Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global An NEH Summer Institute for College & University Teachers Directed by Michael Neill

At the Folger Institute Center for Shakespeare Studies 13 June – 14 July 2011

In today’s multicultural classrooms, a nuanced understanding of such early modern English concepts as nation, race, and imperial destiny is needed to address the culturally sensitive issues raised in many of Shakespeare’s plays.

This institute will equip college teachers with the knowledge to introduce their students to Shakespeare in his global and historical contexts. While the plays initially reflected the concerns of an expanding early modern world, Shakespeare soon emerged as a voice and an icon of empire and Englishness. He is now the most significant representative of a globalized literary culture and the most popular playwright of the non-Anglophone world. Twenty participants will examine this history of reception, adaptation, translation, and re-appropriation. With a distinguished faculty and the unparalleled Folger collections, they will integrate their discoveries into their courses and disseminate them through a resource-rich website.

Adrienne Shevchuk, Program Assistant
The Folger Institute
Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003-1094
202/675-0333

Email: institute@folger.edu
Visit the website at http://www.folger.edu/institute/neh2011

Why and How Gender Matters: The Concept(s) of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern World

During the latest decades, the questions, problems and theoretizations of gender history have become more nuanced. It has become clear that special attention is needed for studying gender history of medieval and early modern world. The central focus of the symposium is to test and verify the methodology and use the concept of gender specifically applicable to the period of great change and transition, often failed to be seen by scholars as an independent item. Late medieval period (14th and 15th centuries) is often lost in the shadow of humanism and Renaissance coming while 17th century is observed as something in between Renaissance and the Age of Reason. Geography of change is quite important as well, as in different parts of the European continent changes happened within distinct cultural, social and political contexts. It is these contexts the organizers try to bring together to see whether one universal gender concept should and might be applied cross boundaries and times.
Understanding the multifaceted aspects of gender, gendered positions and access to knowledge and power in medieval and early modern times will ultimately help to see even the present day gender positions as historically and culturally defined, not universal or monolithic. However, medieval and early modern period has too often been neglected by gender historians. The aim of the symposium is to help to increase the awareness of the significance of the field and challenge the still persistent assumption of medieval and early modern women simply as victims of misogynist thought.
The conference aims at dialogue between the scholars and researchers of different age/era, culture and discipline background. We especially encourage younger scholars to participate in our discussion.
See the program at: http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/why_gender.htm
Ms. Kirsi Reyes
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
University of Helsinki
Fabianinkatu 24a
Helsinki
Finland
Email: kirsi.reyes@helsinki.fi
Visit the website at http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/why_gender.htm

CFP: Intellectual Geography: Comparative Studies, 1550-1700 (Oxford 2011)

Please find via the link below details of the CFP for an international conference on the theme of ‘Intellectual Geography: Comparative Studies, 1550-1700’, which is to be held at St Anne’s College at the University of Oxford on 5-7 September 2011. The deadline for the receipt of abstracts is 1 April 2011.
This conference, the second in a series of three, forms part of ‘Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters’. Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Project is based in the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford and, in collaboration with partners in both Britain and abroad, is dedicated to reconstructing the correspondence networks central to the revolutionary intellectual developments of the seventeenth century. Full details concerning the conference and submissions may be found at the conference microsite:
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/intellectualgeography/

Windows of Empire: Colonial Celebrations and Competing Visions of the Colonial World, 1492-2010

Windows of Empire:
Colonial Celebrations and Competing Visions of the Colonial World, 1492-2010
Call for submissions for Ex Plus Ultra, the Postgraduate e-journal of the WUN
International Network in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
Imperial powers from London to Madrid hosted colonial exhibitions to showcase their territorial acquisitions. Frequently revelling in the exoticism, wealth and promise of these far-off lands, they also created far more intimate windows into empire, revealing not only the accomplishments but the insecurities, tensions and vulnerabilities of the colonial project. At the same time, celebrations such as Empire Day and royal jubilees were occasions for demonstrations of the interconnections between different colonies and the imperial metropole.
The editorial committee of Ex Plus Ultra welcomes submissions of articles from any discipline in the humanities, covering any colonial region, period and theme that correspond to the visions of empire to be found in “Colonial Celebrations.” Selected papers will be sent for strict peer review by established academics in the field. This third edition of Ex Plus Ultra will tie in with a conference on “Colonial Celebrations” to be held at the University of Bristol in September 2011.
Articles should be no longer than 6,000 words (including references), and should be submitted with an Ex Plus Ultra submission form to reach the editorial committee no later than 5pm GMT on 17 January, 2011. We have extended this deadline due to requests for a longer submission period and also in response to the changed publication date of the previous issue of the journal in Leeds. Interviews, comments, blogs and book and film reviews corresponding to the above theme will also be considered up until 14 February, 2011. All submissions must meet the required standards laid out in the journal’s publishing guidelines.
For further information, including the journal’s publishing guidelines, please refer to our webpage at:
http://explusultra.wun.ac.uk/index.php/about/submissions.
Please direct all queries, proposals and submissions to the editorial team:
Alastair Wilson alastair.wilson@bristol.ac.uk
Margery Masterson margery.masterson@bristol.ac.uk
Isabella Jackson isabella.jackson@bristol.ac.uk
William Raybould w.g.raybould@bristol.ac.uk

SOAS Summer Programme in London: 'Empires in World History: Merchant Capital, Colonialism and World Trade'

Monday, December 6, 2010

Sixth Blackfriars Conference, Staunton, VA

In 2011, the American Shakespeare Center’s Education and Research Department will once again host Shakespeareans, scholars and practitioners alike, to explore Shakespeare in the study and Shakespeare on the stage and to find ways that these two worlds – sometime in collision – can collaborate. Past conferences have included such notable scholars as Andrew Gurr, the “godfatASC actor and 2009 Blackfriars Conference presenter: James Keegan as Falstaff in 1H4.her” of the Blackfriars Playhouse, Tiffany Stern, Russ McDonald, Gary Taylor, Stephen Greenblatt, Roz Knutson, Tina Packer, and many more in five days full of activities.
Except for banquets, all events – papers, plays, workshops, – take place in the world’s only re-creation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre, the Blackfriars Playhouse. This conference distinguishes itself from saner conferences in a variety of other ways. First, to model the kind of collaboration we think possible we encourage presenters to feature actors as partners in the demonstration of their theses. For instance, in 2009, Gary Taylor’s keynote presentation “Lyrical Middleton” featured ASC actors singing and dancing to the songs in Middleton’s plays. Second, we limit each paper session to six short papers (10 minutes for solo presentations, 13 minutes for presentations with actors). Third, we enforce this rule by ursine fiat – a bear chases from the stage those speakers who go over their allotted time. Delegates also attend all of the plays in the ASC fall season – Hamlet, Henry V, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe, and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde – and, for the past several conferences, bonus plays written by their colleagues and performed by actors in the Mary Baldwin College MFA in Shakespeare in Performance program. The spirit of fun that imbues the conference manifests itself in the annual Truancy Award, for the sensible conferee who – visiting the Shenandoah Valley at the height of Fall – has the good sense to miss the most sessions.
The 2011 gathering will include a returning keynote speaker, Shakespearean scholar Tiffany Stern, author of essential performance studies such as Making Shakespeare, Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan, and Documents of Performance. Professor Stern’s work has played an influential role in the development of the American Shakespeare Center’s Actors’ Renaissance Season, and her presentations continue to inspire the further exploration of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the ASC’s educational and artistic programming. Additionally, George T. Wright, author of Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, will present. Professor Wright’s text on prosody illuminates Shakespeare’s use of meter for actors and scholars. We will invite our other speakers with an eye to other aspects of Shakespeare’s plays in performance such as playing the possibilities of rhetoric, playing in early modern theatres, early modern play audiences (then and now), metrical analysis, early modern rehearsal practice, early modern visual design, pedagogy (early modern and current practice and its influence on performance).
Since each conference expands on the activities of the preceding conferences, the 2011 incarnation will include thematic panels following each keynote address. The work of the conference always echoes in the work on stage at the Blackfriars Playhouse and in the American Shakespeare Center’s Research and Scholarship department, and it has provided the material for two books devoted specifically to essays from the conference (Inside Shakespeare, edited by Paul Menzer, and Thunder in the Playhouse, edited by Matt Kosusko and Peter Kanelos). Plans are already afoot to include papers from the upcoming conference in a third book.
ASC Education and Research extends this call for papers on any matters to do with the performance of early modern drama (historical, architectural, political, dramatical, sartorial, medical, linguistical, comical, pastoral) to all interested parties for our bi-annual conference to be held at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, 25-30 October 2011. The deadline to submit your abstract is 31 May 2011.
Link to Abstract Submission Form: http://www.formstack.com/forms/?1007217-Fa8fydC0oQ

