● Colloquium on the Teaching of Post-Classical Latin and Latin to Non-Classicists, Cambridge (23 September 2006)

● Religious interaction in post-reformation England, Oxford (23 September 2006)

● CFP Recovering Renaissance Drama: 100 Years of Malone Society Publications, Corpus Christi College, Oxford (23 September 2006)

● Displaced Identities: Exile in Early Modern Europe 1550-1730, York (21-22 September 2006)

● Exile in the English Revolution and its Aftermath, 1640-1685, London (28-29 July 2006)

● Rediscovering radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland, c.1550-c.1700: movements of people, texts and ideas, London (21-23 June 2006)

● Renaissance Greek, Trinity College, University of Dublin (16 September 2005)

> The Thomas Harriot Seminar
St John's College, Durham
18 - 20 December 2006

Monday 18 December

2:00-3:00  Registration (St. John’s; lectures take place in Leech Hall)

3:15          Russell Smith (Oxford):
‘Light Mechanics: The Optical Context of Thomas Harriot’s Doctrine of Reflexions’. 

4:30           Tea and biscuits                                  

5:00           Ayesha Mukerjee (Trinity College, Cambridge):
‘Dearth science 1580-1608: the writings of Hugh Plat.’            

6:30           Sherry and soft drinks                        

7:00           Dinner

8:00           Stephen Pumfrey (Lancaster University):
‘Thomas Harriot and William Gilbert on the Vacuum’.

Tuesday 19 December

8:00           Breakfast

9:30           Robert Goulding (University of Notre Dame):
‘Optical powers: Harriot on the efficacy of burning glasses’

10:45         Coffee/tea and biscuits

11:15         Pascal Briost ( CSER, Tours):
‘Thomas Harriot : Reader of Niccolò Tartaglia’

12:30         Photo-call

12:45         Lunch

2:00           Special Visit to University Library

4:15           Coffee/tea and biscuits

4:45           C P Mayers (Devon):
Stephen Borough and Tudor Exploration’

6:30           Sherry and soft drinks.

7:00           Conference Dinner

8:30           Musical Entertainment: AK Chorale; A Christmas Concert

Wednesday 20 December

8:00           Breakfast 

9:30           Tim Wilkes (Southampton Solent University):
‘Harriot and the court of Prince Henry’

10:45         Coffee/tea and biscuits.

11:15         Peter J. Forshaw (Birkbeck, University of London):
‘Ritual Magic in Elizabethan England’

12:30         Close of Conference. A short business meeting will be held.

Further details are available from Prof. G. R. Batho and Dr. Stephen Clucas.

> Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas
13-16 December 2006
Salamanca

Durante los días 13 al 16 de diciembre de 2006 tendrá lugar en la Universidad de Salamanca el primer Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas (SEMYR). En esta primera edición del Congreso se propone un enfoque abierto a cualquier tema medieval o renacentista. No obstante, se preferirán aquellas comunicaciones que presenten un enfoque metodológico o teórico, sobre el desarrollo futuro de los estudios en los dos ámbitos de trabajo.

Ponencias plenarias. El Congreso contará con seis ponencias plenarias, encargadas a personas de renombre internacional en los estudios medievales y renacentistas.

Comunicaciones. Además de las ponencias plenarias, podrán presentarse comunicaciones, cuya exposición no superará los 20 minutos. Quienes estén interesados en proponer una comunicación deberán enviar un resumen antes del 30 de mayo de 2006 a la siguiente dirección:

Congreso Internacional de la SEMYR
SEMINARIO DE ESTUDIOS MEDIEVALES Y RENACENTISTAS
Departamento de Literatura Española e Hispanoamericana
Facultad de Filología
Pza. Anaya s/n
37008 SALAMANCA
E-mail: eco@usal.es

> CFP Preaching and Politics in Early-modern Britain
3-4 November 2006
University of Cambridge

A two-day international conference at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, 3-4 November 2006.  

‘The sermon properly considered – as theatrical, as fundamentally occasional, as literary art inextricably engaged in the public sphere – stands poised to take a wholly new place in literary study, and a better understood one in historical study.’
(Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCullough, 2000)

How far have we come in the six years since Ferrell and McCullough’s prediction?

This conference seeks to gauge the current state of studies in early-modern British sermons by providing a forum for the work of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including literary, historical, and religious studies. Focussing on sermons ‘as literary art inextricably engaged in the public sphere’, potential areas of interest will include: the occasional nature of sermons; pulpit censorship; preaching and ecclesiology; types of auditory (e.g. the royal court, the universities, assizes, Paul’s Cross, country parishes, sermons commissioned by trading companies); women and sermons; varieties of exegetical method; allusion to current affairs via scriptural typology; links with continental European preaching; sermon preparation, delivery, publication, and reception; rhetorical and oratorical traditions of homiletic prose; the literary representation of preachers in plays, poems and pamphlets; the historiography of sermons.

Confirmed plenary speakers include:

> Dr Peter McCullough (Oxford University)
> Professor Jeanne Shami (University of Regina, Canada)
 
Prospective speakers are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers by 1 July 2006 to the conference organisers, Dr Hugh Adlington and Dr Emma Rhatigan, either by e-mail (hugh@adlingtonc.freeserve.co.uk or emma.rhatigan@magd.ox.ac.uk), or by post:

Dr Hugh Adlington
CRASSH
17 Mill Lane
Cambridge CB2 1RX

Dr Emma Rhatigan
Magdalen College
Oxford OX1 4AU

The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst will host our annual graduate student conference on Saturday, November 4, 2006. Graduate students are invited to submit abstracts for a ten to fifteen minute paper on any range of topics or approaches, including textual studies, new theoretical applications, performance history, Renaissance philosophy, print culture, religious studies, material studies, and Renaissance classicism. The purpose of the conference is to provide graduate students in the New England area with an opportunity to share their work and place it in a greater context of interests and concerns. The conference is designed to foster conversation among students who share similar challenges and construct a space where participants may expect serious feedback on their work.

Please send an abstract no longer than 250 words by email or email attachment to:
Kevin Petersen (petersen@english.umass.edu) by October 15, 2006.

For more information, click here to visit the conference website

> Renaissance Endings
28 October 2006
Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies, Roehampton University

And all our beauty, and our trimme, decayes,
Like courts removing, or like ended playes.
John Donne

Papers are invited for the Fifth Annual Conference of the Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies. The conference theme is ‘Renaissance Endings’.

Keynote Speaker: Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe and author of Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (Allen Lane, 2006) will give the Turner Lecture in Renaissance Studies.

Invited speakers will include Christie Carson (Royal Holloway London), Tobias Döring (Ludvig Maximilians University Munich) and Gordon McMullan (Kings College London).

Papers are invited from academic staff, independent researchers and postgraduate students on the following or related topics:

Representations of Death: epitaphs, funerary arts, relics; Death as spectacle; Death as actor; 'sad stories of the death of kings'

Textual and Theatrical Endings: strategies of closure, epilogues, and postscripts; theatrical endings, including final speeches, final silences, final exits; closed and open bodies on the early modern stage

Avoiding Closure: famously unfinished texts; adaptations and sequels; rewriting Shakespearean endings in theatre and film

Periodicity: 'courts removing'; dynastic endings; the end of the 'Renaissance' (contemporary and modern perspectives)

Interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives will be particularly welcome.

Proposals (250-300 words) for short papers (maximum 2,500 words) should be submitted by 3 August 2006 to Jane Kingsley-Smith (j.kingsley-smith@roehampton.ac.uk). Accepted papers – to be submitted by 18 September – will be circulated by Seminar Chairs before the conference, and participants will be invited to speak briefly to their papers.

Registration: to register for the conference please complete a registration form.
Click here for a credit card payment form.

If you have any queries about the conference or would be interested in chairing a session please write to:

Robin Headlam Wells (r.headlam_wells@roehampton.ac.uk), or

Jane Kingsley-Smith (j.kingsley-smith@roehampton.ac.uk), or

Clare McManus (c.mcmanus@roehampton.ac.uk)

Venue: the conference will be held in Grove House, Froebel College, Roehampton University, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ.

Click here for details of train, bus and car access and a printable campus map.

> CFP Shakespeare and the Queen's Men
24-29 October, 2006
Toronto and Hamilton, Canada

This major international conference at the University of Toronto is being organized by the SSHRC-funded "Shakespeare and the Queen's Men" project in association with Poculi Ludique Societas (PLS).

The project, a joint venture led by Alexandra Johnston (REED, University of Toronto) and Helen Ostovich (McMaster University), aims to recreate the staging conditions of a sixteenth-century touring company in order to study and test scholarly theories about acting styles and repertory through performance practice.

The conference will feature keynote addresses followed by thematically organized seminars on the Queen's Men and their theatrical contemporaries, including questions of repertory, acting styles, and touring, as well as ensemble and casting issues.

Participants will have a rare opportunity to see three Queen's Men plays (King Leir, Three Ladies of London, and The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth) in different venues in Toronto and Hamilton reflecting the range of playing spaces available to touring companies.

We invite papers dealing with theatrical practice in the plays of the Queen's Men and other companies of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries or addressing theatre-historical questions pertaining to the works of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and collaborators, and their borrowings from or transformations of theatrical material of the 1580s and 90s.

Related concerns might include the social history of playing, the history of censorship, provincial and metropolitan conditions of performance, or early dramaturgy, including but not limited to questions of staging, clowning, extemporization, jigs, etc. Submissions from graduate students and theatre practitioners doing work in these fields would be particularly welcome.

