> CFP Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britian, 1550-1640
- A Joint Conference organised by the Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts at the University of Plymouth and the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen
14-16 April 2011
University of Plymouth

This conference investigates the cultural uses of the letter, and the related practises of correspondence in early modern culture. Concentrating on the years 1550-1640, it examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter that saw a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society and an expansion in the uses to which letters were put. The conference aims to enhance our understanding of epistolary culture and to challenge accepted models of epistolarity through the study of letter-writing practices in all their nuanced complexity, ranging from the textual production of letters, their subsequent delivery and circulation, to the various ways in which letters were read and preserved for posterity. The transmission and reception of correspondence is a major theme for exploration, from the various processes by which letters were delivered in an age before the post office, to their copying and dissemination in manuscript form, and publication in print, as well as the oral divulgation of letters through group and public reading. Study of the early modern letter in its material and cultural forms can reveal the complex interplay of material practices of letter-writing with rhetorical strategies of the letter text. Contemporary literary appropriations of the letter on page and stage demonstrate the cultural significance of the letter and its potential resonances.

Proposals are invited for papers that treat the following key areas:
• The materiality of the letter: the physicality of correspondence (paper, ink, seals, folding) as well as the social context of epistolarity (composition, delivery, reading, archiving)
• Correspondence networks; the circulation of letters; postal systems and modes of delivery
• Letters, news and intelligence
• Authenticity, deception and surveillance: forgeries, secrecy, ciphers and codes
• Women’s letters and the gendered nature of letter-writing
• Epistolary literacies, social hierarchies and the acquisition and diffusion of letter-writing skills
• Manuscript letters and letters in print
• The letter as a cultural genre and the rhetorics of letter-writing
• Humanistic letter-writing practices and the familiar letter; letter-writing manuals and models; education, pedagogy and learning to write letters
• Categories or types of letters: suitors’ letters, letters of petition, love letters, letters of condolence
• Genres of printed letters: prefatory letters, dedicatory letters, address to the readers
• Staging the letter: letters and letter-writing in drama
• Editing and the digitization of correspondence

Proposals for papers, including titles and abstracts (of no more than 300 words) should be sent to James Daybell (james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk) and Andrew Gordon (a.gordon@abdn.ac.uk) before 1st July 2010.

Confirmed Speakers Include

> Alan Stewart (Columbia University)
> Lynne Magnusson (University of Toronto)
> Gary Schneider (University of Texas, Pan American)

The Organisers

James Daybell is Reader in Early Modern British History at the University of Plymouth. His publications include Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), three collections of essays, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450-1700 (Ashgate, 2004), Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Palgrave, 2001) and Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580-1730 (Palgrave, 2010) and more than twenty articles and essays in journals and edited collections. Dr Daybell is currently completing a monograph entitled, The Material Letter: The Practices and Culture of Letters and Letter-Writing in Early Modern England (Palgrave 2011)

Andrew Gordon is Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and Programme Co-ordinator of the Department of English. He has published articles on various aspects of urban culture in the renaissance from city mapping to the urban signboard, and co-edited (with Bernhard Klein) Literature, Mapping and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2001) and (with Trevor Stack) a special issue of Citizenship Studies (2007) devoted to early modern concepts of citizenship. A monograph entitled Writing the City is forthcoming. His work on manuscript culture has focused principally on letter-writing and included articles on Francis Bacon, the earl of Essex, John Donne, and early modern libels.

Click here to download the Cultures of Correspondence flier

> Seminars on Early Modern Preaching: King David - A One-Day Colloquium
6 November 2010
University of Reading

No biblical figure provided early modern preachers with such various material for their sermons as King David: from the young champion to the king ‘old and full of days’, David was the loyal subject who would not ‘touch the Lord’s anointed’, and the broken-hearted father of Absalom. Through the stories of David and Jonathan, David and Saul, David and Michal, David and Bathsheba, and David and Absalom, early modern preachers could explore relationships that were public and political, and those that were intimate and passionate. God said of David that he was ‘a man after my own heart’, and yet David’s flaws were revealed by Nathan the prophet, who said ‘you are the man’. David, as the reputed author of the psalms, lies in the background of the most popular source of biblical text for early modern preachers, and his stories are often invoked to explain the expressions of piety, fear, anger, and joy that the psalms contain.

We invite papers on any aspect of King David in early modern preaching: David in political sermons (on obedience or rebellion); David in penitential sermons; David in marriage sermons; David in sermons on the doctrine of grace; David as a ‘type’ of Christ; David as the author of biblical texts, and David’s example of the ‘literary’ styles suited to prayer, liturgy, and preaching.

This colloquium is the third in the Seminars in Early Modern Preaching series, which aims to provide a scholarly forum for all those working on all aspects of early modern English sermons. We invite proposals for 30-minute papers. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Please e-mail submissions to Dr Mary Morrissey (m.e.morrissey@reading.ac.uk) and Dr Hugh Adlington (h.c.adlington@bham.ac.uk).

Due date for submissions: 15 June.

> CFP: From Republic to Restoration: Legacies and Departures
6 – 9 July 2010
University of Hull, Andrew Marvell Centre

350 years after Britain’s fledgling Republic came to an end, this conference will explore the impact of republicanism and the politics of the Restoration on literature and the arts. To what extent was the experience of 1649-1660 blotted out of writing and political discourse? How was history re-written? What were the residues of republicanism in Restoration politics and culture? What was ‘restored’ to the arts at the Restoration?

These are some of the questions that the conference will explore. It is envisaged that there will be sessions devoted to political history, literature, science and the Royal Society, theatre, and music. Papers (of 30 minutes duration) are also invited on Milton, Marvell, Behn, Hobbes, and Clarendon.

Speakers will include Nigel Smith, Tom Corns, Graham Parry, Blair Worden, Paul Seward, Laura Knoppers, and James Loxley.

Enquiries and abstracts (of 250-300 words) on any of the above topics should be sent to Professor Janet Clare by 31st January 2010: J.Clare@hull.ac.uk

> CFP Re-creating Renaissance and Baroque Spectacle: The Hispanic Habsburg Dynasty in Context.
6 - 7 July 2010
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Since the publication of Art and power: Renaissance festivals, 1450–1650 by Sir Roy Strong, scholars have had an increasing interest in Early Modern European festivals. The Europa Triumphans project at the University of Warwick created new enthusiasm for the subject among scholars and inspired the Renaissance Festival Books digitisation project by the British Library. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque European courts have been flourishing in recent years. The relations between ruler and ruled were both represented and performed in these often costly and elaborate events, which owed a great deal to classical models and humanist ideas. Books of festivals and chronicles also played a critical role in the dissemination of political propaganda and of the achievements of participants. Representations of power were highly mediated and were ambiguous reflections of royal authority and rites of passage, since the demands and desires of the ruled, as well as of the ruler, often had to be reflected in words, images and gestures. Ephemeral architecture, theatre, musical performance and objects such as tapestries, paintings, engravings and books were created solely to commemorate these multimedia events.

