Anne Askew

The Society for the Study of Women in the Renaissance will hold its
November meeting on Thursday, November 17, 6 pm at the CUNY Graduate
Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, in room 9206.

David Loewenstein, English, University of Wisconsin, will speak
on "Anne Askew and the Culture of Heresy Hunting in Henry VIII's
England." Professor Loewenstein suggests reading the following pages
of THE EXAMINATIONS OF ANNE ASKEW, edited by Elaine V. Beilin (Oxford
UP, 1996): First Examination: pp. 19-24, 27-30, 34, 42-5, 56-7, 62;
Second Examination: pp. 91-3, 97-9, 103-4, 112, 119, 121-2, 127, 130,
134, 149-50.

Research grants

The Renaissance Society of America: eighteen research grants for RSA members; deadline 31 December

Research projects in all subjects and language areas within Renaissance studies are eligible for support. If you are applying for a grant please be sure that you have renewed your membership for 2012.

The 18 grants are:
*RSA Research Grants (9 grants), upto $3,000 each
*Rensselaer W. Lee Memorial Grant in Art History (1 grant), $3,000
*Paul Oskar Kristeller Memorial Grant (1 grant), $3,000
*Bodleian Library Research Grant (1 grant), one-month residence in Oxford for the purposes of research in the Special Collections of the Bodleian Library, with an additional stipend of $3,000.
*Patricia H. Labalme Grant (1 grant) in collaboration with the Giorgio Cini Foundation, supports a one-month residence in at the Centro Vittore Branca on the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore for the purpose of research in Venice, with a total award of $3,000.
*Samuel H. Kress Foundation Grant in Renaissance Art History (5 Grants); $3,000 each; these grants will support the costs of publication or research leading to publication in the history of art.

For further details of eligibility and how to apply, see https://rsa.site-ym.com/?page=ResearchGrants

PODCAST: Shakespeare Institute Academic Panel on ‘Measure for Measure’

The Shakespeare Institute
 Stratford-upon-Avon presents:
Shakespeare Institute Academic Panel on
‘Measure for Measure’ for Birmingham University undergraduates
This event has been recorded and is available as a podcast at the following URL:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/11/shakespeare-institute-academic-panel-on-'measure-for-measure'/

Northern Renaissance Seminar: 'Genre in the Renaissance'

University of Chester
17th March 2012

'Genre in the Renaissance'

*Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor John Drakakis (University of Stirling) and Professor Marion Wynne-Davies (University of Surrey)*

Proposals for papers are invited on any aspect of the ways in which literary/poetic/dramatic genres function in the Renaissance. This seminar endeavours to expose some of the ways in which genres are employed, manipulated, or resisted in Renaissance literature, poetry and drama.
Topics may include, but are certainly not restricted to:

- The emergence and evolution of genres in relation to Renaissance culture;
- The tensions or compliance of literary/dramatic works with genre theory;
- How social discourses shape categories and classifications of literary production;
- How and why do literary works resist or subvert generic classifications;
- How dramatic formulations contribute to the synergy between genre and culture;
- The use of genre as an ideological construct;
- How genre interacts with other driving forces in the literary/poetic/dramatic work.
Comparative, interdisciplinary, and performance-oriented approaches are welcome. We invite proposals (250 words) for papers addressing these questions, and considering the use or subversions of genre and generic readings in the Renaissance. Submissions from postgraduate students, and early career researchers welcomed. Please send your proposals or any queries to Anna Mackenzie: a.mackenzie@chester.ac.uk.
Deadline for proposals: 31st December 2011.

[UPDATE] Cornell Medieval Studies Student Colloquium Fame! Exploring Reputation, Rumor, and Historical Legacy in the Middle Ages

Fame! Exploring Reputation, Rumor, and Historical Legacy in the Middle Ages
Friday February 24-Saturday February 25, 2012
Call for Papers:
Influenced by Max Weber’s theories of social “enchantment” the theater historian Joseph Roach suggests that, through a process of “re-enchantment,” the affects and emotions associated with saints and other religious figures get mapped onto actors and other stars of stage and screen beginning in late seventeenth century Restoration theater. And so the modern notion of celebrity was born. This conference will explore the historical backdrops and preconditions for Roach’s claim, examining the ways that the reputations of saints, heretics, kings, poets, and other medieval “celebrities” were formed. We aim to concentrate particularly on the relationships between fame and the circulation of rumor, gossip, and popular opinion. The seminal work of Mary Carruthers has drawn attention to the social constitution of memory in a way that implicitly points out how local micro-narratives such as gossip and rumor might inform broader social consciousness and the construction of history. In exploring these issues, this conference will investigate the indistinct boundaries that exist between different modes of telling stories, in particular how storytelling informs both the private and informal intimacies of gossip and the formal public institutions of literature and history. Examples of potential paper topics may include, but are no means limited to:
• Ancient Roman conceptions of fama and their medieval afterlives
• Fama as a legal category
• The construction of sanctity by the circulation of rumors
• Collective memory
• Vox populi
• Orality and literacy
• Discursive circulation and exchange
• Gossip as a tool for social control
• Marginalia as textual orality
• Visual notoriety and recognition
• Iconography
• Confession
• Architectures of intimacy/ intimacy as spatial practice
We invite graduate students from Cornell and other universities to share papers on their current research in any area of medieval studies. Papers may address any topic with a focus on Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Early Modern period in Western Europe and beyond. We are seeking submissions in all disciplines, including (but not limited to) archaeology, art history, history, linguistics, literature, musicology, paleography, philosophy, and theology. We especially encourage interdisciplinarity. Undergraduate abstracts and abstracts on topics unrelated to our theme will be considered, but preference will be given to graduate papers with some thematic affinity.
Abstract submissions for 20-minute presentations must be received by 5 December, 2011 in order to be considered. They may be submitted by e-mail attachment to Adin Lears at ael74@cornell.edu.

[UPDATE] Special Call for Medieval and Early Modern Texts in/as Popular Culture

The 2nd Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association of Canada will be held at the Sheraton on the Falls Hotel, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
We invite proposals for papers and/or panels on theories of popular culture, research methods in popular culture, the teaching of popular culture, and any epiphenomena of popular culture, past or present.
Our broad definition of popular culture encompasses communicative texts, practices and experiences, mediated and unmediated, contemporary and historical, Canadian and non-Canadian (including the local and the global).
We share an interdisciplinary vision of this Association. We are particularly interested in featuring papers from scholars and/or producers and practitioners of popular cultural phenomena from the humanities, the arts, and the sciences.
To that end, we are interested in continuing to promote work in:
Film & Television
Cultural History
Music
Race, Gender, Class & Ability Studies
Theatre
Media
Communication
Queer Studies
We also seek to broaden the scope of our conversations by encouraging and promoting panels that draw from fields frequently under-represented in Popular Culture Conferences such as (but certainly not limited to):
Medieval & Early Modern Texts
Popular Environmentalism(s)
Science in/as Popular Culture
Food and Beverage Cultures
Non-mass Mediated Entertainment
Sport & Game Studies
Politics in/of Popular Culture
Tourism Industries and Theory
Single paper proposals should consist of a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a list of keywords or key phrases (maximum 5), and should be accompanied by a brief biographical note of 100 words or less. Panel proposals should include all of the above information for each presenter, plus a proposed title for the panel and a brief rationale. For more information visit us at http://www.canpop.ca/.
The deadline for proposals is January 15, 2012. The conference organizers will endeavour to contact all potential participants by mid-February, 2012.
Please send proposals (or any press/media inquiries) to the conference co-chairs: conference@canpop.ca
Stuart Henderson (History, McMaster University); Katja Lee (English & Cultural Studies, McMaster University);Scott Henderson (Popular Culture & Film, Brock University)

Popular Fiction and the English Renaissance

Abstracts are invited for a conference on "Popular Fiction and the English Renaissance", to take place at Newcastle University 14-15 April 2012. The conference aims to explore those texts and plays which were most enthusiastically received and read by sixteenth and seventeenth century readers, as well as, more broadly, the themes and approaches which Renaissance authors identified as appealing to a broad audience of readers and theatre-goers. Topics could include (but are not limited to) the following:
Particularly popular sixteenth and seventeenth century texts, for example John Lyly's Euphues; literary responses to these works by other writers.
Renaissance authors who were particularly concerned with the popularity and saleability of their works.
The early modern literary marketplace; tension between print and manuscript culture.
The rise of the sequel in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.
The cult of the author in the Renaissance.
Renaissance recycling of classical and/or medieval material.
English use of popular continental models and texts.
Authorial interaction with/awareness of the reader.
Renaissance texts and authors in modern popular culture (print, film, television or theatre)
Papers which address any of these themes from an interdisciplinary perspective are also warmly welcomed. The conference will consider papers on any aspect of the theme, in the period 1500-1700.
Abstracts (250 words max) should be sent to Katherine Heavey (katherine.heavey@ncl.ac.uk) by Friday 16th December.