Medieval Film/TV/Electronic Games Paper(s)

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages is seeking a paper or papers to round out a session on medievalism in film, TV, or electronic games for the 2011 Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum to be held from 15-16 April 2011.
Please submit proposals by 31 December 2010 to our Conference Committee at Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Position of Associate Professor in Medieval English Language and Literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland

I would like to draw your attention to the following
position available at the University of Fribourg.
Apologies for cross-posting.
The Faculty of Humanities at the University of Fribourg
invites applications for the position of
Associate Professor in Medieval English Language and Literature
commencing 1 September 2011
For further information, please see: http://lettres.unifr.ch/fr/services/job/
Applicants must hold a doctorate and demonstrate a high quality in research publications. They must offer proof of their teaching experience in a university setting, their ability to undertake research projects, and their existing or developing scholarly networks.
The successful applicant will teach 6 hours a week in each of two semesters of the
academic year. Teaching will include introductory English language courses in Old
English and Middle English as well as advanced courses at the BA and MA level. In addition, the appointee will supervise MA and PhD theses. Classes are taught in English. However, the successful candidate is required to take on administrative duties and have a working knowledge of at least one of the official languages of the University (French or German).
Letters of application with a CV, a list of publications, the names and contact information of three references, and list of courses taught should be sent to :
Prof. Thomas Austenfeld, Doyen, Faculté des lettres, Université de Fribourg, Avenue de l’Europe 20, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
Closing date: 31 January 2011.
For further information please contact the President of the Recruitment Commission, Prof. Luca Zoppelli: luca.zoppelli@unifr.ch
The University of Fribourg is committed to promoting the academic careers of women and welcomes applications from women.
Faculté des lettres
Juliette Vuille
Graduate Assistant
English Department
UNIL-Dorigny Anthropole 5073
Ch - 1015 Lausanne
+41 21 692 29 93

Renaissance Verse

Sir Philip Sidney wrote that poetry "is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word [Greek text]; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight." What, then does poetry teach us? How does it continue to delight us? This panel seeks papers that explore or even celebrate the triumph of poetry in English during the 16th and 17th centuries. From sonnets to soliloquies, how do Early Modern poets and playwrights utilize verse?
Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to Lynne Simpson at lsimpson@presby.edu by May 1.
Southeast Renaissance Conference

"Counterfeiting or Teaching? Using English Renaissance Poetry to Teach Non-Literary Skills"

"Counterfeiting or Teaching? Using English Renaissance Poetry to Teach Non-Literary Skills"
Sir Philip Sidney wrote that poetry "is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word [Greek text]; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight." With the humanities under siege and humanities faculty being asked to justify their role in higher education, how might we rethink teaching English Renaissance poetry to make it more relevant to the 21st century college student? For instance, what approaches to teaching poetry can we use to teach the ever-elusive critical thinking? Can we still allow poetry to delight while we teach more marketable skills?
Possible topics may include:
How to use poetry to teach critical thinking
How to use poetry to teach ethics
How to use poetry to teach reading skills
How to use poetry to teach writing
Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to Dan Mills at engsdm@langate.gsu.edu by May 1, 2011. Southeast Renaissance Conference

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Shakespeare and Early Modern Emotion Conference

Shakespeare and Early Modern Emotion
An International and Interdisciplinary Conference
29 June – 1 July 2011
The Andrew Marvell Centre, The University of Hull
This conference will explore the performance and representation of emotion in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In the last decade, scholars have been increasingly interested in the cultural history of emotions, arguing that they should be regarded as ‘social phenomena’ rather than inward experiences. At the same time, we have seen a resurgence of interest in the ethical and philosophical aspects of literary texts, and a return to thinking about ideas of ‘human nature’.
How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries respond to and/or shape early modern conceptions of emotion? How do early modern plays and poems speak to current debates about emotion, culture, and what it is to be human? Do early modern texts suggest that emotions are bound up with language and culture, or can we make a case for emotions as a transhistorical or even ‘universal’ category?
A broad range of papers are invited, but possible topics might include: the history of medicine and/or the body; the language of emotion; early modern rhetorical culture; discussions of emotion in classical and/or Renaissance literary criticism; emotions on the stage; antitheatrical anxieties; emotion and disease; emotional contagion and mimicry; sympathy and empathy; the cultural significance of tears, laughter, etc.; theories of tragedy; cognitive and social neuroscientific approaches to emotion.
Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Neil Rhodes (St Andrews)
Andy Mousley (De Montfort)
John Lee (Bristol)
Abstracts (no more than 150 words) for 20 minute papers should be sent to Richard Meek r.meek@hull.ac.uk by 1 March 2011.

Call for contributions: censorship and literature in English-speaking countries, 16th-21st centuries

Call for Contributions: collected essays on censorship and literature in English speaking countries, 16th-21st centuries
With the development of the modern state, there has been an ongoing tension between the will to control and at the same time allow free speech to develop. In English-speaking countries, the theme of “Censorship and Discourse” has been a recurrent concern from the 16th century to the present day, as the numerous censored publications and writings against censorship testify.
Our editorial project focuses on the negotiating processes going on between censoring institutions and literary texts, exploring the effects and counter-effects of censorship on writing itself and on the diffusion of the works of art through publication or stage performance.
Contributions in the following fields are most welcome:
- literature and self censorship
- censorship and literary reception
- stage censorship
To submit a proposal for consideration before March 1st 2011
Please send an abstract of up to 250 words, together with your particulars (names, institutional address, occupational status, postal and e-mail addresses) to the following e-mail addresses:
delphine.texier@uhb.fr
lakshmi@aliceadsl.fr
nicole.cloarec@univ-rennes1.fr
Submissions will be examined by the scientific committee and articles will be required by the end of June 2011. A set of guidelines for document setup will be sent to you.

Children and Childhood in the English Renaissance

Despite the fact that the terms “child” and “childhood” have inspired scholars of various disciplines and ages, the representation of childhood in the time of the English Renaissance remains an under-investigated topic. The reasons for this oversight are manifold. Although Philip Ariès’s thesis that childhood was discovered in the eighteenth century has meanwhile been revised (see, for instance, Orme and Hanwalt on the Middle Ages, or Pollock on the Early Modern Period), comprehensive studies of childhood in the Renaissance are still comparatively scarce. This is the more deplorable since the Renaissance can be regarded as a transitional period between the Middle Ages and the increasing influence of Puritanism in the seventeenth century, with its focus on childhood as a crucial period in spiritual life. In fact, childhood is a central topic of Renaissance literature. The dramatic works of Shakespeare are a case in point: the parent-child relationship, for instance, is of prominent significance in many of the Bard’s principal tragedies. In Romeo and Juliet and King Lear it is precisely this relationship that stands in the core of the tragedy causing the ultimate end of the protagonists. Besides, the concept of childhood was also a part of the state apparatus. Elizabeth I was often represented as “the mother of the nation” and a pelican who feeds her subjects, respectively children with her own flesh. While scholars have frequently focused on the maternal side of such metaphors, the implications of childhood are yet understudied. Last but not least, one could think of the emergence of numerous books on education and teaching methods for children by Mulcaster or Ascham who certainly develop their own concepts of childhood and adolescence.
The international symposium at the University of Siegen therefore seeks to explore a wide range of questions related to the representation of childhood in this widely neglected period in childhood studies. Papers are invited on various topics dealing with the representation of children and the development of the concept “childhood” in the Renaissance. Suggested topics include:
- Representation of Children in literature, the visual arts and music
- Conceptualizations of Childhood (e.g. in philosophy, rhetoric, science)
- Childcare (medical advice, handbooks, nursing, swaddling etc.)
- Educational issues
- Children’s literature, toys and games
- Family relationships
- Childhood and religion
- Royal children
Presented papers should cover about 20 minutes. Selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Please send your proposal of 250-350 words length to: drenkov@anglistik.uni-siegen.de by 28 February 2011.

