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
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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
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/
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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
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
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