3rd Biennial Oxford/Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium, 5-7 July 2012, University of Oxford

The Oxford/Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium (OCICS) is a biennial conference devoted to the interdisciplinary study of historical texts in the medieval and Early Modern periods. It provides a forum for discussions of chronicles and related texts written across a range of languages, periods and places. It seeks to strengthen the network of chronicle studies worldwide, and aims to encourage collaboration between researchers working in a variety of disciplines from around the globe.
The theme for the 2012 conference, taking place at the University of Oxford on 5-7 July, is ‘Bonds, Links, and Ties in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles’. Keynote addresses will be given by Prof Pauline Stafford (Liverpool), Dr Elizabeth van Houts (Cambridge), and Dr James Howard-Johnston (Oxford). The conference will take place at Oxford’s Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies.
Registration is £60 (full) or £50 (reduced). This includes lunch and refreshments on all three days. A limited number of bursaries will be available to assist graduate students with travel costs.
Call for Papers
Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers of 20 minutes must be submitted to the organizers via e-mail (at ocics@history.ox.ac.uk) by 31 January 2012.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• genealogies (real or imagined)
• family bonds
• textual links
• breaks and discontinuities
• links between past, present, and future
• ties of religion and faith
• law, order, and disruption
• oaths, promises, and betrayals
• local, regional, and national identities
Please visit our website for more information: http://www.ocics.co.uk/

Geographies of Desire: A Medieval and Early Modern Interdisciplinary Conference April 27-28, 2012

The University of Maryland, College Park -- April 27-28, 2012
Keynote Speaker: Valerie Traub, Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan
Where do we go to get what we want? Mandeville to the kingdom of Prester John, the Littlewits to Bartholomew Fair, Antony to Alexandria, Henry VIII to the Field of the Cloth of Gold: the fulfillment of desire, or the negation of an interior lack, is frequently a plotted movement from here to there. “Geographies of Desire” seeks papers that explore how desires are mapped across spatial planes; how do spaces such as markets, shrines, bedrooms, and courts produce material, spiritual, erotic, and political desires?
Geography is produced by an invested interest in the world, such that the mapping out of one’s desires is a precondition for mapping out the world. The desire for geographies both literal and figurative results from having outgrown local, national, imperial, and earthbound spaces. And yet, satisfaction often eludes us: the geography of desire pursues a sense of completion but risks corruption in the process.
Geography assimilates space and erases conceptual difference between separate worlds within the confines of a controllable physical representation. But even as the fog lifts from the exterior world, a strange desire keeps pulling us toward things monstrous and divine. How, then, does the geography of desire upset or reinforce the economic, political, erotic, and cosmological centers of our universes? How do literature, the visual arts, travel narratives, histories, religious writings, natural philosophy, and theater imagine these geographies? How and why do we imagine ourselves into the personal, cultural, ecological, and political spaces of others?
The Graduate Field Committee of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the Department of English at the University of Maryland invite papers that explore these issues for “Geographies of Desire,” a graduate-faculty conference to be held April 27 and April 28, 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park. This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims to foster insightful and vigorous conversation on this topic through an innovative format that includes graduate paper panels, roundtables, and plenary sessions with local scholars (TBA).
In addition to traditional papers, we are soliciting proposals for workshops related to the conference theme. Digital Humanities workshops centered on new research tools, pedagogy tools, or digital archives are especially welcome.
We expect this theme to be interpreted broadly, but invite participants to consider some of the following approaches:
-Exclusionary geography: Anchorites, xenophobes, isolationists, land enclosure
-Desire in Transit: pilgrimages, war and territorial expansion, diplomacy, colonization, tourism, travel literature, captivity narratives, slave narratives
-Shipwrecked Desires: lost coasts, desert islands, Hellesponts and Maelstroms, Mermaids and Sirens
-Are You Going to Scarborough Fair?: local economies, fair circuits, foodsheds and market villages, new views on Von Thünen
-Scientific Desire for Geography: telescopes, cartography, geohumoralism, new technologies, cosmography, describing nature—natural philosophy v. poetry, properties
-Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: domestic economies, decoration of interior spaces, mapping the home
-Long is the way / And hard, that out of hell: religious desires, missions, conversion, priest holes and monuments, spreading reform, spreading heresy, redemption
-Art and design: cartography (veracity v. subjectivity), mapping the canvas, perspective, architecture, urban planning
-Romantic and Erotic desires: exogamy, queer spaces, gendered spaces, courtly love, private / public, forests and cityscapes: green worlds and grey worlds
Abstracts of 400-500 words for workshops or 20-minute papers related to the conference theme should be emailed to (fieldcommittee.umd@gmail.com) no later than Saturday, December 31, 2011
Please check http://geographiesofdesire.blogspot.com/ for registration information and other conference related updates.

Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters across Disciplines and Periods: ACLA 2012

Use the following link to submit an abstract:
http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php
The dialogue between postcolonial/critical race studies and medieval/early modern studies of cross-cultural encounters has raised concerns about the (non)inclusion of the latter in larger historical narratives. For example, Lisa Lampert has questioned the tendency of critical race theorists to dismiss the relevance of medieval formulations of somatic difference to later formulations of race, even as Bruce Holsinger has challenged the post 9-11 impulse to trace current Christian-Islamic relations back to the Crusades. Cross-cultural encounters also feature more prominently in class curricula devoted to questions of identity, and of relations between different cultural, religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. This seminar explores how recent research on and concerns about medieval and early modern cross-cultural encounters might be productively included in the undergraduate curriculum. We welcome proposals from instructors in any discipline and any period who have organized courses (in part or in whole) on medieval and/or early modern cross-cultural encounters, actual and/or imagined.
Papers might consider:
medieval and early modern views and literary/artistic productions of dominant and minority cultures
fruitful pedagogic strategies and sources; practical and conceptual difficulties
teaching cross-cultural encounters as contributions to renewal or change within university pedagogy and academic disciplines
responsibly extending courses focused on cross-cultural encounters beyond specific historical eras
designing classes on cross-cultural encounters that don’t favor the perspective of a single culture
incorporating medieval and early modern cross-cultural encounters in courses taught by non-specialists
medieval/early-modern cross-cultural encounters and current cultural crises across the globe

NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers, Tudor Books and Readers: 1485-1603

John N. King of The Ohio State University and Mark Rankin of James Madison University will direct a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on the manufacture and dissemination of printed books and the nature of reading during the era of the Tudor monarchs (1485-1603). In particular, they plan to pose the governing question of whether the advent of printing was a necessary precondition for the emergence of new reading practices associated with the Renaissance and Reformation. Participants will consider ways in which readers responded to elements such as book layout, typography, illustration, and paratext (e.g., prefaces, glosses, and commentaries). Employing key methods of the history of the book and the history of reading, this investigation will consider how the physical nature of books affected ways in which readers understood and assimilated their intellectual contents. This program is geared to meet the needs of teacher-scholars interested in the literary, political, or cultural history of the English Renaissance and/or Reformation, the history of the book, the history of reading, art history, women’s studies, religious studies, bibliography, print culture, library science (including rare book librarians), mass communication, literacy studies, and more.
This seminar will meet from 18 June until 20 July 2012. During the first week of this program, we shall visit 1) Antwerp, Belgium, in order to draw on resources including the Plantin-Moretus Museum (the world’s only surviving Renaissance printing and publishing house) and 2) London, England, in order to attend a rare-book workshop at Senate House Library and consider treasures at the British Library. During four ensuing weeks at Oxford, participants will reside at St. Edmund Hall as they draw on the rare book and manuscript holdings of the Bodleian Library and other institutions.
Those eligible to apply include citizens of USA who are engaged in teaching at the college or university level, graduate students, and independent scholars who have received the terminal degree in their field (usually the Ph.D.). In addition, non-US citizens who have taught and lived in the USA for at least three years prior to March 2012 are eligible to apply. NEH will provide participants with a stipend of $3,900.
Full details and application information are available at http://www.jmu.edu/english /Tudor_Books_and_Readers. For further information, please contact Mark Rankin (rankinmc@jmu.edu). The application deadline is March 1, 2012.