The aim of this conference is to re-create or reconstruct Renaissance and Baroque Festivals by an interdisciplinary approach. This includes the presentation of the project’s online exhibition in which the project’s investigators re-create music played in Festivals and a 3D model of the city with the reconstruction of the ephemeral architecture displayed in it.

The organisers of this two-day conference seek contributions related to any aspect of Early Modern European festivals and are especially interested in proposals which relate to the festivals of the Hispanic Habsburg dynasty. Proposals from any field of the Humanities in a broad sense are welcome, with an emphasis on, but not limited to, the visual arts, music and performing arts. Ultimately, we are interested in any study that would bring back the pageantry and senses of those magnificent events.

Some preliminary conference themes are:
- The transformation of the urban space for the festival.
- Triumphal entries in Early Modern Europe: princely courts, heroes, religion and explorers.
- Celebrations of marriages and treaties.
- Religious ceremonies and processions.
- Public executions in Europe and autos de fé.
- Funerals and commemorations of death.
- Cultural and artistic objects created for the festivals, i.e. paintings, tapestries, festival books etc.

The Keynote speaker is Prof. Fernando Checa Cremades, University Complutense of Madrid, Spain. Prof. Checa Cremades is one the most important international voices in the study of Renaissance and Golden Age art patronage in Europe. Among his many achievements, he is a former director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Dr. Alexander Samson from University College London has confirmed his attendance. He is due to publish a book entitled: Mary Tudor and the Habsburg Marriage: England and Spain 1553 – 1557.

Submissions should include a 300 word abstract in English or Spanish and a 200 word CV, and should be emailed as an attachment to recreatingfestivals.abstract@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is 1 April 2010. Notification of acceptance will be made before 1 May 2010.

Registration

Information about the registration will be available soon.

There will be a maximum number of delegates at this conference. A number of places have been reserved for speakers; thereafter the allocation of places will be on a first come first served basis. To register please email: recreatingfestivals.reg@gmail.com

There might be available a limited number of students’ bursaries we are in the process of confirming this, If you are interested in being considered for them please state it as soon as possible. Priority will be given to speakers.

This conference is part of the Iberia Triumphant: the reconstruction of Lisbon on the triumphal entry of Philip II of Spain in 1581 project directed by Laura Fernandez- Gonzalez, Architecture, University of Edinburgh, and funded by the Spanish Consulate in Edinburgh in collaboration with the Architecture Department, University of Edinburgh.

> CFP The Book Trade in Early Modern Britain
6-7 July 2010
Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare Institute

Guest speakers
> Bernard Capp, Professor of History, University of Warwick
> Giles Mandelbrote, Curator, British Collections 1501-1800, The British Library

The conference theme is broadly defined and papers are invited on any aspect of the production, distribution and reception of print and manuscript in late medieval and early modern Britain, up to c.1750, and on aspects of book-trade relations within the Anglophone world.

Papers should be of up to 30 minutes’ duration. A brief CV (c. 50 words) and an abstract (of c.300 words) should be submitted by 28 February 2010 to John Hinks: jh241@le.ac.uk

Selected papers will be published as part of the Print Networks series, edited by John Hinks and Matthew Day, published by Oak Knoll Press and the British Library.

We can offer up to two Conference Fellowships to postgraduate students who wish to present a paper. Fellowships cover the cost of attending the conference and assistance towards costs of travel. An outline of the research being undertaken, together with a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor, should be sent by 28 February 2010 to John Hinks: jh241@le.ac.uk

For the latest information on the conference, click here to visit the British Book Trade Index website (then select ‘Print Networks’).

The conference (earlier in July than usual) will be held over two full days. We shall meet in the attractive surroundings of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Delegates will need to book their own overnight accommodation, of which there is a wide choice in Stratford.

Conference organizer (on behalf of the ‘Print Networks’ committee):
Dr John Hinks
Centre for Urban History
University of Leicester
Leicester LE1 7RH
Email: jh241@le.ac.uk

> Communicating Culture in Early Modern Europe: A Research Seminar for Dissertation-Stage and Recent PhDs and Junior Faculty
24 May – 23 June, 2010
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

Leaders: Robert Tittler (Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, Concordia) and Brian Cowan (Canada Research Chair in Early Modern British History, McGill)

Co-sponsored by MaPs and our host, Concordia University, the 2010 seminar will explore the issues of cultural networks and the translation of styles, conventions, and tastes across geographic and temporal boundaries. We seek to observe both intra-regional and trans- regional experiences of cultural communication: how such patterns developed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their influence thereafter, and the tensions between traditional (folkloric and/or 'vernacular'), local, and regional forms of cultural expression on the one hand and the more formal, or ‘polite', and widespread forms on the other.

Canadian and non-Canadian dissertation-stage students, recent PhDs, and junior faculty from any field relevant to the subject are invited to apply. As many as 12 successful applicants will take part in the seminar, which will bring together scholars interested in early modern cultural networks, the formation of publics, and the development of public and private life. The travel and accommodation expenses of the participants in the seminar will be covered by the MaPs project.

The end of the seminar will dovetail with the annual meeting of the MaPs research team and seminar participants will present a summary of their work in a special session, as well as participate in the research discussions of the meeting.

Making Publics: Media, Markets, and Association in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, is headquartered at McGill University and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (SSHRC-MCRI) program. Concordia University is a Co-Investigator institution of the MaPs Project.

Application Deadline: 15 December 2009

Click here for the conference announcement PDF

Click here for Application Materials and additional information on the MaPs website

> CFP Religion in the Hispanic Baroque: The First Atlantic Culture and its Legacy
12-14 May 2010
The Foresight Centre, Liverpool

This interdisciplinary conference will look at the role of religion in the Hispanic Baroque. We propose to explore the Baroque not merely as a specific and historical set of literary, artistic and architectural styles. Rather we seek to study it as a complex cultural system that emerged from early modern transatlantic interaction and exchange of knowledge and imagination, and that continues to shape the political, social and cultural reality of the Atlantic world and beyond to this day. We invite the submission of proposals from every disciplinary background interested in one or both of our two main strands of investigation.

Our first strand focuses on religion as a media through which political and social conflict in the early modern and modern Hispanic world are exacerbated as well as negotiated. We want to examine the ways in which religion shaped individual and collective identities and was in turn shaped by conflict and compromise arising from colonization, resistance and mestizaje. This strand seeks to deepen our understanding of the mutually transformative relationship between religion and society in the Hispanic world from the fifteenth century to the present by looking at religion as the means, medium or obstacle to the creation of social, political and cultural stability. We thus hope to be able to pinpoint the features of interaction between religion and society that are specific to the Hispanic Baroque.

In our second strand of investigation we want to compare complex transatlantic technologies and patterns of interaction characteristic for the Hispanic Baroque with those of other cultural spheres. For instance, in how far can we describe Baroque religion as a cultural system and system of communication transcending the boundaries of confession, nation, language and mode of artistic expression? Can we regard Baroque religion and also the Baroque generally as cross-cultural phenomena producing and sustaining patterns of cultural interaction that are dynamic and stable over long periods of time? What can the study of Baroque cultures and their modes of conflict and resolution tell us about the need and the ways to balance complex contemporary societies?