Perpetual Crisis: Defending the Humanities

The Graduate Student Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison English Department is pleased to announce the 7th Annual MadLit Conference. This year’s conference, “Perpetual Crisis,” engages the intersections between art, science and the academy as institution. Our keynote speaker will be Professor Rita Felski (University of Virginia).
The 2009 edition of Profession registered the increasing anxiety within the disciplines of the humanities regarding the status of humanistic inquiry in the 21st century. The common decrease in university funding for the humanities, the flight of majors to the sciences, and the increase in digitization lead us to ask: why study literature? Why research performance? Why create art? Though the critical discussion of these questions seems frenzied, this discourse of crisis has existed in our fields for the past 100 years, stretching back through I. A. Richards and Paul De Man. Larger questions regarding the tension between humanistic inquiry, science, and institutionalized knowledge have marked philosophical discourse since Plato. What is the history of this crisis? How has it affected the creation and study of literature? What ought the status of the humanities be in 2050?
While grounded in literary studies, these considerations cannot help but engage fields within the humanities, including history, art history, theater, comparative literature, linguistics, and anthropology, and how these fields produce and teach humanistic inquiry. To this end, we hope this conference will invite a discussion of how research in the humanities interprets, responds to, and changes culture.
Keynote Speaker: Rita Felski
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and editor of New Literary History, Rita Felski is a scholar of critical theory, feminist aesthetics, and postmodern culture. Her 2008 book, Uses of Literature, is an exploration of aesthetic experience. Dr. Felski’s other work includes: Rethinking Tragedy (2007), Literature After Feminism (2003), Doing time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (2000), The Gender of Modernity (1998), and Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (1989). Her articles have appeared in such journals as The Chronicle, Profession, Modernism/Modernity and Feminist Theory.
We are currently soliciting proposals for 15-20 min. presentations and three-person panels on any aspect of crisis and/or the humanistic tradition. Possible considerations might include:
➢ What is the future of the humanities? How will “the humanities” be defined in 2050?
➢ What is the humanistic tradition? How has it inquired after and had an impact on culture? On history?
➢ How can we bring crisis into the classroom?
➢ What role should digital media play in the research and teaching of crisis?
➢ How do we justify humanistic inquiry to ourselves? Our students?
➢ How can we talk about the humanities in a post-human world?
➢ How is crisis productive? Can it be ethical?
➢ How does period or region define crisis? How does crisis define period or region?
➢ What is the relationship between crisis and the canon?
➢ In what ways does hybridity function as a response to crisis?
➢ How does crisis (re/de)construct identity?
➢ How is crisis uniquely defined in religious, eco-critical and wartime studies?
➢ Does the presence of a specific kind of crisis help brand a work as fitting within a genre?
Please submit a 250-word abstract to the Graduate Student Association at uwmadlit@gmail.com (and the panel chair, if submitting a paper to a special panel) by December 15th, 2010. Accepted papers will be announced by January 15.
It is also possible to submit a proposal for consideration in one of our special panels, listed below. To submit a proposal to a special panel, please email your 250-word abstract to both the panel chair (contact info below) and the GSA (at uwmadlit@gmail.com). Papers not selected for the special panels will be sent on to the conference planning committee for consideration in another panel.
Crisis of the Book
Chair: Leah Misemer
Contact Information: lsinsheimer@wisc.edu
This panel provides a forum for presenters to explore change across a medium through the concept of crisis, taking crisis as a transformative and generative concept. Presenters could examine the topic from a book history perspective by discussing salient moments in how society responded to the evolution of the medium, from a literature perspective by discussing how genre intersects with medium as it evolves, and from an art history/visual culture perspective by discussing how visual changes in the medium have posed moments of crisis and induced change. The topic also provides space for looking at alternative cultural forms that may have created this crisis of the book, such as digital technology, film, or other media in popular culture, and how these forms interact with books. Panels for this paper should address what is seen as the crisis and how that crisis generates (or generated) new forms.
Flirting with Commitment: Marxist Theory Without Praxis?
Chair: David Aitchison
Contact Information: aitchison@wisc.edu
Most if not all of us in our studies and research typically engage with the interrelation of aesthetics and politics; and most of us will occasionally call on Marxist traditions for help with explanations of social relations – especially in terms of material culture, ideology, labor, alienation, revolution, and so on. Most of us, however, use this interrelation and tradition at best to speculate, theoretically and rhetorically, in a realm of intellectual abstraction divorced from the actual world in which we live and work. Papers for this panel should (implicitly or explicitly) address the question of whether there is room for a more genuine Marxist praxis in our work as theorists and teachers of literature.
(Sleep)Walking: Embodiment, Liminality, and Crisis in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Chairs: Chelsea Avirett and Nancy Simpson
Contact Information: avirett@wisc.edu and nlsimpson@wisc.edu
This panel asks the central question of how do physical movement and/or states of consciousness inflect ways of negotiating political, religious, or personal crises during the period from roughly 1350-1650?
Hu(man) Crises
Chair: Catherine DeRose
Contact Information: cmderose@wisc.edu
This panel invites papers that address the social implications of changing categorizations of “man.” Nineteenth-century writers struggle to define “man” in philosophical, scientific, legal, medical, and popular literature. Who counts as man? Where does man stand in relation to other men, women, animals, and nature? What separates man from monster? How do writers’ answers to these questions support, undermine, or otherwise alter man’s social authority in society? Possible papers for this panel might engage with slave dialogues, evolutionary theory, gender dynamics, and/or animal’s rights movements. While this panel takes nineteenth-century discourse as its primary example, submissions from any period or critical framework that examine the role of “man” are welcome.
“So What?” Questioning a Common Question in Literary Studies
Chair: Andy Karr
Contact Information: akarr@wisc.edu
“So what?” We’ve said it to our students. We’ve heard it from our professors. The persistence of this simple question could suggest anything from the particular difficulties of undergraduate literary analysis as a genre to the diminishing relevance of literary study to any other aspect of life. Wherever you hear it, this constant demand for justification is certainly characteristic of crisis. This panel hopes to address the “So what?” question in a variety of ways, such as (for example):
-discussing methods for and/or struggles with teaching students to make arguments about literary texts with appropriate stakes.
-giving a paper that made you really struggle to answer the “So what?” question, and then discussing that struggle.
-giving a paper that seems to have failed to answer that question, and discussing what you think is still valuable in it.
-considering what is at stake in demanding “So what?” of literary criticism—professional or student-written. In other words, asking “So what?” of the “So what?” question.

Gods and Groundlings: Historical Theatrical Audiences

Before cell phones or internet marketing or even electrical lighting, how did theatre audiences function in various periods and cultures? How did they behave? What did they expect? What was expected of them? Who came and who stayed home—and why? The 2011 Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) Theatre Symposium will focus on audience reception, expectations and obligations, behaviors, “contracts” with performers, etc. in early- and pre-20th-Century cultures. Possible topics:
- Effect of audience behavior on performance or playwriting conventions;
- Class distinctions within audiences;
- Violation of or submission to social expectations of audiences;
- Unusual or typical “contracts” with specific audiences;
- Relationship of evolving audience expectations to social change or upheaval;
- Blurred or enforced distinctions between performers and their audiences;
- Role of concessions or other non-theatrical elements of theatre attendance;
- Etc.
Research on both Western and non-Western audiences is welcomed. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in Volume 20 of SETC’s annual Theatre Symposium journal.

The Symposium will be held at Furman University in Greenville, SC, April 15-17, 2011. Please send one-page abstracts by January 10, 2011, to wallacebert@campbell.edu. Please use “LastName TS Abstract” as your subject line. Abstracts should include complete contact information (snail mail, email, phone).
Please contact Bert Wallace, Editor, at wallacebert@campbell.edu or 910.814.4328 with any questions. Thank you.

Early Modern Encounters

The Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group (EMIG) of the CUNY Graduate Center presents:
Early Modern Encounters
Graduate Student Conference 29 April 2011
Location
The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
Keynote speaker
Professor Nigel Smith
Princeton University
Call for papers
We welcome proposals for papers on any kind of early modern encounter; proposers are encouraged to consider the theme broadly. Papers innovative in form are especially welcome.
topics might include the following:
inner-, inter- and cross-cultural encounters
travel writing
divine encounters and prophecy
reception and influence
competition and collaboration among writers
genre innovation and hybridity
touch
encounters with space aliens
multi-media events, artifacts and poetics
encounters with authority
life writing and hagiography
encounters with monsters
adventure, questing, and romance
archaeological and archival encounters
inter-textual encounters
cinematic and theatrical encounters
surprise us
Proposals and deadline
Please provide the title and a 300-400 word abstract of the paper you are proposing, your name, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address. Please e-mail proposals in Word to emig.conference@gmail.com by 1 January 2011.