Audience in the Middle Ages // Yale University

Abstracts from graduate students are now being accepted for the 29th annual New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference, to be held at Yale University on Saturday, March 31st, 2012. The theme will be “Audience in the Middle Ages.”
The organizers hope that this broad heading will elicit proposals for papers from all disciplines of medieval studies. Among many potential areas of focus are performance; orality; spectacle and spectatorship; transmission and circulation; decrees, bulls, charters, and other public documents; drama; liturgy and sacred music; sermons, lectures, and disputation; reception history; and coteries. Further, we look forward to receiving proposals that take more theoretical approaches to ideas of audience in the medieval period. We also welcome investigations of the post-medieval reception of medieval life and thought.
The conference will feature a plenary lecture by Elaine Treharne, Professor of English at Florida State University. Professor Treharne is the author of Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020-1220 (Oxford, forthcoming), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 2006) and Textual Cultures: Cultural Texts (Boydell and Brewer, 2010), among many others.
Papers are to be no more than twenty minutes in length and read in English. Abstracts of up to 250 words should be sent by e-mail to audience.yale@gmail.com, or a hard copy may be mailed to:
Audience in the Middle Ages
c/o Joseph Stadolnik
Department of English
Yale University
P.O. Box 208302
New Haven, CT 06520-8302
The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2012. Graduate students whose abstracts are selected for the conference will have the opportunity to submit their paper in its entirety for consideration for the Alison Goddard Elliott Award.

The Medieval in New Age and Neopagan Movements

We welcome contributions to a collection of essays tentatively entitled “Intuiting the Past: New Age and Neopagan Medievalisms.” Scholars of Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Art History, Music History, and Cultural Studies, as well as historians and literary critics, are particularly encouraged to contribute.
Topics may include but need not be limited to:
Appropriations of Kabbalah
Medievalism and Tarot
Hildegard of Bingen and New Age music
Neopagan and New Age Pilgrimage
Grails and femininity
Quests and masculinity
Apocalyptic visions
Christian mystics in New Age contexts
Herbal and “alternative” healing
Abstracts of approximately 500 words and a brief academic bio should be sent to Dr. Karolyn Kinane at kkinane@plymouth.edu by December 1, 2011. Abstracts should articulate how the article will advance theoretical and cultural understandings of medievalism and/or New Age and Neopagan movements. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee inclusion in the volume.
Upon preliminary acceptance, contributors will be asked to submit articles of approximately 7,000 words by August 1, 2012. Editors reserve the right to reject articles that do not meet editorial standards. We anticipate a Fall/Winter 2013 publication date.

Shakespeare and Bakhtin Book

Shakespeare and Bakhtin Book – Collection Chapters sought for collection of essays exploring Bakhtinian understandings of Shakespeare. Chapters may interrogate any play, plays or poetry by Shakespeare (except for 12th Night which is already allocated Final articles should be 5000 – 8000 words long and in English in MLA style. Deadline for finished articles 31st January 2012. Send to: xenoppa@gmail.com.

CFP: Shakespeare on Film, TV, Video

Shakespeare on Film, TV, Video (SW/TX PCA/ACA)
CFP: SW/TX PCA/ACA Regional Conference
Albuquerque, NM
Feb. 8-11, 2012
Submission deadline: Dec. 1, 2011
Proposals are now being accepted for the Shakespeare on Film, Television, and Video Area. While any topic on Shakespeare and moving images is welcome, here are some to consider:
-- Shakespeare and the genre film
-- viral Shakespeare (viral videos)
-- apocalyptic Shakespeares
-- Shakespeare online
-- Shakespeare and parody/homage
-- Shakespearean
-- foreign Shakespeare
-- silent Shakespeare
-- political Shakespeare
-- transgressive Shakespeare
-- Shakespeare and gender
-- Shakespeare and race
-- Shakespeare and class
-- postmodern Shakespeare
Please send all proposals (approx. 250 words) to the SW/TX PCA/ACA database: http://conference2012.swtxpca.org/.
Any queries may be sent to the Shakespeare on Film, Television, and Video Area Chair: Kelli Marshall, kellirmarshall_at_gmail.com.
All participants MUST register online at the SW/TX website as soon as papers are accepted; more information and forms are available at http://swtxpca.org/.

Shakespeare and Performance

The 2012 volume will focus on "Shakespeare and Performance." We are interested in articles that consider any aspect of performance in historical or contemporary productions of Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights. The following list is of possible topics, but should not be considered exhaustive:

Comparative performance in England



Comparative performances in England and other countries


Street performance


Provincial performance


Performance of Guilds



Women and performance


Boy’s companies



Current productions of early modern plays



Shakespeare Festivals



Playing spaces



Actors and the text



Theatrical Gesture



Court Performances and Masques



Film or TV productions of Shakespeare
Please submit double-spaced manuscripts in Times New Roman, 12 pt font that do not exceed thirty pages in length, including notes (9,000 words total); electronic submission in Word format is required. Please use endnotes rather than a bibliography, formatting to Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Ed. The author’s name, affiliation, and academic history should be included on the first page of the document. Thereafter, the author’s name should not appear in the document. For more information about submissions or about the journal generally please see: http://www.uta.edu/english/ees/
Submissions are due January 31, 2012.
Please send submissions to Amy Tigner, earlyenglishstudies@gmail.com or altigner@gmail.com. The issue will appear in Fall 2012.
Early Modern Studies Journal (EMSJ) formerly Early English Studies (EES) is an online journal under the auspices of the University of Texas, Arlington English Department and is devoted to literary and cultural topics of study in early modern period. EMSJ is published annually, peer-reviewed, and open to general submission.

Early Modern Social Neworks, 1500-1800

The word “network” is more likely to call to mind computer connection than the “glittering net-work” of a spider-web (E. Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1781) or a “Mantle of blacke silke” (Book of Robes, 1600). What is the link between such “curious Piece[s] of network” (Addison, Spectator 275, 1712) and contemporary social networking? These older uses of network illuminate the development of early modern techniques of loose connection. By contrast with a chain-of-being model, networks are versatile, allowing for manifold modes of association. We invite proposals for papers that explore early modern networks of both human and nonhuman actors in areas such as knowledge production, religious practice, international trade, infrastructure development, and others. In the area of knowledge production, for example, one might ask: what social practices were developed to manage the early modern “explosion” of knowledge? How were the ownership claims of the producers of knowledge and users of knowledge negotiated? We speculate that social networking, in the broad sense that we are using it, lies behind many of the transformations of the three centuries after 1500.
Possible topics include: knowledge networks, (such as the Royal society, libraries, salons, and coffeehouses); secret societies; clubs; literary coteries; epistolary correspondents; religious communities (including sacramental practices); print and publication networks; gift communities (patronage, the ward system); trade networks (such as the East India Company, the Royal Exchange, workers’ guilds, black markets); colonial administration; infrastructure expansion (the post, turnpikes, canals); financial organizations (stock markets, insurance); and others we have not anticipated.
This two-day conference will consist of keynote talks and panel discussions that will encourage all participants to engage the issues raised throughout the conference.
Please send abstracts, 250-500 words in length, to EMCConference@gmail.com by January 6, 2012. Feel free to contact Danielle Davey at emcfellow@gmail.com with specific questions.

Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies, 12-14 July 2012

The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years, proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on research in any aspect of early modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world. This year, the plenary speakers are Professor Paul Yachnin (McGill), director of the ‘Making Publics’ project, and Professor John Morrill (Cambridge).
We would welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on any aspect of early modern literature, history, art, music and culture. Panels have been proposed on the following themes and further panels or individual papers are also invited on these topics or any other aspect of early modern studies:
• Making publics
• Gathered texts: print and manuscript
• Politics and Biblical Interpretation
• Negotiating early modern women’s writing
• Passionate bodies, passionate minds
• Prince Henry: role, rite, and rhetoric
Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.
Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the Conference Committee, Dr. Chloë Houston, by 9 January 2012,c.houston@reading.ac.uk.
Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.

‘Mortality and Imagination: The Life of the Dead in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’,30 August-2 September 2012.

Further Call for Papers: ‘Mortality and Imagination: The Life of the Dead in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’
Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2012
The 21st Biennial Conference of the Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies will be held at Mont Fleur, Stellenbosch, South Africa, on 30 August-2 September 2012.
The theme of the conference is ‘Mortality and Imagination: The Life of the Dead in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’. In an effort to facilitate a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary conversation, we encourage scholars working in any discipline to submit abstracts addressing this theme. We also invite scholars working on any related aspect of the Middle Ages or Renaissance to submit abstracts for consideration.
We are proud to announce that Helen Fulton, BA (Sydney), Dip. Celt (Oxon.), Ph.D. (Sydney) has agreed to be the keynote speaker at the conference.
Please send proposals (250-300 words) for 20-minute papers to Professor David Scott-Macnab (dscott-macnab@uj.ac.za) by 31 January 2012.
More information: http://sasmars2012.blogspot.com/.