Proposals of 250 words for papers (maximum length 3000 words) should be submitted by February 15, 2006 to reed@chass.utoronto.ca.

For more information on the 'Shakespeare and the Queen's Men' project, please click here to visit our website.

> 31st International Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference
Structure, Space, and Meaning: The Walls and Portals of Premodern Worlds
13-15 October 2006
Villanova University, Philadelphia

How does space structure meaning? How do the spaces we inhabit shape our habits of thought? And why do we imagine our thought itself in terms of space, from ‘mystical arks’ to ‘interior castles’ and ‘memory palaces’?  We invite papers that will reflect on architecture and space as ‘meaning-making’  AND/OR on the use of structural or architectural metaphors in premodern cultures.

Guest Speakers include:
> Annabel J. Wharton (William B. Hamilton Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University)
> Richard Kieckhefer (Professor of Religion and History, Northwestern University)

Please submit an abstract of one double-spaced page, bearing Name, Academic Affiliation, and complete contact information in upper right hand corner.  Only one paper per person will be accepted.  Proposals for panels or sponsored sessions should be submitted together with paper abstracts.  Please indicate precisely on your abstract any audio-visual needs.

We need your help! Would you be willing to chair a session? Please indicate this in note attached to your abstract or under separate cover. Please include your area of interest/expertise, affiliation, and complete contact information on this note. 

Send all abstracts and panel proposals to:

P M R
c/o Anna Misticoni
The Augustinian Institute
Villanova University
800 Lancaster Avenue
Villanova, PA 19085-1699

OR as a Word or WordPerfect attachment to: pmr.conference@villanova

Click here to see the conference programme

> Colloquium on the Teaching of Post-Classical Latin and Latin to Non-Classicists
23 September 2006
Clare College, Cambridge

Funded by the Classics Subject Centre (CSC) of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)

For further information, contact

Dr Jacqueline Glomski: Jacqueline@Glomski.demon.co.uk
Vice-President, Society for Neo-Latin Studies
History Dept
King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS
T: 020 7848 1078
F: 020 7848 2052

Click here for the SNLS Colloquium poster: WORD or PDF

Click here for the SNLS Colloquium Registration Form: WORD or PDF

England's reformation remains a watershed in history - it divided a people from their ancestors, a nation from much of Europe, and set regions, communities, and individuals against one another. This workshop seeks to build upon recent work on the ways in which was the reformation was worked out and to discuss the dynamic of religious interaction in post-reformation England (to c. 1700). It is concerned to explore how communities intersected, how ideas were exchanged, and to outline the processes of accommodation. Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of this process, from any discipline or perspective.

Workshop organisers: George Southcombe and Andrew Cambers

Contact George Southcombe: george.southcombe@history.ox.ac.uk
Lincoln College, Turl Street, Oxford. OX1 3DR

> Recovering Renaissance Drama: 100 Years of Malone Society Publications
23 September 2006
Corpus Christi College, Oxford

The Malone Society is celebrating its centenary with a one-day conference to be held in the New Music Room, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 10.0-7.0. on Saturday, 23rd September 2006.

The programme will consist of up to a dozen short presentations, each followed by brief discussion. Among those who have already agreed to speak are:

• Professor Henry Woudhuysen
• Dr. John Jowett (on Thomas More)
• Dr.Sonia Massai (on the Pavier Quartos)
• Dr Martin Wiggins (‘A Midsummer Night’s Apocalypse’-related to Malone Society Collections Volume III and the year 1535)
• Dr Eugene Giddens

Chairpersons will include Professor Richard Proudfoot, Mrs. Leah Scragg and Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones.

The day will conclude with a staged reading of the short and farcical Christmas play Gigantomachia (see Malone Society Collections Volume XIV, Jacobean Academic Plays, edited by Suzanne Gossett).

We would welcome offers of short papers (no more than ten minutes) on topics related either to material available in Malone Society editions, including Collections volumes (for a full list of Malone Society publications, please see the Malone Society Website); or to other Tudor and early Stuart play-texts; or to material illustrative of theatrical practices within the same period. Discussion of textual issues will be particularly welcome.

Preliminary enquiries, with or without offers of papers, should be made to katherine.duncan-jones@some.ox.ac.uk. It would be helpful if paper bids could be made before 1st May 2006.

The basic fee, to cover actual costs, including coffee, lunch and tea, is £35. However, the Society’s Council has agreed to subsidize the conference out of its reserves. We are therefore able to offer a reduced fee of £25 to conference members who are members of the Society. It has also agreed a heavily discounted fee of £15 for students (defined as those who are either working for a doctoral or other higher degree, or who completed such a degree no more than two years ago), with a further reduction to £10 for students who are members of the Society. However, because a large number of participants will be paying fees that do not cover the costs, we must ask all conference members, including speakers, to pay the appropriate fee.

> The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court
14–16 September 2006
Courtauld Institute, London

The conference will focus on various aspects of the early modern Inns, particularly the visual arts, music, architecture, and the function of the Inns as performance spaces. Religious, political and social currents at the Inns, literary production, formal and informal modes of pedagogical and professional instruction, relations between the Inns and other educational, social and vocational institutions, and their function and significance within the cityscape of early modern London will also be featured.

Sponsored by the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of Warwick.

For further information contact the organizers:
Dr Jayne Archer (jayne.archer@warwick.ac.uk)
Dr Elizabeth Goldring (elizabeth.goldring@warwick.ac.uk)
Dr Sarah Knight (sk218@le.ac.uk )

Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies

> Astrology and the Body 1100-1800
8-9 September 2006
Cambridge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Astrology makes sense of the past and guides the future, positing a systematic link between man and the cosmos. It is one of the longest-standing intellectual traditions in history. It reached the heights of its sophistication in Renaissance Europe, an age that also generated profound questions about its credibility. Astrology, as, for instance, an explanatory system, a political discourse, and a source of theological controversy, is crucial to our understanding of the history of medieval and early modern Europe.

In the past three decades increasing numbers of scholars have studied aspects of the history of astrology. They have adopted a variety of historical approaches, falling broadly into three groups: technical accounts of astrological methods and the texts that document them; intellectual histories that position astrology in relation to natural philosophy and theology; and social histories of beliefs in astrology. This conference will convene scholars working on all aspects of the history of astrology 1100-1800 to confront questions about ‘Astrology and the Body’, a theme which draws attention to the body as presumed recipient of astral influences. It will provide a forum for historians to discuss the continuities and differences in various astrological traditions, to consider the common features of their approaches and to explore the centrality of astrology to histories of natural philosophy, medicine, mathematics, other occult arts, theology, and politics.

Speakers:

> Dr Monica Azzolini (University of New South Wales)
> Dr Claudia Brosseder (LMU, Munich, and Stanford, 2006-2007)
> Professor Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute)
> Professor Hilary Carey (University College Dublin)
> Professor Brian Copenhaver (UCLA)
> Dr Patrick Curry (University of Kent)
> Professor Darin Hayton (Haverford College, Pennsylvania)
> Dr Rob Ralley (University of Cambridge)
> Dr Darrel Rutkin (University of Oklahoma)
> Dr Steven vander Broeke (The Catholic University of Brussels)
> Professor Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge)
> Professor Laura Smoller (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Commentators:

> Mr Patrick Boner (University of Cambridge)
> Professor Jean-Patrice Boudet (Université d'Orléans)
> Dr David Juste (University of Sydney)
> Dr Lauren Kassell (University of Cambridge)
> Mr Martin Kjellgren (Lund University and Malmö University)
> Dr Alisha Rankin (University of Cambridge)

Click here for the provisional programme

Click here for the registration form

Click here to download the PDF of the conference poster

For more details contact Dr Lauren Kassell (ltk21@cam.ac.uk) or Dr Rob Ralley (rcr23@cam.ac.uk).

> CFP Women and poetry in the 21st Century
6-7 September 2006
University of the West of England, Bristol

Keynote Address: Medbh McGuckian

Participating speakers:
> Deryn Rees-Jones
> Robyn Bolam
> Kate Clanchy

This two-day event aims to bring poets, critics and readers  together with poetry publishers and editors. Topics for discussion might include the lyric voice, radical / experimental poetics, collaboration,  performance, influence,  myth, the long poem, class, race / ethnicity, sexuality,  the Muse, the history of the book,  the politics and economics of poetry publishing and anthologising.  Emphasis throughout will be on exchanging ideas and there will be plenty of time for discussion and debate.  The organisers are open-minded about the form  contributions might take.  We invite proposals for conventional  papers of 20-25 minutes duration, or offers from individuals or small groups for informal roundtable discussions on germane themes. Graduate students will be particularly welcome. 

Click here for the full CFP

Abstracts of c.350 words should be submitted by March 1st 2006 to the conference organisers:

Dr. Alice Entwistle,
School of English and Drama,
University of the West of England,
St. Matthias Campus,
Oldbury Court Road,
Fishponds,
Bristol BS16 2JP
womenandpoetry@uwe.ac.uk

Dr. Jo Gill,
School of English and Creative Studies,
Bath Spa University,
Newton Park,
Newton St. Loe,
Bath, BA2 9BN
womenandpoetry@bathspa.ac.uk

Conference steering group: Dr. Vicki Bertram (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Jane Dowson (De Montfort University),  Dr. Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes University).

To mark the centenary of the publication of the first volume of P.S. Allen's edition of the correspondence of Erasmus an international conference will be held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford during the first week of September 2006. The conference will cover all aspects of Erasmus' achievement and influence in the fields of education, literature, biblical studies, and theology.

