Call for Panelists: Creating a Medieval Studies Program (A Roundtable, Kalamazoo 2012)

The role of cross-departmental cooperation in the interdisciplinary world of Medieval Studies cannot be understated; the concept of “Medieval Studies” and the International Congress itself of course are predicated on such an understanding. IPFW Medieval Studies seeks to bring together a range of scholars from different types of schools to discuss the ways in which Medieval Studies programs are created, succeed, and possibly fail. Building on the success on last year’s panel, “Teaching Medieval Studies at Regional University,” we will be particularly interested in hearing from teachers at schools like our own which has been historically too “pragmatic” to offer an interdisciplinary degree in Medieval Studies. However, we will be interested in soliciting panelists and audience members from schools with established Medieval Studies programs as well those who are considering or in the process of creating new programs.

Particular topics for discussion might include:
• Requirements for a Medieval Studies degree
• The necessity of interdisciplinarity
• “Selling” the idea of Medieval Studies to administration
• The history of Medieval Studies programs
• Medieval Studies and community engagement
• Team-teaching Medieval Studies

Potential participants are encouraged to send a brief statement of interest and sketch of discussion topic (5-10 minutes) before September 15 to:

Damian Fleming
Assistant Professor
English and Linguistics, IPFW
flemingd@ipfw.edu

Potential participants are reminded that you are able to participate in a roundtable *as well as* present a paper in another session.

Vernacular Religious Writing in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England

The traditional view of medieval English literary history holds that vernacular literary production in England took a major hit in the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest. Indeed, some scholars would have us believe that no important English prose or poetry may be found in post-Conquest England until the early- to mid-thirteenth century. Homilies and other religious texts, however, continued to be produced (in English as well as Anglo-Norman), and they make up a large portion of the surviving vernacular literature from twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Some of these works were reproductions and adaptations of Ælfrician or Wulfstanian texts, but many were not, instead taking their inspiration from Continental or other sources, many of which have not been traced. The purpose of this session is to provide a space for us to explore what these pieces of vernacular writing may have to show us about the literary culture, as well as the socio-political environment, of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Possible topics may include:
- use and reuse of Old English texts
- continuity and change in late Old and early Middle English religious literature
- Anglo-Norman religious literature
- categorization and its discontents
- multilingual textuality
- sovereignty of the religious vernacular

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and the congress Participant Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF) toearlyMElit@gmail.com by September 15, 2011. Papers are to be no longer than fifteen minutes, please.

NeMLA 2012 CFP: Love and Society in Giovanni Boccaccio: Comedy, Elegy, Tragedy

43nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) March 15-18, 2012
Rochester, New York – Hyatt Rochester

Deadline for abstract submission: Sept 20, 2011

Love and Society in Giovanni Boccaccio: Comedy, Elegy, Tragedy

This session aims to explore the way(s) in which love and/or society are treated in Boccaccio’s works. Papers concerning the relationship between Boccaccio and previous Italian/European traditions, or Boccaccio’s influence on subsequent Italian/European generations of authors are also welcome.Send your abstract of 150-250 words to Jelena Todorovic, at jtodorovic@wisc.edu, by September 20, 2011.
Jelena Todorovic


jtodorovic@wisc.edu
Email: jtodorovic@wisc.edu

Genuine Copies: The Question of Authenticity

I am seeking contributors for an edited collection on the question of cultural authenticity. While the texts and artifacts will be incredibly diverse, the book will be bound together by a series of common questions, including the following: How does a cultural product acquire an aura of authenticity? Why does authenticity continue to matter in an age of endless reproductions, remixes, and copies? What is the relationship of authenticity to commodification? These questions were born out of a three-day ACLA Seminar in spring 2011 titled: “Emergent Authenticity: Fakes, Copies, and the Real Thing in a Global Culture.”
This book springs from a paradox. On the one hand, authenticity is derided as an out-moded concept. It is taken as an article of faith that what constitutes “authentic” Mexican food or an “authentic” urban neighborhood is a social construct. Claims to authenticity in ethnic literature or music are especially problematic, since authenticity in the realm of culture must, by its very nature, imply exclusivity. If one work of art, or type of cuisine, is deemed authentic, then others must be inauthentic or simply fake. The symbolic violence inherent in the idea of authenticity makes us weary of saying the word without scare quotes.
And yet. Authenticity is alive and well, even in this age of pirated artworks, downloadable mix-tapes, plagiarized novels, and postmodern irony. From the boom in the marketplace for the first-person, non-fiction memoirs, to the emergence of the "locavore" movement, to the staged sincerity of media figures like Glenn Beck, consumers of contemporary culture demand authenticity. When a writer has been exposed as a plagiarist, or an artwork as been exposed as a copy, there is a collective outcry of shame. We want, we demand, not just realistic, but actually real narratives, as David Shields recently noted in Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.
This collection will include shorter, provocative essays as well as longer scholarly articles. Contributors are urged to think creatively, interdisciplinarly and critically about the topic, while addressing the questions at hand. Contributors will be selected based on the relevance of the abstract to the topic of the volume. I hope to submit a draft of the entire volume to publishers by spring 2012. If you are interested in the topic, and can commit to that rough timeline, please send a CV and 400-500 abstract by September 5 to:
Russell Cobb
rcobb@ualberta.ca