POSSIBLE THEMES FOR PANELS include:
• The Universal Baroque?
• Baroque Media from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century
• Baroque Science
• Baroque Arts
• Baroque Spaces
• Religion, Conflict and Identity in Baroque Societies
• Religion, Culture, and Commerce
• Complex Legacy: Enduring Patterns of Baroque Religion

PROPOSALS for papers should include a title, an abstract of about 250 words, and your full contact details (including an e-mail). We welcome the proposal of panels and we warmly encourage postgraduate submissions. Please send your proposals by 30th September 2009 (post or email) to:

REGISTRATION
The registration fee will be £100.00 for the full three-day-conference (including all coffee/tea breaks and lunches). The day-rate will be £35.00. There is a small subsidy of £10.00 for the subsidised conference dinner. A limited amount of financial support for postgraduate research students may be available.

Click here to find the REGISTRATION FORM and more INFORMATION on the conference website

LOCATION and TRAVEL
The Venue is the Foresight Centre, University of Liverpool.
Click here for how to get there

ACCOMMODATION
Information on accommodation for all budgets will be made available on the conference website on 1st November 2009. This conference is generously supported by The Hispanic Baroque, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Major Collaborative Research Initiative.

Click here to download the CFP.

> Imagining Astrology: Painted Schemes and Threads of the Soul
24-25 April 2010
University of Bristol

Astrology as a way of understanding the world has woven its thread into cultures since Mesopotamian times. Along with its technical descriptions of calculation and interpretation, whether written on clay tablets or vellum, using stylus, quill or printing press, it has also taken form in sculpture, mosaics and painting, as well as inhabiting such esoteric bodies of knowledge as Kabbalah, alchemy and magic. Modern scholarship, viewing astrology from the outside, pays little attention to the language incorporated in such esoteric lore and has assigned it solely a cultural meaning, assuming astrology to be a form of divination, shaped by Aristotlean cosmology and Neo-Platonic philosophy. In so doing the Academy has failed to understand that astrology forms a lingua franca stitching together multiple paradigms of thinking. These fall beyond cultures, and bind, underpin and flow through them, reflective of and inherently part of human experience.

Speakers: Ronald Hutton, Elliot Wolfson, Kocku von Stuckrad, Roger Beck, Peter Forshaw, Geoffrey Shamos, Liz Greene, Bernadette Brady, Darrelyn Gunzburg

Click here to visit the conference webpage

> CFP Cultures of War and Conflict Resolution Research Network -
Classical Heroism and Conflict: Revisiting Antique Warfare in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
Friday, April 16, 2010
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

The sixth one-day colloquium of the Cultures of War and Conflict Resolution Research Network will be held in Athens, at the historic site of the First University of Greece. The theme of this colloquium focuses on the representation of classical heroism and its implications in the practice and theory of conflict in the medieval and early modern periods. This conference will concentrate not only on the influence of antiquity upon violent cultural change in these periods but also on the ways in which warfare in ancient cultures was remembered by succeeding centuries. We welcome papers on any aspect of the configurations of the classical past with particular reference to: medieval/early modern heroism; conflict; warfare; and/or the influence of classical writing upon these fields of enquiry.

Particular topics of interest for this conference are as follows:

Myths and heroes in representations of medieval and early modern warfare
Textual oppositions between the Warrior-king and the soldier/army
Aestheticizing violence and the battle
Military ethos and the construction of masculinity
Heroism, sixteenth-century militarism, and the ideal soldier
Armour, weapons, technology
Conventions of representation; the capacity and the limitations of the Renaissance theatre to portray warfare
Militant Christianity; the embattled Church
Propaganda and empire-building
Non-combatant civilians and the rules of engagement
War and the making of community

Please send proposals for 30-minute papers (250 words) by 28 February 2010 to Efterpi Mitsi, emitsi@enl.uoa.gr

Organizers:
Assoc. Prof. Efterpi Mitsi (emitsi@enl.uoa.gr),
Assist. Prof. Christina Dokou (cdokou@enl.uoa.gr),
The Faculty of English Studies,
School of Philosophy,
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Zografou University Campus, 157 84,
Athens,
Greece

> Old Saint Peter's, Rome
22-25 March 2010
British School at Rome

The basilica that was built by Constantine at the Vatican in the early fourth century to mark the burial place of the Apostle Peter became the central place for Christian worship in the West for more than a millennium until its protracted demolition over the course of the sixteenth century. The essential chronology of the construction of Old St Peter’s, and the major modifications made to its fabric over subsequent centuries, are well established. But a great many questions remain to be answered about details of the building and its monuments, and on the ways in which the basilica and its environs functioned as a ‘theatre’ of worship, burial and power throughout the middle ages from the fourth to sixteenth centuries.

This major international conference, hosted by the British School at Rome, will bring together both leading and new scholars in the fields of ancient, medieval and early modern art history, musicology and liturgical history to answer some of these questions by focussing on the fabric, monuments and use of the basilica of Old St. Peter’s.

Conference convenors

Rosamond McKitterick (University of Cambridge)
John Osborne (Carleton University)
Carol M. Richardson (The Open University)
Joanna Story (University of Leicester)

Click here to visit the conference website.

> CFP Early Modern Libraries/ Women and Libraries
18 March 2010
York, Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

The Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York invites proposals for a half-day symposium on early modern libraries.

Papers on any aspect of the topic are welcome - intellectual libraries, material libraries, knowledge and libraries - but we would particularly welcome papers on women and libraries in the early modern era.

This seminar forms the 4th Thomas Browne Seminar, a forum for early modern studies and intellectual history.

Contact Kevin Killeen: kk536@york.ac.uk

> CFP The British Milton Seminar Spring Meeting
13 March 2010
Birmingham Central Library

Preliminary Notice

Venue: In Birmingham Central Library on Saturday 13 March 2010. There will be two sessions, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm and from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

We currently intend that each session will have two papers, for which proposals are invited. Please send proposals to the convenor, Thomas N. Corns: els009@bangor.ac.uk, no later than 4 January 2010

> Reassessing Gerrard Winstanley
5-6 February 2010
Keele University

Speakers include:
> Chris Rowland
> Nigel Smith
> John Gurney
> Ariel Hessayon
> Ann Hughes
> Tom Corns.

The conference will discuss Winstanley as political thinker and activist, as radical theologian, and as prose stylist. It is held in connection with the publication for the first time of a complete edition of Winstanley’s writings, and marks the 400th anniversary of his birth.

Plenary lecture admission free (Friday); conference registration £25 to include lunch on Saturday. Accommodation available.