Keynote speakers include Lisa Jardine, J.K. McConica, Hilmar M. Pabel, Jane E. Phillips, Erika Rummel, and Mark Vessey.

Click here to download the conference poster

Conference Programme

> Lisa Jardine (QMUL), ‘Yours Sincerely: Erasmus and the Printed Fortune of Familiar Letters’
> Christine Bénévent (Univ. de Paris XII), ‘De l’édition Allen aux recueils publiés par Erasme: enquête sur quelques stratégies de publication’
> Kathy H. Eden (Columbia Univ.), ‘Erasmus on Familiaritas in Writing, Handwriting and Letter-writing’
> J.K. McConica (PIMS, Toronto), ‘The Englishing of P.S. Allen’
> Mark Vessey (UBC), ‘Erasmus and Literary History’
> Isabelle Diu (Paris), ‘Enjeux de la traduction du grec en latin dans la République des lettres selon Erasme’
> Romano Ruggeri (Urbino), ‘Erasmus, Polydore Vergil and the Respublica Litteraria.’
> Erika Rummel (Emerita, Wilfrid Laurier Univ.), ‘Erasmus and Capito: the Background History of Erasmus’ Polemic with the Strasbourg Theologians’
> Paolo Sartori (PG, Sacro Cuore, Milan), ‘From Montaigu to Louvain: Biblical Philology and Spirituality in a Journey through Erasmus and his Quarrels with Petrus Sutor and Frans Titelmans’
> Marie Barral-Baron (PG, Univ. de Paris IV), ‘The Relationship between Erasmus and George, Duke of Saxony during the 1520s: Reformation of the Church and Theological Involvement’
> Catherine Pézeret (PG, Univ. de Paris IV), ‘Etienne Dolet and the Influence of Erasmus’
> Clare Murphy (Angers), ‘Erasmus as Biographer of Thomas More and his Family’
> Charles Fantazzi (East Carolina Univ.), ‘The Erasmus-Vives Correspondence’
> Michel Magnien (Univ. de Paris III), ‘Supplementunculum Allenianum: le début de Allen 2021 retrouvé’
> Stephen Ryle (Univ. of Leeds), ‘The Papacy in Erasmus’ Correspondence: an Overview’
> Silvana Seidel Menchi (Univ. di Pisa), ‘The Anti-Roman Paradigm: Julius, Erasmus, and Hutten’
> Phillips Salman (London), ‘Gnoseology and Epistemology in Erasmus’s Praise of Folly’
> Hilmar Pabel (Simon Fraser Univ.), ‘Editing Jerome Before Erasmus: A Little Known Anthology Printed in Antwerp (1515)’
> Vivienne Westbrook (National Taiwan Univ.), ‘Erasmus for Englishmen: Richard Taverner’s Translation of the Adagia, 1539’

> Jane Phillips (Univ. of Kentucky), ‘The Shaping of a Gospel: Further Reflections on the Paraphrase on Luke’
> Béatrice Perigot (Univ. de Nice), ‘Concordia and disputatio in Erasmus’ Colloquies’
> Hanan Yoran (Ben Gurion Univ.), ‘The Erasmian Republic of Letters and its Discontents’
> Alexandre Vanautgaerden (Brussels), ‘Les Lettres d’imprimeurs dans la correspondance d’Erasme’
> Aysha Pollnitz (Trinity Coll. Cambridge), ‘Erasmus’ Christian Prince in 16th-century England and Scotland’
> Gregory Dodds (Walla Walla Coll.), ‘Joseph Hall, Thomas Fuller, and the Erasmian via media’
> Dominic Baker-Smith (Emeritus, Amsterdam), ‘Tranquillitas animi: Erasmus and the Quest for Spiritual Reassurance’
> David Rundle (Oxford), Title to be announced
> Ari Wesseling (Univ. of Amsterdam), ‘Erasmus and Plagiarism’
> Farkas Kiss (ELTE, Budapest), ‘Dog-ears of Erasmus: the Adages in 16th-century Hungary’
> Letizia Panizza (RHUL), ‘Re-launching Erasmus’ papal Polemics in 17th-century Venice: the case of Ferrante Pallavicino’
> Jeanine De Landtsheer (Leuven), ‘Two Models of Humanist Letter Writing: Desiderius Erasmus and Justus Lipsius’

> The Jacobean Printed Book: Authors, Printers, and Readers
1-3 September 2006
Queen Mary, University of London

Speakers include:

> Sharon Arnoult (Midwestern State University)
> Cyndia Clegg (Pepperdine University)
> Elizabeth Evenden (Newnham College, Cambridge)
> David Gants (University of New Brunswick)
> Carter Hailey (College of William and Mary)
> Pete Langman (Queen Mary, London)
> David Lawrence (University of Toronto)
> Graham Rees (Queen Mary, London)
> Stijn Van Rossem (Universiteit Antwerpen)
> Richard Serjeantson (Trinity College, Cambridge)
> Helen Smith (University of York)

The first seminar will be held at Queen Mary, University of London, from Friday September 1 to Sunday 3, 2006. One theme of the seminar will be the financing, production, and politics of religious publications in the Jacobean period, a theme to which the organisers plan to contribute. This will not by any means be the exclusive or indeed the main focus of the seminar. We want to cast the net wide to draw in comparative studies, e.g. Continental publishing in the period, or British printing immediately before and after the Jacobean period, studies of the relationship between printed book and manuscript; analytical-bibliographical work, and studies of book-historical method; the politics and economics of book production; and, in short, any new or ground-breaking work that sheds light on the history of the early-modern book and book trade.

Click here for the provisional programme

Click here for the online registration form

For further information, contact: Prof Graham Rees: g.c.rees@qmul.ac.uk

> CFP The Ritual and Rhetoric of Queenship, 1250-1650
24-25 August 2006
Canterbury, Christ Church University, Kent

This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore the ritual and rhetoric of queenship in late medieval and early modern England. We hope to encourage debate on the image and representation of queens, and on the cultural and political narratives of queenship.

Possible themes might include:
the ritual construction of queenship;
queenship, identity and power;
holy and sainted queens;
royal motherhood;
queens as intercessors and patrons;
queens in translation.

We are delighted to announce that our keynote speaker will be
> Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University)

Our two plenary speakers will be
> Dr Joanna Laynesmith (author of The Last Medieval Queens) and
> Dr Jacqueline Eales (Canterbury Christ Church University)

Please email proposals for papers (approx. 250 words) and brief CV to the conference organisers:
Dr Liz Oakley-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Writing
Email: ejo7@cant.ac.uk
Dr Louise Wilkinson, Lecturer in Medieval History
Email: ljw28@cant.ac.uk

Deadline: Submission of proposals: 24 March 2006

English Department
Canterbury Christ Church University
North Holmes Road
Canterbury
Kent
CT1 1QU

Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies

> International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, Thirteenth Congress
6-13 August 2006
Budapest

The Thirteenth International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies is arranged by the IANLS and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Ministry of the National Cultural Heritage and with the universities of Szeged and Debrecen. The congress will take place 6-13 August 2006 in Budapest, Hungary. It will start in Budapest with registration on Sunday evening (6 August) and will formally close with the banquet on Friday evening (11 August), with an excursion to Szeged on the following day

Click here for further information.

> CFP Fifth International Conference of the Tudor Symposium
2-5 August 2006
Pázmány Péter Catholic University (PPKE), Faculty of Humanities, Piliscsaba, Hungary

Theme: "Humanity and Barbarism in Tudor Literature"

We expect most proposals to fall into two main camps:

1)  On the one hand, there will be papers exploring humanity and barbarism in quite general terms. Here, 'humanity' might be interpreted as 'human nature,' 'human kindness,' 'humans and animals,' 'humanity and divinity' - and so on. And 'barbarism' could be tackled as 'cruelty,' 'philistinism,' 'barbarism and civilisation'; and, given the location of our conference, I think there is scope here for papers which deal with Tudor attitudes to the Ottomans.  

2) On the other hand, people may well wish to explore the themes in the more narrowly cultural-historical terms of 'humanism.' Papers on any aspect of Tudor litterae humaniores are welcome.

Here is a list of some of the people who have put forward proposals so far:

> Agnes TANACS (Szeged): [Title TBC but on Macbeth]
> Don BEECHER (Carleton): Relentless Barbarity in the Garden of Humanism:
The Emblematics of Lodge's Marguerite of America
> Francis GUINLE (Lyon 2): Barbarous/Barbarian: The Ambiguity of b/Barbary in Peele's Battle of Alcazar
> Gunilla FLORBY (Gvteborg): Intertextual Sidelights on the Hero in George
Chapman's Byron Plays
> John N. KING (Ohio SU): The Humanistic Bases of Foxe's Book of Martyrs
> Mark RANKIN (Ohio SU): Humanity and Incoherence: Writing Early English
Protestantism in Foxe's Book of Martyrs
> Matt DeCOURSEY (Hong Kong): Did Thomas More Become a Barbarian?
> Mike PINCOMBE (Newcastle): Roger Ascham and 'The Turk'
> Pauline BLANC (Lyon 3): Barbarism in A Looking-Glass for England and
James IV
> Peter HAPPI (Southampton): Heywood and Humanism

The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2006

For further information, please contact:
Professor Michael Pincombe
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Percy Building,
University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU,
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)191 222 7621
Fax: +44 (0)191 222 8708
E-mail: Mike.Pincombe@newcastle.ac.uk

> Exile in the English Revolution and its Aftermath, 1640-1685
28-29 July 2006
Beveridge Hall, Senate House, Malet Street, London, UK

An interdisciplinary conference run by the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The conference will explore the experiences of and responses to exile and defeat in the years 1640-1685, with reference both to physical displacement and inner withdrawal, retreat and retirement. The time-frame allows for an examination of Royalists and also onetime Parliamentarians after 1660, such as exiled regicides, Milton, and radical political exiles of the early 1680s. Speakers include John Adamson, Ann Hughes, Annabel Patterson, Nigel Smith, Joad Raymond, Robert Wilcher, James Loxley, Julie Sanders, James Peacey, David Scott, Steven Zwicker, Martin Dzelzainis.