Grants-in-aid available for research in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries is pleased to offer several grants-in-aid annually, each of which is generally for one month’s duration, for research in the humanities and related fields appropriate to the libraries’ collection strengths. Awards are made up to $2,000 each for recipients from North America and $3,000 for those from elsewhere in the world.
Applications are due 1 February of any year. For application forms or more information, see http://giving.library.wisc.edu/friends/grant-in-aid.shtml, or Friends of the University of Wisconsin—Madison Libraries, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 990 Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706, or contact the Friends at 608-265-2505; fax: 608-265-2754, E-mail: friends@library.wisc.edu.

CFP: Kings and Queens: Politics, Power, Patronage and Personalities in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy

The institution of Monarchy was absolutely central to the political developments and events of the medieval and Early Modern world. This conference aims to celebrate monarchy in all of its various aspects, from examining the institution itself to assessing the impact of particular monarchs in their own realms and beyond. Historic Corsham Court, located just outside of Bath, is a beautiful and appropriate setting for this conference, with its origins as a summer palace for the Kings of Wessex.
The conference will be held April 19/20th 2012 at Corsham Court, near Bath, England.
We welcome papers and/or panels on any theme which connects to monarchs or monarchy in any way including (but not limited to):

• • • • • •
Kingship/queenship/rulership
The relationship between monarchs and consorts
The relationship between monarchs and their subjects
The involvement of monarchs in politics, religion and war
The patronage and representation of monarchs
The monarch and their court

We encourage a multi-disciplinary approach including papers which draw on gender studies, art, military, political and/or cultural history. Graduate students and early career researchers are particularly invited to submit a proposal. We hope to produce a published volume of the papers generated by the conference.

Please submit a proposal of approximately 250 words for a paper OR a panel of three papers to the organizers at monarchyconference@gmail.com by October 31, 2011.

Elena (Ellie) Woodacre
Bath Spa University
Newton Park Campus
Department of History
Newton St. Loe, BATH
BA2 9BN
Email: monarchyconference@gmail.com

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.

The Keynote Speaker will be Nigel Smith of Princeton University, who will give a paper entitled ‘The State of Imitation: Literature and International Politics in Early Modern Europe.’ This paper will discuss the interaction of Dutch, English, French, Spanish and German literature from c. 1580 to c. 1680.

Best,
April Genung
Meghan Conine

Inarticulacy: An Interdisciplinary Early Modern Conference

BerkeleyEarlyModern@gmail.com

Inarticulacy: An Interdisciplinary Early Modern Conference
University of California, Berkeley
November 12 - 13, 2011

**Abstracts welcome from graduates, post-docs, and faculty!**

When Cordelia responds to Lear with “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave/My heart into my mouth” she both does and does not follow her own resolution to “Love, and be silent.” Like Hamlet before her, Cordelia has “that within which passeth show,” however, as a character on the stage, she is bound by literary convention to speak. Yet broader conventions, perhaps even necessity, compel human expression to manifest in human voice. As some philosophers have argued, to see and to be seen is not the only activity that provides the objective reality to subjective experience, but also to hear and to be heard. But what happens when words do not seem to suffice? And how can a scholarship dependent on reconstructed 'presence' interpret such absences, silences, and imprecisions in literary texts, the historical record, and visual media?

This conference concerns such moments at the intersection of speech, silence, and wordless expression, inviting papers of eight to ten pages (approximately 2,000 words) on the topic of inarticulacy in the Early Modern period. Aspects to consider include:

Gaps and silences in written records
The visual arts

Translation and its attendant anxieties
Material historicism
Reading or staging silence
The role of material objects or landscape
Religious writing and the limits of human knowledge
Incorporating others’ words (intertextuality)
Ekphrasis
Quantification and taxonomy
Stage history
Protestant logocentrism and its discontents
The inexpressibility topos
Representations of grief and trauma
Censorship and surveillance
Unfinished works

Please submit paper titles and abstracts of no more than 250 words toBerkeleyEarlyModern@gmail.com by September 1, 2011. If you have any questions feel free to contact the conference organizers at the same address. We’ll look forward to reading your submissions!

