit Arts, Science and Music in the early modern period

             10.45 – The Jesuits and the Arts, 1540–1700

                         Professor Peter Davidson, University of Aberdeen

            11.15 – The Jesuits and Science, 1540–1700

                         Dr Adam Mosley, Swansea University

             11.45 – The Jesuits and Music, 1540–1750

                         Dr Peter Leech, Swansea University

             12.15 – Questions and Discussion

  12.30–14.00 –  Buffet Lunch, with time to view the exhibitions of early Jesuit books and music, and sacred treasures from the Special Collections at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, as well as the Hereford Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library exhibition. 

 Panel Two: The Jesuits in late-sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England and Wales

              14.00 – The Jesuits in England and Wales, 1580–1700: an overview

Reverend Dr Thomas McCoog, SJ, Fordham University, New York,                                                  and Archivist of the British Province of the Society of Jesus, London

             14.30 – Helen Wintour and Jesuit vestment-making in seventeenth-century

                          Worcestershire

                          Janet Graffius, Curator of Special Collections, Stonyhurst College

              15.00 – The Cwm Jesuit Library at Hereford Cathedral

                          Hannah Thomas, PhD candidate, Swansea University

              15.30 – Questions and Discussion

              16.00 – Closing comments

                          Canon Chris Pullin, Chancellor, Hereford Cathedral

                          Professor Maurice Whitehead, Swansea University

   16.15–17.15 – Exhibitions open

   17.30–18.15 – Opportunity to attend Choral Evensong in Hereford Cathedral, featuring      

                          unaccompanied seventeenth-century music

 19.30 – Concert

 For further information, please visit the conference web page worldisourhouse.blogspot.com

e-mail

library@herefordcathedral.org or call 01432 374225/6

 *********************************************************

 The RSA Division in Hispanic Literature, the Cervantes Society of America, and/or the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry are jointly sponsoring panels on:

 Cervantes’s Library:

Critical readings by Cervantes; Cervantes as literary critic; Cervantine commentaries on literature.

Cervantes’s reactions to historical, legal, scientific, political or theological (i.e., non-fictional and non-poetic) writings are especially encouraged. Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 25, 2013 to both Laura Bass (laura_bass[at]brown.edu) and David A. Boruchoff (david.boruchoff[at]mcgill.ca).

 The Intellectual Mileux of Renaissance Spanish Artists:

Literary-artistic circles; artists and patrons; artists as writers and writers as artists; imagined or unrealized artistic projects. Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 25, 2013 to both Laura Bass (laura_bass[at]brown.edu) and David A. Boruchoff (david.boruchoff[at]mcgill.ca).

 Purloined Letters:

Plagiarism, false authorship, unauthorized publications, misleading or self-serving commentaries or translations. Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 25, 2013 to both Laura Bass (laura_bass[at]brown.edu) and David A. Boruchoff (david.boruchoff[at]mcgill.ca).

 Reimagining Time in the Early Modern Hispanic World:

In the wake of seismic events such as the encounter with America, religious wars, and acute political crisis, early modern Spain registered a pronounced awareness of historical change. In turn, traditional understandings of time as an ongoing continuum were challenged by an intensified sense of the material and cultural discontinuities that separate the present from the past. How did this new experience of the passage of time manifest itself in literature? What were its effects on mimesis, the tempus fugit topos, clock symbolism, visual imagery, representations of America, the practice of memory? Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 25, 2013 to all three of the following: Ariadna García-Bryce (garciab[at]reed.edu), Laura Bass (laura_bass[at]brown.edu) and David A. Boruchoff (david.boruchoff[at]mcgill.ca).

 Poetry and the City:

This forum explores poetry as a social practice that transcends the search for aristocratic status. We invite submissions that examine the multiple roles of poetry in city life; urban themes and imagery; or poetry and the bourgeoisie. Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 15, 2013 to both Ignacio Navarrete (ignacio[at]berkeley.edu) and Elizabeth Pettinaroli (pettinarolie[at]rhodes.edu).

Cervantes and Poetry:

On the fourth centenary of the publication of Cervantes’sViaje del Parnaso(1614), we invite submissions on poetry written by Cervantes or on the roles that poetry and poetics play in his works. Please send a single page with a 150-word abstract and brief CV by May 15, 2013 to all three of the following: David A. Boruchoff (david.boruchoff[at]mcgill.ca), Laura Bass (Laura_Bass[at]brown.edu), and Ignacio Navarrete (ignacio[at]berkeley.edu).

 Please note:

All proposals should bear in mind the interdisciplinary makeup of the Renaissance Society of America and the need to speak to scholars whose primary interests and expertise may lie beyond the Spanish-speaking world. Successful proposals will be published in the conference program.