Commons: Shared Resources and Collective Activity in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance St

Commons: Shared Resources and Collective Activity in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference for the Group for the Study of Early Cultures - The University of California, Irvine
Conference Dates: Friday and Saturday, April 20 – 21, 2012
Abstract Submission Deadline: December 1st, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Julian Yates, University of Delaware
The commons once referred to tracts of land – forests and meadows, seas and waterways – open to collective use by members of one or more communities. The commons were shared spaces where public goods were generated through activities such as agriculture and hunting. They were also sites where social practices (for example, the rites of May) took place, marking the commons as an essential component to the shared cultural heritage of the people. However, the enclosure system sealed off these lands for exclusive use, dissolving the commons and opening the possibility for modern forms of private property. The commons also referred to a people distinguished from nobility by virtue of their birth, occupations, and cultural practices. There was a distinctly political characteristic to the commons that implied the bearing of communal burdens and the sharing of certain limited rights and privileges. The commons became an indicator of plebeian identity, shared backgrounds, beliefs, and ways of experiencing everyday life.
Today the term is widely associated with shared cultural legacies, open-source software, and public space and resources that are collectively owned and shared among members and populations. The commons may include everything from physical to intellectual property, water to ecosystems, media, languages and literatures, performances, public health and infrastructure, and the internet. This conference aims to gather models of the commons in its various modes including but not limited to land, public space, joint ownership, and collective action in medieval and Renaissance practice, with some sense of their viability as models for alternative economic, spatial, artistic, and political practice today.
The Group for the Study of Early Cultures focuses mainly on fields that investigate pre-modern societies, including but not limited to: Classics, Late Antiquity, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, 18th Century Studies, East Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, and Islamic Studies. We are also interested in a wide range of disciplinary approaches to Early Cultures, including literary studies, history, art history, drama, visual studies, sociology, culture studies, anthropology, political science, philosophy, and religious studies. All interested graduate students from any university and discipline are welcome to submit a proposal (title and 200-300 word abstract) to early.cultures.conference@gmail.com by December 1, 2011.
For more information about our organization, please visit our website: http://www.humanities.uci.edu/earlycultures/
Topics for consideration include:
● Common pastures and the rise of enclosure; imagining the commons in pastoral poetry
● Seas and waterways as commons; piracy, tourism, immigration, environmentalism
● Forests, hunting, poaching; parks, greenwoods and Robin Hoods
● Holiday as a form of temporary commons
● Theater as a public art form (its urban and spatial dynamics, “properties,” and publics)
● Imitation, allusion, intertextuality: building a literary commons
● Corporate life of medieval and Renaissance cities (plays, pageants, entries)
● Constituent sovereignty, non-sovereign or unsovereign forms of self-rule and collective action
● Community and immunity: medieval and Renaissance biopolitics, and life worlds
● Public education and shared (common) curriculum
● Hospices and public health care
● Religion as commons, and religious communities
● Copyright law now and then
● Folklore and common narratives
● Open Source Renaissance: new media and early studies
● The commons and food studies
● Collective agency
● Queer commons
● Colonial and postcolonial commons
● Gender conventions as commons
● Local, national, and international commons
● Planned communities and common space
● Legal and juridical dimensions of the commons
● Race and common identity

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium Undergraduate Panel CFP

You may be familiar Sewanee's annual Medieval Colloquium which in the past has accepted Professional and Graduate papers. This year we are happy to announce that the Colloquium will again, for a third year, include an Undergraduate session. Included is the call for Undergraduate papers. If you would please send this forward to your colleagues and other interested parties it would be most helpful. Thank you very much.
The Sewanee Medieval Society Colloquium Committee
Call for Papers
39th Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
March 30-31, 2012
on the theme of
After Constantine: Religion and Secular Power in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Lecturers:
Peter Brown, Princeton University
Thomas Bisson, Harvard University
In recognition of the 1700th anniversary of the traditional "conversion" of Constantine, this conference will explore the interrelationship of religion and secular power in the late antique and medieval worlds. Attention will be given to the relationship of "church" and "state," the role of the church as holder of secular power, the politics of sainthood, the uses of patronage, the relationship of religion and power in non-Christian contexts, and any other appropriate issues.
If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit an abstract (approx. 250 words), with a paragraph detailing your academic background, electronically if possible, no later than 25 January 2012. Decisions regarding abstracts will be made and sent by 30 January 2012 and papers due no later than 14 March 2012. The Colloquium runs on March 30 and 31. Student papers in final form are expected to be roughly 12 minutes in length.
For further information on the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, see http://www.sewanee.edu/medieval/main.html
Please address submissions and inquiries to The Sewanee Medieval Society Colloquium Committee at smcundergrad@gmail.com ___________________________________________________________
The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is an annual, interdisciplinary conference attended by medievalists from throughout the United States. Each of our meetings is organized around a distinct theme, broad in scope, recent examples of which are “Outlaws, Outcasts, Heretics,” “Power in the Middle Ages,” “The Seven Deadly Sins in the Middle Ages,” “Francis, Dominic, Their Orders and Their Traditions,” “The City in Medieval Life and Culture,” “Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages,” and, in 2011, “Voice, Gesture, Memory, and Performance in Medieval Culture.”

Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe

Cultures of conflict resolution in early modern Europe
University of Cambridge, 4 May 2012
Disputes, discord and reconciliation are part of the fabric of communal living. Early modern Europe was no exception. Indeed, in a time when enmity could be, in John Bossy’s words, 'a force', 'personal, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball . . . a formal and public condition’ conflict was especially prominent. However, the ways in which disputes and discord were dealt with could vary from person to person, and from one culture to the next. The methods and resources available to pursue enmities, to make peace and resolve conflict could depend on gender, social standing and age. Reconciliation could be both a formal and informal process. The pursuit of conflict resolution, moreover, could involve whole villages, and all manner of personnel including local magistrates, legal faculties, priests, government officials and the nobility. It was a communal affair.
It was also a deeply gendered process. Men and women had different methods of pursuing peacemaking, could be involved in different types of conflict, and often had highly different experiences of the process.
This conference seeks to trace cultural codes of conflict resolution in the early modern world. How did these vary from man to woman, old to young, and village to village? What methods of peace-making were available, and to whom? How did courts work? What were the languages of conflict and reconciliation, and who had recourse to them? What role did emotions, factions and the law play in conflict resolution? Did ‘official’ ideas of conflict resolution clash with local ones?
We also plan to investigate the relationship that study of dispute resolution has with chronologies of change in the early modern world. The end of feud and the triumph of law and the state has often been seen as the mark of modernity. Norbert Elias’s ‘civilizing process’ was tied to the restraint of violence, and Weber’s ‘monopoly of violence’ is still referred to often in histories of the state. Can new histories of conflict resolution provide revised accounts of processes of ‘civilization’, emotional ‘restraint’, and state formation? We are, moreover, keen to forge global connections and comparisons. Are there specifically Christian aspects to most Western conflict resolution that differ in, for example, the Islamic world? How did burgeoning states outside of Europe deal with the disruptive effects of feuding?
Finally, this conference will provide an occasion to reflect on the seminal volume edited by John Bossy Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, published almost thirty years ago. How have the last three decades of historiography changed perspectives, methodologies and approaches? What has the impact of interdisciplinary influences been?
We hope to assemble around 10 speakers who are in the early stages of their academic career. We are interested in a variety of approaches to, and aspects on, conflict resolution in the early modern world. Please submit paper proposals (500-750 words) by 31 December 2011. Invitations to present at the colloquium will be given by 31 January 2012.
Send paper proposals to the convenors Stephen Cummins stc28@cam.ac.uk and Laura Kounine lk279@cam.ac.uk by 31 December 2011.

2012-2013 FELLOWSHIPS AT THE HUNTINGTON

The Huntington is an independent research center with extensive holdings in British and American history, literature, art history, and the history of science and medicine, with the collections ranging chronologically from the eleventh century to the present. The Huntington will award to scholars over one hundred fellowships for the academic year 2012-2013. These fellowships derive from a variety of funding sources and have different terms. Recipients of all fellowships are expected to be in continuous residence at the Huntington and to participate in and make a contribution to its intellectual life.
NEH FELLOWSHIPS offer stipends of up to $50,400 for four to twelve months.
BARBARA THOM POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS are intended to support a non-tenured faculty member who is revising a manuscript for publication, carrying a stipend of $50,000 for nine to twelve months.
THE MELLON FELLOWSHIP is for nine to twelve months with a stipend of $50,000. THE DANA AND DAVID DORNSIFE FELLOWSHIP is for nine to twelve months with a stipend of $50,000.
HUNTINGTON RESEARCH AWARDS are for one to five months and carry monthly stipends of $2,500.
TRAVEL GRANTS AND EXCHANGE FELLOWSHIPS FOR STUDY IN GREAT BRITAIN are offered to support U.S.-based cholars in any of the fields in which the Huntington collections are strong and where the research will be carried out in Great Britain. We also offer exchange fellowships with Linacre College and Lincoln College, Oxford.
THE DIBNER HISTORY OF SCIENCE PROGRAM offers historians of science and technology the opportunity to study in the Burndy Library and the other history of science and technology resources at the Huntington. Both long- and short-term fellowships are available.
The deadline for submitting an application is December 15, 2011. For more details and instructions on how to apply, visit our website at http://www.huntington.org.

