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.”