The RSA permits participants to give only one paper at its annual meeting.

All presenters must be or become members of the RSA and register for the meeting.

Submission of a proposal implies that one will subsequently participate in the meeting if selected. The RSA is considering sanctions against those who withdraw after being selected or fail to attend the meeting. For more information on the annual meeting, see the RSA website: www.rsa.org.

 ****************************************************************

 The Society for Early Modern Women [http://ssemw.org/] extends sponsorship for up to five sessions at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. Sponsorship signifies that sessions accepted by the SSEMW are automatically accepted for the RSA Annual Conference.

Session organizers whose panel focuses on women or female gender/sexuality in the Renaissance/Early Modern period – in all disciplines and in all geographic areas – are invited to submit an abstract describing the objective of their session, the names of speakers (with institutional affiliation), and the titles and draft abstracts of the papers to be read. Please make sure that all the information required by the RSA is provided when you submit your proposal [http://www.rsa.org/?page=2014NewYork]

Deadline for proposals: 25th May 2013 to smatth01@syr.edu

Emails regarding the award of SSEMW sponsorship for submitted sessions will be sent out one week before the RSA due date for proposals (11 June 2013).

The SSEMW does not require that people proposing sessions for sponsorship be members of the Society until their panel is accepted.

 *******************************************************

 We are delighted to welcome Peter Stallybrass (Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania) to The Courtauld Institute of Art this summer as Research Forum Visiting Professor. His programme will be as follows:

 Tuesday, 14 May 2013

17.30 – 18.45, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Lecture:Letter-writing and Painting 1500-1900

Ticket/entry details: Open to all, free admission

 Thursday, 16 May 2013

16.00 – 18.00, Research Forum South Room
Seminar:The Materiality of Reading and Writing: What Paintings Can Teach Us (If We Let Them)

Ticket/entry details: Open to postgraduate students and teaching staff

 Peter Stallybrass is Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the History of Material Texts. He is also a member of the American Philosophical Society and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at the University of London. Peter began his career as a mortician, but he has been teaching since 1973, first in England at the University of Sussex, and, since 1988, at Penn. He has also taught in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and at the Collège de France. Among his awards are the Andrew Lang Gold Medal from the University of St. Andrew’s, the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Languages Association, and four teaching awards from Penn. His books include The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986) with Allon White, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (2000) with Ann Rosalind Jones, and Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer (2006) with Jim Green. He has also collaborated with Jim Green in curating exhibitions on “Material Texts” at the Library Company of Philadelphia and on Benjamin Franklin and at the Grolier Club, and with Heather Wolfe on “Technologies of Writing in the Renaissance” at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Peter Stallybrass’ Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography on “Printing for Manuscript” will be published next year by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is at present working with Roger Chartier on a history of the book from wax tablets to e-books.

 Lecture: Letter-writing and Painting 1500-1900

 In this lecture, Peter Stallybrass will focus both on the material practices of letter-writing in Europe from 1500 to 1900 and on painted representations of the reading and writing of letters in this period. The lecture will include hand-outs of exact facsimiles of four letters (dated 1557, 1762, 1828, and c.1888) as an aid to examining continuities and transformations in letter-writing practices and to help understand how folding patterns and filing systems are represented in paintings.

Open to all, free admission.

Organised by Professor Caroline Arscott

 Seminar: The Materiality of Reading and Writing: What Paintings Can Teach Us (If We Let Them)

 In this seminar, Peter Stallybrass will look at what Renaissance paintings can teach us about the practices of reading and writing in early modern Europe. Among the topics that we will discuss are: the uses of erasable paper and notebooks by artists; bookmarking systems; and further considerations on letter-writing practices, following on from the lecture on Tuesday.

Open to postgraduate students and teaching staff.

Organised by Professor Caroline Arscott

 *************************************************************

 The 3rd Forum on Early Modern Central Europe seminar of the year will take place on 9th May, at 5.15 pm.

Professor Martyn Rady (UCL-SSEES)

”The Hungarian Golden Bull of 1222: Composition, Content, Consequences’

Virginia Dillon (Somerville College, Oxford) ‘Religion, Violence and Ceremony in the Transylvanian News: Reporting in the German Language Newspapers from 1619-58’.

The venue is Room 431, UCL-SSEES, 16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW.

As usual, there will be a small drinks reception after the seminar, and do let the convenors know if you are interested in joining the speakers for dinner.