For further details contact Ann Hughes: a.l.hughes@keele.ac.uk

> Early Modern Dis/Locations: An Interdisciplinary Conference
15-16 January 2010
Northumbria University

On 15-16 January 2010, Northumbria University in Newcastle (UK) will host an interdisciplinary conference on Early Modern Dis/Locations.  The organisers invite scholars and students working in literary and cultural studies, history, geography, philosophy, and related disciplines to submit 200 word abstracts for 20-25 minute papers relating to any of the following themes and questions by June 1st 2009.  Contributors are free to interpret and address these as broadly as they deem appropriate:

• What were the significant locations for and of early modern cultures, and why?  How might we re-think and problematise constructions of court, city (or particular cities, real and imagined), ‘suburbs’, ‘country’, the ‘nation’, the ‘home’,  ‘private’, ‘public’, the marketplace, the streets, ‘landscape’, colonies and plantations?
• To what extent and which locations were conceived and constructed as gendered, rank-specific, desirable, or disgusting?
• How were all such locations experienced (and by whom), and represented in literature, art, and philosophy?
• In what ways did locations condition, inhibit, or compel political agency and cultural production and consumption?
• How were locations demarcated, policed, transgressed and jeopardised in the period?
• How was dislocation caused, theorized and represented in the period?   What were the realties and representations of placelessness, homelessness, and dispossession? Where, how and why did ‘mobilities’ occur, and in what forms?
• How have early modern cultural products and locations – like The Globe –been relocated into and appropriated by later historical and cultural positions? 
• How can modern theories of ‘space’, ‘place’, and ‘placelessness’ develop our understanding of early modern locations and dislocations?

Please submit 200 word abstracts for 20-25 minute papers by email to:

Dr Adam Hansen (adam.hansen@unn.ac.uk) by June 1st 2009.
If you have any questions please contact Dr Hansen by email or at this address:
Division of English and Creative Writing
126, Lipman Building
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Northumbria University
City Campus
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 8ST
Tel: 0191 243 7193

Click here to download the CFP

To celebrate the forthcoming on-line publication of Roberto Weiss' classic Medium Ævum Monograph, Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century, the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature is organising a one-day conference.

Speakers will include: John Flood, Jacqueline Glomski, Jeremy Lawrence, Stephen Milner, Cristina Neagu, David Rundle, Craig Taylor, Arjo Vanderjagt, Dan Wakelin.

Registration, including lunch and refreshments: £35 (£25 to members of the Society).

A number of open bursaries to assist graduate attendance are available, thanks to the generous support of the Society for Renaissance Studies. There are also closed full bursaries for graduate students at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, kindly provided by the college's Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity.

The registration form is now downloadable as a pdf file. Please complete and return with your remittance to the Society, c/o History Faculty, George Street, Oxford, OX1 2RL.

All enquiries about the conference, registration and bursaries can be directed to the Executive Officer.

> Britain, Ireland and the Italian Renaissance: Reception and Influence
20-22 October 2009
Gregynog (Mid-Wales)

Plenary Speakers: Alessandra Petrina (Università degli Studi di Padova), Diego Pirillo (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Firenze) SPONSORS: Society for Renaissance Studies (Welsh fund); Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, Swansea University.

This conference is one of a series on the reception of the Italian Renaissance in Britain and Ireland from 1350 to 1914. The first conference was held in Florence in 2008 and a further conference is planned for Padua in 2010. We are also planning to submit an AHRC Network Grant bid in the near future.

If you would like to give a short paper (20 minutes) at Gregynog or to be kept on the mailing list for this conference and/or project, please let us know, including a title and abstract if you are proposing a paper. Enquiries: Professor Helen Fulton (h.e.fulton@swansea.ac.uk) or Dr John Law (j.e.law@swansea.ac.uk)

The conference will be preceded by a half day colloquium on “Western Esoteric Traditions in the Renaissance” at Anglia Ruskin University, as part of a programme of Cambridge-based events celebrating the intellectual legacy of the Renaissance.

The John Dee Quatercentenary Conference is hosted by St John’s College, Cambridge, and supported by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (University of Cambridge) and The Society for Renaissance Studies.

The John Dee Quatercentenary Conference welcomes papers investigating any aspect of Dee’s rich intellectual life, including his interest in mathematics, astronomy and astrology, navigation, and calendar reform; his fascination with alchemy, magic, and divination; and his achievement in building Renaissance England’s greatest library, and the importance of this library in serving a wider intellectual community in early modern Europe. We are particularly keen to invite contributions from graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and bursaries may be available to support students attending and giving papers. Details on the bursary scheme will be posted shortly.

250 word abstracts should be sent via email to Jennifer Rampling, jmr82@cam.ac.uk, by 30 June 2009. Presentations will last no longer than 30 minutes.

REGISTRATION

Details of registration will be posted on this page when available.

ACCOMMODATION

Bed and breakfast accommodation may be booked at St John’s College. Further details will be posted on this page when available.

DIRECTIONS

Click here for detailed information on getting to St John’s College, including a plan of the College

Click here for information on getting to Anglia Ruskin University

COLLOQUIUM – ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY

‘Western Esoteric Traditions in the Renaissance'
1.30pm, Sunday 20 September

On the eve of the Dee Quatercentenary Conference, Anglia Ruskin University hosts an event overviewing changing scholarly attitudes to Renaissance magic and related fields, organised by the Department of English, Communication, Film and Media. Confirmed participants include Professor Stanton Linden (Washington State), Dr Angela Voss (Kent), and Professor Gyorgy Szonyi (Szeged, currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Anglia Ruskin University). Participants of the Dee conference are most welcome to attend.

Although admission is free, prospective participants should notify
Professor Sarah Annes Brown: sarah.brown@anlia.ac.uk of their intention to attend.

To mark the collaboration between this Colloquium and the John Dee Quatercentenary Conference, the day will conclude with a joint reception at 6.30pm in the Ruskin Gallery.

> The Gascoigne Seminar 2009
18 September 2009
Lincoln College, Oxford

There are only a few places left for the Gascoigne Seminar on Friday 18th September at Lincoln College, Oxford. There are three places for postgraduates, with the conference fee generously funded by the Society for Renaissance Studies (SRS), so if you are a postgraduate and would like to attend please email Gillian Austen off-list (gillian.austen@lincoln.oxon.org). For everyone else, the fee is £35, or £30 for members of the SRS, which just covers costs, but includes a good lunch, teas and coffees throughout the day and the private viewing at the Bodleian. Please email Gillian as soon as possible to book your place as spaces are extremely limited.

The speakers are Susan C Staub, Rob Maslen, Elizabeth Heale, Jayne Archer, Syrithe Pugh, David Trim, Andy Kesson and John Burton. Other participants, some of whom will be session chairs, include Roger Pooley, Cathy Shrank, Elizabeth Goldring, Katharine Wilson, Mike Pincombe and Arthur Kinney.