Theatre and Ghosts Conference, 1-3 July 2011

The Department of Theatre, Film and Television
University of York (UK)
is pleased to announce a call for papers for an international conference on
Theatre and Ghosts
1-3 July 2011
Keynotes:
Professor Marvin Carlson, CUNY
Professor Barbara Hodgdon, University of Michigan
Professor Peter Holland, Notre Dame
Professor Joseph Roach, Yale
The conference spans the Renaissance to the present day. We are expecting rich cross-dialogue between cultures and periods.
Papers are called on, but not limited to, the following:
ghosts and cultural memory
haunted roles, ghosting, and surrogation
haunted actors, haunted plays
performing ghosts
Japanese Noh
ghosts and war
guilt and revenge
the undead and the disappeared
ghosts, stage mechanics and technology
Chinese opera
haunted theatre buildings, haunted spaces
ghosts and trauma
ghosts and spectatorship, superstition, the operations of fear
Conference Director: Professor Mary Luckhurst
Deadline for 300-word abstracts, for 20 minute papers or performance presentations:
5 January 2010
We will respond to applications by the end of January 2011.
Please send enquiries and abstracts to the conference administrator, Virginia Spillett on vhs500@york.ac.uk

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Call for Papers -- Allerton English Articulation Conference

47th Annual Allerton English Articulation Conference:
Reflection and Renewal
April 20 - 21, 2011
Allerton Park and Retreat Center
Monticello, Illinois

Call for Proposals and Participation

In cooperation with Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming and
the statewide Allerton Planning Committee, NIU's Department of English
is pleased to announce the 47th Allerton English Articulation
Conference, to be held Wednesday and Thursday, April 20-21, 2011.
The Allerton English Articulation Conference, bringing together faculty
from two-year and four-year colleges and universities for discussions
and presentations, will take place at the historic Robert Allerton House
in Allerton Park and Retreat Center in Monticello, Illinois. In keeping
with Allerton tradition, our two-day format will include plenty of
opportunities for collegiality, entertainment, and woodland walks.
Our theme will be Reflection and Renewal, in the context of
articulation in English Studies at two-year and four-year colleges and
universities. By reflection, we celebrate the value of reflective
practice through writing and speaking about our successes and
challenges, our questions and our suggestions to others. By renewal, we
mean how we rejuvenate and renew ourselves as teachers and writers
through the connections we make with students, colleagues, and wider
discourse communities (e.g., through service learning activities).
Suggested proposal topics include but are not limited to:
* Composition
* Culture and diversity
* English education
* Film
* Genre
* Literature
* Reading communities
* Technology
Rather than formal paper-reading, we envision more informal discussion
and interaction. Building upon the success of previous conferences at
Allerton, we are inviting proposals for both conversation strands and
individual presentations, which we will then group topically into a
series of 50-minute roundtables and panels.
Please email a title and one paragraph abstract of your roundtable or
panel presentation proposal to AllertonConference@niu.edu by February 1,http://www.niu.edu/clasep/allerton/index.html

Join us on Facebook (Friends of Allerton English Conference) for
conference planning updates and to converse with other participants and
presenters!

2011.
We hope you'll join us for convivial, productive conversation as we
celebrate our connections at Allerton House. If you know of colleagues
at your school (or interested high school instructors with an eye toward
college expectations) who might help us shape these discussions, we
would be grateful if you would pass this invitation on to them.
Thanks for your participation. We look forward to seeing you at
Allerton House in April!
Your Allerton Articulation Conference Planning Committee:
John Bennett, Lake Land Community College
Christine Brovelli, North Central College
Suzanne Coffield, Northern Illinois University
Judith Cortelloni, Lincoln College
Michael Day, Northern Illinois University
Bradley Dilger, Western Illinois University
Kathy Ford, Lake Land College
Ellen Franklin, Northern Illinois University
Jack Haines, Joliet Junior College
Rochelle Harden, Parkland College
Spring Hyde, Lincoln College
Jeanne Jakubowski, Northern Illinois University
Sharon McGee, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Jim Nagle, Columbia College Chicago
Janice Neuleib, Illinois State University
Sarah Quirk, Waubonsee Community College
Jan Vander Meer, Northern Illinois University
Joyce Walker, Illinois State University
Ruijie Zhao, Parkland College

Humanities and Technology Association Call for Articles and Book Reviews

Humanities and Technology Review (HTR), the interdisciplinary peer reviewed journal, published annually, of the Humanities and Technology Association (HTA), is calling for articles and book reviews for the Fall 2011 (Volume 30) edition. HTR explores the interface between the humanities and technology. For manuscript guidelines, contact Frederick B. Mills, Editor, HTR, Department of History and Government, Bowie State University: fmills2003@yahoo.com. The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2011.

2011-2012 Newberry Library Fellowships

The Newberry Library, an independent research library in Chicago, invites applications for its 2011-2012 Residential Fellowships in the Humanities. All proposed research must be appropriate to the collections of the Newberry Library (excluding certain short-term awards). Long-term residential fellowships are available to postdoctoral scholars for periods of six to eleven months, generally with a stipend of up to $50,400. Applicants for postdoctoral awards must hold the Ph.D. at the time of application. Short-term residential fellowships are intended for postdoctoral scholars or Ph.D. candidates from outside of the Chicago area who have a specific need for Newberry collections. The tenure of short-term fellowships varies from one week to two months. The amount of the award is generally $1,600 per month. Long-term fellowship applications are due January 10, 2011; most short-term fellowship applications are due February 10, 2011. Visit our website for information and application materials:
http://www.newberry.org/research/felshp/fellowshome.html

Monsters, Marvels, and Minstrels: The Rise of Modern Medievalism: Mythcon 42, 15-18 July 2011, Albuquerque NM, Deadline 15 April 2011

Monsters, Marvels, and Minstrels: The Rise of Modern Medievalism
The year 2011 marks the 75th anniversary of both C.S. Lewis’ publication of The Allegory of Love and J.R.R. Tolkien’s lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Spanning the early Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian heroic legacies and late Continental French-inspired romance traditions, these authoritative works of scholarship dramatically changed academic discussion on their medieval subjects. In addition, their literary reinterpretations laid the groundwork for the modern medievalism that now informs so much modern fantasy literature, Inkling or otherwise. To commemorate these important anniversaries, Mythcon 42 will invite reflection on the impact of these critical works and how they offer new ways to view the fantastic in earlier texts as well as how they initiated many of the approaches modern fantasy applies to its reading of the medieval. While legacies inherited from Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Biblical, and Classical cultures will be obvious subjects, papers and panels that explore mythological and fantastic works from other early traditions (such as Native American, Asian, and Middle-eastern) are also welcome, as are studies and discussions that focus on the work and interests of the Inklings (especially J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams), of our Guests of Honor, and of other fantasy authors and themes. Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome.
Guests of Honor:
Michael D.C. Drout, Scholar
Catherynne M. Valente, Author
Paper abstracts (250 word maximum), along with contact information, should be sent to the Papers Coordinator at the e-mail address below by 15 April, 2011. Please include your AV requests and the projected time needed for your presentation. Time slots for individual papers are one hour (45 minute paper plus discussion) or 1/2 hour (20 minute paper plus discussion). Panels consisting of related short papers may be proposed for a 90 minute time slot. Participants are encouraged to submit papers chosen for presentation at the conference to Mythlore, the refereed journal of the Mythopoeic Society (http://www.mythsoc.org/mythlore.html). Undergraduate and graduate presenters are encouraged to apply for the Alexei Kondratiev Award for Best Student Paper.
Janet Brennan Croft, Paper Coordinator
Head of Access Services, University Libraries, University of Oklahoma
jbcroft@ou.edu, mythlore@mythsoc.org
The Mythopoeic Society is an international literary and educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and mythopoeic literature. We believe the study of these writers can lead to greater understanding and appreciation of the literary, philosophical, and spiritual traditions which underlie their works, and can engender an interest in the study of myth, legend, and the genre of fantasy. Find out about past conferences at http://www.mythsoc.org/conferences.html.