****************************************************************** 

 We are organizing a panel for the 60th Annual RSA Meeting in New York Hilton
Midtown, 27–29 March 2014 entitled: The image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern
Spain. Here is the Call for Papers for anyone interested:

Queen Elizabeth I was a celebrated cult figure in 16th century England. In
Spain, however, her iconic presence was portrayed quite differently due to
the tense relations of the two countries. This strained and fearful
relationship between England and Spain began in 1584 with the prosecutions
of Catholics in England and the Spanish defeat of the “Invincible” Armada. A
limited Spanish corpus dedicated to this prominent political figure exists,
in which authors such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Pedro de
Ribadeneira, Luis de Góngora, Antonio Coello or Bances Cándamo characterized
the Virgin Queen from contradictory perspectives and analyzed and imagined
her physical appearance, her private life, her personality and her rule.
This panel seeks to explore the fictionalized, historical and visual
representations of Elizabeth I and their impact on the Spanish collective
imagination. Please send 150 words abstracts in English by June 5, 2013 to
Eduardo Olid eolid@muhlenberg.edu <mailto:eolid@muhlenberg.edu> or Esther
Fernández efernandez@slc.edu <mailto:efernandez@slc.edu> .

 **********************************************************

 University of York Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies (CREMS) Summer Event Programme:

 WED 1 MAY 1.15-6.15PM

Women and the Popular in Early Modern England – CREMS Workshop

Speakers: Laura Gowing (London), Adrian Wilson (Leeds)                  

Venue: Treehouse, Berrick Saul

 THURS 9 MAY 5.30PM

Love, Anger and Envy: emotions and the early Reformation

Speaker: Lyndal Roper (Oxford)    

Venue: Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul

 FRI 10 MAY 9.45-12.15PM

Postgraduate Seminar: Carlstadt’s Wagon: visual propaganda for the Reformation  

Speakers: Lyndal Roper (Oxford), Jenny Spinks (Manchester)   

Venue: Treehouse

 WED 15 MAY 4.30PM

Capuchin Model of Leadership: the Pére Ange (Henri de Joyeuse) 1563-1608

Speaker: Peter Goddard (Univ of Guelph)                         

Venue: BS/008, Berrick Saul

 MON 20 MAY 4.30PM

Understanding Baroque Ivory Sculptures: the collection at the V& A

Speaker: Marjorie Trusted (Senior Curator of Sculpture V&A) HoA    

Venue: Bowland Auditorium

FRI 14 JUN 9-5.30PM

Cabinet of Curiosities – Postgraduate Symposium

Email: curiositycabinet2010@gmail.com                             

Venue: BS/008, Berrick Saul

 MON 3 JUN 4.15PM

Postgraduate Workshop: Literature, Politics and Religion in the Dutch Republic: ‘True Freedom’ and an Anglo-Dutch perspective 

With Nigel Smith (Princeton)

Venue: BS/008

 TUES 4 JUN 5.30PM

The European Marvel – Annual Patrides Lecture

Speaker: Nigel Smith (Princeton)                                       

Venue: Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul

WED 19 JUN 4.30PM

The Fate of the Book

Speaker: Eric Rasmussen (Univ of Nevada)                            

Venue: BS/008, Berrick Saul

 MON 22 APR 4.30PM

The Reader’s Eye: between annotation and illustration

Speaker: Bill Sherman (York)

Venue: Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul

 21-22 JUN 9-7PM

Sensing the Sacred: Religion and the Senses 1300-1800        

2-Day Conference, details on the web: york.ac.uk/crems/events/         

Venue: HRC, Berrick Saul

WED 29 MAY 9.30-5.30PM

Poetics and Prose Theory in Early Modern English – Thomas Browne Seminar

Speakers: Gavin Alexander (Cambridge), Jennifer Richards (Newcastle)   

Venue: Treehouse, Berrick Saul

 ************************************************************

 A one day interdisciplinary colloquium on early modern approaches to the imagination is to be held at the University of Warwick on 17th July. Themes will include (among others) the imagination and dreams, the poetic imagination, imagination and trauma in literature, conversion and the imagination, the demonic imagination, the musical imagination, theological approaches to the imagination, and the imagination and health.

Further details, including how to register, can be found here: http://warwick.ac.uk/earlymodernimagination

 For more information, please contact Femke Molekamp: femke.molekamp@warwick.ac.uk

 **************************************************************

 

The Renaissance at Birkbeck: Arts Week

All events at 43 Gordon Square

Wednesday 22 May

6.00pm-7.20

‘Remembering Myself: Memory and Identity in the Renaissance’

Panel with three speakers: Dr Adam Smyth, Dr Gillian Woods, Sue Wiseman.

Wednesday 22 May 7.40-9

‘Casta Paintings and the Colonial Body: Embodying Race in Spanish America’

Professor Rebecca Earle (Warwick)

Thursday 23 May 6.00pm

‘Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures: A Book and Some Afterthoughts’

Professor Leonard Barkan (Princeton)

Peltz Room.

All welcome