THE GASCOIGNE SEMINAR 2009: PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

> 9.30-10.00 Registration and coffee

> 10.00-10.15 Introduction and Welcome by Dr Gillian Austen (University of Bristol)

SESSION ONE. Chair: TBC

> 10.15-10.45 Dr Jayne Archer (University of Wales at Aberystwyth): "'A notable kinde of rime': Gascoigne's Certayne Notes of Instruction and Theories of Metrical Composition in Elizabethan England"
> 10.45-11.15 John Burton (University of Wales at Lampeter): "'Sorted', 'Wrote', 'Compiled'; Gascoigne as Father of the Sonnet Sequence"

> 11.15-11.45 COFFEE BREAK

SESSION TWO. Chair: TBC

> 11.45-12.15 Dr Syrithe Pugh (University of Aberdeen): "Gascoigne's Ovidian Masks"

> 12.15-12.45 Dr Elizabeth Heale (University of Reading): "Spenser and Gascoigne"

> 12.45-1.30 BUFFET LUNCH

From 1.30pm-2.15pm there is a private viewing at the Bodleian Library of selected Elizabethan editions of Gascoigne's work, including Gabriel Harvey's copy of the Posies(1575).

SESSION THREE. Chair: TBC

> 2.15-2.45 Andy Kesson (University of Kent): "Palaces, adventures and anatomies: Gascoigne, Lyly and print story-telling in the 1570s"
> 2.45-3.15 Prof Susan C Staub (Appalachian State University): "'Pretty conceits as pleased her peevish fantasy': the 'Manling' Secretary in The Adventures of Master F.J."

> 3.15-3.45 TEA BREAK

SESSION FOUR. Chair: TBC

> 3.45-4.15 Dr Robert Maslen (University of Glasgow): "Gascoigne, Piccolomini, and the Demilitarisation of the Siege of Troy"
> 4.15-4.45 Dr David Trim (Newbold College): "Gascoigne the soldier: reality and rhetoric"

4.45-5.30 CONCLUDING DISCUSSION/FAREWELL

Feedback from the 2007 Gascoigne Seminar:

... a really successful seminar ... the papers were uniformly excellent and the small gathering very conducive to the exchange of ideas. And of course the collegiate setting was idyllic! The papers were so informative, the setting splendid, and the lunch probably the best I've had at a conference! I enjoyed it, and thought that both the papers and the discussion were unusually good. a lovely seminar - a real event. _ such a successful day _ It went really well and was one of the most useful and enjoyable conferences I've been to - here's to the next one! _ a wonderful, stimulating day. Wasn't it amazing that there was really minimal repetition? I'm so glad the papers are coming out in full _ they all had such clear new material and approaches in them _ And the visit to the Bodleian was great: to see Harvey's copy, so often quoted in print! The food and accommodation were all very good/convenient. _ such a well-planned and stimulating day conference on Gascoigne _ congratulations once again on a most successful conference _ thank you for one of the best seminar/conference experiences I have had in years _ I so enjoyed the conference and came away on a real high _ And it was definitely the best organised conference I've ever been to (and the best food) _ I thoroughly enjoyed the event _ I thoroughly enjoyed the day and meeting everyone. Thanks again for all your efforts to make this day happen. _ it was a really convivial event _ generally a very strong conference.

> Reviewing Shakespearean Theatre: The State of the Art
5-6 September 2009
The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Join a gathering of distinguished international speakers from the world of the theatre, media and academia to explore what happens when we review a production of a Shakespeare play. The conference combines short paper sessions and seminars, and includes an opportunity to 'review' the RSC's production of As You Like It (seen on the Saturday evening, with the conference reconvening on the Sunday morning). This weekend is a chance for dialogue and collaboration between directors, journalists, students, actors, educators, and Shakespeare enthusiasts. Speakers include: theatre reviewer Michael Billington (The Guardian), Andrew Dickson (The Guardian), Shakespeare specialist Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame), Shakespeare Survey theatre reviewer Carol Rutter (University of Warwick), Tim Supple (director), and Janet Suzman (actor and director).

To find out more, including how to SUBMIT A PAPER, click here.

Saturday 5 September
9.30am Registration
10.00am Keynote lecture by Michael Billington of The Guardian
11.00am Coffee
11.30am Andrew Dickson, Carol Rutter, Tim Supple, Janet Suzman, and Stanley Wells share different perspectives on reviewing (a panel discussion)
1.00pm Lunch (included in the conference fee)
2.00pm Discussion of the papers of conference delegates (auditors welcome), or visit to Shakespeare Found: A Life Portrait
4.00pm Peter Holland (University of Notre Dame) on ‘The Rhetoric of Reviewing’
7.30pm Performance of As You Like It at The Courtyard Theatre Sunday

Sunday 6 September
10.00am - 12.30pm Post-show review and reflection, followed by future conference network plans

Booking
Tel: (01789) 204016 or
E-mail: katherine.ledwidge@shakespeare.org.uk

The cost of the conference is:
Before July 14th: £75; only £45 for students (includes lunch on Saturday, coffee, entrance to Shakespeare Found: A Life Portrait exhibition, and theatre ticket for As You Like It).
After July 15th: £45; only £30 for students (all of the above, EXCEPT theatre ticket).

Click here to download the booking form (Word) or (PDF)

> Newton:Milton, Two Cultures?
22-24 July 2009
University of Sussex, Brighton

Newton:Milton, Two Cultures? is co-hosted by the Newton Project, the Centre for Early Modern Studies, the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History and the School of Humanities at the University of Sussex. The international conference aims to bring together experts in the fields of English Literature, History of Science and general History to consider a number of questions relating to the work and careers of Isaac Newton and John Milton including: social, political and religious contexts; metaphysical and scientific beliefs; political ideas; literature and science; religion and science; rhetorical techniques; relationship with the 'occult' traditions, among others.

We are specially keen to invite doctoral and postdoctoral students. 10 student bursaries are available at £60 each. Bursaries have been awarded by the Society for Renaissance Studies. For further details please email newton-milton@sussex.ac.uk

Deadline for registration – July 12. Click here for further details

Keynote speaker: Barbara K. Lewalski (Professor of History and Literature and of English Literature, Harvard University): 'Milton, Galileo and the Opening to Science'. Click here for more information.

Other speakers include: Justin Champion (Professor of History, Royal Holloway), Rosanna Cox, (Lecturer, University of Kent), Brian Cummings (Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex), Matthew Dimmock, (Reader in English Literature, University of Sussex), Stephen Fallon (Professor of English Literature, University of Notre Dame), Andrew Hadfield (Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex), Margaret Healy (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Sussex), Rebekah Higgitt, (Senior Curator, National Maritime Museum), Sarah Hutton (Professor of Intellectual History, University of Aberystwyth), Rob Iliffe (Professor of Intellectual History and History of Science, University of Sussex), Ken Knoespel, (Professor of History and Dean of Arts and Humanities, Georgia Institute of Technology), Bill Newman (Professor of History of Science, Indiana University), John Rogers, (Professor of English Literature, Yale University), G. A. John Rogers (Editor, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Keele University), Regina Schwartz, (Professor of English literature, Northwestern University), Nigel Smith, (Professor of English Literature, Princeton University), David Womersley, (Professor of English Literature, Oxford University), and Dr. John Young (Newton Project, University of Sussex).