DRAFT PROGRAMME

Friday 28th July

09.30 - 10.00     Registration

10.00 - 10.15     Welcome, notices, introduction

10.15 - 11.30     Session 1: Sources and influences
> Tim Raylor (keynote): ‘The Intellectual History of the Royalist Exile: A Case for Caution’.

11.30 - 12.00     Tea / Coffee

12.00 - 1.15       Session 2: Elite exiles
> David Scott:  ‘The Exiles of Charles I and the Prince of Wales’.
> James Loxley: ‘Hobbes in a Hole: Enmity, Exile, Engagement’.        
> Gillian Darley: ‘John Evelyn: made in Paris’.
                        
1.15 - 2.15         Lunch

2.15 - 3.30         Session 3: Anglicans and royalists
> Sarah Mortimer: ‘Exile, Apostasy and Anglicanism’.
> Marika Keblusek: ‘A Tortoise in the Shell: Royalist and Anglican Experience of Exile in the 1650s’.
> Robert Wilcher: ‘Exile in Breconshire: The Double Displacement of Henry Vaughan’.

3.30 - 4.00         Tea / Coffee

4.00 - 5.15         Session 4: Royalist poetics
> Sue Clark: ‘Lovelace’s experience of defeat’ (tbc).
> Chris D’Addario: ‘Allegory and the Literature of the Royalist Exile’.
> Paul Davis: ‘Thomas Sprat, Cowley and self-exile in the Restoration’.

5.15 - 5.30         Comfort Break

5.30 - 6.45         Session 5: European literature
> Nigel Smith (keynote): ‘Exile in Europe during the English Revolution and its Literary Impact’.

6.45 - 7.30         Conference Reception (Senate House)

Saturday 29th July

09.30 - 11.00     Session 6: The experiences of women
> Ann Hughes, Julie Sanders (keynote): ‘Women Royalist Exiles in the Low Countries: Renegotiating Family Relations at home and Abroad’.
> John Cronin: ‘The Marchioness of Ormond’s return from exile and the Butler patrimony’.

11.00 - 11.30     Tea / Coffee

11.30 - 12.15     Session 7: Artists and musicians
> Karen Hearn: ‘“Nearly all the most famous artists left England...”?’
> Jane Clark: ‘A mode among the Monseurs’.

12.15 - 12.45     A performance by the Early Music group, ‘Janiculum’.

12.45 - 2.00       Lunch

2.00 - 3.15         Session 8: Milton and exile
> John Adamson: ‘Prophecies of Exile: Milton, Prelacy, and the Fall of the Regime of Charles I’.
> Laura Jacobs: ‘“Exiled from Light”: Samson Agonistes and Blindness’.
> Joad Raymond: ‘Milton’s internal exile’.                         

3.15 - 3.45         Tea / Coffee

3.45 - 5.00         Session 9: Regicides and residence
> Jason Peacey: ‘“The good old cause for which I suffer”: the life of a regicide in exile’.
> Philip Major: ‘“A poor exile stranger”: William Goffe in New England’.                       
> Martin Dzelzainis: ‘Extraterritoriality: the Earls of Clarendon and Castlemaine’.

5.00 - 5.15         Comfort Break

5.15 - 6.30         Session 10: Restoration literature
> Annabel Patterson (keynote): ‘The Print Legacy of the Restoration Exiles: Clarendon, Locke and John Starkey’.

Click here for further information and registration.

Click here for copies of the abstracts.

Alternatively, phone the Institute of English Studies on + 44 (0)20 7862 8675 or email the conference organiser: Philip Major (Birkbeck, University of London).

Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies

> Renaissance Paratexts: A Conference
27-28 July 2006
University of York, Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

In Paratexts, Gérard Genette describes a preface as ‘a threshold, or – a word Borges used apropos of his – a “vestibule” that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back’.  This conference invites participants to linger on the threshold, exploring the ways in which Renaissance Paratexts, broadly considered, shape the reader's approach to the text, and the text's approach to the surrounding world.  The conference will take place at the University of York on July 27th & 28th, 2006.

Speakers include: Christy Anderson, Tom Berger, Danielle Clarke, Mike Cordner, Juliet Fleming, Steven Galbraith, Hester Lees-Jeffries, Peter Lindenbaum, Sonia Massai, Randall McLeod, Neil Rhodes, Jason Scott-Warren, and Wendy Wall.

For further details, or to suggest a paper, please contact: 
Helen Smith (hs25@york.ac.uk) or Louise Wilson (elw107@york.ac.uk)

> Icons and Iconoclasts: The Long Seventeenth Century, 1603-1714
20-22 July 2006
Aberdeen Centre for Early Modern Studies

This international and interdisciplinary conference embraces the long Seventeenth Century in Britain, America, and Europe.

The plenary lectures are:

> Professor Catherine Belsey (Cardiff): 'Shakespeare as Icon'

> Professor Peter Burke (Cambridge): 'Was the 17th Century an Age of Crisis?'

> Professor Annabel Patterson (Yale) 'Swansong: The Human Voice of History'

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on any aspect of British, American, or Continental literature, science, philosophy, culture, and history during the period up to 1714. They should be sent by email to the conference organizer, Professor Derek Hughes (1603@abdn.ac.uk) by 31 March, 2006. Every effort will be made to accommodate early applicants who require a decision before that date.

The conference will be held in the King's College Centre, adjacent to the University’s beautiful early sixteenth-century chapel. King's College is one of the last Medieval universities; it amalgamated with Marischal College to form the University of Aberdeen. With its extensive collection of incunabula and manuscripts, it forms a perfect setting for a conference on the Early Modern period. There will be an optional excursion to Fyvie Castle on the afternoon of 21 July.

Aberdeen is situated on the North Sea coast, and a convenient point of departure for the Highlands and the Orkneys. The airport (with direct flights to London) is only five miles from the university, and there are direct trains to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other Scottish cities.

> Medea:  Mutations and Permutations of a Myth
17-19 July 2006
Clifton Hill House, Bristol

Medea, the notorious infanticidal non-Greek wife of Jason, is a figure from Classical mythology who challenges the boundaries of behaviour and understanding and has proved both a creative and an intellectual challenge for countless writers, artists, composers and performing artists since Euripides and before.

We invite proposals for papers for a cross- and interdisciplinary conference jointly organised by the Universities of Bristol and Nottingham. We particularly welcome proposals exploring the following areas:

> The reception of the myth from Antiquity to the twenty-first century in the fields of Classical studies; literature; fine and performing arts; film and media studies; music; popular culture; advertising; history; politics; alterity and gender studies; psychology; and medicine
> A critical re-assessment of theories of myth and myth-making on the basis of the mutations and permutations of the Medea myth
> The interpretation of the Medea myth to suit cultural, political, gender and scientific agendas

We intend to publish a volume of proceedings shortly after the conference with the aims:
a) of presenting an interdisciplinary insight into the wide-ranging
diachronic reception history of the Medea myth
b) of illuminating how the reception of this particular classical figure
reflects urgent contemporary concerns in the areas of politics and gender

Speakers so far include: Richard Buxton (Classics, Bristol), Daniela Cavallaro (Italian, Auckland), Helene Foley (Classics, Barnard, Columbia), Edith Hall (Classics, Durham), Elizabeth Prettejohn (History of Art, Bristol) and Amy Wygant (French, Glasgow).

Abstracts of five hundred words should be submitted by 15th December 2005 to:

Click here to visit the conference webpage

> Writing Lives in Early Modern England
13-15 July 2006
Queen Mary, London

'Writing Lives in Early Modern England' seeks to recapture early modern lives as imagined, written, and consumed, and to open for discussion all such pre-modern forms of life writing as history, moral inscription, exemplum, performance, story and text.

The conference is organised jointly by Kevin Sharpe, Leverhulme Research Professor and Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, and Steven Zwicker, Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Washington University, St. Louis. The conference will be hosted jointly by the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary.

Speakers include: Julia Marciari Alexander, Alastair Bellany, Thomas Corns, Andrew Hadfield, Frances Harris, Lisa Jardine, Paulina Kewes, Peter Lake, Leah Marcus, Michael McKeon, Steven Pincus, Kevin Sharpe, Andrea Walkden, Steven N. Zwicker. Dr Stella Tillyard will give an opening talk on Writing Lives. Annabel Patterson will give closing comments.

For further details, click here for the conference website

Or email Alistair Daniel: a.daniel@qmul.ac.uk

Click here to download the Writing Lives poster

> Troy and the European Imagination
7-9 July 2006
Bristol

The legends of Troy lived long after the end of Antiquity. Not only did they prove to be a source of continuing inspiration to European artists and writers but through their many retellings they also contributed to the shaping of communal and national identities. This international conference presents a programme of speakers drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines to discuss Troy in its many different incarnations during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and beyond.