Monday, November 22, 2010

OLD AND NEW WORLDS. International Congress of Early Modern Archaeology

Old and New Worlds.
International Congress of Early Modern Archaeology
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas | Universidade Nova de Lisboa | 6 -9 April 2011
Call for papers | 31 January 2011
The advent of the Early Modern Age triggered profound changes on the history of Europe. Urban development and increased commercial exchanges went hand in hand with the spread of new cultural ideas and paradigms and major changes in religious geography. All this occurred in a framework of political alterations that were often determined by wars, themselves determined/transformed by a technical revolution in military art. It was also the era of the discovery of new worlds, the first globalisation, with products moving at a previously unknown scale, in which the Iberian kingdoms played a pioneering role. In the American, African and Asian regions, linked by lengthy sea voyages that defied the imagination and the technique of those times, contacts with the local populations led to different types of political domination, economic exploitation and cultural exchange, sometimes radically altering the existing pattern of life. The aim of this congress is to bring together young and renowned archaeologists who have produced works based on academic or protective contexts, which are suitable for our discussions on the various themes concentrating on the period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, both in the European context and in colonised areas. The goal is not only to encourage the development of early modern archaeology but also to establish bridges between the archaeological communities spread throughout various parts of the world, namely those concentrating their research on the Iberian kingdoms and their world expansion.
CHAM (Center for Overseas History)
FCSH/New University of Lisbon
Av. de Berna 26C
1069-061 Lisbon
Phone: 00351.217972151
Fax: 00351.217908308

Email: coloquios.cham@fcsh.unl.pt
Visit the website at http://cham.fcsh.unl.pt/congresso_arqueologia_moderna/eng/congressointernacionalarqueologiamoderna_home.html

The Printed Image within a Culture of Print: Prints, Publishing and the Early Modern Arts in Europe, 1450-1700

The Printed Image within a Culture of Print: Prints, Publishing and the Early Modern Arts in Europe, 1450-1700


CALL FOR PAPERS

A conference to be held at The Courtauld Institute of Art

Saturday 9 April 2011

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, the advent of print utterly changed the production of images. A repertoire of images of all kinds, from the crudest woodcut to the most virtuosic engraving, from broadsides of wonders and prodigies to pictures reproducing famous paintings and sculptures, was put into the hands of both image-makers and consumers of images. New possibilities for allusion and intertextuality came into being thanks to this bridge between the image and its publics. And the publication of printed images, a commercial venture, widened the spectrum of those who bought images, producing new kinds of viewers and readers.

This one-day conference focuses on the relations between print culture and the visual arts as a whole, looking not only at the artist’s print as produced by the peintre-graveur, but at the relations between the entire spectrum of print and what we think of now as ‘fine art’.

Since the 1990s when the studies of Roger Chartier inspired work across many historical disciplines, much has been claimed for the impact of printed media on social, intellectual and cultural life in early modernity. The study of popular culture, the history of mentalités, book history and reception studies across a diverse range of periods and cultures have all profited from opening up the area known loosely as print culture. Art historical studies, however, have not often referred to this body of research. Bringing together some of the disciplines that study print culture to focus on the image and the printed text opens up new questions of concern to historians and literary historians as well as to students of the art print.

We invite papers across the disciplines of print studies. Issues that we suggest are relevant include:

• printed images used within legal or educational contexts, ceremonies and festivities (‘thesis’ prints, for example)
• the effect of printed images on the readership of books, political pamphlets, broadsides and ballads
• the printed image incorporated within other media, such as paintings or architecture
• the publication of artists’ biographies and printed portraits of artists, changing relations between artists and their publics
• the publication of collections: the gathering of paintings, sculpture, and printed images accruing new significance through their dissemination in print
• publication and the discourse of the arts in early modernity: the effect of print on artists’ biographies, manuals on the crafts of image making, or critical reflections about the nature of artistic beauty
• printed text and printed image: the dialogue and argument between word and image within printed publications

Proposals of 200-300 words (for 20 min papers) may be sent by email by 10 January 2011, to sheila.mctighe@courtauld.ac.uk or by mail to Dr. Sheila McTighe, Emily Gray and Anita Sganzerla, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, the Strand, London WC2R 0RN UK

Organised by Dr. Sheila McTighe (Senior Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art), Emily Gray (PhD candidate, The Courtauld Institute of Art) and Anita Sganzerla (PhD candidate, University of London)

Visit the website at http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/calendar.shtml

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Call for submissions to Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (OSTMAR)

The Editorial Board of
Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (OSTMAR)
is pleased to announce the official launch of its website.

http://opuscula.usask.ca
We seek single-witness editions of Medieval and Renaissance texts under 6,000 words accompanied by a brief introduction (1000-1500 words) and translation. We invite submission of a broad range of pre-modern texts including but not limited to literary and philosophical works, letters, charters, court documents, and notebooks. Texts should be previously unedited and the edition must represent a discrete text in its entirety.
For more information or to view a sample edition, go to opuscula.usask.ca or write Frank Klaassen, General Editor at editor@opuscula.usask.ca.
OSTMAR is an on-line and open-access journal published by Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies at the University of Saskatchewan under a creative commons license. All submissions are subject to a double-blind peer review and must be accompanied by readable digital facsimiles of the original documents.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ann Blair to direct Folger faculty seminar on "Managing Scholarly Information efore the Modern Age"

Interested faculty should consider applying to what promises to be an extraordinary weekend seminar.
Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age Ann Blair to direct a Spring Faculty Weekend Seminar at the Folger Institute
The focus of this weekend seminar will be on the materials and practices involved in reading and/or writing in the early modern period (roughly 1400-1700). Twelve-to-sixteen participants will focus on the process of intellectual work, from reading and note-taking to the composition and revision of texts, published or not. In each case participants will examine what can be garnered from the evidence, including marginal annotations in printed books, surviving manuscripts, and finished texts. Paying attention to the materials, spaces, and people involved throughout the cycle of intellectual work, participants will consider the following questions: Where did readers and authors read, take notes, or compose? What materials did they use for writing (including ink, quills, paper in various forms)? How did they organize their notes and preparatory materials? Did they work alone or rely on the help of others (friends, family members, or servants)? How did they use and cite their sources? Faculty with advanced research projects that usefully illuminate these topics are encouraged to apply; they will have the opportunity to discuss their projects within the seminar’s intellectual framework. One session will be scheduled in the Werner Gundersheimer Conservation Lab for close examination of selected cases and discussion with the professional staff.
Director: Ann Blair is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Harvard University where she teaches courses in the history of the book, early modern intellectual and cultural history, and French history. Her publications include The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (1997) and Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (forthcoming 8 November 2010).
Schedule: All day Friday and Saturday, 4 and 5 February 2011.
Apply: 3 December 2010 for admission (and grants-in-aid for Folger Institute consortium affiliates). Please use the Institute online application process available at www.folger.edu/institute.
Folger Institute faculty weekend seminars convene over a Friday and Saturday and provide participants with the opportunity to introduce and situate their advanced research projects as they connect to the topic designated for investigation. Knowledgeable scholars provide feedback on those projects over an intensive two days.

Ancient Rome and Early Modern England: Literature, History, and Politics

ANCIENT ROME AND EARLY MODERN ENGLAND: LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND POLITICS
Interdisciplinary conference, Jesus College Oxford, 21-22 May 2011
Speakers include David Norbrook and Blair Worden

CALL FOR PAPERS
Ancient Rome was a source of endless fascination to the early moderns.
Historians, politicians, divines, and imaginative writers looked to the Roman example for models and inspiration. The aim of the conference is to reassess the place of ancient Rome in the literary and political culture of late Tudor and early Stuart England. In what ways did the translation and reception of the Roman classics stimulate the native literary tradition or influence its political outlook? What was the impact of the Roman precedent on attitudes towards constitutional change, the rights and wrongs of empire, and the law? How did it influence ecclesiastical policy and, more generally, the views of the relationship between church and state? In what ways did Roman historiography, political writings, and rhetoric shape the language and substance of public argument? What was the trajectory of circulation in manuscript and print of the Roman classics? What were the uses and topical appeal of the Roman models in the wider public world and in education? How did the Roman legacy compare with that of ancient Greece?
Our aim is to foster dialogue among literary scholars, classicists, political and intellectual historians, historians of religion, specialists in the history of the book, and historians of historiography. Bringing together scholars representing diverse disciplines and approaches, the conference will encourage reconsideration of much received wisdom about the place of ancient Rome in early modern England's literature and political imagination. It will, we hope, raise new questions about, inter alia, the shaping influence of the Roman example upon formal properties and topical undercurrents of imaginative literature, sermons, and polemical writings; upon conceptions of public institutions and the individual's relationship to them; upon views of foreign policy and international relations as also military theory and practice; upon emergent confessional divisions and incipient notions of religious toleration; and, finally, upon perceptions of social relations in urban, above all metropolitan contexts. No less important will be to assess the utility and pervasiveness of romanitas before and after the union with Scotland, and compare the situation in England with major European states, in particular, France, Spain, Italian principalities, and the Netherlands.
We invite proposals for 30-minute papers. Please e-mail abstracts of no more than 500 words to Felicity Heal (felicity.heal@jesus.ox.ac.uk) or Paulina Kewes (paulina.kewes@jesus.ox.ac.uk) by 30 January 2011.
The Oxford gathering is a follow-up to the conference on 'Ancient Rome and Early Modern England: History, Politics, and Political Thought' to be held at the Huntington Library, 21-22 January 2011. For further information, please contact Carolyn Powell (cpowell@huntington.org).