You're So Juvenile: Monstrous Children in Medieval Culture - K'zoo May 10-13 2012

EARCSTAPA Session for the International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, Michigan
May 10-13, 2012
Session I: “You’re So Juvenile: Monstrous Children in Medieval Culture”

In the medieval tradition, monsters serve as warnings, omens, portents, signs of the threshold between Us and Them, Here and There. Patrolling the borders of what is known and unknown, they signify all that humankind most fears and all that is possible beyond human understanding, good, bad and ugly in nature. As such, monsters inevitably are portrayed as decidedly non-human figures. But what about monstrous children? The presence of children problematizes the traditional Us-Other binary presented by most medieval monsters by normalizing them: children/offspring signify families; families signify communities, and this brings monsters into the realm of humanlike existence. How should we read, see, and interpret such figures, given the traditional view of the monstrous as inhuman? Do monstrous children underscore the difference of monsters, or do they provide a new, more encompassing view of monsters as more like humans than we want to believe? Are the offspring of monsters, themselves, automatically monstrous? What in the case of monstrous offspring raised by humans, or of human offspring raised by monsters? If a monster is baptized, is it then rendered human? Perhaps the standard taxonomy needs to be re-examined in light of the presence of monstrous children.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu)

Deadline for submissions to this session: September 15.
Any papers not included in this session will be forwarded to the Congress Committee for possible inclusion in the General Sessions.
Note, paper proposals will appear on the Mearcstapa blog:http://medievalmonsters.blogspot.com/

Landscape, Space, and Culture in Medieval Britain: 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 10- 13

This session seeks papers that utilize landscape studies, space and place theory, and ecocritical approaches on medieval texts and places in an effort to illuminate new understandings on the literature, history, ecology, geography, archeology, and architecture of medieval Britain. Proposed topics may come from any geographic area and time period, and this session hopes to cross (and perhaps complicate or dismantle) temporal, generic, and disciplinary boundaries through scholarly interaction and discussion. Papers may address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

•How are landscapes depicted in medieval British literature, and what do these descriptions reveal about society’s cultural beliefs?
•How does medieval culture create landscape? How do medieval ecology and the towns, forests, mountains, hills, heaths, fens, and coasts of Britain create or shape human culture?
•What roles do landscapes and buildings play in historical chronicles?
•What dynamics exist between the many spaces of medieval Britain, and how can we complicate traditional dichotomies such as sacred/ profane, center/ periphery, wild/ culture, and land/ water?
•How do landscapes impact medieval architecture, and what can buildings tell us about medieval British culture?

This session is sponsored by the Saint Louis University Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Justin T. Noetzel at noetzelj@slu.edu by September 15, 2011. Any papers not included in this session will be forwarded to the Congress Committee for possible inclusion in the General Sessions.

Elizabeth I and Shakespeare: Kalamazoo, May 10-13, 2012

Submissions are invited for the panel "Elizabeth I and Shakespeare," to be held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, May 10-13, 2012.

The papers need not limit the subject of discussion to Shakespeare’s reflection of Elizabeth and her distinctly androgynous nature in his plays, but may address a range of topics, such as the extent to which the writing of both is integrated in the same web of cultural, political, and gender-specific concerns.

This session is sponsored by Queen Elizabeth I Society.

Please email the abstracts (300 words or less) to Anna Riehl Bertolet,ariehl@auburn.edu, no later than September 15, 2011.

Exploring the Renaissance 2012

Papers (15-20 minutes in length) are invited on any aspect of Renaissance studies (music, art history, history, literature, emblems, language, philosophy, science, theology, et al. Interdisciplinary studies are especially welcome.) Abstracts only (400-500 words; a shorter 100-word abstract for inclusion in the program) must be submitted online no later than December 15, 2011, via the SCRC website’s abstract submission form @ http://scrc.us.com/.

Suggested topics might include the following:

• The interrelations between Sidney and Spenser
• The intersection of art and science in the Renaissance
• European influences in music and the arts
• Painting in Italy
• Visionary Milton
• Shakespeare’s dramatic art
• Marvell’s poetry and the sister arts
• Renaissance women poets

Papers are also invited for the following special session:
Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Culture

Sessions: sessions should be proposed no later than November 1, 2011, and e-mailed to the Program Chair (link given in contact info below). Abstracts of papers for approved sessions should be submitted online via the SCRC website’s abstract form @ http://scrc.us.com/. For further 2012 conference information click http://scrc.us.com/, or contact Debra Barrett-Graves, the program chair @ dlbg@earthlink.net.