Graduate Conference on the History of the Body - Washington University in St. Louis

Graduate Conference on the History of the Body
October 20th- October 22nd, 2011
Washington University in St. Louis, Danforth Campus
The Graduate History Association at Washington University in St. Louis is pleased to announce the inaugural Graduate Conference on the History of the Body, to be held October 20-22 on the Danforth Campus in St. Louis.
In 2001, Roy Porter remarked that body history had become the "historiographical dish of the day." Ten years on, histories of the body continue to flourish. Often working at the interstices of a number of methods and approaches, the field has produced innovative and compelling articulations of the body as a category of historical analysis. As thinking about bodies has occasioned ongoing encounters, clashes, and border-crossings between a variety of disciplines, this conference aims to promote conversations across scholarly divides by showcasing and reflecting on graduate-level scholarship on the history of the body, in all periods and regions, and from a variety of methodological approaches. The keynote address will open the conference at 4:00 on Thursday, October 20, and panels will be delivered on Friday, October 21 and Saturday, October 22. Please see the attached program for full details.
Professor Mary Fissell, renowned historian of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, will deliver the Keynote Address in conjunction with the Washington University in St. Louis Department of History Colloquium Series: “Blood Will Out: Kinship, The Body, and Popular Medicine, 1750-1860,” at 4 pm in Busch Hall Room 100 on the Danforth Campus. Please join us for an open reception immediately following in Busch 18.
There are no registration fees for this conference, but pre-registration is available through our website: www.history.artsci.wustl.edu/GHA/Conference

Entering the Gate of Felicity: Diplomatic Representation of Christian Powers in Early Modern Istanbul

International conference organised by the project group “Ottoman Orient and East Central Europe” at the Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (GWZO); Leipzig, 14th–16th October 2011
14 October
18:00 Keynote lecture
Peter Burschel (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin): Westliche Gesandte in Istanbul:
Beobachtungen eines historischen Anthropologen
15 October
9:00–10:30 Panel I , Chair: Sabine Jagodzinski (GWZO)
Gunes Işıksel (Collège de France, Paris): Resident Ambassadors as the Agents of the Ottoman State?
Anikó Kellner (Central European University, Budapest): Amicitia: A Key Term of Diplomacy at the Sublime Porte
Dennis Dierks (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena): Die Sprache(n) des Friedens: Zur Reichweite der Okzidentalisierung europäisch-osmanischer Friedensverträge im 18. Jahrhundert
11:00–13:00 Panel II, Chair: Dietlind Hüchtker (GWZO)
Radu G. Păun (CERCEC, EHESS, Paris): “A Never Ending Flow”. The Gift-Giving Vocabulary of the 16th Century Venetian Diplomats in Constantinople
Lovro Kunčević (Institute for Historical Sciences in Dubrovnik of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts): Antemurale Christianitatis and the Most Loyal Servant of the Sultan: The Discourses of Ragusan Diplomacy
Tatjana Trikic (Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main): Subversive Sovereigns? The Exchange of Gifts and Letters between Elisabeth I and Valide Sultan Safiye
Will Smiley (Law School, Yale University): Negotiating Freedom: Russian Diplomats and the Freeing of Ottoman Slaves, 1739–1794
14:30–16:00 Panel III, Chair: Winfried Eberhard (GWZO)
Stephan Theilig (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin): Friedrich II. und Carl Adolf von Rexin als Bittsteller an der Hohen Pforte
Sándor Papp (Szeged University): Zwei Modelle des Gesandtschaftswesens: Habsburg und Siebenbürgen
Nedim Zahirović (GWZO): Der osmanische Beglerbeg zu Ofen: Der Wandel des Amtes anhand der Analyse der diplomatischen Geschenke
16:30–18:30 Panel IV, Chair: Arno Strohmeyer (Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg)
Dóra Kerekes (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): War die „geheime Korrespondenz“ der Habsburger im Osmanischen Reich während der frühen Neuzeit ein Geheimdienst?
Emrah Safa Gürkan (Georgetown University, Washington DC): The Diplomatic Function of Espionage: The Case of Habsburg Renegados in 16th Century Constantinople
Cecilia Tarruell (EHESS, Paris): Hispanic Monarchy’s agents at the Sublime Porte and the Muslim world at the end of 16th Century
Ovidiu Cristea (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History, Bucharest): An Unusual Diplomatic Episode: The Conversion to Islam of Prince Iliaş Rareş of Moldavia in 1551
16 October
9:30–11:00 Panel V, Chair: Andreas Puth (GWZO)
Tetiana Grygorieva (Mohyla Academy, Kiev): Ottoman Palace Ceremonial: Translated and Edited by Polish-Lithuanian Ambassadors
Michał Wasiucionek (European University Institute, Florence): Hermeneutics of Ceremonial Lore: Glimpses of the Idealized Diplomatic Protocol as revealed in the Polish-Lithuanian diplomatic accounts (1677–1763)
Ernst Petritsch (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Wien): Von Bittstellern zu gleichrangigen Diplomaten: Zeremonielle Fragen bei der Behandlung habsburgischer Gesandter
11:30–13:30 Panel VI, Chair: Peter Burschel (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)
Pascal Firges (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg): The Ottoman Empire in the Eyes of a Revolutionary Diplomat
Petr Štěpánek (The Embassy of the Czech Republic, Ankara): The Household of the Habsburg Ambassador Heřman Černín at His First Embassy 1616–1618
Robert Born (GWZO): Chronisten, Vermittler und Unternehmer. Beobachtungen zu den Künstlern im Gefolge der diplomatischen Delegationen nach Konstantinopel
Gábor Kármán (GWZO): Diplomats in Chains: Imprisoning Transylvanian Envoys at the Sublime Porte

Call for Papers: Shakespeare at the Opera

NEMLA Convention, 2012
Session title:
Shakespeare at the Opera
Description: The panel examines operatic adaptations of Shakespeare plays. How do Shakespearean operas serve as ‘readings’ that illuminate facets of the plays on which they are based? How do different treatments of Shakespeare shed light on the historical and cultural conditions that produced the operas? How can studying Shakespeare as opera function as a miniature historical lens om Shakespearean reception across the centuries? Send 300 to 500-word abstract to Josh.Cohen@massart.edu.
43nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
March 15-18, 2012
Rochester, New York – Hyatt Rochester
Host Institution: St. John Fisher College
Keynote speaker: Jennifer Egan, 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Deadline: September 30, 2011
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration) The 43rd annual convention will be held March 15-18th in Rochester, New York at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown, located minutes away from convenient air, bus, and train transportation options for attendees. St. John Fisher College will serve as the host college, and the diverse array of area institutions are coordinating with conference organizers to sponsor various activities, such as celebrated keynote speakers, local events, and fiction readings.
Joshua Cohen
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Phone: (617) 824-4288
Email: josh.cohen@massart.edu

Cool, Calm and Collected: The Dutch and their Emotions in Pre-Modern Times'

