● Venice & the League of Cambrai: Politics · Art · Architecture, Oxford (15 March 2008)

The Modern Language Review and The Yearbook of English Studies continue to welcome submission of research articles on topics in any literary period, including, especially, the Early Modern Period.

Submissions are considered for either of these periodicals.
Click here for details of submission requirements for articles for The Modern Language Review and here for The Yearbook of English Studies.  

See also the MHRA website to download the MHRA style guide: CLICK HERE.    

The next themed volumes of The Yearbook of English Studies include Vol 38 (1 & 2), July 2008, TUDOR LITERATURE (14 essays), and Vol 39 (1 &2), July 2009, RELIGION AND LITERATURE.

We welcome proposals for future themes volumes as well as general submissions for both journals. All enquiries can be directed to Dr Allyna E Ward by email: A.E.Ward@ncl.ac.uk

> 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

> CFP Pretexts, Intertextualities, and the Construction of Textual Identity
3-4 October 2008
University of Berne

The newly founded Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (SAMEMES) would like to announce its first

Conference and Call For Papers.

The conference proposes to focus on some of the numerous critical and theoretical interests common to our institutionally divided disciplines, whether they relate to modes of textual production and reception (the advent of print culture does not spell out the demise of manuscript production, nor do these two forms of textuality reflect the wide range of literary transmission and reception, which is further affected by intermediality), to formal or thematic continuities and discontinuities (processes of cultural memory and/or amnesia), or whether they concern the effects of social and political change in (gendered and transgendered) construction of textual identities. Current theoretical approaches to literary history require that the study of diachronic and synchronic relationships between texts - pretexts and intertexts - take into account mechanisms of cultural transmission, as well as of gender and identity construction. With these emphases in mind, we plan to organize a two-day conference on Pretexts, Intertextualities, and the Construction of Textual Identity, at the University of Berne, on 3 – 4 October 2008.

The conference is open to all interested participants, whether or not they are members of SAMEMES. The conference fee of 60 francs will be waived for members only.

Distinguished guest speakers include Stephen Orgel (Stanford University), Ad Putter (University of Bristol) and David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania). A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature). The organizers invite interested scholars to submit proposals for short papers (presentation time 20 minutes).

Send your proposals by 31 January 2008 to:

Professor Margaret Bridges
Institut für Englische Sprachen und Literaturen,
Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät der Universität Bern,
Unitobler,
3012 Bern,
Switzerland.
E-mail: margaret.bridges@ens.unibe.ch

All proposals must include the following information: name and affiliation of proponent, contact details, title of paper, abstract of 150-200 words.

For further information contact the conference organizer, Professor Margaret Bridges, or (from early 2008) click here to visit the Association’s website, which also describes the procedure for application for membership to SAMEMES.

Click here for a copy of the CFP

> CFP New Worlds, New Publics: Re(con)forming Association and the Impact of European Expansion, 1500-1700
25-27 September 2008
The Newberry Library, Chicago

This symposium and the publication to follow from it are funded by the interdisciplinary project on Making Publics: Media, Markets and Association in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 . Supported by a Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this project examines the various forces that shaped the emergence and evolution of “publics”: open-membership groups that coalesced around practices, interests, ideas, values and forms of publication or performance in the early modern period.

Accounts of the cultural, intellectual, social and spiritual transformations of early modern Europe have often weighed the role of new media, technologies, techniques and markets, while ignoring the impact that new geographic discoveries had on the Old World beyond the purview of politics and economics. These discoveries not only expanded the horizons of European thought but, more essentially, called into question the certainties of classical and religious teachings. The result was a twofold opportunity fraught with practical concerns and constraints: the challenge to go beyond the known, looking outward, and to look again inward with new eyes and new expectations.

This symposium proposes to examine the effects that these various processes had upon publics in Europe and in the new domains of European expansion and influence. How did racial, ethnic and cultural differences impact upon traditional concerns, modes of thought, institutions, practices or forms of association? Did “positionality,” one’s physical location, affect the publics found there? For example, how did Puritan publics in Europe differ from those in America? Did the publics of Spanish Creoles in America differ from those of Peninsular Spaniards? Were the roles of science and the arts the same in European publics at home and abroad? And more generally: how was the creation and evolution of publics informed by European discoveries in Africa, Asia, America and elsewhere in the early modern period? How did these new publics differ, especially in the eyes of their members, from traditional bodies such as guilds, universities, congregations or parliaments?

The symposium will consist of a keynote address and four plenary sessions, with twenty to thirty 30-minute papers, between Thursday and Saturday, 25-27 September 2008. It is likely that some financial support will be available to help defray the travel and lodging expenses of those chosen to give papers.