Programme

Friday 7th July

Sunday 9th July

Click here for the conference registration form

For further information, contact

Dr Elizabeth Archibald
Department of English
e.archibald@bristol.ac.uk

Dr James Clark
Department of Historical Studies
james.clark@bristol.ac.uk

Samantha Barlow
BIRTHA administrator
sam.barlow@bristol.ac.uk

> CFP Incorporation in Literature
8 July 2006
Edinburgh

We invite proposals from postgraduate students for a conference on "Incorporation in Literature" to be held at the University of Edinburgh on 8 July 2006.  This conference seeks to address the idea of incorporation from a variety of different perspectives.  Incorporation is an important theme in many literary works in which eating, drinking, digesting, or even cannibalism figure prominently, whether these subjects are treated literally or metaphorically.  In a more abstract sense, incorporation could also be understood as the way in which one work can be incorporated into another as an influence, or as the ways in which visual images and other graphic details are incorporated into literary texts. By inviting papers on specific texts or authors in any language from any period, this conference seeks to provide a comparative exploration of the ways in which incorporation has been used in literature.

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to both conference organisers at the addresses below by 31 March.  Papers should be no more than 20 minutes long and should be in delivered in English.

Topics might include, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- consumerism
- consumption
- food
- eating/drinking/digesting
- cannibalism
- communion
- cultural cannibalism
- translation/transcreation
- influence
- rewriting
- incorporation as form of resistance
- text and image
- dialogue

Conference organisers:
Rachel Douglas: Rachel.Douglas@ed.ac.uk
Antonio Ochoa: A.Ochoa-1@sms.ed.ac.uk
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
University of Edinburgh

Postal address:
Rachel Douglas,
French,
Division of European Languages and Cultures,
59-60 George Square,
Edinburgh, EH8 9JU

>Myth and the New Science
July 2006
University of Bristol

This conference aims to explore the question of the many relationships between different forms of ‘scientific’ knowledge and myth, with especial focus on the claims made in different epochs to the instauration of a ‘new science’, and the mythic status of those very claims.

For further information contact:
Dr Ellen O’Gorman,
Department of Classics and Ancient History,
University of Bristol,
Bristol BS8 1TB
Tel. +44 117 928 9848
Fax. +44 117 928 8678
E-mail. e.c.ogorman@bris.ac.uk

> CFP Authority in European Book Culture (1400-1600)
29 June - 1 July 2006
University of Liverpool

Keynote speakers:
> Adrian Armstrong (Manchester)
> Jos Biemans (Amsterdam)
> Brian Richardson (Leeds).

Through its many and varied manifestations authority has frequently played a role in the communication process in both manuscript and print culture. Rulers and governments, the papacy and Church hierarchy, civic and ecclesiastical societies and fraternities, guilds and corporations, local governments, religious orders, have all influenced production methods and forms of publication, essentially trying to determine where, when and how information was to be circulated. Authority, whether religious, intellectual, political or social, has sometimes enforced the circulation of certain texts and text versions or conversely acted to prevent the distribution of books, pamphlets and other print matter. It has also stimulated the development of new publication forms and methods of dissemination. At times, authority has been explicit by encoding itself in structures or legislation. At others, it has operated in a more discreet way, seemingly imperceptibly influencing cultural attitudes to the written and printed word which have acted to the detriment of particular communities. Authority has not always gone unchallenged: readers, writers and printers have also rebelled against its constraints and restrictions, publishing controversial works anonymously or counterfeiting authoritative texts. The written or printed word itself has sometimes been perceived to have a kind of authority, which might have had ramifications in social, political or religious spheres.

The objective of the conference is to bring together history of the book scholars with interests in late medieval and early modern Europe to reflect upon the questions that authority raises. The participation of postgraduate students is particularly welcomed.

Some bursaries will be available for postgraduate students giving a paper.

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Short proposals (200-300 words) for 20-minute papers should be submitted to the conference organisers Pollie Bromilow (pollie.bromilow@liverpool.ac.uk) and Godfried Croenen (g.croenen@liverpool.ac.uk) by January 13th 2006.

For full details of the Call for Papers, please visit the Conference Website.

It is anticipated that a selection of papers from this conference will be published.

> Reading and Religion: A Symposium
24 June 2006, 12:00 - 5:00 pm
University of York, Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, King's Manor K/133

Featuring faculty and postgraduates from York, Leeds and Sheffield.

Keynote speaker: Lori Anne Ferrell (Claremont/Huntington): "How to Read the Bible in Early Modern England"

1:30-2:30 Session 1: Textual Communities in Reformation Europe
Chair: Philip Withington (Leeds)
> Stewart Mottram (Leeds)
> Paul Brand (York)

2:30-3:00: Tea

3:00-4:00 Session 2: Privacy and Purgatory
Chair: Bill Sheils (York)
> Andrew Cambers (Oxford Brookes)
> Cathy Shrank (Sheffield)

4:00-5:00 Session 3: Counter-Reformation Perspectives
Chair: Robert Black (Leeds)
> Simon Ditchfield (York)
> Anthony Wright (Leeds)

* This event is free and there is no need to register.

Sponsored by the Yorkshire Forum for Early Modern Studies and hosted by the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (CREMS), University of York.

For more information, contact Prof William Sherman: ws505@york.ac.uk
Or, Sally Kingsley, Administrator, CREMS: sk23@york.ac.uk

> Rediscovering radicalism in the British Isles and Ireland, c.1550-c.1700: movements of people, texts and ideas
21-23 June 2006
Goldsmiths College, University of London

Early modern British and Irish history is marked by a succession of fascinating radical movements, ideologies and events. From Kett's rebellion, the Family of Love and Baptists, through to Levellers, Quakers and Whigs; from millenarians and mystics to those who believed in free grace, community of goods and even wives; from debates over forms of government, issues of sovereignty and natural rights, through to advocates of revolution and regicide, each was radical in the sense that it challenged fundamental political, religious or social axioms of its day. This interdisciplinary conference sets out to explore the role of migration and the exchange of ideas, images and texts in the history of those events, ideologies and movements (or moments).

Click here for the Conference Programme

Click here for the Registration Form

For further information, contact the conference organisers:

Ariel Hessayon: a.hessayon@gold.ac.uk
Philip Baker: philip.baker@sas.ac.uk

History Department
Goldsmiths College
University of London
New Cross
London SE14 6NW

> CFP The Eighth Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference
15–17 June 2006
The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon 

This interdisciplinary postgraduate conference invites papers from historical, literary and performance approaches that examine the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including their cultural and theatrical history, appropriations, textual issues, and literary readings.

All graduate students are invited to give a paper at the conference, lasting approximately twenty minutes. Undergraduate students in their last two years of study are also invited and welcomed to the conference as auditors. To find out more about the conference and registration, please visit our British Graduate Shakespeare Conference Website

The Shakespeare Institute
Mason Croft, Church Street
Stratford-upon-Avon, WARKS
CV37 6HP England

For further information please email: britgrad@yahoo.com

> CFP Second North American Conference on Esotericism,
8-11 June 2006
University of California, Davis

Call for Papers: Conference on Esotericism, Art, and the Imagination.

The Association for the Study of Esotericism is seeking paper and panel proposals for its second North American Conference on Esotericism to be held 8-11 June, 2006, at the University of California, Davis. As the title suggests, we especially seek paper proposals on topics pertinent to Western esotericism, art and the imagination. However, we are interested in all aspects of the study of Esotericism, and hope to run sessions including papers on Magic and Secrecy, Antique, Medieval and Modern Theurgy and Mysticism, American and European Spiritualism, Folk magical traditions in North America, Nineteenth and Twentieth century occultism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Alchemy, Astrology, New Religious Movements, Asian influences on Western traditions, and Esotericism in Cinema, among others.

We welcome scholars from a wide range of perspectives, including anthropology, American studies, art history, history, history of religions, literature, philosophy, religious studies, medieval studies, sociology, the full range of academic disciplines and fields that bear upon this area of study. This is an interdisciplinary field of research, and we believe everyone will benefit from the cross-fertilization of perspectives.

If you wish to submit a paper proposal for review and possible presentation at the conference, please send it by regular email to conference organizers at ASEconf2006@yahoo.com

In order to encourage graduate study in the field, again we will offer a modest prize for the best graduate student paper presented. No attachments, please: simply copy and paste your abstract into ordinary email. Please limit abstracts to a paragraph or at most to one single-spaced page, and indicate your academic affiliation and/or other academic qualifications. We hope to post a preliminary schedule early in 2006.

The deadline for paper proposals is January 15, 2006.

For more information on the ASE and our previous conference in June, 2004, see our website at: http://www.aseweb.org

> Seminar on Giordano Bruno
7-10 June 2006
The Warburg Institute, London

Organised by the Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani “Giovanni Aquilecchia”, Naples and the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici.

The seminars will be led by Paolo Galluzzi (Istituto e Museo Nazionale di Storia della Scienza di Firenze) on Galileo Rivisitato and Dilwyn Knox (UCL) on Giordano Bruno e il Dibattito Cosmologico.

Details of scholarships to enable students to come to London for the duration of the course will be published in April/May 2006.