The Conference 'Cool, Calm and Collected: The Dutch and their Emotions in Pre-Modern Times', will take place in the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) in The Hague, November 4, 2011. The conference aims to enhance the burgeoning history of emotions in the Netherlands. Speakers at the conference will present their current research, integrating the study of emotional standards in advice literature with the study of actual emotional practices in ego documents, chronicles or archival sources. The fields covered will range from politics, philosophy and the urban feud to religion, the stage and the visual arts. The conference will not only be of interest to specialists in the history of emotions but also to the greater historical community. Keynote lecture: Thomas Dixon (Queen Mary, London).
Although the history of emotions was already suggested as an interesting topic by Lucien Febvre and Johan Huizinga it has been taken up seriously as a subject of historical study only fairly recently. Initially, historians limited themselves largely to the study of documents that prescribed emotional ideals and standards. Researchers are now going beyond such texts. They are currently identifying transformations in emotional ‘communities’ and ‘styles’ on the basis of letters, autobiographies and memoirs, as well as a variety of narrative, archival and visual sources. Historians are also emphasising performativity, what emotions actually do. At the institutional level, in Europe two important research centres have been started: in London the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions (Thomas Dixon, director); in Berlin the ‘Forschungsbereich Geschichte der Gefühle’ (Ute Frevert, director). This conference seeks to establish a more solid footing for the history of emotions in the Netherlands and join in with these international trends.
The speakers at the conference will discuss the emotional styles of the Modern Devouts and the cult of pugnacity in Late Medieval feuds. Focusing on the seventeenth century, they will reconsider the performativity accorded to the emotions in painting, the theater, and pietist religious movements. For the eighteenth century, speakers will analyse the Dutch ‘cult of sensibility’, the contemporary appreciation and navigation of the sentiments. The day will be closed with a lecture by Dorothee Sturkenboom. She is a pioneer in the study of emotions in the Netherlands and will relate the emotional history of the Dutch to contemporary and more recent views on their ‘national character’. The conference’s keynote lecturer, the well-known English historian Thomas Dixon, will discuss the latest developments in the field.
The organisers: Wessel Krul, Herman Roodenburg, and Catrien Santing.
The conference will take place in the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) in The Hague.
The conference fee is € 30,- (€ 25,- for members of the KNHG and € 15,- for students and PhD students) and includes lunch. The conference fee should be transferred to account number 6934391 of Nederlands Historisch Genootschap in The Hague. Registration by way of an e-mail to: info@knhg.nl, or by telephone: +31 (0)70 3140363.
Programme
9. 45 - 10.00: Welcome Catrien Santing (Groningen University), chair
10.00 – 10.15: Introduction Herman Roodenburg (Meertens Institute)
10.15 - 11.00: Keynote lecture Thomas Dixon (Queen Mary, London, History in British Tears: Some Reflections on the Anatomy of Modern Emotions
11.00 - 11.15:Coffee/tea
11.15 - 11.45: Mathilde van Dijk (Groningen University), 'Just some silly Beguine': being pious and showing it in the Devotio Moderna
11.45 - 12.15: Matthijs Gerrits ( Leiden University ), Anger and Feuding in the Late Medieval Northern Low Countries
12.15 - 13.30: Lunch
13.00-13.30: Annual Meeting Koninklijk Nederlands Historisch Genootschap
13.30 - 14.00: Kristine Steenbergh (VU University, Vondel and the Role of Emotions in the Public Sphere
14.00 - 14.30: Fred van Lieburg (VU University), The Use of Emotions by the Hotter Sort of Protestant
14.30 - 15.00: Eric Jan Sluyter (Amsterdam University), The Changing Representation of the Passions in History Paintings by Rembrandt and his Amsterdam Colleagues
15.00 - 15.15: Coffee and tea
15.15 - 15.45: Wessel Krul (Groningen University), Phlegmatic Excitement. The Dutch and the Discovery of the Emotions in the 18th Century
15.45 - 16.15: Edwina Hagen (VU University), The Passionate Politics of Rutger Jan and Catharina Schimmelpenninck: Dialogue between the Head and the Heart.
16.15 - 16.45: Dorothée Sturkenboom (independent scholar), The Dutch Temperament: An Enigma to be Explained...
16.45 - 17.30: Reflections by Dixon, Roodenburg and Santing, followed by Plenary Discussion
17.30-18.00: Drinks

call for chapter proposals: anthology on early modern Europe 1500-1800

After the successful completion of two anthologies on Modern European history, the editor is now looking for contributors to write chapters on early modern Europe. The anthology is aimed at university students and teachers in South East Asia. Chapters should be written in an accessible manner covering events, processes, approaches and debates in about 15,000 words. Scholars having some expertise and teaching experience in the relevant area may send a 1,000 word proposal and C.V. Possible themes include the Renaissance, the Reformation, geographical discoveries, overseas trade, commercial revolution, seventeenth century crisis, the scientific revolution, the English revolution, popular culture, literacy and education, gender relations, absolutism. transition from feudalism to capitalism and the Enlightenment.

europeanhistory2010@gmail.com
Email: europeanhistory2010@gmail.com

Renaissance Italy and the Idea of Spain: 12-14 Jan 2012

This conference explores the perception of Spain and the Habsburg monarchy in early modern Italy. Its aim is to demonstrate how groups of Italians from across the peninsula who came into contact with the imperial power of the Spanish crown imagined the wider Iberian culture brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. In particular, it will excavate the factors and circumstances that determined Italians’ responses to the Spanish presence, their intentions for the images they created, and the forums through which they articulated and projected them. The keynote speaker is Simon Ditchfield (University of York) and other speakers include Harald Braun (University of Liverpool), Nicholas Davidson (University of Oxford) and Robert Gaston (University of Melbourne). Bursaries, provided by the Royal Historical Society, are available for a number of Postgraduate Students. For further information please consult the website or contact the organisers directly:
Website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd2505/conference.html
Organisers and Contacts: Miles Pattenden, University of Oxford: miles.pattenden@history.ox.ac.uk and Piers Baker-Bates, Open University: p.baker-bates@open.ac.uk.

[REMINDER] "Rethinking Seneca’s Influence on Early Modern Drama" (09/30/2011; NEMLA, Rochester NY: 03/15-18)

For years, scholars have demonstrated the debt that Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and other playwrights owe to Seneca’s work. Such foundational criticism has often pointed to Seneca’s plot devices, characterization, language, and form that inspired later Renaissance dramatists. However, recent scholarship demonstrates Seneca’s effect on early modern subject construction and performance conditions. This panel aims to continue and extend current reconsiderations of Seneca’s influence on early modern drama by gathering papers that “rethink” Seneca’s works and influence in light of feminist, queer, post-colonial, and materialist theoretical perspectives. In so doing, this panel seeks to articulate the cultural, historical, and literary implications of early modern appropriations of Seneca’s plays, letters, and philosophy, thereby contributing to ongoing scholarly dialogue that re-conceptualizes the role and significance of Humanism in the early modern period.

This panel seeks papers that consider Seneca in a post-Humanist theoretical framework and that attempt to articulate what such reexaminations may teach us about the early modern period. Therefore papers may explore, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Early modern English translations of Seneca’s works and their dramatic influence
Seneca’s staging and early modern theatre practices
The performance history of Seneca in early Modern England
The role of gender, sexuality, disability, and race in Seneca and early modern Senecan-inspired dramas
Senecan stoicism and the construction of identity
Early modern drama’s exploration of Senecan philosophy
Appropriations of Classicism on the early modern stage
Senecan politics in early modern drama
Appropriation of Seneca in the ongoing debate over the nature and morality of theatre in the 16th an 17th centuries

Please send a 250-word abstract to nicola.imbracsio@unh.edu by September 30th, 2011.

Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. For more information on NeMLA and the conference, please visit: www.nemla.org

Educating the Imagination: A Conference in Honour of Northrop Frye on the Centenary of His Birth

EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION: A CONFERENCE IN HONOUR OF NORTHROP FRYE ON THE CENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH
October 4,5,6, 2012 | Victoria University in the University of Toronto

Twenty years after his death, Northrop Frye, the author of Fearful Symmetry and Anatomy of Criticism, continues to be one of the most read and the most quoted of literary critics. His attention to form, specifically to genre and mode, and his understanding of literature as a totality have directly influenced two later generations of critics, including Hayden White, Fredric Jameson, and Franco Moretti. In order to celebrate this ongoing legacy, the Department of English and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, Frye's home throughout his career, have organized a three-day symposium in his honour.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
--Ian Balfour, York University, author of Northrop Frye (1988), The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy (2002)

--Robert Bringhurst, poet, author of A Story As Sharp As a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (1999) and Selected Poetry (2009)

--J. Edward Chamberlin, University of Toronto, author of Come Back to Me My Language: Poetry and the West Indies (1993) and If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? (2003)

--Michael Dolzani, Baldwin-Wallace College, editor of Frye's Notebooks

--W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago, editor of Critical Inquiry and author of What Do Pictures Want? (2005) and Picture Theory (1994)

--Gordon Teskey, Harvard University, author of Delirious Milton (2006); Allegory and Violence (1996)

There will be panels devoted to Frye's specific legacy, which we are now in a better position to appreciate because of the completed publication of the Collected Works in thirty volumes. But we also invite speakers to take inspiration from Frye and to consider literary and cultural topics such as:

1. Educating the imagination when the humanities are under threat; Frye and Comparative Literature
2. The place of Western Literature and theory in a global context; the spread and the provincialization of Europe; the limits of the Great Code

3. Contemporary manifestations of traditional literary modes; 
the popular romance;
contemporary tragedy;
irony after postmodernism

4. Creative responses to the Bible in an era of fundamentalism and secularism

5. The survival of the literary imagination in a digital age 

6. Canadian literature in a postnational age

7. The Great Code and Islam

8. History as Narrative

9. Nature in an era of environmental crisis

10. Local literature, local forms

Proposals for papers or panels of papers are welcome.
Abstracts of 200 words (for papers) are due January 31, 2012.
Please send abstracts by e-mail to frye.2012@utoronto.ca

http://northropfryeconference.utoronto.ca/

**PLEASE POST AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY**

Shakespeare Studies Journal, 10/10/2011

The Journal of the Wooden O is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published at Southern Utah University with the support of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Gerald Sherratt Library, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Department of English.

The Journal of the Wooden O invites essays on any topic related to Shakespeare and early modern drama, but gives priority to papers on plays produced in the Utah Shakespeare Festival's 2011 summer and fall seasons: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter’s Tale.

Also, in celebration of their 50th anniversary, the Utah Shakespeare Festival in cooperation with the Sherratt Library will be hosting an exhibit featuring a First Folio. In recognition of this singular event, we also welcome journal submissions on subjects related to the First Folio and Shakespeare’s quartos, including but not limited to editing practices and the use of the First Folio in performance.