Proposals (1-page abstracts + brief CVs) and inquiries should be sent to the symposium director, Professor David A. Boruchoff (McGill University) at: newworlds2008@mcgill.ca

Proposers are encouraged to consult the Making Publics website. Click here to visit the site

Click here to download the CFP

The deadline for receipt of proposals is 1 February 2008.

> Renaissance Keywords
19 September 2008
University of Birmingham

'Renaissance Keywords' are central to understanding the literature, art, politics and thought of the European Renaissance. Words like ingenium and grace - to take two major examples - describe qualities that express how individuals thought about themselves, each other and their experience of the world, yet they are as hard to define as they are ever-present in Renaissance discourse. This conference brings together scholars interested in offering new interpretations of these and other terms and in tracing interdisciplinary encounters that the terms make possible.

We offer as a point of departure the suggestion that keywords have a distinctive role in the making of the European Renaissance. They rise to prominence particularly in the context of the paragone, where literature and art are seen both to complement and to rival each other, and where one discipline may be employed either to enhance or to outclass the other. For a range of artists, writers and thinkers working within this context, keywords were used to argue for the pre-eminence of their chosen fields and to express the qualities that set the exemplary apart from the mediocre. Renaissance keywords thus constitute a means of interconnection between rival media and play a major role in the flourishing of literature and the arts that characterises the period. Rather than seeking catchall definitions, speakers will aim to do justice to the semantic versatility of these crucial terms and to investigate their contribution to those interdisciplinary transactions for which the European Renaissance is famous.

In contemporary scholarship, too, Renaissance keywords represent a locus of encounter between disciplines, languages and areas of specialisation. Accordingly, this conference aims to promote collective methodological reflection about the variety of approaches taken in Renaissance studies, from word histories and close readings of texts to comparative studies and formal analyses of art. In so doing, it offers a chance for specialists to assess the critical tools of our disciplines today, and to discuss how they may best be used and combined in order to make sense of Renaissance keywords and the period as a whole.

Confirmed speakers and keywords:

> Emily Butterworth (French Studies, Kings College London): 'Scandal'
> Tim Chesters (French Studies, Royal Holloway London): 'Discretion'
> Guido Giglioni (Neo-Latin Cultural and Intellectual History, Warburg Institute): 'Sense and perception'
> Dilwyn Knox (Italian Studies, University College London): 'Ingenium'
> Ann Moss (Neo Latin and French Studies, Durham University): 'Allegory'
> Barbara Ravelhofer (English Studies, Durham University): 'Grace'
> Ben Thomas (History of Art, University of Kent): 'Disegno'

Respondents and chairs include:

Carlo Caruso (Durham), Stefano Cracolici (Durham), Ingrid deSmet (Warwick), David Hemsoll (Birmingham), Martin McLaughlin (Oxford), Mary O'Neill (Birmingham), Richard Scholar (Oxford), Dario Tessicini (Durham), Helen Swift (Oxford), Maude Vanhaelen (Warwick).

Programme: The conference will run from 10.30 am (registration) to 5.30 pm (round-table discussion) and will be followed by a conference dinner. A more detailed program with abstracts of papers will follow shortly.

Further information: If you require further information, please contact
Dr Ita Mac Carthy
E-mail: i.maccarthy@bham.ac.uk

Click here to visit the Renaissance Keywords webpage

Click here to download the Conference Booking Form

> CFP Diplomats, Agents, Adventurers and Spies 1500-1700 - A Conference
17-19 September 2008
University of Kent

> CFP Text and Image in Early Modern Society
9-11 September 2008
University of Sussex, Centre for Early Modern Studies

A postgraduate conference organised by the Centre for Early Modern Studies to be held at the University of Sussex, 9-11 September 2008.

Plenary Speakers:
> Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex),
> Tom Healy (Birkbeck, University of London),
> Jennifer Richards (University of Newcastle).

Subjects: Theatre and Performance, The Bible, the Inns of Court and law, Music, Art, Printing, popular culture, court and elite culture, food and music, woman writers, politics, gender and sexuality, race and colonialism, others, rhetoric, writing lives, architecture, religion, graffiti and libels, pamphlets and broadsheets, polemic, fables, almanacs, poetry, the epic, satire, the body, erotica, witchcraft and ghosts, philosophical discourse, monsters.

Deadline for Papers: 15 March 2008

Costs: £35 conference fee (exclusive of accommodation).

Postgraduate Bursaries available.

Abstracts of 200-300 words should be sent electronically to textandimage2008@googlemail.com

Click here to download the CFP

> CFP Chymia: Science and Nature in Early Europe (1450-1750)
7-10 September 2008
El Escorial, Madrid

A church for God, a monastery for the Jeronymite order, a palace for the king, a tomb for the Royal Spanish dynasty, and a temple for science. All that, and much more, Philip II planned for the monument intended to perpetuate his glory for centuries to come, San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

The final aspect, the temple is science, is undoubtedly the one that has received least recognition on the part of scholars and historians throughout the ages, despite the significance of the chemical practice developed in the pharmacy and distillation laboratory founded by the King in 1570s.