Enquiries to Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani, tel. 00 39 081 2452150, fax. 00 39 081 7642654 or see www.giordanobruno.it/

> Spiritual and Material Renaissances III
7 June 2006
Sheffield Hallam University

Room 18, Montgomery House, Collegiate Crescent Campus, Sheffield
Click here for directions

10:00 Arrival and coffee

10:15-11:15 Session 1
> John Norton (Sheffield Hallam University): 'Guilt and Shame in The Tempest'
> Richard Wood (Sheffield Hallam University) 'Shakespeare's Ghosts'

11:15-11:30 Coffee

11:30-12:30 Session 2
> Mark Robson (Nottingham University): '"Catching the Sense at Two Removes": Love's Senses'

12.30-2 Lunch

2:00-3:00 Session 3
> Michael Davies (Liverpool University): 'Bunyan's Bawdy: Sex and Sexual Wordplay in the Writings of John Bunyan'

3:00-3:15 Tea

3:15-4:00 Session 4
> Kate Wilkinson (Sheffield Hallam University): 'Staging the supernatural in the first tetralogy'

There is no conference fee but I am afraid everyone will have to forage for their own lunch (there are plenty of nearby eating places), and it would be much appreciated if anyone intending to come would let Lisa Hopkins (L.M.Hopkins@shu.ac.uk) know in advance.

> Whose Shakespeare? English Association and Shakespeare Institute Conference
2-4 June 2006
The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon

This is a year of celebration for the English Association, the Shakespeare Institute and the Royal Shakespeare Company:  2006 sees the centenary of the English Association, 60 years of Shakespeare conferences in Stratford for the Shakespeare Institute, and the beginning of the RSC's year-long production of Shakespeare's Complete Works.

The Institute and the Association have therefore joined together to hold a non-residential weekend conference at the Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon aimed at all those with an interest in Shakespeare.  The weekend will also see the launch of the Institute's Alumni Association.

Cost: £200 EA/Institute members   £215 non-members

Includes all lectures and workshops, course materials, tea and coffee, Conference Reception and theatre tickets

TO BOOK:

Either by post to

English Association,
University of Leicester,
University Road,
Leicester LE1 7RH,
UK

or by email: engassoc@le.ac.uk

Cheques should be made payable to 'The English Association'

> Leisure, Pleasure and Play in Renaissance and Early Modern England
31 May 2006
Nottingham Trent University

The Forward Early Modern Social History Symposium provides an opportunity for postgraduates and academics to discuss aspects of their research.  ‘Leisure, Pleasure and Play’ aims to encourage considerations of how, when, and why renaissance and early modern people enjoyed their recreational time.  Suggestions for topics could include, but are not limited to, political, social, cultural, and gendered examinations of recreational activities; changes in use of recreational time over the period; regulation; recreational spaces; gambling and gaming; sports and hunting.  We are pleased to announce that the keynote speaker will be Prof Ronald Hutton (Bristol).

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers from postgraduate researchers, which explore any aspect of ‘Leisure, Pleasure and Play’ during the renaissance and early modern period.

Please submit your proposals of no more than 300 words to

Jennie Jordan
School of Arts, Communication and Culture
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham NG11 8NS
UK
Tel: 44 (0)115 848 3545
Email: jenniejordan_forward@hotmail.com

Click here to download the symposium poster: Word or PDF

> Shrews on the Renaissance Stage
26-27 May 2006
York Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (Kings Manor site)

This interdisciplinary conference will focus particularly on Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew; Fletcher, The Woman's Prize; John Lacy, Sauny the Scott.

Speakers will include:
> Anna Bayman (Oxford)
> Sandra Clark (Birkbeck)
> Michael Cordner (York)
> Holly Crocker (South Carolina)
> Laura Gowing (King’s London)
> Helmer Helmers (Leiden)
> Barbara Hodgdon (Michigan)
> Graham Holderness (Hertfordshire)
> Leah Marcus (Vanderbilt)
> George Southcombe (Oxford)
> David Wootton (York)

For further information, please contact Professor David Wootton: dw504@york.ac.uk
or the CREMS Administrator: Sally Kingsley: sk23@york.ac.uk

Click here to visit the CREMS "Shrews" webpage

Centre for Renaissance & Early Modern Studies (CREMS)
Vanbrugh College
University of York
York YO10 5DD

> Shakespeare: Portraiture, Biography and the Material World
18-19 May 2006
National Gallery, London

This academic interdisciplinary conference will accompany the exhibition Searching for Shakespeare opening at the National Portrait Gallery in March 2006. The exhibition brings together a body of material from Shakespeare's lifetime. It includes documents relating directly to the playwright's biography such as his last will and testament, manuscripts relating to performance and stagecraft, together with portraits of patrons and players, books of plays printed in Shakespeare's lifetime and costume of the period. The conference aims to contextualise events and relationships from Shakespeare's life including his marriage, property purchases, and ownership and knowledge of material goods. It will also explore Shakespeare's knowledge of the visual arts, issues concerning lifetime portraiture and his posthumous representations.

Programme

> Stanley Wells (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust), Opening Address

Portraiture and Likeness

> Elizabeth Goldring (University of Warwick):
Mine Eye hath play'd the painter: Shakespeare and Portraiture
> Tarnya Cooper (National Portrait Gallery):
Performing the Part: The Emergence of Author and Actor Portraits 1590-1620
> Susan North (Victoria and Albert Museum) & Jenny Tiramani (Costume Designer): Interpreting Dress in Representations of Shakespeare
> Erin Blake (Folger Shakespeare Library):
Posthumous Portraits of Shakespeare

Biography and Custom

> James Shapiro (Columbia University NY ):
Shakespeare's London: the tourists' perspective
> Robert Tittler (Concordia University, Montreal):
London and Provincial England: Patterns of Cultural Exchange in the Age of Shakespeare
> Loreen Giese (Ohio University):
Cases of Marriage: Shakespeare and Marriage Customs in Early Modern London
> Ann Thompson (Kings College, London):
Hamlet in 1603
> Lena Cowen Orlin (University of Maryland, Baltimore County):
Last Wills and Second Best Beds
> Vanessa Harding (Birkbeck, University of London):
Leasing, Lodging, and Living in Shakespeare's London

Theatrical Cultures

> Larry Manley (Yale University) & Sally Beth Mclean (Records of Early English
Drama, Toronto):
'My Good Sweet Mouse': Edward Alleyn's Letter to His Wife from Lord Strange's Company Tour, 1593
> Nick de Somogyi (Independent Scholar):
Enter pursued by a Bear: Playhouse and Beargarden
> Aileen Ribero (Courtauld Institute):
Role Playing: Dress and Identity in Shakespeare's Theatre
> Grace Ioppolo (Reading University):
'You Vnderstand our Vnfortunate extremitie': Dramatists' Biographies in the Henslowe- Allen Papers at Dulwich College
> Sonia Massai (Kings College, London):
'The Good, the Bad and the Wise': The Rise of Shakespeare in Print

BOOKING: By credit card: call 020 7306 0055. By post: please complete the
following information: Name: Postal Address:

The conference is jointly organised with King's College London, and is supported by The Paul Mellon Centre for studies in British art.

Please send a cheque payable to 'National Portrait Gallery', to
National Portrait Gallery Conferences,
St. Martins Place,
London WC2H 0HE

Standard Price £35.00 Concessions £25.00

For further information visit www.npg.org.uk/conferences

> Forgery, Authority, and Authenticity in the Renaissance
Saturday 13 May 2006
University of Stirling

Keynote speakers:
> Professor Emeritus Peter Ucko (Former Director of the Institute for Archaeology, UCL)
> Professor Brian Vickers, FBA (Distinguished Senior Fellow, School of Advanced Studies, London)

With participants from the Universities of Columbia, Leeds, Oxford, Saint Etienne, Strathclyde, Toronto, Valenciennes, and Wisconsin

“…the third vice of disease of learning, which concerneth deceit or untruth…is of all the rest the foulest; as that which doth destroy the essential form of knowledge, which is nothing but a representation of truth…. This vice therefore brancheth itself into two sorts; delight in deceiving, and aptness to be deceived; imposture and credulity…”

(Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605) IV. 8.)

Bacon's abhorrence of what he termed “feigned matter” provides us with the context for this colloquium on the topic of “Forgery, Authority, and Authenticity in the Renaissance”. One of the great undertakings of humanism in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was the recovery and transmission of the hitherto “lost” texts of classical antiquity – a device which would later become a standard means of allowing fake or forged material to enter the public domain. At the same time, this was an age in which there was immense interest in the exploration of the material culture of the classical past – the excavation, recording, collection, and (even) exchange of the objects, monuments, and sculptures of antiquity were activities which (it has been claimed) foreshadowed antiquarian research in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

However, recent work on the archaeological frauds of Annius of Viterbo in the late fifteenth century, or the “discovery” of forged Etruscan materials in the seventeenth century, as well as the well-known case (recounted by Vasari) of Michelangelo's “antiquation” of statues in order to increase their market value, point to a darker side of Renaissance delight in fabrication and discovery.

In literary studies, by the same token, the rise of a modern concept of authorship (and with it, perhaps, the redefinition of terms such as authority) was contemporaneous with these developments. When Sir Philip Sidney, spoke of poetry as “an art of imitation… that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting , or figuring forth” (our emphasis) his terms might remind us of Hamlet's flourishing of two pictures before his mother: the one ‘authentic', the other a “counterfeit presentment” ( Hamlet IV. iii), a poor copy of the ‘original'. Authority, authenticity, and the act of forgery are clearly bound up with one another, but how exactly?

More generally, pretence, contrivance, or the subtle arts of equivocation might all be associated with the act of forging documents, texts, objects, or images. These terms, too, are ones that cohere around the charges of Reformers: that the use of remains, or images, or even rituals had no “warrant” in scripture and were to be condemned as, in some measure, inauthentic.