Submissions should be prepared following The Chicago Manuel of Style (16th edition) and submitted by October 10, 2011 to: The Editors, Journal of the Wooden O Symposium, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, 351 W. Center St., Cedar City, UT 84720; or via email to: woodeno@suu.edu.

Shakespeare and Performance

The 2012 issue will focus on "Shakespeare and Performance." We are interested in articles that consider any aspect of performance in historical or contemporary productions of Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights. The following list is of possible topics, but should not be considered exhaustive:

Comparative performance in England
Comparative performances in England and other countries
Street performance
Provincial performance
Performance of Guilds
Women and Performance
Boy’s companies
Current Productions of early modern plays
Shakespeare Festivals
Playing spaces
Actors and the text
Theatrical Gesture
Court Performances and Masques
Film or TV productions of Shakespeare

Please submit double-spaced manuscripts in Times New Roman, 12 pt font that do not exceed thirty pages in length, including notes (9,000 words total); electronic submission in Word format is required. Please use endnotes rather than a bibliography, formatting to Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Ed. The author’s name, affiliation, and academic history should be included on the first page of the document. Thereafter, the author’s name should not appear in the document. For more information about submissions or about the journal generally please see http://www.uta.edu/english/ees/

Submissions are due January 31, 2012. Please send submissions to Amy Tigner,earlyenglishstudies@gmail.com or altigner@gmail.com. The issue will appear in Fall 2012.

Early Modern Studies Journal (EMSJ) formerly Early English Studies (EES) is an online journal under the auspices of the University of Texas, Arlington English Department and is devoted to literary and cultural topics of study in early modern period. EMSJ is published annually, peer-reviewed, and open to general submission.

[UPDATE] Shakespeare and the Natural World

“Shakespeare and the Natural World”

A graduate student conference jointly sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kings College London

Location: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Campus

March 30-31, 2012

Recently, Shakespeare studies have taken a “natural” turn. With the advent of ecocriticism and posthumanist thinking, a “green Shakespeare” has begun to emerge. The purpose of this conference is to consider the construction, politics, and history of the trope of “nature,” both in Shakespeare’s works and in current Shakespeare scholarship. Papers for this conference may consider animal studies, early modern zoology, bio-politics, climate theory, geohumoralism, food, medicine, botany, demonology, and more. Our aim will be to discuss a variety of questions: What constitutes early modern environmental studies? How did early modern writers define “nature,” as opposed to supernature, or preternature, or culture? In what ways did travel, global exchanges, or economic shifts affect the construction of early modern “nature”? What role does gender play in conceptions of “nature”? What was natural knowledge? Who had access to it? How do these questions, and others, inform the worlds represented in Shakespeare’s plays?

Faculty speakers will include Wendy Wall, Mary Floyd-Wilson, David J. Baker, and Gordon McMullan.

Please submit abstracts (500 words maximum) to Jennifer Parkjennifer.m.park@gmail.com and Katie Walker walkerkn@email.unc.edu by *October 1, 2011*.

Shakespeare's inside-out immunities:

This is a CFP for a panel proposal for the upcoming British Shakespeare Association conference, February 2012. The theme of the conference is 'Shakespeare Inside-Out'

Shakespeare's inside-out immunities: 

This panel seeks to explore spaces of liberty in Shakespeare's plays.  Where does Shakespeare present us with protected spaces (religious, economic, legal or political) where outlaw speech or practices might be tolerated inside the community? How are these spaces defined and what purpose do they serve within the represented community? How are they threatened by and threatening to their wider socio-political context? How do these spaces refer to the body as social metaphor and (perhaps) point to medical understandings of immunity that would become gradually more common in the 17th and 18th centuries?  How do different kinds of immunity interrelate to offer a vital and versatile mechanism in different fields of social experience?

Paper proposals that examine some aspect of 'immunity' or 'immune' space are welcome whether they approach the topic from a materialist or metaphorical perspective.

Please send 150 word proposals by Friday, 16 September 2011.

Medieval Association of the Pacific, 30-31 March 2012

The 2012 Conference of the Medieval Association of the Pacific will take place at Santa Clara University on Friday and Saturday March 30-31, 2012.

The Program Planning Committee welcomes proposals for individual presentations and organised sessions. Although the conference will not have a theme and papers on any topic relevant to our understanding of medieval culture will be welcome, the Committee invites members to take advantage of the 800 year anniversary of Clare of Assisi's foundation of a community of women on Palm Sunday in March 1212.

Proposals for papers or sessions may be submitted using the online submission system on the MAP web site: http://www.csun.edu/english/map09/.

The deadline for submissions is 3 October, 2011.

CFP The Legacy of the Will - JNR Special Issue. Deadline: March 2012

The semantic slipperiness of 'will' fascinated the Renaissance: in all manner of texts of the period we find ‘Will too boote, and Will in over-plus’. The structural conceit of the opening lines of John Donne’s poem, ‘The Will’, exemplifies a key thematic construct to be found in much early modern literature and a prevalent intellectual thread in the culture from which this literature emerges: ‘Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breath / Great Love, some legacies’. This poem – this willed enactment of the speaker’s last will and testament to the world he will shortly leave behind – encapsulates the polyvocal qualities of the human ‘will’ and all that it signifies. The rich intellectual legacy of the European Renaissance that we, as critics and researchers, struggle to understand is constructed from the physical and literary legacies that writers such as Donne, Erasmus, Calvin, Elizabeth I, Marlowe, Middleton and others have bequeathed us. It is from these legacies of authorial ‘will’ that our very idea of what represents or constitutes the early modern period is shaped.

The Journal of the Northern Renaissance is a peer-reviewed, open-access online journal dedicated to the study of both the cultural productions and the concept of the Northern Renaissance. This special issue builds on a symposium held at the University of Strathclyde, and will be guest-edited by Alison Thorne; however, for this issue JNR also welcomes further submissions on this theme. We would welcome papers of up to 8,000 words on the ‘will’ in the northern Renaissance. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

Will as desire or volition: willfulness; will as voluntas; will as membrum pudendum, male or female; possession of one’s will; excessive willing, transgressive will.

Theological and philosophical wills: freedom of the will; the negation or undoing of the will; will as futurity; theological debates on the relationship between ‘will’ and ‘fate’.

Literary and legal wills: the exercise or abdication of authorial will or intentionality; will as testament; framing legal wills; the interplay between ‘wit’ and ‘will’; Will as a proper name and authoritative mark.

Submission deadline: March 2012. Expected date of publication October 2012

Preliminary enquiries are welcome, and should be addressed tonorthernrenaissance@gmail.com

Historicizing Performance in the Early Modern Period, Manchester, UK, 20th January 2012

Keynote Speakers: Professor Julie Sanders (Nottingham)
Professor Tiffany Stern (Oxford)

This one-day academic conference aims to bring together scholars working on all aspects of performance in the early modern period (taken broadly to include the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries). We intend to interrogate what performance and its related terminologies and practices might have meant to early modern readers, playgoers, and congregations; how performance shaped and/or undermined distinctions between private/public bodies and selves. Although drama is an essential point of reference for this discussion, we encourage that “historicizing performance” be taken as broadly as possible. Topics might include (but are not limited to):
- Plays and play-going
- Music and singing
- Public spectacles, ceremonies and architecture
- Ritual, devotional expression, spirituality / the sermon as performance

- Autobiography and Performative Texts
- Performing gender/ sexuality/ the domestic
- Performance and the performative in theory

Please email abstracts (400 words max.) for a 20 minute paper to Michael Durrant and
Naya Tsentourou at: Historicizing.Performance@manchester.ac.uk
Deadline for abstracts: September 23th, 2011
Notifications of acceptance to be sent out by October 14th, 2011

Commons: Shared Resources and Collective Activity in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Abstract due Nov. 1)

Friday and Saturday, April 20 – 21, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Julian Yates, University of Delaware

The commons once referred to tracts of land – forests and meadows, seas and waterways – open to collective use by members of one or more communities. The commons were shared spaces where public goods were generated through activities such as agriculture and hunting. They were also sites where social practices (for example, the rites of May) took place, marking the commons as an essential component to the shared cultural heritage of the people. However, the enclosure system sealed off these lands for exclusive use, dissolving the commons and opening the possibility for modern forms of private property. The commons also referred to a people distinguished from nobility by virtue of their birth, occupations, and cultural practices. There was a distinctly political characteristic to the commons that implied the bearing of communal burdens and the sharing of certain limited rights and privileges. The commons became an indicator of plebeian identity, shared backgrounds, beliefs, and ways of experiencing everyday life.

Today the term is widely associated with shared cultural legacies, open-source software, and public space and resources that are collectively owned and shared among members and populations. The commons may include everything from physical to intellectual property, water to ecosystems, media, languages and literatures, performances, public health and infrastructure, and the internet. This conference aims to gather models of the commons in its various modes including but not limited to land, public space, joint ownership, and collective action in medieval and Renaissance practice, with some sense of their viability as models for alternative economic, spatial, artistic, and political practice today.