The monastery/palace of El Escorial will serve as a backdrop and co-host of this International Conference on Science and Nature in Early Modern Europe. The conference seeks to bring together Spanish and international scholars of science to discuss various topics relating to recent developments in the history of alchemy.

Speakers include:
> Dr. Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University)
> Dr. Bruce Moran (University of Nevada, Reno)
> Dr. Harold J. Cook (Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine at UCL)
> Dr. William Eamon (University of New Mexico)
> Dr. Didier Kahn (Université Paris IV Sorbonne)
> Dr. Manuel Castillo Martos (Universidad de Sevilla)
> Dr. José Luis del Valle (Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Library)
> MSc. José Rodríguez Guerrero (Azogue Journal)
> Dr. Agustín Fernández
> Dr. Miguel López Pérez
> Dr. Mar Rey Bueno
> Dr. William Royall Newman (Indiana University)
> Dr. Michela Pereira (Università di Siena)
> Dr. Chiara Crisciani (Università degli Studi de Milano)
> Dr. Anke Timmermann (University of Cambridge)
> Dr. Lauren Kassell (University of Cambridge)
> Dr. Kevin Chang (Academia Sinica)
> Dr. Antonio Clericuzio (Università di Cassino)
> Dr. Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London)
> Dr. Tara Nummedal (Brown University)
> Dr. Hiro Hirai (University of Ghent)
> Dr. Peter J. Forshaw (University of London)

For program information, contact:
Miguel López Pérez: baeyens@revistaazogue.com

Click here for a PDF version of the evolving conference programme

Click here for a PDF poster advertising the CFP

For further information, click here to visit the conference website

> CFP Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) Special Journal Issue on George Gascoigne

With the increased interest in George Gascoigne demonstrated in recent years, and with the approach of the 430th anniversary of his death, now seems an opportune moment to gather new essays that focus on the poet's life and work.

To that end, Early Modern Literary Studies (EMLS) is publishing a special issue on George Gascoigne and invites essay submissions that address his life, work, or influence.

Proposals will be accepted until 21 November 2006 and final articles will be due 15 February 2007. Essays should be between 6,000 and 10,000 words in length, should not be submitted elsewhere, and should not have been previously published. The special issue of EMLS on Gascoigne will be published in either spring or fall 2007.

Please submit proposals to Dr. Stephen Hamrick: hamrick@mnstate.edu

Early Modern Literary Studies (ISSN 1201-2459) is a refereed journal serving as a formal arena for scholarly discussion and as an academic resource for researchers in the area.

> CFP on EEBO

Since 1998, Early English Books Online (EEBO) has given scholars and students  'instant access' to over 125,000 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English books. Books in research libraries across the world can now be read at any time and in any place; moreover, it reaches readers who, because of their status or their geography, have traditionally found it difficult to access these rare book collections. By bringing early printed books into any library, into the academic office, into the classroom, even into the home, EEBO has changed how scholars and students study these texts.

But how much impact has EEBO had on research and on teaching? What have scholars and students gained? What have they lost? How does EEBO fit with the renewed attention to the materiality of the early modern text and the increasing interest in the history of early printing and publishing? Just how scholarly are the technologies and structures underlying EEBO? What kind of relationship should there be between EEBO and academia? How should EEBO develop?

Following on from a successful international conference on EEBO held in Bath, UK, in September 2005, we invite proposals from scholars engaged in any area of early modern studies (e.g., literature, philosophy, political science, history, history of science, of medicine, etc.) for 10-15 papers on the effect of EEBO on scholarship outlining personal techniques or on methods and experiences of using EEBO as a teaching tool.

Please send proposals (max. 250 words), along with a brief biography and any audio-visual requirements, to
Tracey Hill (t.hill@bathspa.ac.uk),
Ian Gadd (i.gadd@bathspa.ac.uk) and
Peter C. Herman (herman2@mail.sdsu.edu) by April 21st.

Please note that in order to present a paper at the RSA Convention, you must be a member of the RSA at the time of the convention.

> CFP Studies in Travel Writing, Volume 12, No. 1 (2008)

Special Issue: Early Modern Travel Writing.
Guest Editors: Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt

Essays are invited on cross-disciplinary themes for a Special Issue on early modern travel. The Special Issue is intended to serve as a forum for discussion and debate about primary materials and methodologies, as well as assessing the state of scholarship on early modern travel writing. Topics covered might include: philosophy of travel; ethnography and travel writing; gender and travel; colonialism and travel; satires on travel.