To register for the symposium, please fill in the Registration Form and return it to susie.dryburgh@stir.ac.uk or faye.v.tudor@strath.ac.uk; alternatively, contact:
Susie Dryburgh
Department of English Studies
University of Stirling
Stirling, FK9 4LA
Tel. 01786 467510

Click here to download the Symposium programme

Click here to download the Conference Poster

> Metamorphosis and Transformation in the Life and Work of Lope de Vega
Saturday 13th May 2006
University College London, Golden Age and Renaissance Seminar

Registration: 9.00 – 9.30

Session 1: 9.30 – 11.00
> Isabel Torres (Queen’s Belfast) Interloping Lope: Tomé de Burguillos.
> Elaine Canning (Swansea) Jacob, Joseph and Dinah on the Seventeenth-Century Stage: From Biblical Text to Corral Stage in the Works of Lope de Vega.
> Arantza Mayo (Cambridge) “Desengañado de sus tres enemigos, servir, amar y pretender”: the making of Lope's religious self.

Session 2: 11.30 – 1.00
> Jonathan Thacker (Oxford) Lope and Diogenes.
> Alejandro García Reidy (Universitat de València) From the stage to the aposento: Lope de Vega’s vindication of printed plays.
> Geraldine Coates (Oxford) “¡Oh reino, prestado estado!”:  The Myth of Fall and Reconquest in Lope’s Chronicle-Legend Plays.

Session 3: 2.00 – 3.30
> Jack Sage (King’s College London) Another look at Lope’s technique for wooing “el vulgo necio” with “aquella incertidumbre anfibológica” as fictional omniscience.
> Esther Gómez (Manchester) Casilda, mujer mineral: de vuelta a Peribañéz y el Comendador de Ocaña.
> Jules Whicker (Birmingham) Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale and Lope’s El laberinto de Creta: Tragedy and Tragicomedy.

Session 4: 4.00 – 5.30
> David McGrath (King’s College London) A Little Known Portrait of Lope de Vega.
> Alexander Samson (University College London) The Many Lives of the Fénix.
> Geraint Evans (Nottingham and Royal Holloway) Gender and Religion.

Session 5: 6.00 – 7.30
> David Johnston (Queen’s Belfast) Translating Lope de Vega: Performance and the New Historicism.
> Victor Dixon (Trinity College Dublin) title to be confirmed.
>Duncan Wheeler (Oxford) Metamorphosis or Make-Believe: The Transvestite Effect at Play in “El perro del hortelano”.

7.30 Conference Dinner

For further details contact:

Dr Alexander Samson
Lecturer in Golden Age Literature
Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel: 020 7 679 7121
Email: a.samson@ucl.ac.uk

Click here for more information about the Golden Age and Renaissance Seminar

Papers on any aspect of these questions (30 mins) are invited from both researchers and practitioners in fields including (but not limited to) anthropology, astrology, classics, divination, philosophy, psychology, religious studies and theology.

Please send abstracts (200-300 words) to Dr Angela Voss (a.voss@kent.ac.uk) by 31st December 2005

This two-day event brings together editors, practitioners, researchers and academics who have been working on The Spanish Tragedy and on Jacobean drama more generally. Presentations will cover a wide and exciting range of topics: from textual performance to textual editing; from meta-theatre to film; from questions about enacting and vindicating revenge to questions of nationhood, more precisely on how Spanish The Spanish Tragedy is; from how you film the Jacobeans to how you build a web-site to aid the research and teaching process of The Spanish Tragedy.

Participants include:
> Jonathan Bate (Warwick)
> Clara Calvo (Murcia)
> Nicoleta Cinpoes (Warwick)
> Alex Cox (Exterminating Angel)
> Tod Davies (Exterminating Angel)
> Philip Edwards (Liverpool)
> Tony Howard (Warwick)
> Eugene Musica (Warwick)
> Carol Chillington Rutter (Warwick)
> Jesus Tronch (Valencia)

Booking deadline: Monday 20th April 2006  

Contacts:
Nicoleta Cinpoes: Nicoleta.Cinpoes@warwick.ac.uk or Lisa Cook: L.D.Cook@warwick.ac.uk

Click here for the full programme

Click here for the online booking form (the event is free, but it would be appreciated if you could register in advance)

For further information, click here to visit the 'Doing Kyd' website

> The Renaissance and the Ottoman World
26-27 April 2006
Warburg Institute and School of Oriental and African Studies, London

Organised by Claire Norton (St. Mary’s College, University of Surrey), Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute) and Anna Contadini (SOAS), supported by St. Mary’s College, the British Academy, the Society for Renaissance Studies, the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

This conference brings together an international group of eminent scholars in order to present the latest research on the cultural, intellectual, artistic and commercial interactions between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the Renaissance. It has been timed to coincide with the National Gallery’s 2006 exhibition, Bellini and the East. For the first day, which will emphasise interactions in the field of the humanities, the Warburg Institute will be the host; on the second day, the conference will transfer to the neighbouring School of Oriental and African Studies where artistic relations will be considered. The individual papers will examine a number of key aspects, including artistic, philosophical and scientific exchanges; the reception and use of Ottoman artefacts in Europe; European and Ottoman architecture; the extent of Western knowledge of Ottoman music; and the experience of Christians in Islamic lands and Muslims in Christendom.

Click here for the programme.

Registration fee: £50 for two days (concs. £30); £30 for one day (concs. £20).

For further information go to St Mary’s website or the SOAS website

To register and for further details please consult Claire Norton: nortonc@smuc.ac.uk

Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies

Members of the Society for Renaissance Studies can register at the concessionary rate

> Witchcraft and Masculinities in the Early Modern World
21-23 April 2006
Wivenhoe House Hotel and Conference Centre, Essex University, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ

This conference seeks to redress the balance within the debates on witchcraft and gender by focusing on masculinity in the broadest possible context of the magical worlds of early-modern Europe. Key themes will include the regional variation in the persecution of men for witchcraft; the gendered ways in which black and white magic were imagined by contemporaries; cunning men; gender and the psychology of masculinity in relation to male accusers and professional witch hunters; and gender and possession. Keynote speakers will include Robin Briggs, Owen Davies, Jonathan Durrant, Peter Elmer, Sarah Ferber, Malcolm Gaskill, Jenni Grundy, Alison Rowlands, Rolf Schulte, and Rita Voltmer.

Contact: Dr. Alison Rowlands or telephone: 44 (0)1206 872257

The deadline for registration for the conference is 31 December 2005

> CFP 'Wanton nights and riotous feasts': Representations of Virtue and Vice: 1500-1800
8 April 2006
University of Warwick, Coventry

A conference examining the representations of virtue and vice in the period 1500 – 1800, aiming to encourage intellectual exchange between disciplines, including, art history, cultural studies, history, literary studies, theology, and philosophy.

For more information, please contact Rebecca Hayes at virtueandvice@hotmail.co.uk

Submission of papers (call for papers): 16 January 2006

> The Thomas Browne Seminar
8 April 2006
Birkbeck, University of London - Click here for directions

We are pleased to announce the first session of the Thomas Browne Seminar, a joint project between Birkbeck College, University of London, and Exeter University. Browne was a significant figure in the intellectual landscape of the mid-seventeenth century, but has come to be seen, in many accounts, as a ‘quaint’ and retiring figure, withdrawn from the mainstream of political and intellectual life. The seminar aims to explore and restore the significance of Browne across the numerous fields which occupy his writing. Papers on any aspect of Browne’s work and its context are invited for the inaugural meeting on Saturday 8 April 2006.

Seminar Schedule

Registration (9:00-10:00)

Session 1 (10:00-11:00)

> Claire Preston (Cambridge):
The Arena of the Unwell: Letter to a Friend as Medical Narrative
> Karen Edwards (Exeter):
tba

11.00-11.30 Coffee

Session 2 (11:30-12:30)

> Stephen Clucas (London, Birkbeck):
Argument, authority and textual fragmentation in Natural Philosophy: Browne, Burton and Galileo
> Kathryn Murphy (Oxford, Balliol):
A man very well studyed”: Thomas Browne and the Hartlib circle

12.30-1.30 Lunch

Session 3 (1:30-3:00)

> Kevin Killeen (Reading):
The Politics of Painting
> Philip Major (London, Birkbeck):
Urn-Burial and Interregnum Royalist

3:00-3:30 Coffee

3.30-4.30 Browne & Wine

For further information, contact Kevin Killeen k.killeen@bbk.ac.uk or Karen Edwards K.L.Edwards@exeter.ac.uk

Sponsored by the Society for Renaissance Studies

> Reading and Textual Exchange in Early Modern Europe
7-8 April 2006
Keele University

An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference

Keynote Speakers:      

> Professor Mark Greengrass     
> Professor James McLaverty
> Professor Joad Raymond

For further details of the programme email either
Ann McGruer (a.c.mcgruer@engl.keele.ac.uk)
or
Geoff Baker (hid08@keele.ac.uk)

or click here to visit the conference website where you can view abstracts of the papers being presented and download the registration form.

> Power and Image in Early Modern Europe
7-8 April 2006
University of New York Graduate Conference

E-mail: igsa.conference@nyu.edu

Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 15 January 2006

> Renaissance Theory Roundtable
3 April 2006
University College Cork, Ireland

University College Cork anounces a roundtable on 'Renaissance Theory'.

Participants will include:

> James Elkins (University College Cork/Art Institute of Chicago)
> Robert Williams (University of California)
> Claire Farago (University of Colorado)
> Matt Kavaler (University of Toronto)
> Michael Cole (University of Pennsylvania)
> Stephen Campbell (Johns Hopkins University)
> Fredrika Jacobs (Virginia Commonwealth University)

The panelists will be debating the optimal way of conceptualizing the Renaissance, and the connection between Renaissance art and contemporary art historical practices.