We hope that you will be able to join us in Sussex in July 2009.

'Milton, Galileo and the Opening to Science' by Barbara K. Lewalski
University of Sussex, Conference Centre - Bramber House
Wednesday 22 July, 17.30 - 19.00

Professor Barbara K. Lewalski has been William R. Kenan Professor of English Literature and of History and Literature. Among her numerous publications include The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (2000); Writing Women in Jacobean England (1993); Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (1985); Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century English Lyric (1979); Milton's Brief Epic (1966).

Abstract

Though chronology and circumstances make it unlikely that Milton knew or knew of Newton, he did know Galileo personally and was interested in science all his life. Moreover he had to engage directly the question of how to relate science and religion in his great biblical epic, Paradise Lost, first published in 1667. How, given the authority many in his society accorded to the literal text of scripture, was he to treat his biblical story from Genesis, and how represent the vast cosmos - heaven, hell, chaos, earth, and the region of the planets and stars - within which his characters are situated and sometimes move? Scholars for almost a century have sought to pin down Milton's own cosmology in the light of language throughout the poem pertaining to both the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, and especially the scene in which the angel Raphael offers a defense of both, refusing Adam's earnest plea to determine the matter. I mean to suggest here the principles that allowed Milton to escape the strictures of biblical literalism, and to argue that, far from displaying his own uncertainties about, or accommodating readers' various views on the cosmos, he treats that issue in terms that allow for the science of his present and the future.

The lecture will be followed by drinks and cocktail finger buffet from 19.00 till 20.00

The cost is £10 (standard); £8 (students and retired)

For registration and further information, please contact: newton-milton@sussex.ac.uk RSVP essential before July 13

> Republican Exchanges, c. 1550-c. 1850
16-18 July 2009
Newcastle University

Keynote speakers:

The history of republicanism in the long early modern period is a topic of the last sixty years. Almost completely unexamined before the publication of Zera Fink’s monograph The Classical Republicans (1945) the field has since expanded dramatically. Yet, despite the wealth of works, the focus of investigations into republican ideas between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been too narrowly defined and there are important issues and areas that remain insufficiently explored. Scholarly effort has focused on developing a canon of sources, but, as a consequence, the variety of contexts in which republican ideas were disputed and adapted is still not fully understood, and the range of participants often overlooked. Moreover, relatively little attention has been paid to the exchange of republican ideas both within and across national boundaries and, indeed, over time. The aim of this conference is, therefore, to open up the discussion of republicanism and to explore the variety of uses to which the vocabulary of republicanism was put in different times and places as well as the transmission, reception and transformation of republican ideas. We are concerned with these ideas as they were experienced and utilised in a wide range of contexts rather than with an approach which defines republicanism in terms of its agreement with the tenets of classical sources.

To facilitate this, the chronological, geographical and disciplinary range of this conference will be broad. The period covered will extend from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries and panels will be organised thematically rather than chronologically to facilitate discussion across the centuries. Similarly our intention is not simply to focus on British, European or American republicanism, but to explore similarities, differences and interrelationships between republican thought and practice in these places.

Questions we envisage our speakers and delegates addressing include:

Click here to visit the website

For further information, please contact:
Michael Rossington: michael.rossington@ncl.ac.uk

> CFP 12th International Conference of the Durham Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies
13-16 July 2009
Durham Castle

Proposals are invited for the twelfth Conference of the Durham Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies, which will focus on the general theme: Friends and Enemies: Collaboration and Conflict in the Seventeenth Century.

It is expected that this theme will be approached from a very wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives; contributions which span national and disciplinary boundaries are, as always, particularly welcome.  Papers should be of 30 minutes’ reading time.  Each session will have ample time for discussion.  Offers to chair sessions are welcomed from participants who are not reading papers.

Proposals for papers should be of approx. 200 words, and should be sent to the Director, Prof. Richard Maber (email: r.g.maber@durham.ac.uk) as soon as possible, but no later than 28 March 2009. Proposals for themed panels are also welcomed.  The programme will be announced within the following fortnight.

The conference will take place in the magnificent setting of Durham Castle, from Monday 13 to Thursday 16 July.  Residential delegates will depart after lunch on 16 July; it will also be possible to book overnight accommodation for nights before and after the conference if required.  Generous bursaries will be available for postgraduates attending the conference, whether or not they are presenting a paper.

Durham University
Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies
Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3JT, England.
Director:   Professor Richard Maber
Tel: 0191-334 3431     
Fax: 0191-334 3421     
E-mail: R.G.Maber@durham.ac.uk

> CFP Literary London 2009 - Representations of London in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference
9-10 July 2009
Hosted by the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London
Organised by the University of Northampton, Kingston University, and Queen Mary, University of London.

Keynote Speakers and Creative Writers

> Rachel Lichtenstein, author of On Brick Lane and Rodinsky’s Room
> Professor Scott McCracken (Keele, English)
> Professor Miles Ogborn (QMUL, Geography)

The 8th Annual Literary London conference will be hosted by the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London, located in Mile End, at the heart of London’s East End. The Mile End campus is historically the home of Queen Mary College, which began life in 1887 as the People’s Palace, a philanthropic endeavour to provide east Londoners with education and social activities. In 1995 it merged with Westfield College, which was founded in 1882 as a pioneering college for the higher education of women. English studies commenced in 1905, and the Queen Mary English department was founded in 1911 with the appointment of the writer Hilaire Belloc. Today the Department of English is the largest in London, and remains committed to world-class research and teaching. It has recently launched a new interdisciplinary MA in London Studies.

London is one of the world's major cities with a long and rich literary tradition reflecting both its diversity and its significance as a cultural and commercial centre. Literary London 2008 aims to:

• Read literary and dramatic texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis.
• Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London.
• Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London.
• Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature.
• Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English literature and drama

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers which consider any period or genre of English literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-classical times to the present day. While the main focus of the conference will be on literary texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating film, architecture, geography, theories of urban space, etc., to literary representations of London. Papers from postgraduate students are welcome for consideration. While proposals on all topics are encouraged, this year we would especially welcome paper or panel proposals on the theme of ‘Urban Geographies’. Topics that might be addressed are:

• relationships between the disciplines of geography and literary studies, or more generally between words and spaces
• representations of the city, the country, the exotic
• metaphors of geography in literary studies: ‘mapping’, ‘cartography’, ‘space’
• theories of the urban, of town planning, of cityscape, as ‘text’
• particular places, spaces, and the texts they engender
• the geomorphology of London and its literature
• ecological criticism, landscape ecology, climate change, geology, cartography, geomatics, tourism, demography.
• migration studies
• urban spaces and postmodern theory, psychogeography
• the geography of London’s print culture
• the city as landscape, the landscapes of the city

Abstracts of 200 words for 20-minute papers by Friday 27 March 2009 to:
contact@literarylondon.org

Proposals for comprised panels of three speakers are also welcome.