Program participants are required to join SCRC and are encouraged to submit publication-length versions of their papers to the SCRC journal, Explorations in Renaissance Culture. Shorter papers (up to 3,000 words) are invited for submission to the SCRC newsletter, Discoveries.

A limited number of graduate travel fellowships are available; graduate students presenting a paper at the conference may apply to the program chair for travel assistance (maximum $300). Complete essays must be submitted electronically by February 1, 2012, to be eligible for consideration. See the graduate travel fellowships page for instruction on how to apply.

Constructing and Locating Women Warriors in Medieval Eurasia (proposal due 9/15/2011)

47th International Medieval Congress
Kalamazoo, Michigan
May 10-13, 2012

The construction and historicization of the Amazonian type women warriors have generated a long legacy in both Western and Eastern cultures.The ancient world’s literary impulse to construct and the geographical impulse to locate the women warriors and women's kingdoms continued in the Middle Ages. Examples can be found in the writings of Boccaccio, Chaucer, De Pizan, and travel writings of Mandeville and Marco Polo. In the East, “women’s kingdom” continued to evolve in Chinese literature and historiography.

We invite papers that explore the appropriation and transformation of these cultural impulses of constructing and locating the women warriors in medieval Eurasia.

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.

The panel will include a presentation by Herman Rapaport (Wake Forest University), author of Milton and the Postmodern, Is There Truth in Art? and Later Derrida

Applications of around 400 words should be sent to James Smith atrenaissance.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

Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Conference: Classifying the Medieval and Renaissance World, April 12-14, 2012

Idaho State University
Pocatello, Idaho
April 12-14, 2012

The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association invites proposals for papers and panels concerning the categories and classifications used to understand the Medieval and Renaissance worlds, both in the period and now.

Topics might include: Anachronism, Class, Dictionaries, Disciplines, Epistemology, Estates, Ethnicity, Gender, Genres, Grammars, Guilds, Medievalism, Narratives, Nationalism, Natural Histories, Periods, Professions, Race, Regionalism, or Travel.

Keynote Speaker: Antonette diPaolo Healey (Editor of the Dictionary of Old English and Angus Cameron Professor of Old English Studies, University of Toronto)

Please submit proposals for papers or sessions (along with a one- to two-page CV) to Thomas Klein (kleithom@isu.edu) by January 30, 2012.

Shakespeare and the Natural World, March 29-31, 2012 (Abstracts due October 1, 2011)

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?

Regional manuscript transmission, 1500-1700 (SRS 2012)

My country Penne would alwaies shun the City: Regional manuscript transmission, 1500-1700 @ Society for Renaissance Studies 2012, 9-11th July, University of Manchester.

While the transmission of manuscript texts in early modern England has been understood as a phenomenon based in metropolitan centres, a number of recent studies have now shown that hand-copied texts were an important means of communicating literary culture all over the British Isles. As suggested by the title’s quotation from Nicholas Oldisworth, regional manuscripts can show a lively culture of composition and circulation that operated quite independently of the cities, though important exchanges were maintained between urban and non-urban environments.

This panel will present papers that explore any aspect of the role and significance of manuscript dissemination outside of urban centres in the early modern British Isles. Topics for proposals may include (but are certainly not limited to): the accumulation, collection, and anthologising of hand-copied texts; the importance of social groupings based around families, friends, and other institutions; the geographical spread of
copied texts; the literary forms of texts available to provincial readers and copyists; the relationship between writing, place, and dissemination.

Please send short abstracts or informal enquiries to Joel Swann at j.swann [at] ihum.keele.ac.uk by the 2nd of September 2011 (ahead of the general SRS deadline). For more information on the 2012 SRS conference, go tohttp://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/srsnc .

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.

The Keynote Speaker will be Nigel Smith of Princeton University, who will give a paper entitled ‘The State of Imitation: Literature and International Politics in Early Modern Europe.’ This paper will discuss the interaction of Dutch, English, French, Spanish and German literature from c. 1580 to c. 1680.

