Thursday, April 28, 2011

Ninth Annual Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies Graduate Conference

The Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst will host its annual graduate student conference on Saturday, October 15, 2011.
Graduate students are invited to submit abstracts for a ten to fifteen minute paper on any range of topics or approaches to Renaissance literature and history, including textual studies, performance history, philosophy, print culture, religious studies, gender studies, post-colonial interpretations, and other new theoretical perspectives. The purpose of the conference is to provide graduate students with an opportunity to share their work and place it in a greater context of interests and concerns. The conference is designed to foster conversation among students who share similar challenges and construct a space where participants may expect serious feedback on their work.
Please send an abstract of 250-300 words by email or email attachment to April Genung or Meghan Conine (MArenaissanceconference@gmail.com) by Thursday, September 15, 2011. For more information on the conference, you can visit our website: http://renaissanceconference.wordpress.com/.
We are organizing the conference to bring graduate students with similar interests together to share their work. Last year’s conference had an intimate feel with all participants able to view the other presentations. As before, we intend to divide the conference into several small panels, with ample time for discussion among peers, and we welcome the attendance of faculty from your department as well.
Best,
April Genung
Meghan Conine

Renaissance and Baroque in Critical Theory, SRS conference, University of Manchester, July 9-11, 2012

Renaissance and Baroque in Critical Theory
A panel to be held at the 5th Biennial conference of the Society for Renaissance Studies, University of Manchester, July 9-11, 2012
Proposals are invited for papers making up a panel on representations and appropriations of culture from the mid-1300s to the early 1700s by modern critical theory. Taking ‘critical theory’ broadly to include all those writing in the wake of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and feminism, this panel seeks discussions of its passing remarks (such as those by Nietzsche and Lacan), sustained analyses (Bakhtin, Foucault, Kristeva), and more multifarious appropriations (Deleuze’s baroque) on and of Renaissance texts, culture and terminology.
Other welcome topics include the relationship or tension between readings of the Renaissance by critical theory and other differently-motivated forms of scholarship (Benjamin and the Warburg Institute, for instance), and assessments of the intervention critical theory can make in the situation of the study of the Renaissance today, or indeed, vice versa.
Applications of around 400 words should be sent to James Smith at renaissance.drama@manchester.ac.uk by 01/09/11.
For further information about attending the SRS conference in 2012:
http://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRSNationalConference2012.htm
For further information on ‘Renaissance and Baroque in Critical Theory’ at the SRS conference 2012:
http://manchester.academia.edu/JSmith

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Transcultural/Transmedia Adaptations of Shakespeare [UPDATE]

Outerspeares: Transcultural / Transmedia Adaptations of Shakespeare
The 1st Annual Conference of the Guelph Early Modern Studies Group
University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario - November 1, 2011
Deadline for Proposals: May 1, 2011
Description:
Our globalized, digitized textual environment has truly become, in Shakespearean terms, a “brave new world” of virtual realities, post-/trans- national identities, and unprecedented constructs of communication and meaning that shapeshift transculturally across different media. Ania Loomba suggests that “emerging national/imperial identities in Europe could never be entirely pure, could never successfully erase the long histories of intermingling.” In our contemporary globalized and digitized media environment, the concept of “intermingling” speaks not only to our distant past but also to our sense of our post-national and increasingly virtual future.
As conceptions of the world have changed, so has Shakespeare accommodated new attitudes to culture, cultural negotiations, and emerging forms of human expression. Shakespeare's continual, pervasive adaptation across an array of cultural contexts and media platforms forces consideration of the ways meaning is assigned to literary texts, and how meaning is located in the particulars of these cultural events. Transcultural, Intercultural, Multicultural and cross-, mixed-, or transmedia adaptations of Shakespeare reconfigure the relationship between textual autonomy and historical particulars, pushing beyond conventional understandings of the literary event and the complexities of historical time.
This conference explores transcultural and transmedia adaptations of Shakespeare and the Shakespeare effect through a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, welcoming papers that address the transcultural and/or transdisciplinary aspects of Shakespeare in the contemporary world. Outerspeares focuses on the radical reshaping that multiple forms of media sampling engage to produce new forms of knowledge associated with “wild Shakespeare," a form of anarchic “engagement with prior texts that cannot be policed and refuses containment.”
Keynotes:
The keynote speaker on transcultural Shakespeares at the conference will be Tom Magill, Director of “Mickey B,” The Educational Shakespeare Company’s innovative adaptation of Macbeth featuring prisoners from Belfast’s Maghaberry Prison, who will screen the film and give a plenary talk. Click here for more information on the film.
The keynote speakers on transmedia Shakespeares at the conference will be Anthony Del Col and Connor McCreery, creators of the Kill Shakespeare graphic novel series, soon to be mediated into a major motion picture. Please see the following link for more information on Kill Shakespeare: http://www.killshakespeare.com/press.html.
Papers on the following topics are of particular interest:
• Transcultural adaptations of Shakespeare across media platforms (Film, Television, Visual Art, Performance Art, and the like)
• Transmedia Shakespeares with a focus on how Shakespeare has been sampled, appropriated, and transformed in and across a variety of new and old media
• Theorizing the transculturation of Shakespeare
• Shakespeare and the transculturalism of the Global Early Modern Period
• Shakespeare and Media Subcultures (Graphic Novel subcultures, Film Subcultures, etc.)
• Shakespeare and Diaspora
• Any other topic that falls within the conference theme.
Contact:
Send a (maximum)one-page Abstract to the conference organizers at gems@uoguelph.ca.
Please note any audio/visual equipment required. For more information, use the above contact or visit our conference website, http://gemsconference.blogspot.com/.
Conference organizers encourage graduate students to submit proposals. Conference organizers plan to produce a book based on conference proceedings.