Literary London Organising Committee:
Dr Lawrence Phillips (University of Northampton),
Dr Brycchan Carey (Kingston University), and
Prof Markman Ellis (Queen Mary, University of London).

The Annual Literary London conference is mutually supportive of the e-journal of the same name.

Click here to visit the Literary London website

> Tudor Translation Conference
9-10 July 2009
Newcastle University, UK

Provisional Programme

Supported by the MHRA, the Leverhulme Trust, and NIASSH.

Thursday 18 June/Jeudi 18 juin

8h30     Registration/accueil des participants, inscriptions
9h00     Opening/ouverture du colloque
(Anne Fraïsse, Présidente Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III, Charles Whitworth, directeur de l’IRCL, Anne Page et Clotilde Prunier, organisatrices)

Session 1: The Epistolary Genre: Models and Definitions
9h30-9h50         Alain Kerhervé (Brest), « Théorie des lettres religieuses au XVIIIe siècle en Angleterre »
9h50-10h10,      Jean-Pascal Gay (Strasbourg 2), « Genre épistolaire et controverse doctrinale au XVIIe siècle : les paradoxes de la construction d’un espace public religieux »
10h10-10h30     Christophe Blanquie (Sénat/EHESS), « Les lettres épiscopales, une catégorie épistolaire ? L’exemple du cardinal de Retz »
10h30-11h00     discussion

11h00-11h30 coffee break/pause

Session 2: Concord and Discord in Early-Modern Europe
11h30-11h50     Natacha Salliot (Nice), « Formes et enjeux de la lettre dans le débat théologique au début du XVIIe siècle (1598-1620) »
11h50-12h10     Kenneth Austin (Bristol), « Dealing with difference: Correspondence and Religious Identity, c.1570-1650 »
12h10-12h30     Mark Greengrass (Sheffield), « Scribal Networks and Sustainers in Protestant Martyrologies »
12h30-13h00     discussion

13h00-14h30 lunch/déjeuner

Session 3: Maintaining the Faith
14h30-14h50     David Finnegan (Trinity College, Dublin), « Telling lies for God: Irish Jesuit Relations, 1598-1651 »
14h50-15h10     Xavier Brilland (Université du Maine), « ‘Réparer les brèches du sanctuaire’ : le maintien de la foi catholique et romaine à travers la correspondance du clergé réfractaire du diocèse du Mans pendant la Révolution »
15h10-15h30     Paul Chopelin (Lyon 3), « Une administration épiscopale par correspondance. Mgr de Marbeuf et la direction clandestine du diocèse de Lyon pendant la Révolution (1789-1799) »
15h30-16h00     discussion

16h00-16h30 coffee break/pause

Session 4: Writing Scottish Presbyterianism
16h30-16h50     Paula Barros (Montpellier 3), « Témoignage(s) d’un pasteur en exil : les lettres de Samuel Rutherford, 1636-1638 »
16h50-17h10     James Moore (Concordia), « Cultivating virtue in opposition to zealotry: the correspondence of Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) in the early Scottish enlightenment »
17h10-17h40     discussion

Friday 19 June/Vendredi 19 juin

Session 5 : Catholic Spirituality
9h30-9h50        Nathalie Ferrari (EHESS), « La consolation à l’antique de Saint François de Sales : l’épistolarité au service d’une direction spirituelle adaptée à la mondanité »
9h50-10h10       Cynthia Meli (Genève), « ‘Ce haut degré de spiritualité où il était parvenu’ : les lettres de Bossuet à Mme Cornuau »
10h10-10h30     Patrick Gougeon (EHESS, Facultés Jésuites de Paris), « La lettre spirituelle chez les jésuites »
10h30-11h00     discussion

11h00-11h30 coffee break/pause

Session 6: Jansenism
11h30-11h50     Michèle Bretz (Paris 13), « La correspondance de la mère Agnès, abbesse de Port-Royal, durant la période de la grande persécution, de 1661 à 1665 »
11h50-12h10     Constance Cartmill (Manitoba), « Pierre Nicole, moraliste : de l’essai à la lettre »
12h10-12h30     Sébastien Drouin (Dalhousie University), « Les Lettres pastorales de Jean Soanen : du témoignage à la supercherie ? »
12h30-13h00     discussion

13h00-14h30 lunch/déjeuner

Session 7: European Protestantism
14h30-14h50     Maria-Cristina Pitassi (Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation, Genève), « Écriture épistolaire et conversion : souci pastoral, combat apologétique et témoignage spirituel dans quelques correspondances réformées postérieures à 1685 »
14h50-15h10     Antony McKenna (Saint-Etienne), « La correspondance de Pierre Bayle : la religion entre les lignes »
15h10-15h30     Hubert Bost (EPHE), « Facettes religieuses dans la correspondance de La Beaumelle (1726-1773) »
15h30-16h00     discussion

16h00-16h30 coffee break/pause

Sesssion 8: A Case Study: The Correspondence of Antoine Court
16h30-16h50     Pauline Duley-Haour (EPHE), « Correspondance clandestine et pratique religieuse illégale : autour du réseau et de l’activité épistolaire d’Antoine Court (1695-1760) »
16h50-17h10     Pierre Lurbe (Rennes 2), « Expliquer et justifier: la correspondance d’Antoine Court »
17h10-17h40     discussion

[Conference Dinner/Dîner colloque]

Saturday 20th June/Samedi 20 juin

Session 9: Philosophy, Science and Religion
9h30-9h50        Claire Preston (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), « ‘A kinde of Elizium’: scientific correspondence in mid-seventeenth-century England »
9h50-10h10       Sarah Hutton (Aberystwyth), « Religion and women’s letters: the correspondence of Damaris Masham (1659-1708) »
10h10-10h30     Ann Thomson (Paris 8), « La correspondance privée et la remise en cause des doctrines de l’Église au XVIIIe siècle »
10h30-11h00     discussion

11h00-11h30 coffee break/pause

Session 10: Poets and Letter Writers
11h30-11h50     Jean-Christophe Van Thienen (Lille 3), « Auto-censure et double-discours dans la correspondance de George Herbert (1593-1633) »
11h50-12h10     Guillaume Fourcade (Paris 6), « ‘An Epistle is collocutio scripta’: liaisons spirituelles tissées par le sermon comme forme épistolaire chez John Donne »
12h10-12h30     Lynn S. Meskill (Paris 13), « John Donne’s Letters to Severall Persons of Honour (1651): The Epistle as Religious Metaphor »
12h30-13h00     discussion

13h00-14h30 lunch/déjeuner

Session 11: Writing English Dissent I
14h30-14h50     Reid Barbour (North Carolina, Chapel Hill), « Letter from a Judicious Friend: Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, and the Quakers »
14h50-15h10     Michael Davies (Liverpool), « Spirit in the Letters: John Bunyan’s Congregational Epistles »
15h10-15h30     discussion

15h30-16h00 coffee break/pause

Session 12: Writing English Dissent II
16h00-16h20     Alison Searle (Anglia Ruskin/Dr William’s Centre for Dissenting Studies), « Writing Religion in Early-Modern Europe: The Baxter Archive as a Case-Study »
16h20-16h40     Françoise Deconinck-Brossard (Paris 10, Nanterre), « La correspondance de Philip Doddridge »
16h40-17h00     discussion

17h00-17h00     Synthèse des journées et conclusion, Françoise Deconinck-Brossard

End of the conference/clôture du colloque

> "Eterne in Mutabilitie": Edmund Spenser in the Seventeenth Century
15-17 May 2009
Kilkenny Castle and Ormond Castle, Ireland

We are pleased to announce a Spenser conference in Ireland this May: "Eterne in Mutabilitie": Edmund Spenser in the Seventeenth Century. A conference marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Spenser's Two Cantos of Mutabilitie. This event also incorporates the annual meeting of the British and Irish Spenser Seminar. The Mutabilitie Cantos, and seventeenth-century Spenser are the primary interests of the conference, but we will also be making the most of our venue: the two magnificent castles of the Earls of Ormond at Carrick-on-Suir and Kilkenny.