The Group for the Study of Early Cultures focuses mainly on fields that investigate pre-modern societies, including but not limited to: Classics, Late Antiquity, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, 18th Century Studies, East Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, and Islamic Studies. We are also interested in a wide range of disciplinary approaches to Early Cultures, including literary studies, history, art history, drama, visual studies, sociology, culture studies, anthropology, political science, philosophy, and religious studies. All interested graduate students from any university and discipline are welcome to submit a proposal (title and 200-300 word abstract) toearly.cultures.conference@gmail.com by November 1, 2011.

For more information about our organization, please visit our website:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/earlycultures/

Topics for consideration include:

● Common pastures and the rise of enclosure; imagining the commons in pastoral poetry
● Seas and waterways as commons; piracy, tourism, immigration, environmentalism
● Forests, hunting, poaching; parks, greenwoods and Robin Hoods
● Holiday as a form of temporary commons
● Theater as a public art form (its urban and spatial dynamics, “properties,” and publics)
● Imitation, allusion, intertextuality: building a literary commons
● Corporate life of medieval and Renaissance cities (plays, pageants, entries)
● Constituent sovereignty, non-sovereign or unsovereign forms of self-rule and collective action
● Community and immunity: medieval and Renaissance biopolitics, and life worlds
● Public education and shared (common) curriculum
● Hospices and public health care
● Religion as commons, and religious communities
● Copyright law now and then
● Folklore and common narratives
● Open Source Renaissance: new media and early studies
● The commons and food studies
● Collective agency
● Queer commons
● Colonial and postcolonial commons
● Gender conventions as commons
● Local, national, and international commons
● Planned communities and common space
● Legal and juridical dimensions of the commons
● Race and common identity

he Medici Archive Project 2011 on-line Paleography Course

The Medici Archive Project announces the 2011 on-line Paleography and Archival Studies Course. The course is designed to increase access to the wealth of information contained in manuscript historical materials, particularly those from late fifteenth- through seventeenth-century Tuscany.This 12-week online course running from September 26, 2011 to December 17, 2011 teaches the requisite skills to read historical Italian writings, and offer a broad introduction to the nature of Italian archives. Please visit our website for more information.

The Medici Archive Project
Viale Giovine Italia, 6
50122 Firenze, ITALY
0039-055-240221
Email: ebrizio@medici.org; info@medici.org
Visit the website at http://www.medici.org

Friends of the Princeton University Library Research Grant Program

ach year, the Friends of the Princeton University Library offer short-term Library Research Grants to promote scholarly use of the library’s research collections. Up to $3,500 is available per award. Applications will be considered for scholarly use of archives, manuscripts, rare books, and other rare and unique holdings of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, including Mudd Library; as well as rare books in Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, and in the East Asian Library (Gest Collection). Special grants are awarded in several areas: the Program in Hellenic Studies supports a limited number of library fellowships in Hellenic studies, and the Cotsen Children’s Library supports research in its collection on aspects of children’s books. The Maxwell Fund supports research on materials dealing with Portuguese-speaking cultures. The Sid Lapidus '59 Research Fund for Studies of the Age of Revolution and the Enlightenment in the Atlantic World covers work using materials pertinent to this topic.
For more information, or to apply, please go to http://www.princeton.edu/rbsc/fellowships/f_ships.html The deadline to apply is January 15, 2011.

Medieval Panels at 2012 NeMLA

Call for Papers
Medieval Sessions at
Northeast Modern Language Association 43rd Annual Convention
Rochester, New York
March 15-18, 2012
Deadline for abstracts Sept. 30, 2011
Please consider submitting an abstract for NeMLA 2012 in Rochester. In addition to the sessions below, the Russell Hope Robbins library at the University of Rochester is rapidly becoming one of the most acclaimed research libraries for medievalists and is one of the headquarters of the TEAMS project. The Robbins Library has recently acquired a significant stained glass and research collection as well.
Continuities in English Literature between the Norman Conquest and Reformation Too often, students of medieval English literature unnecessarily categorize Old and Middle English as completely disconnected, highlighting Beowulf and Chaucer as the exemplary markers, with little in between. This panel seeks instead to explore moments of interaction across the spectrum of earlier and later medieval English literature. Send paper abstracts to Pamela Longo (pamela.longo@uconn.edu) or Brandon Hawk (brandon.hawk@uconn.edu).
New Approaches to Old Texts: Studying Medieval and Early Modern Women and Gender This panel seeks to elicit new interpretations and approaches to studying women and gender in medieval and early modern Europe. Submissions on how to re-evaluate new or existing texts about/by/for medieval and early modern European women are especially welcome as are works that intend to use new technologies such as the internet. Please submit abstracts to Lyn Blanchfield, Department of History, SUNY Oswego, Oswego NY 13126 or lyn.blanchfield@oswego.edu.
Representing Identity and Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain This panel will explore the construction of identity and its relationship to power in medieval and early modern Spanish literary texts. Submissions are invited that interrogate both the representation of different subject positions and their connection with the constantly shifting discourses of power that characterize the socio-cultural landscape of these periods. Send 250-300 word proposals to Ryan Prendergast, University of Rochester (pdst@mail.rochester.edu).
Teaching Medieval German Literature and Culture Share successful models of undergraduate courses that focus on medieval German topics (e.g., from Hero to Knight, medieval heroes/ heroines and villains), of courses that approach modern themes from a medieval perspective (e.g., gender studies), or that offer a major German medieval component (Crossroads of Medieval Cultures and Literatures) for crosslisted courses. Abstracts to Rosemarie Morewedge at rmorewed@binghamton.edu
The Notion of Friendship in Dante and Medieval Italian Writers The representation of friendship and its theoretical background (as found in works by Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine and others) has not yet been sufficiently probed in the field of Italian literature. This panel seeks to foster critical discussion on friendship in Dante and other medieval authors. Abstracts to Francesco Ciabattoni fc237@georgetown.edu
Using and [Re]Fusing The Bible: Revision and Parody in Medieval Britain What was the value of The Bible in medieval Britain? The study of biblical paraphrase, expansion of biblical narrative, and the creation of literary parodies of biblical material provide possibilities for understanding how cultural context shaped the uses of this text, the decentralization of political or religious power, public and private performance of devotion, and the development of notions about artistic ownership. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts about the uses of The Bible in medieval Britain to David Pecan atdavid.pecan@ncc.edu.
Representations of the Wound in French and Francophone Literature This panel seeks papers on the representation of wounds and physical injury in French/Francophone literature and film. From the Middle Ages to the present day, this topos has challenged the limits of representation. To what degree can the wound qua corporeal inscription be read as a master metaphor for text? What are its implications for our understanding of the relationship between the artwork and its audience? Please send inquiries or abstracts to Kathryn Rose (kgrose@fas.harvard.edu) and Ian Thomas Fleishman (ifleishm@fas.harvard.edu).
For more information on the Convention, visit www.nemla.org and VisitRochester.org

Forbidden Places and Prohibited Spaces in English Women’s Writing (1640-1740)

In early modern England, travel has the disruptive potential to alter the female traveler as well as to question, defy, and change the shape, rules, and parameters of her social space. Physical journeys open up opportunities for more impalpable travel, including but not limited to social, political, and internal journeys. As Rosi Braidotti has said, “some of the greatest trips can take place without physically moving from one’s habitat. It’s the subversion of set conventions that defines the nomadic state, not the literal act of traveling” (Nomadic Subjects, 5). This panel seeks to draw a connection between the physical act of traveling itself and the variety of figurative journeys that ensue because of a woman’s movement in the world. We will discuss travel as including the more subtle movements through immaterial social and hierarchical boundaries. Early modern texts are full of narratives, both fictional and real, of these journeys into prohibited places and spaces. This panel will explore the transformative effects of travel on women. In what ways does physical movement permit other immaterial types of movement and create a space for subversion? How does movement within society, across its social and hierarchical boundaries, challenge existing beliefs and practices? How do intangible journeys alter the landscape of power in which women operate? Please send 300 word abstracts to Andrea Fabrizio or Ruth Garcia at FabrizioGarciaabstracts@gmail.com by September 30, 2011.
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)
43rd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) March 15-18, 2012
Rochester, New York – Hyatt Rochester
Host Institution: St. John Fisher College
Keynote speaker: Jennifer Egan, 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad
The 43rd annual convention will be held March 15-18th in Rochester, New York at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown, located minutes away from convenient air, bus, and train transportation options for attendees. St. John Fisher College will serve as the host college, and the diverse array of area institutions are coordinating with conference organizers to sponsor various activities, such as celebrated keynote speakers, local events, and fiction readings.
Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/cfp.html