German History 1500-1815

The German Historical Institute in Washington DC and the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University are pleased to announce the 17th Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History, which will be devoted to the time period 1500-1815 and take place at the GHI Washington on May 18-21, 2011.
The seminar brings together young scholars from Europe and North America who are nearing completion of their doctoral degrees. We plan to invite up to eight doctoral students from each side of the Atlantic to discuss their research projects. The organizers welcome proposals on any aspect of German history in the period 1500-1815. Doctoral students working in related disciplines -- such as art history, legal history or the history of science -- are also encouraged to apply, as are students working on comparative projects or on the history of Austria or German-speaking Switzerland. The discussions will be based on papers (in German or English) submitted in advance of the conference. The seminar will be conducted bilingually, in German and English. The organizers will cover travel and lodging expenses.
We are now accepting applications from doctoral students whose dissertations are at an advanced stage but who will be granted their degrees after June 2011. Applications should include a short (2-3 pp.) description of the dissertation project, a curriculum vitae, and a letter of reference from the major dissertation advisor. German-speaking applicants should submit their materials in German; English-speaking applicants in English. Questions may be directed to Dr. Richard F. Wetzell by email at wetzell@ghi-dc.org.
Applications and letters of reference must be received by December 15, 2010. They should be submitted via email (preferably in pdf format) to Ms. Baerbel Thomas at b.thomas@ghi-dc.org. Letters of reference should be submitted directly by the dissertation advisor, preferably by email or by Fax to 1 (202) 483-3430. For further information on the GHI please go to: www.ghi-dc.org.
The next Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar (2012) will be devoted to German history in the nineteenth century; the 2013 Seminar to the twentieth century.

Dr. Richard F. Wetzell
German Historical Institute
1607 New Hampshire Ave NW
Washington DC 20009-2562
(202)387-3355

Email: wetzell@ghi-dc.org
Visit the website at http://www.ghi-dc.org/seminars

Science and Magic: Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance

Science and Magic: Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

           April 29 – 30, 2011

  
 Keynote Speaker: Bruce Moran, Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno
In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandola described two forms of magic. There was that branch of sorcery consisting “wholly in the operations and powers of demons,” as well as a more benign craft pertaining to none other than “the highest realization of natural philosophy.” To many Renaissance thinkers, magic was a legitimate field of study as well as a potential threat to established orthodoxies. Inspired by this formulation, this interdisciplinary conference aims to consider scientific thought alongside magic and domains that modern vocabulary would describe as pseudoscience, such as alchemy and astrology, and invites papers related to diverse ways of magical and scientific knowing in the early modern world.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
·         Distinctions between magic, science and pseudoscience in theory and practice.
·         Forms of scientific literature and art, magical texts and artifacts.
·         The transmission of licit and illicit magic; the role of natural philosophy and magic in education.
·         The attitudes and policies of secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
·         Practical magic: fortune-telling, amulets, etc.
·         Early modern European and American witch-hunts and witchcraft trials.
·         Alchemical theory and practice.
·         The articulation and reception of prophecies.
·         The commerce of magic, the financial circumstances of men of science or magicians.
·         Fraudulent magic or science, cons and hoaxes.
·         Encyclopedic texts, indexing schemes and the organization of knowledge.
·         Artistic, literary or musical representations of magic, science or the thirst for knowledge.
·         Gender in magic, science, or pseudoscience.
·         Magic in the New World and beyond; extra-European influences on Renaissance magic and science.
This conference is conducted under the auspices of the Renaissance Studies Program at Princeton University. Please submit abstracts of no more than 350 words to Scott Francis (smfranci@princeton.edu) and Jebro Lit (jlit@princeton.edu) by January 15, 2011.  Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Monday, November 1, 2010

The Marprelate Tracts

Inspired by the recent publication of the first new edition of the Martin Marprelate Tracts for nearly a century, this day conference seeks to re-evaluate the Tracts as both a literary and historic event and act as the impetus for new research directions. The conference will take place in Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK on 9 April 2011 and is of interest to all those working on the political, religious and cultural history of the early modern period as well as those whose interests lie in English literature and early modern print culture.

Cathryn Enis
Email: http://www.blogger.com/goog_1138924365
Visit the website at http://www.reading.ac.uk/english/research/deal-EMRC.aspx

Friday, October 29, 2010

Early Modern Migrations: Exiles, Expulsion, & Religious Refugees 1400-1700

http://new.crrs.ca/about/events/conferences/migrations/
The early modern period witnessed a dramatic increase in the migration, expulsion and exile of social groups and individuals around the globe. The physical movements of religious refugees triggered widespread, ongoing migrations that shaped both the contours of European colonialist expansion and the construction of regional, national and religious identities. Human movements (both real and imagined) also animated material culture; the presence of bodies, buildings, texts, songs and relics shaped and reshaped the host societies into which immigrants entered. Following exiles and their diasporic communities across Europe and the world enables our exploration of a broad range of social, cultural, linguistic and artistic dynamics, and invites us to reconsider many of the conceptual frameworks by which we understand the ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Reformation’.
This conference invites a sustained, comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of the phenomenon and cultural representation of early modern migrations. It also aims to consider how the transmission and translation of material, textual and cultural practices create identity and cross-cultural identifications in contexts animated by the tension between location and dislocation. While often driven by exclusion and intolerance, the exile/refugee experience also encouraged emerging forms of toleration, multiculturalism and notions of cosmopolitanism. In a period in which mobility was a way of life for many, identifications rooted in location were often tenuously sustained even as they could be forcibly asserted in cultural representation.
Deadline for Submissions: 31 January 2011.
The link to the page for submissions is:
http://new.crrs.ca/about/events/conferences/migrations/
For more information, please contact:
Marjorie Rubright marjorie.rubright@utoronto.ca
Nicholas Terpstra nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca
Stephanie Treloar crrs.vic@utoronto.ca

Evidence and the Early Modern Period (Feb. 18-19, 2011)

Call for Papers
Evidence and the Early Modern Period
A conference held by the Early Modern Colloquium
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
February 18-19, 2011
Keynote speakers: Mary Floyd-Wilson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Kathy Eden (Columbia University)
This conference will center on questions pertaining to the status of evidence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Participants are invited to investigate how early modern culture employed evidence in the (by no means wholly distinct) fields of art, demonology, history, law, literature, math, medicine, music, performance, philosophy, politics, religion, and science. The conference will explore the connections and distinctions between various types of evidence—e.g., aesthetic, empirical, humanistic, legal, medical, rationalistic, rhetorical, and scientific—deployed in the period. How did the use of evidence trouble or define the boundaries between fields? How did evidence appear in diverse genres? The conference will also attempt to delineate the systems of thought upon which various epistemological praxes were predicated and those, in turn, that these praxes sustained. Relatedly, it will evaluate relationships between evidence and authority. In summary, the conference will ask: How did early modern individuals and collectives know? In what terms—explicit or implicit—did they demarcate what there was to know?
Additionally, the conference will consider what counts as evidence in arguments waged by contemporary scholars of the early modern period. How might contemporary conceptions of evidence affect our approaches to understanding prior evidentiary protocols and regimes? How might a careful review of this evidence illuminate further issues at stake? We welcome submissions that address these or other questions related to this topic.
The Early Modern Colloquium is a graduate interdisciplinary group at the University of Michigan. It will give priority to abstracts submitted by graduate students. Please send 250-300 word proposals to Angela Heetderks, Leila Watkins, and Sarah Linwick at slinwick@umich.edu by December 10, 2010.