Best,
April Genung
Meghan Conine

The Apocalypse in Literature and Film - October 1, 2011

Alien invasion, viral outbreak, nuclear holocaust, the rise of the machines, the flood, the second coming, the second ice age—these are just a few of the ways human beings have imagined their “end of days.” And someone’s Armageddon clock is always ticking—we just dodged Harold Camping’s rapture on May 21st of this year, and the Mayan-predicted doomsday of 2012 is just around the corner. In the end, what do we reveal about ourselves when we dream of the apocalypse? What are the social and political functions of these narratives in any given historical period? How do different cultures imagine the apocalypse, and what do these differences reveal? What is particular to the narratological design and content of apocalyptic texts? LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory solicits papers for an upcoming special issue on representations of the apocalypse in literature and film across a range of genres, time periods, and cultural traditions. LIT welcomes essays that consider representations of the apocalypse in literature and film and that are theoretically grounded but also engaging and accessible. Contributions should be from 5,000-10,000 words in length.

Guest Editors: Karen J. Renner, Northern Arizona University; Joshua J. Masters, University of West Georgia.

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory publishes critical essays that employ engaging, coherent theoretical perspectives and provide original, close readings of texts. Because LIT addresses a general literate audience, we encourage essays unburdened by excessive theoretical jargon. We do not restrict the journal's scope to specific periods, genres, or critical paradigms. Submissions must use MLA citation style. Please email an electronic version of your essay (as an MS Word document), along with a 100 word abstract, tolitjourn@yahoo.com.

Deadline for submissions: October 1, 2011

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory also welcomes submissions for general issues.

LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory
Editors: Professor Regina Barreca, University of Connecticut &
Associate Professor Margaret E. Mitchell, University of West Georgia

Exploring the Renaissance 2012

Papers (15-20 minutes in length) are invited on any aspect of Renaissance studies (music, art history, history, literature, emblems, language, philosophy, science, theology, et al. Interdisciplinary studies are especially welcome.) Abstracts only (400-500 words; a shorter 100-word abstract for inclusion in the program) must be submitted online no later than December 15, 2011, via the SCRC website’s abstract submission form @ http://scrc.us.com/.

Suggested topics might include the following:

• The interrelations between Sidney and Spenser
• The intersection of art and science in the Renaissance
• European influences in music and the arts
• Painting in Italy
• Visionary Milton
• Shakespeare’s dramatic art
• Marvell’s poetry and the sister arts
• Renaissance women poets

Papers are also invited for the following special session:
Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Culture

Sessions: sessions should be proposed no later than November 1, 2011, and e-mailed to the Program Chair (link given in contact info below). Abstracts of papers for approved sessions should be submitted online via the SCRC website’s abstract form @ http://scrc.us.com/. For further 2012 conference information click http://scrc.us.com/, or contact Debra Barrett-Graves, the program chair @ dlbg@earthlink.net.

Program participants are required to join SCRC and are encouraged to submit publication-length versions of their papers to the SCRC journal, Explorations in Renaissance Culture. Shorter papers (up to 3,000 words) are invited for submission to the SCRC newsletter, Discoveries.

A limited number of graduate travel fellowships are available; graduate students presenting a paper at the conference may apply to the program chair for travel assistance (maximum $300). Complete essays must be submitted electronically by February 1, 2012, to be eligible for consideration. See the graduate travel fellowships page for instruction on how to apply.

CFP: Kings and Queens: Politics, Power, Patronage and Personalities in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy

The institution of Monarchy was absolutely central to the political developments and events of the medieval and Early Modern world. This conference aims to celebrate monarchy in all of its various aspects, from examining the institution itself to assessing the impact of particular monarchs in their own realms and beyond. Historic Corsham Court, located just outside of Bath, is a beautiful and appropriate setting for this conference, with its origins as a summer palace for the Kings of Wessex.
The conference will be held April 19/20th 2012 at Corsham Court, near Bath, England.
We welcome papers and/or panels on any theme which connects to monarchs or monarchy in any way including (but not limited to):
• • • • • •
Kingship/queenship/rulership
The relationship between monarchs and consorts
The relationship between monarchs and their subjects
The involvement of monarchs in politics, religion and war
The patronage and representation of monarchs
The monarch and their court
We encourage a multi-disciplinary approach including papers which draw on gender studies, art, military, political and/or cultural history. Graduate students and early career researchers are particularly invited to submit a proposal. We hope to produce a published volume of the papers generated by the conference.
Please submit a proposal of approximately 250 words for a paper OR a panel of three papers to the organizers at monarchyconference@gmail.com by October 31, 2011.
Elena (Ellie) Woodacre
Bath Spa University
Newton Park Campus
Department of History
Newton St. Loe, BATH
BA2 9BN
Email: monarchyconference@gmail.com