Expressions of interest in contributing a 5000-7000 word article should be sent to daniel.carey@nuigalway.ie and claire.jowitt@ntu.ac.uk by 1st February 2007.

Completed essays (in the Journal’s house style) will be required by 1st June 2007.

> CFP: Renaissance Futures (edited collection)

We are seeking essays for an edited collection on 'Renaissance Futures'. Topics may include, but are not limited to, early modern conceptions or narratives of the following:

Progress, mutability, predestination, providence, fate, fortune, destiny, personal development; pilgrim's progresses, dreams, visions, intuitions, fortune-telling and soothsaying; personal futures: providing for old age, descendents; linguistics: future tenses; philosophia perennis, architecture, visual arts and culture, prophets and oracles, astrology, almanacs, natural science, astronomical and meteorological portents; medicine, diagnoses, health and mortality; innovation and tradition in science, technology and manufacturing; machines, time-keeping, automata; material culture; economic futures: credit, forecasting, speculation; social, religious, political reform; town planning; history, chronicles; cyclical and linear history; historiography, military strategy and planning, apocalypse, millenarianism, eschatology, utopias...

We would especially welcome essays which approach the idea of the future from a comparative angle, or which consider the conception of the future from non-Western or non-Christian historical perspectives. We are interested in discussions of popular and material culture and history, as well as literary, artistic and philosophical sources.

Abstracts due: 31 March 2007

Articles (6,000 words) due: 31 March 2008

For more information, please contact the editors:
Andrea Brady ( Brunel University): andrea.brady@brunel.ac.uk
Emily Butterworth (Kings College London): emily.butterworth@kcl.ac.uk

Click here to visit the website

> CFP Word and Image, 1500-1900: Figure, Form and Function, The Society for Emblem Studies’ Eighth International Conference
28 July – 1 August 2008
Winchester College, England

The eighth triennial conference of The Society for Emblem Studies will take place at Winchester College, England from 28th July to 1st August 2008. The conference theme will be “Word and Image, 1500-1900: Figure, Form and Function”.

Plenary speakers who have agreed to address the conference include Kristen Lippincott (former Director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich); Philip Attwood (Curator of Medals, The British Museum); Alan R. Young (Professor Emeritus, Acadia University, Canada); and, provisionally, Mark Jones (Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum).

Emblem Studies is a broad interdisciplinary field of research into early modern culture that encompasses literary studies, art history and iconography, religious practice and theology, political discourses, the history of mentalities, material culture, and social manners and mores. Centred upon the distinctive combination of text and image that emerged from various strands of late medieval and Renaissance humanist culture, emblem studies considers printed books of emblems, emblems in the material culture, symbol theories and emblematic ideas in art and writing, as well as the evolution of these forms in different cultural contexts.

The conference venue will be Winchester College, one of the world’s great schools and the oldest in continual existence in Britain. It was founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor to Richard II, as part of an educational endowment that included New College, Oxford. Established in the ancient capital of England and seat of King Alfred, Winchester College provided the template followed by later institutions such as Eton College, Westminster School, and King’s College, Cambridge. For over six centuries, Winchester’s scholars have been educated among its fourteenth-century cloisters, quadrangles and walks. The school possesses a truly remarkable historical library, a repository of great medieval and Renaissance treasures, as well as a chantry and fine Gothic chapel.

The Eighth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies will meet in some of Winchester’s finest buildings; the medieval College Hall, the seventeenth-century “School” designed in the manner of Wren, and the Arts-and-Crafts period Old Museum. Outside the schedule, delegates may enjoy the College’s peaceful atmosphere and beautiful grounds which lie adjacent to ancient water meadows and Winchester Cathedral Close.

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers on any aspect of Emblem Studies: they might address, but are not restricted to, the following areas:

> Emblems and Education - Emblems in the Schoolroom; Emblems and Alba amicorum; Emblems and International Humanism.

> Emblems and Numismatics - Emblems and Medals; Emblems and Jetons; Emblems and Antique Coins.

> Emblems and Reformation - Protestant Emblematics; Counter-Reformation Emblematics; Emblems and Revelation.

> Emblems and War - Emblems and Glorification; Emblems and Repudiation; Emblems and Soldiers.

> Emblems in the Social Sphere - Emblems and Childhood; Emblems and Courtship; Emblems and Marriage; Emblems and Citizenship; Emblems and Death.

> The Global Presence of the Emblem - The Emblem in Europe; The Emblem in Asia; The Emblem in Africa; The Emblem in North and South America.

> Emblems and Art History - Emblems and Painting; Emblems and Sculpture; Emblems and the Applied Arts; Iconography.