Renaissance Translations, KFLC April 14-16, 2011

"Renaissance Translations"
The Renaissance has traditionally been considered a period of rebirth, a truism that has come increasingly under critical scrutiny. How, instead, might translation work as a defining rubric for the sixteenth century in France: as a period that witnessed a systematic and widespread translation of the past and of other cultures into new languages, forms, and genres? How were classical, antique, and medieval works and ideas resuscitated and recuperated for varied purposes in the sixteenth century in ways that masqueraded as “mere” linguistic translation but in fact served as cultural, intellectual, and political appropriation? How does translation as an intellectual and cultural operation occlude other processes of appropriation? Possible topics include: uses of the past; the rise of the vernacular; the relationship of French to Latin and/or other vernaculars; translation practice; the relationship between translation and projects of adaptation and imitation; translation as a metaphor for broader processes of cultural appropriation.
Please send 250-word abstract for 20-25 minute paper to Katherine Kong (kkong@utk.edu) by November 8, 2010.
For more information on the KFLC, see: http://web.as.uky.edu/kflc/

Memory and Forgetting in the French Renaissance

Many have remarked at the tendency of French Renaissance literature to commemorate past experience. Modern thought tends in the opposite direction, relegating prior experience to oblivion. Sixteenth-century French literature attempts to reconcile the two divergent tendencies, and perhaps for that reason has been dubbed the “early modern” period. Furthermore, the early modern treatment of memory and forgetfulness are determined by various theories from mythology to Christian ideology to medieval humeral philosophy. Through such theories the two are either diametrically opposed or inextricably intertwined and memory becomes aligned with morality and the soul whereas forgetting is associated with morality depravity and the body. At first glance it seems that the art of forgetting is overshadowed by the art of remembering in the literature of the period, but memory and forgetting are, in fact, mutually dependent. On the most basic level, the same fear of passing time and eventual death which inspired the countless carpe diem poems also motivated poets to create testaments to their lives to ensure that they not be forgotten.
We welcome proposals on French literature from the 16th Century / Renaissance that fall within the conference topic. Please send 500-words to Brooke Di Lauro (bdonalds@umw.edu) by November 1, 2010.

Call for Editors Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
CALL FOR EDITORS
FOUNDING EDITORS SEEK AN EDITORIAL TEAM OF 2 OR 3 EDITORS
TO SUCCEED THEM IN 2011
The Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies at the University of Maryland, original publishers of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, officially closed July 23, 2010 due to budget cuts. The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) at Arizona State University will take over the publication of the journal as well as its entire management, including the Managing Editor position. It will also continue the production, design, and distribution work they have provided since 2007. Several Arizona faculty have also agreed to serve on the Editorial Board.
The founding editors—Jane Donawerth and Adele Seeff of the University of Maryland and Diane Wolfthal of Rice University—and the Director of ACMRS—Robert E. Bjork—are seeking an editorial team of two or three editors in different fields of early modern women’s or gender studies to preserve the interdisciplinary character of EMWJ. Proposals should therefore come from a pair or team of potential editors.
The team of editors would be responsible for reviewing submissions, choosing outside readers, offering editorial suggestions, assembling and sending suggestions from editors and readers to authors, sending essays to the Editorial Board for votes, inviting some submissions, overseeing the choice of the annual Forum topic, sending finished revisions to ACMRS for copy-editing, meeting annually with the EMWJ Editorial Board and reporting to the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference or the Attending to Women Symposium, and other tasks related to the pre-publication phase of a scholarly journal.
Editors will be expected to deliver the final edited copy of each issue to ACMRS by July 1, in time for an October publication date. Editors should expect an average of six hours of pro bono work each week year-round, with fluctuations over the course of the year.
All managing and editing responsibilities will be handled by ACMRS: subscription records and bookkeeping, logging submissions and reviews, receiving and mailing books for reviews, advertisements, copy-editing, typesetting, final proofreading, printing, etc.
The ideal proposal will come from a team of editors who are specialists in early modern women’s or gender studies and whose disciplines balance literature and history (or art history or music, etc.). The editorial team should have strong support from a Chair, Dean, or Provost. Ideal candidates will hold a Ph. D. in the humanities and have a strong sense of the scholarly traditions of gender and early modern studies and its future.
Preferably, new editors would begin the transition during the winter of 2011 and would take over formally by June 30, 2011. Some flexibility is possible. The current editors will be available for advice and support to ease the transition.
Please send a statement describing your interest and qualifications to:
Editors
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
0139 Taliaferro Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Electronic submissions also are welcomed at emwjournal@umd.edu.
Applications should include:
1. Statement of interest
2. Current CVs for all editors
3. Signed letter of support from a Chair, Dean, or Provost (support might include financial support, travel funds, a staff person, graduate assistant, or work-study student, etc.)
4. Indication of possible start date, preferably before June 30, 2011.
Editing experience is desirable but not required. A commitment to the field of Early Modern Women and Gender Studies and to collaborative scholarship is essential.
DEADLINE for application: December 1, 2010
For more information about the Journal please see, http://www.emwjournal.umd.edu/, or contact the journal at emwjournal@umd.edu.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Anti-masonry

The Canonbury Masonic Research Centre (CMRC) is pleased to announce the program for its twelfth annual conference on the theme of 'Anti-Masonry' scheduled for 29/30-31 October, 2010.
Soon after its emergence in early Hanoverian London, organised Freemasonry earned the enmity of both religious institutions and governments alike, and by the summer of 1738 the association had been proscribed by the Magistrate in The Hague, the French government of Cardinal Fleury, and by Pope Clement XII, in what was to be the first of many Papal Bulls issued against the order. In the wake of the French revolution of 1789, polemicists such as the Catholic priest, Abbé Barruel, accused the Freemasons of helping to bring about these momentous events, and within a few years a Jewish component had been introduced to this heady tale. It was an elaboration that was to have disastrous consequences.
During the nineteenth century Freemasonry also found itself accused of fomenting the European revolutions of 1848 and a highly successful anti-masonic party was established in the United States. By the close of century, the story that Freemasonry was somehow intertwined with Jewish interests (what American historian Gabriel Jackson termed 'The Black Legend') had metamorphosed into one of the most outlandish conspiracy tales of all time - The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This notorious forgery of the Tsarist Secret Police - an imagined blueprint for Judeo-Masonic world domination - was eagerly embraced by the European Fascist regimes, and it helped prepare the ground for the Holocaust as well as the imprisonment and execution of thousands of Freemasons, along with the targeted theft of vast masonic archives, many of which are still being restituted to their original owners today. In post-war Europe the publication and appeal of the Protocols dwindled, although in the case of Spain General Franco continued to maintain a belief in the existence an imaginary Bolshevik-Masonic complot until his death in 1975. And today, this infamous document is still viewed as genuine in many parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East where it is typically used to justify an over-arching anti-Western rhetoric. But while the anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist aspects of this phenomenon are frequently discussed by academics, the anti-masonic element is all too often ignored.
Consequently, this international conference aims to address this neglected topic in all its aspects.
For further information please email:
conference@canonbury.ac.uk or telephone 00 44 (0)20 7226 6256
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday 29 October
The conference will commence with a rare showing of 'Les Forces Occultes' - a feature length anti-masonic film made in wartime occupied France (1943) complete with English subtitles - at University College London.