Recasting the Past: Early Modern to Postmodern Medievalisms 7-8 September 2011

Recasting the Past: Early Modern to Postmodern Medievalisms
A Conference supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) at the University of Exeter
7-8 September 2011
In 1649, the radical Digger movement called on the people of England to ‘throw down that Norman yoke’; in 1849, at the launch of the periodical the Anglo-Saxon, its British readers were addressed as ‘Anglo-Saxons all’; and in 2009, a cover story for Harpers magazine accused American soldiers in Afghanistan of acting ‘exactly like the crusaders of 1096’.
This AHRC-supported conference will draw together research examining how, from the Renaissance to the present, historical narratives about Britain’s ‘medieval’ past have been drawn on to foster communal identities; to fuel, legitimate or oppose social and political change; and to resist or moderate the forces of modernity. Confirmed speakers include Rosemary Hill, author of God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (2007) and Bruce Holsinger, author of The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (2005).
Proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes or 3-paper panels are invited. Possible topics might include:
• The formation of regional and national identities
• The politics of Pre-Raphaelitism
• Gothic architecture
• The reception of historical medieval figures – King Alfred, Richard III, the Black Prince, etc
• The social/political agendas of translation and editing projects
• The uses of chivalry, monasticism, feudalism, etc in post-medieval thought and praxis
• The establishment of medieval-inspired institutions and associations
• The social uses of King Arthur, Robin Hood and other medieval myths/legends/folklore
Please send proposals of 200-300 words to Dr Joanne Parker, Dr Philip Schwyzer, and Dr Corinna Wagner at medievalisms@exeter.ac.uk by 13 Friday 2011. We will notify delegates of their acceptance by 29 May.
Each year the AHRC provides funding from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities. Only applications of the highest quality are funded and the range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the
AHRC, please go to: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/.

Battle of Agincourt

For a book marking the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt (1415), I am seeking essays providing novel, interdisciplinary perspectives on this pivotal event in European history. I welcome chapter ideas from scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. Please send queries or brief abstracts to tftuleja@yahoo.com.

Early Modern Architecture Request for Information on Research Projects in Progress

The Early Modern Architecture initiative (http://earlymodernarchitecture.com) is now starting a list of research projects in progress, in response to a series of inquiries following the announcement of our PhD dissertation list and as an additional step in forging a network of international and rigorous scholarly exchange. As with the PhD dissertation list, we welcome projects from any discipline and on any aspect of the architecture (design, theory, and practice) of Europe and its colonies, 1400-1800.

If you have a research project in progress, please email us at emalistserv@gmail.com with your name, the working title of your project, and the names of your department as well as institution. We will then add your project to our list and will post the list as soon as we have a number of projects.

More information is available on our website at: http://wp.me/P1fiUy-qC.