> Emblems in Literature - Emblems and Metaphor; Emblems and Shakespeare; Emblems on the Stage; Emblems and Narrative.

> Emblems and the Book - Bibliography; Emblematic Production; Emblems and Frontispieces; Printers’ Devices.

> Emblems as Political Discourse - Emblematic Panegyrics; Emblematic Lampoons; Emblematic Manifestoes.

> Recent Developments in Emblem Theory - Appraisals of Emblem Theory in the light of scholarship since Mario Praz.

> Otto Vaenius’ Amorum emblemata: 400 years on - To mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of Otto Vaenius’ Amorum emblemata, proposals are sought celebrating the achievement of Vaenius in the sphere of the erotic emblem.

Ideas for panels not covered in the range of themes listed above are most welcome. The deadline for proposals is 31st December 2007. To submit a paper for consideration, please send a 250-word abstract to the e-mail or postal addresses below. Please include your contact details and brief biographical note, including your affiliation, if any.

The conference organizer is
Dr Simon McKeown
Art History,
King’s College School,
Southside Common,
Wimbledon,
London SW19 4TT,
United Kingdom.
E-mail: smck@kcs.org.uk

Deadlines: Submission of proposals: 31st December 2007; Confirmation of accepted papers: 28th February 2008; Registration for a conference place: 31st March 2008; Final registration: 31st May 2008.

Click here for the full CFP, information on accommodation, and the registration form

Click here to visit the Society for Emblem Studies website

Two long-running and regular conferences join together in 2008 at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln. The 25th Print Networks conference and the 3 rd Texts, Ma(r)kers Markets Conference will be held in Lincoln, UK from 22 nd -24 th July, 2008.

This call for papers invites abstracts on any aspect of print culture ranging from their production, through circulation to reception. Topics might include but need not be limited to:

> Authorship
> Textual (manuscript or print) production
> Textual (manuscript or print) revision
> Editorship
> The materiality of the text
> The commodification of texts
> Paratextuality
> The circulation of texts
> Book-selling and the book-trade – including, manuscripts, books and prints
> The consumption of texts
> The conservation of texts
> e-texts and e-textuality

Abstracts of c.300 words should be sent in the first instance to
Dr Matthew Day,
Head of English,
Bishop Grossseteste University College,
Lincoln, LN1 3DY.
Email: matthew.day@bishopg.ac.uk

Click here for more information about the University College

Deadline for abstracts is 7 February 2008. Abstracts will be put before a committee and submitters of those accepted will be notified by 28 February.

One conference fellowship will be available for graduate students and those wishing to be considered for this should indicate this in their covering letter/email sent with the abstract. Applicants are also asked to include a CV.

There will be a conference publication in the series edited by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong and published by the British Library and Oak Knoll Press and publication will be at the editors’ discretion.

This celebration of William Roscoe’s manifold Italian interests will focus on his biographies of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leo X, analyse his significance among the historians of Renaissance Italy, place him among a community of Italophiles in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Liverpool, and focus on his collections of Italian books, prints and paintings.

Speakers: David Chambers, Cecil Clough, Martin Hopkinson, John Law, David Rundle

For further information see or contact
Dr Stella Fletcher,
School of History,
University of Liverpool,
9 Abercromby Square,
Liverpool L69 7WZ
Email: stella@ravenna123.freeserve.co.uk

Click here to download the Roscoe Poster

Click here to download the Roscoe Booking Form

> CFP Public Spheres, Private Spaces
16-17 July 2008
Durham University, Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies

Eleventh International Conference, at Durham Castle

Call for Papers

Proposals are invited for the eleventh Conference of the Durham Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies, which will focus on the general theme: Public Spheres and Private Spaces.

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 9 May 2008.
The programme will be announced within the following fortnight.

The conference will take place in the magnificent setting of Durham Castle, on the two full days of Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 July 2008. Residential delegates will depart after breakfast on Friday 18 July; it will also be possible to book overnight accommodation for Tuesday 15 July if required.

> CFP Land, Landscape and Environment, 1500-1750
14-16 July 2008
University of Reading, Early Modern Research Centre

Current debates over the environment – and in particular over the exploitation or management of natural resources – find their origin in early modern discourses of mastery and stewardship. Whilst a pervasive argument saw it as man’s responsibility to exploit the Earth, to what extent were those who made their living from the countryside, and those who wrote about it, ambivalent about landscape change in the name of progress and improvement, both in England, Scotland and Ireland and in the American colonies? To what extent was land, landscape and environment the subject of struggles between those who were the subjects of agrarian capitalism and those who lived off its profits at first or secondhand? How did representations of land and environment develop in this period? Landscapes are lived environments that find expression through buildings and patterns of behaviour, and bring into focus questions of belonging and the relationship between nature and civilisation. What connection can we draw between literary and visual depictions of land and environment - whether as map, image, or text - and these ideas of mastery and control? And what does the recent turn towards 'green politics' in early modern literary studies suggest about the usefulness of twenty-first century political imperatives for an interrogation of the early modern past?  