Saturday 30 October 09:00 Registration and coffee
09:50 Official opening
10:00 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Professor Michael Hagemeister, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
10:45 Morning coffee
11:15 Chair: Professor Andrew Prescott, Hatii, University of Glasgow
Anti-masonry and masonic trans-nationalism: a complex interplay Dr. Joachim Berger, Institute of European History, Mainz
Blaming the Great War on the masons' entente: Friedrich Wichtl, 1872-1921
Dr. Reinhard Markner, Berlin
The anti-masonic writings of General Erich Ludendorff
Jimmy Köppen, Free University of Brussels
Anti-masonry as political protest: Fascist attitudes to Freemasonry in interwar Romania
Roland Clark, University of Pittsburgh
12:35 Panel discussion
13:00 Lunch
14:15 Keynote: Franco's persecution of Freemasonry
Professor José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, University of Zaragoza
15:00 Afternoon Tea
15.30 Chair: Dr. Andreas Önnerfors, University of Sheffield
'Anti-masonry' in nineteenth-century Ottoman Lebanon: an offensive against Anglo-Saxon and protestant missionaries?
Said Chaa EPHE/Sorbonne Paris
Anti-masonry among the Ottomans and in contemporary Turkey
Professor Thierry Zarcone, CNRS/Sorbonne Paris
Trends of anti-masonry in Eastern Orthodox cultures
Dr. Yuri Stoyanov, Research Fellow, SOAS, University of London
'The Devil's sons': one century of anti-masonry in the Arab world
Stephan Schmid, American University of Beirut
16:50 Panel discussion
17:30 Close
19:00 Dinner
Sunday 31 October
10:00 Keynote: Professor John Robison (1739-1805)
Professor Andrew Prescott, Hatii, University of Glasgow
10:45 Morning coffee
11:15 Chair: Professor Jeffrey Tyssens, Free University of Brussels
The reception of anti-masonry in the eighteenth-century English press
Dr. Róbert Péter, Senior Assistant Professor, University of Szeged
Barruel's conspiracy theory - a theoretical approach
Claus Oberhauser, University of Innsbruck
A Swedish diplomat's recently deciphered perspective on the Unlawful Societies Act of 1799
Dr. Andreas Önnerfors, University of Sheffield
'The voice of Morgan's blood cries from the ground': reading American anti-masonry through anti-masonic almanacs, 1827-1837
Jeff Croteau, MA MLS, National Heritage Museum, Lexington MA
12:35 Panel discussion
13:00 Lunch
14:15 Keynote: War on Freemasons: The restitution of stolen masonic archives from Russia
Dr. Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
15:00 Afternoon tea
15:30 Chair: Dr. Tim Baycroft, University of Sheffield
Anti-masonic thought in France: the example of Bernard Faÿ Jen Farrar, University of Sheffield
Visual evidence used by Franco's Police in the persecution of Spanish Freemasons
Dr. Sylvia Hottinger, Carlos III University, Madrid
Stolen truth or truth stolen?
Dr. Hans Kummerer, Quatuor Coronati Research Lodge, Austria
The ongoing restitution of the Norwegian masonic library and archives
Helge Bjørn Horrisland, Norwegian Order of Freemasons
16:30 Panel discussion
17:00 Close

The Sincerest Form: Literary Imitation, Adaptation, and Parody

The Sincerest Form: Literary Imitation, Adaptation, and Parody
Notre Dame English Graduate Student Conference
University of Notre Dame
South Bend, Indiana
March 3-4, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Professor Julie Sanders, University of Nottingham

From mash-up videos to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the refashioning of cultural artifacts is a primary mode of artistic expression in the twenty-first century. Such appropriative strategies are part of a long literary tradition, one shared by writers as diverse as Geoffrey Chaucer, Carlo Goldoni, Bertolt Brecht, and Jean Rhys. This graduate student conference will explore how writers from around the world reimagine European literature through imitation, adaptation, and parody, from the Middle Ages to the present. These texts, which often cross temporal, spatial, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, raise intriguing questions about the relationships between the past and the present, centers of power and peripheries, the canonical and the non-canonical, and the highbrow and the lowbrow. In addition, we will examine the role that these texts play in cultural interchange within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world. We will consider as well how these texts disrupt traditional Western notions of intellectual property rights.
A keynote address will be given by Julie Sanders, Professor of English Literature and Drama at the University of Nottingham. Professor Sanders is the author of "Novel Shakespeares: Twentieth-Century Women Novelists and Appropriation" (2001), "Adaptation and Appropriation" (2005), and "Shakespeare and Music: Afterlives and Borrowings" (2007), and serves on the editorial board of "Adaptation," Oxford University Press’s journal on literature and film.
The conference will include a roundtable on the pedagogy of imitations, adaptations, and parodies. The roundtable participants are Professor Sanders; Professor John Sitter, chair of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame; and Dr. Abigail Palko, Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Gender Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame.
Please send abstracts to Lauren Rich at rich.12@nd.edu by December 17, 2010. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words for papers 15-20 minutes in length.
For more information, please contact James Creech (jcreech2@nd.edu) or Lauren Rich (rich.12@nd.edu).

Performance Studies Focus Group Call for Proposals-ATHE 2011 Chicago

Call for Proposals: PSFG/ATHE 2011
The Performance Studies Focus Group (PSFG) of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) invites session proposals for the 2011 25th Anniversary Conference at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in Chicago, 11-14 August on the conference theme of "Performance Remains, Global Presence: Memory, Legacy, and Imagined Futures."
Beyond the discipline of Performance Studies, what lies ahead? Where might the academy's move toward interdisciplinarity take Performance Studies and/or what influence might Performance Studies have had on the academy's changing view of the discipline? Because Performance Studies is predicated upon being wide-ranging, can it approach legacy? How might we explore the tensions within our own imagined community by thinking about the temporal confines of our field? Additionally, where might our individual research break new ground? How indeed do we incorporate past methodologies into our present work? PSFG invites submissions that embrace the discipline's past as well as envision its future. Taking Performance Studies in the larger scope of an institutional move toward hybridity, what remains?
All session proposals are filed electronically directly to ATHE. A link to the session proposal form, along with full explanations, can be found at http://www.athe.org/conference/sessions. All session proposals have a deadline of 1 November.
ATHE also accepts proposals for Multidisciplinary (MD) sessions. Multidisciplinary panels must be sponsored by three different focus groups. All MD session organizers must contact the Conference Planners of all three sponsoring groups before submitting their session directly to ATHE. If you would like to learn more about ATHE Focus Groups, go to: http://www.athe.org/getinvolved/focusgroups/index. All session proposals are due by 1 November.
While individual papers will receive consideration, submissions that pull together a strong panel of participants are preferred. With individual papers, the Focus Group Conference Planner will curate panels, attempting to match up related papers. In order to facilitate this process, these papers must be received directly by the Conference Planner Megan Shea at megan.shea@nyu.edu, by October 10th. Individual paper proposals should include title, contact information, and an abstract of 250 words.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact:
Megan Shea
PSFG Conference Planner
Expository Writing Program
New York University
411 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003
megan.shea@nyu.edu

CFP Purdue Comitatus Grad Conference, Feb 4-5th, 2011

Dear All,
I am pleased to announce that the 9th Annual Comitatus Graduate
Student Medieval Conference will be held at Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana, on Feb 4th-5th, 2011.
CALL FOR PAPERS: THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK—TEXTS AND RECEPTION
9th Comitatus Graduate Conference on Medieval Studies, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, Indiana, Feb. 4-5th, 2011.
Comitatus, the Purdue Medieval Studies Graduate Student Organization,
is pleased to announce its ninth annual Graduate Conference on
Medieval Studies to be held on February 4-5, 2011. The theme of this
year’s conference is "The History of the Book: Texts and Reception,"
and it will feature a keynote address from Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, The
Notre Dame Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
Kerby-Fulton has written many works on manuscript studies, religious
writers and visionaries, and textual reception, and is author of
_Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing
in Late Medieval England_ (Winner of the 2007 Snow Prize from the
North American Conference on British Studies, as well as the Medieval
Academy of America Haskins Gold Medal in 2010).
We invite submissions of abstracts for papers on any area of the
history of the book and its reception in the medieval to the early
modern period. Possible themes include but are not limited to:
1. Textual studies of manuscripts and early printed books
2. The material culture surrounding the text
3. The history of textual dissemination and its impact
4. The contents of libraries
5. Textual illuminations, artwork, and its relationship to text
6. Cultural support for literary production
7. The relationship between the text and the reader
8. Reception theory
9. Book or textual fetishism
10. Trust in the written record
11. Religious and secular theories of the book
12. The social life of texts
13. Marginalia and glosses
14. Medieval literacy and the text
15. Sponsored educational and literacy programs and the use of the text
16. Renaissances and renewals, and their impact on readers and texts
17. Political uses for the text and literacy
18. Writing and memory
Please submit an abstract of approximately 200 words to
cjudkins@purdue.edu by Dec. 1st, 2010.
Please see http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~comitatu/conference.html for
further details and for registration.
Warm Regards,
Chad Judkins
Comitatus President
Doctoral Student
English Medieval Literature
Purdue University
Heavilon 209/SC G025