The attached poster gives some further details (Click here), and the full programme, together with advice regarding transport and accommodation, will shortly be posted on the website. Click here for details.

The conference takes place on 15-17th May in Kilkenny Castle and Ormond Castle, Carrick-on-Suir (the Earl of Ormond's 'braue mansion'). The conference will be based in Kilkenny but the annual meeting of the British and Irish Spenser Seminar on Saturday 16th will be held in Ormond castle; a special bus will run from Kilkenny on the day. Plenary speakers include David Edwards (University College Cork), James Nohrnberg (Virginia), Syrithe Pugh (Aberdeen) Dr Julian Lethbridge (Tuebingen) and Dr Jane Fenlon, art historian and author of the OPW guidebooks to both castles.

NB: If you would like to attend the conference, we would ask that you pre-register by sending an email to Jane Grogan: jane.grogan@ucd.ie

There are still a few places available for speakers; if you would like to take part, please contact Andrew Zurcher: aez20@hermes.cam.ac.uk with an abstract. We also invite abstracts from postgraduates and post-docs, and are pleased to advertise a limited number of postgraduate/postdoc bursaries, sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies.

> CFP Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University, 1500-1700
14-15 May 2009
Trinity College, Dublin

The notion that university academics recognised themselves as a distinct social category in the early modern period is one that has typically received a cautious response from historians. This is in large part a consequence of a general lacuna in existing scholarship on questions of academic social identity. In recent years, however, scholars investigating various facets of early modern academic culture have begun to fill this gap. New research presents much evidence of an increased self-consciousness among university scholars during this period and an awareness of academic social distinction and difference. This growth in academic self-consciousness coincides with the rise in the importance of the university within the confessional state. In the Holy Roman Empire, for example, the frequency of university foundation increased considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sign of the perceived and actual utility of such institutions. Inevitably, this new prominence resulted in a dispensation of agency to those responsible the university’s operation, namely the professoriate (loosely defined).

This increase in institutional power was no doubt an important factor in affecting a change in the social disposition and self-perception of university academics. Professorial social networking in this period, for example, has been found to reveal efforts to consolidate distinctly academic social power, reflecting a high level of self-recognition. Certainly, during this period a significant increase in representational output from universities is evident. Academic self-characterisations are ubiquitous in this output which has a wide formal range from the ceremonial to the architectural, from printed pamphlets to funeral monuments. It will be the purpose of this workshop to explore these representational practices. In particular, participants will be asked to consider the relationship between the fashioning of individual scholarly identities, representations of an academic social category and the generation of university-based academic communities in this period. Papers presented at the workshop should be revised subsequently for the purposes of publication in an edited volume.

Proposals for papers on relevant topics are now being sought. Interested scholars should submit an abstract of c. 400 words to Dr Richard Kirwan (richard.kirwan@nuim.ie) by 9th February 2009.

The workshop is being organised by Dr Richard Kirwan of NUI, Maynooth (richard.kirwan@nuim.ie) and Dr Crawford Gribben of Trinity College Dublin (crawford.gribben@tcd.ie). The workshop is being sponsored by the arts and humanities research institute for Trinity College Dublin, the Long Room Hub, and is held in association with the International Commission for the History of Universities.

Click here to download the CFP (Word) or (PDF)

> CFP After Arundel: Religious Writing In Fifteenth-Century England
16-18 April 2009  
University of Oxford

An international conference organised by the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, in association with the Bodleian Library, marking the 600th anniversary of the publication of Arundel's Constitutions.

> Humanism & Intellectual History
> Mapping Chronologies
> The dynamics of Orthodox Reform
> Literary Self-Consciousness & Literary History
> Discerning the Discourse: Language & Spirituality
> Heresy & its Textual Afterlife

Plenary speakers:
> Sarah Beckwith
> Jeremy Catto
> Anne Hudson
> David Lawton and
> Miri Rubin.

Please send 500 word abstracts by 31st May 2008 to
Vincent Gillespie,
Lady Margaret Hall,
Oxford OX2 6Q
E-mail: A. vincent.gillespie@ell.ox.ac.uk

Click here to visit the Conference Website

> Region, Religion and Early Modern Literature
2 April 2009
Institute of English Studies, University of London

The first decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed an explosion of interest in religious texts and communities among scholars of early modern literature. While this is in part a reaction to global politics – religious politics have been in the media spotlight for the best part of the decade – the intensity of the interest also derives from more local concerns, from a professional dissatisfaction with the failure of earlier generations of historicist critics to illuminate fully the relationship between religion and literature in the early modern period. This one-day conference aims to build on this renewed interest in early modern religion, to explore the significance of ‘regional’ religious and/or textual communities in early modern Britiain and Ireland. The conference seeks to increase critical awareness of: the development of sectarian identities and religious intolerance; the relationship between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’; the network of discourses surrounding religion, ethnicity and culture which emerge in the early modern period and their links with contemporary issues; the regional context of canonical writers; and the literary value of lesser-known texts and communities.

The keynote speakers are Tom Healy (author of New Latitudes: Theory and English Renaissance Literature) and Willy Maley (author of Nation, State and Empire in English Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare to Milton). Other presenters include Rebecca Bailey (author of Staging the Old Faith: Queen Henrietta Maria and the Theatre of Caroline England, 1625-42), Francisco J. Borge (author of A New World for a New Nation: The Promotion of America in Early Modern England), David Coleman (conference organiser and author of Drama and the Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century England), Helen Hackett (author of Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary), and Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen (author of Devil Theatre: Demonic Possession and Exorcism in English Renaissance Drama, 1558-1642). Early career and postgraduate scholars will also be well represented. The quality of the contributors, coupled with the timeliness of the conference’s line of enquiry, suggests that the conference will play a major role in shaping the direction of future research in the field.

Conference Organiser
David Coleman
Lecturer in Early Modern Literature
Nottingham Trent University (Clifton Campus)
Nottingham NG11 8NS

david.coleman@ntu.ac.uk
0115 848 303

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