Papers are invited on the following areas:

plantation and colonisation as civilising process; agrarian capitalism and sustainable agriculture in theory and practice; topography and poetry, pastoral and georgic, the chorographical and country-house poem; enclosure, disafforestation and drainage: their advocates, opponents, practice and consequences; law, property rights and tenure; husbandry and husbandry manuals; the country house and its landscapes; horticulture and gardens; rivers; writing the land; artistic representations of landscape; cartography, maps and signs; the country and the city; parks; urban pastoral; travel, travel-writing, walking tours and sight-seeing. 

Proposals (max. 300 words) for 30 minute papers and a brief CV should be sent via email attachment by 1 February 2008 to:

Dr. Adam Smyth,
School of English and American Literature,
University of Reading,
E-mail: a.smyth@reading.ac.uk

> CFP Society for Renaissance Studies Third National Interdisciplinary Conference
10-12 July 2008
Trinity College Dublin

Proposals for papers and panels are invited for the third interdisciplinary conference of the Society for Renaissance Studies. The Society would welcome papers on any aspects of Renaissance history, literature, philosophy, music, art, architecture and other artefacts. Proposals are welcome from both established scholars and post-graduates working in the field.

Proposals (max. 400 words) should be sent by Friday 7 September 2007 to:

Dr Sarah Alyn Stacey
French Department
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland
Email: salynsta@tcd.ie

> 'Is there a human in this text?' - Rethinking Literature and Humanism
11 July 2008
De Montfort University, Leicester

• Does English need re-humanising? What form might this take?
• Has English ever entirely broken away from its humanist roots?
• Have specialisation, historicism and the reduction of education to skills killed off literature’s existential significance?
• Is the traditional vocabulary of humanism exhausted and in need of reinvention?

Plenary Speakers
> Ewan Fernie
> Simon Palfrey
> Jeff Wallace

Additional Speakers
> Kathleen McLuskie
> Elspeth Graham
> Andrew Hadfield
> Steve Earnshaw
> Jane Dowson
> Nigel Wood
> Kathy Bell
> Scott Freer
> Gabriel Egan
> Deborah Mutch
> Gary Day
> Ivan Callus and
> Stefan Herbrechter

For further information and/or a booking form, please contact:
Dr Andy Mousley,
School of English,
Clephan Building,
De Montfort University,
The Gateway,
Leicester LE1 9BH
Email: amousley@dmu.ac.uk

Click here to download the Literature and Humanism Poster (PDF)

> CFP Ninth International Milton Symposium
7-11 July 2008
Institute of English Studies, University of London

2008 marks the quatercentenary of John Milton’s birth in Bread Street, London – the city in which he was to live and work for much of his life. It is therefore appropriate that the Ninth International Milton Symposium will be celebrating this event with a five-day conference, 7-11 July 2008, under the auspices of the Institute of English Studies at the University of London.

The Planning Committee (see below) invites papers on − but not restricted to − the following broad themes:

Places

London itself provides one obvious focus of interest since Milton was unquestionably the most important writer the city has ever produced. But places, whether real or imaginary, play a large and arguably under-examined part in his writings.

Beliefs

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in Milton’s religious beliefs, sparked off in particular by the debate over the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana. We would therefore welcome papers on such themes as heresy, orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, and radicalism.

Writings

The texts, contexts, and conditions of publication of Milton’s writings in various genres on various occasions.   

Events

Fresh papers dealing with key events in Milton’s life and times will be welcome as will those dealing more generally with his responses to the revolutionary upheavals of the seventeenth century.

Proposals for papers (500 words maximum, and preferably in the form of an email attachment) should be submitted in the first instance to:

Professor Martin Dzelzainis
Department of English
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham
Surrey TW20 0EX
E-mail: m.dzelzainis@rhul.ac.uk

Planning Committee: Warren Chernaik (King’s, London); Martin Dzelzainis (Royal Holloway, London); Karen Edwards (Exeter); Stephen M. Fallon (Notre Dame); Tom Healy (Birkbeck, London); Michael Lieb (Illinois, Chicago); Peter Lindenbaum (Indiana); David Loewenstein (Madison-Wisconsin); Regina Schwartz (Northwestern); Kevin Sharpe (Queen Mary, London)

For more information about the Institute of English Studies, contact: ies@sas.ac.uk

> Summer Workshop on “Belief and Unbelief”
6-19 July 2008
University of Warwick

The residential workshop, funded by a three-year Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, is intended to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between the institutions affiliated with the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. The coming year of activities sponsored by the grant focuses on the notions of Belief and Unbelief. Discussions and papers will examine the scope, boundaries, and intellectual, social and cultural developments of the religious and spiritual beliefs of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period - including questions of gender; encounters and clashes with the ‘other’; the afterlife, ghosts and witchcraft. Click here for more details.

The project coordinator Ingrid De Smet is a specialist of Neo-Latin literature and intellectual culture in France and the Low Countries. Other members of the Warwick-based team are based in the Departments of History; English & Comparative Literature; Italian; Classics; Theatre Studies and the History of Art. Their interdisciplinary research interests include (but are not restricted to): the study of women’s writing and gender; rhetoric; drama; social and political issues; and more generally, the transmission and reception of texts and ideas (including translation and the Classical tradition). Please see the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance website for further details of research activities and expertise at the Centre.

Purpose of the Summer Workshop: the workshop’s core participants will be drawn from institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, to promote the broader programme’s goals of assessing training in early modern and Renaissance studies from a comparative perspective, and of encouraging discussion and the sharing of knowledge and methodological approaches across disciplines and across the Atlantic. The Summer Workshop will involve formal seminar papers by Warwick faculty and other invited speakers; workshop discussions led by visiting research fellows; visits and field trips to relevant sites; and the opportunity for participants to present a paper on their own research interests.

TWO different schemes are on offer. One is for a Visiting Research Fellowship, which involves residence at Warwick from 12 May to 19 July 2008. Each fellowship supports travel to and from Warwick University; a subsistence and accommodation allowance of $540 per week; and a small research fund ($450 per fellow) to facilitate travel to neighbouring libraries and research collections. Click here for more information.   The second scheme is for a place as a participant in the Residential Summer Workshop, to be held at the University of Warwick from 6 to 19 July 2008. The workshop will comprise 20-24 core participants, 16 of whom will be advanced doctoral or beginning postdoctoral students. Each participant will be entitled to travel to and from Warwick; and accommodation and full board on campus. Please click here.

Deadline for Visiting Research Fellowships and for places in the Summer Workshop is 31 October 2007

> CFP The Iconology of Law and Order
6-10 July 2008
University of Szeged, Hungary

Papers are invited in English, focusing on artists’ and user communities’ verbal and visual representations of legal and cosmic order as reflected in the arts and literatures of Western and Eastern Europe throughout the centuries.

INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
> Daniela Carpi (Verona),
> Peter Goodrich (Cardozo School of Law, New York),
> DeLloyd Guth (Manitoba),
> Alison Saunders (Aberdeen)
> Richard Weisberg (Cardozo School of Law)

Please send your preregistration with a proposed title and a short abstract by October 15, 2007 to

Prof. dr. György E. Szönyi
Director, Institute of English & American Studies
UNIVERSITY OF SZEGED,
H-6722 Szeged,
Egyetem u. 2.
Hungary

Departments of History & Medieval Studies
CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY,
H-1051 Budapest,
Nádor u. 9.
Tel: 36-62-544 030
Email: geszonyi@lit.u-szeged.hu

For further information click here to visit the conference homepage

Click here to download the Call for Papers (PDF)

> Cultural Institutions in Early Modern Italy
4 July 2008
University of Reading, Department of Italian Studies

Keynote lecture: Robert Black (Leeds)

Confirmed speakers:
> Abigail Brundin (Cambridge)
> Paul Davies (Reading)
> Lorenza Gianfrancesco (Royal Holloway, London)
> Melanie Marshall (University College Cork)
> Katie Rees (Cambridge)
> Simone Testa (Royal Holloway, London)
> Franco Tomasi (Padova)

Round table: chaired by Virginia Cox (New York University)

For further information please contact the organizer:

Dr Lisa Sampson
Dept of Italian Studies
School of Languages and European Studies
University of Reading
Whiteknights
Reading RG6 6AA
United Kingdom
E-mail: l.m.sampson@reading.ac.uk

For the full programme, abstracts, and information for delegates, Click Here.

Click here to download the workshop poster (pdf)

> CFP Tyndale, More and their circles: Persecution and martyrdom under the Tudors
3-6 July 2008
Liverpool Hope University

This will be an interdisciplinary conference which will bring together scholars interested in the religious history and literature of the Tudor period. Although there will be a focus on lives, works and reputations of Tyndale and More, papers are sought on martyrdom, religious persecution and inter-Christian conflict generally and thus may range in subject from Anne Askew to Edmund Campion.  

Principal Speakers:
> Prof. Brian Cummings (University of Sussex)
> Prof. Eamon Duffy (University of Cambridge)
> Rev. Dr Ralph S. Werrall (The Tyndale Society)  

Proposals for papers (title and 300-500 words) or enquiries should be directed by October 1st 2007 to Rev. Matthew Baynham
Hopkins Hall
Liverpool Hope University
Liverpool L38QB
UK
E-mail: baynham@hope.ac.uk or

Dr John Flood
Balliol College
Oxford OX1 3BJ
UK
E-mail: john.flood@balliol.ox.ac.uk

Click here for updates

> Writing Wales: 1500-1800
3-4 July 2008
Aberystwyth, The National Library of Wales

The Department of English, Aberystwyth University, and the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Aberystwyth and Bangor) are hosting a two-day conference on the theme 'Writing Wales: 1500-1800', to be held at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, on 3-4 July, 2008.

The conference aims to explore representations of Wales in historical and literary texts written in either Welsh or English between 1500 and 1800. It provides unprecedented opportunity for scholars across disciplines and conventional period demarcations to engage in a discussion of the different ways Wales was "written" in the early modern, eighteenth-century, and early Romantic periods. The conference will generate discussion concerning the broader continuities and/or discontinuities between different periods and different types of writing. Questions raised by the conference might therefore centre on the existence of similarities and/or dissimilarities between historical and literary treatments of Wales, the way in which identifiable literary and historical narratives of Welsh national consciousness develop over the period span, points of connection and/or dissension between Welsh-language and Anglophone imaginings of Wales, the contribution of women writers to a Welsh national vision, the ways in which religion informs literary and historical treatments of Wales. The conference will also raise broader methodological questions about the extent to which conventional period descriptors - early modern, eighteenth century, Enlightenment, Romanticism - have shaped scholarly treatments of Wales, asking if we should continue to reinforce such period divisions, or start to reconfigure our approach to Wales's literary and historical past.

If you would like to offer a paper for this conference, please send an abstract of approx. 200 words to:

Dr Sarah Prescott
Dept. of English
Hugh Owen Building
Penglais
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 3DY
E-mail: scp@aber.ac.uk

The deadline for abstracts is 31st January 2008

All papers will be of 25 minutes duration. Speakers are welcome to deliver papers in Welsh or English.

> Vita Longa - Durata della vita, vecchiaia e prolongatio vitenella tradizione aristotelica e medica tra Antichità e Rinascimento
13-14 June 2008
Università degli Studi di Torino, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

PROGRAMMA DEI LAVORI
Venerdì 13 – h. 15.00

Presiede Luca Bianchi (Università del Piemonte Orientale)
> Maria M. Sassi (Università di Pisa): Normalità e patologia della vecchiaia nella medicina antica.
> Iolanda Ventura (Università di Louvain-la-Neuve): Invecchiamento dell’uomo e invecchiamento dell’umanità nella letteratura farmacologica.
> Paola Carusi (Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’): Età avanzata e qualità della vita nel ‘Canone’ di Avicenna.

Discussione

Pausa

> Chiara Crisciani (Università di Pavia): ‘Lunga vita’ tra teologia e medicina (secoli XIII-XIV).
> Pietro B. Rossi (Università di Torino): ‘Odor suus me confortat’: la fragrante mela e la dolce morte di Aristotele.

Discussione

Sabato 14 – h. 9.00
Presiede Gianfranco Fioravanti (Università di Pisa)
> Luciana Repici (Università di Torino): ‘Tutto invecchia per opera del tempo’: senilità e senescenza in Aristotele.
> Michael W. Dunne (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) : ‘The causes of the length and brevity of life call for investigation’: Aristotle’s ‘De longitudine et brevitate vitae’ in the 13th and 14th Century Commentaries.

Discussione

Pausa

> Stefano Perfetti (Università di Pisa): Alberto Magno tra il ‘De animalibus’ e i ‘Parva naturalia’.
> Gianna Pomata (Johns Hopkins, Baltimore): ‘Humidum radicale’, morte e vita nella ‘Nueva filosofia’ di Oliva Sabuco (1587).

Discussione

Informazioni:
Luciana Repici: luciana.repici@unito.it
Pietro B. Rossi: pietrobassiano.rossi@unito.it

Click here for the Conference poster
Click here for the Conference leaflet

> A Colloquium to Mark the 60th Anniversary of Fritz Saxl's Death
13 June 2008
The Warburg Institute, London, 2:15-6:00pm

Organised by Claudia Wedepohl (The Warburg Institute, University of London)

2.15 p.m. Dorothea McEwan (London): Saxl and Boll

2.45 p.m. Rembrandt Duits (London): Reading the Stars of the Renaissance. Saxl and Astrology

3.15 p.m. Karin Hellwig (Munich): Fritz Saxl’s approach to Spanish art: Velázqu