The roundtable is free and open to everyone, and no pre-registration is required. It begins at 10:30 AM Monday April 3, in Boole 5, on the campus of the University College Cork, Ireland. No papers will be read; the conversation will last about 4 hours, allowing for audience participation. It will be taped and produced as a book of the same title in 2007. The panelists' precirculated texts are available in advance.

For further information, please contact Jim Elkins: j.elkins@ucc.ie
Also visit the Image History Website

> CFP Fallacies of Naturalism during the Renaissance
1-2 April 2006
University of Essex

A 2-day symposium for postgraduate and recent doctoral graduates held at the University of Essex, 1-2 April 2006.

The project seeks to challenge the view, first promoted by Burkhardt and recently re-inscribed within 'anti-occularcentic' discourses, that Renaissance visuality was dominated by the objectivising tendencies of linear perspective, leading to a morally uncommitted eye and a morally de-spiritualised universe.

In our first symposium we aim to take up Leo Steinberg's prompt to go beyond the fallacy of naturalism and posit a plurality of visual practices and theories that share a common belief in the moral basis of sight and seeing.

Our two principal researchers on the project, Professor Thomas Puttfarken and Dr Kate Dunton, have a particular interest in Aristotelian notions of perception and moral insight and in Christian modes of viewing in 16th century Italy. We would be interested, however, to hear from anyone working on EUROPEAN ART c.1380-1650 whose research interests and concerns intersect with our own. We particularly welcome proposals from scholars in the early part of their career from the advanced stages of doctoral research onwards. It is intended that the symposium will lead to the publication of proceedings either in hard copy or online.

The symposium is free. The project will provide full-board and accommodation for attending speakers from the UK.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to
Dr Donna Roberts
Department of Art History and Theory,
University of Essex,
Wivenhoe Park,
Colchester, CO4 3SQ
E-mail: dmrobe@essex.ac.uk.
Tel: 10206 8723092.
Deadline for abstracts is 15 December 2005

> The Unorthodox Imagination in Late Medieval Britain
31 March - 1 April, Neale Lecture and Colloquium 2006
University College London

What were the limits and possibilities of the Medieval Universe? The aim of this colloquium is to examine diverse approaches to the universe, especially in relation to late medieval Britain, focusing on three particular areas: Belief and Wonder; Ritual and Deviance; Nature and Imagination.

Friday 31st March

4.00 p.m. Registration, South Cloisters
4.30 p.m. Tea, South Cloisters

5.30 p.m. Neale Lecture Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre

> Professor Jean-Claude Schmitt (Paris): Images, imagination and the orders of time

6.30 p.m. Reception, South Cloisters

Saturday 1st April
Comments and all sessions in the Old Refectory, UCL

9.30 a.m. Comments on and general discussion of the Lecture
> Robert Bartlett (St Andrews)

10.30 a.m. Coffee, South Cloisters

11.00 a.m. Session 1: Belief and Wonder
Chair: Miri Rubin (QMUL)
> John Arnold (Birkbeck): The materiality of unbelief in late medieval England
> Carl Watkins (Cambridge): Fascination and Anxiety in Medieval Wonder Stories
> Susan Reynolds (Oxford): Belief or unbelief in the legitimacy of social and political structures

Issues for discussion may include: The psychological processes of believing (and wondering and imagining). The variety, flexibility and mutable nature of belief in categories not open directly to the senses. How the supernatural (marvels, portents, ghosts etc) are incorporated into historical writings. The category of 'Marvels of the West. On secular structures, how far did people in different social classes accept them? Is there any connection between this and other sorts of belief?

12.30 p.m. Buffet Lunch, South Cloisters

1.30 p.m. Session 2: Ritual and Deviance
Chair: David d'Avray (UCL)
> Edina Bozoky (Poitiers): Relics : Imagination and Use for Individual Protection in the Middle Ages
> Frank Klaassen (Saskatchewan): Ritual Magic in Late Medieval Britain
> Lea Olsan (University of Louisiana at Monroe): Enchantment in Medieval Literature

Issues for discussion may include: Tensions in the relationship between celestial influence, personal spiritual forces, the free will of man and the omnipotence of God. The structure, goals and creativity of subversive rituals for controlling the supernatural. Magic techniques as tools for manipulating the universe. Rituals to induce 'wonder'. The relationship between magical ritual, orthodox belief and unorthodox imagination, eg the Christian practitioner of a magical ritual involving powdered basilisk. The meanings of 'enchantment': enchanted places and people, the use of enchantments for better or worse, and in relation to moral lessons and physical trials. Specifically British forms of magic.

2.45-3p.m. Tea break

3:00 pm. Session 3: Nature and Imagination
Chair: Sophie Page (UCL)
> Dr Aleks Pluskowski (Cambridge): Constructing exotic animals and environments in late Medieval Britain
> Dr Brigitte Resl (Goldsmiths): Wild beasts and the margins of imagination
> Dr Alixe Bovey (Kent): Feral Saints, Holy Madmen and the Meanings of Wilderness in Gothic Manuscript Margins

Issues for discussion may include: The relationship of medieval men and women to their physical environment: perceptions, subversions and manipulations of the natural order. The interpenetration of the supernatural with the natural. Wilderness and Civilization. Comparison of physical and conceptual approaches to fauna and environments. Constructing exotic animals and environments. The relationship between conceptualising a distant supernatural and exotic (angel or unicorn) and the use of ritual and imagination to bring them closer. Images of animals and nature which subvert texts.

For further information contact:

Dr Sophie Page
Lecturer in late Medieval History
Department of History
University College London
Gower Street WC1E 6BT
Phone: 0207 679 3619
Fax: 0207 413 8394
E-mail: ucraspa@ucl.ac.uk

Click here for the Registration form

Click here to visit the Unorthodox Imagination webpage

> Early Modern Studies in Scotland Seminar (March 2006)
University of Edinburgh

> Metropolis and State in Early Modern Europe (c.1400-1800)
27-28 March 2006
Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London WC1E 7HU

The conference, organized by the University of Amsterdam and the Centre for Metropolitan History (University of London), aims to investigate, from a comparative point of view, the peculiar relationship between European metropoleis (not necessarily all serving as capital cites) and the central state during the early modern period. A recent study supported by the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch National Organisation of Scientific Research has compared Amsterdam and Antwerp in terms of their autonomy vis-à-vis the central state.

The Centre of Metropolitan History in London has similar research interests and is keen to promote the comparative approach. We invite scholars who work on these and related questions to juxtapose their findings and interpretations with our own, so as to compare as wide a variety of European metropoleis and states as possible. The central questions of this conference are: To what degree are the political power or the bargaining power of the city the result of its economic strength? Are there other major sources of urban prestige which had a similar political significance? And, following the significant economic downturn of a town, how long does its urban autonomy last, and how strong is the tradition of bargaining power? As well as papers dealing with the interaction of economic and political factors, we will also welcome proposals for papers examining other aspects of the tension between the interests and policies of the state and those of the city, such as religious issues, recruitment of elites, ethnic and patriotic motives, military organization, debates on taxes, loans or diplomacy, and the relationship between metropolitan centre and provincial periphery in the shaping of debate.

The conference is concerned especially with the larger cities – including major ports, metropolitan centres and capitals – that have sizeable economic power and have to deal with some sort of centralized state. A degree of comparison in the papers – either between two cities in their relationship to the central state, or a comparison over time – will be highly appreciated. We also encourage all contributors to consider change over time, not least since autonomy is a relative concept.

The deadline for receipt of the final version of papers will be Monday 27 February 2006.

The papers will be circulated in advance, with commentators to each session to stimulate comparisons. For further information contact: Derek Keene (Derek.Keene@sas.ac.uk) and Marjoleiin ‘t Hart (m.c.thart@uva.nl)

> Reading and Writing Practices in Provincial Society 1300-1700
Saturday 25 March 2006
Canterbury Christ Church University
Room Pf 5 : Powell First Floor Room 5

First Annual Colloquium

This first annual, interdisciplinary colloquium draws together scholars working on aspects of printed book and manuscript culture. Examining a range of source material, it asks how recent developments in the fields of book history and the history of reading can help us to understand book culture in provincial society.

Speakers include:

> Andrew Butcher (University of Kent): Lambarde’s Fantasy

> Dr Jackie Eales (Christ Church University): ‘To Book and Pen’:The Reading and Writing Practices of Clergy Daughters in Seventeenth Century England       

> Dr Liz Oakley-Brown (Christ Church University): Women Reading/ Weaving Ovid

Conference fee £3:00

For further details and to confirm attendance please contact:

Claire Bartram cb203@canterbury.ac.uk

> The Intellectual and Cultural Lives of Protestant Strangers in Early-modern England
25 March 2006
Kings College, London

By the 17th century, thriving communities of protestant immigrants had settled in London and other parts of England. This conference will explore the intellectual and cultural worlds of these settlers and their families. Particular areas of interest include (but are not limited to): the French, Dutch and Italian churches and their influence; continuing links with Continental Europe; studies of individual experimental scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists and artisans; family life and material culture; merchant strangers; and integration into English society.

Proposals for papers of 20-25 minutes are invited, and should be emailed to:
Felicity Henderson at fch23@cam.ac.uk by 16 December 2005.

> The Renaissance Unconscious
25 February 2006
University of Stirling

A Colloquium organised by SINRS (The Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies)

Renaissance subjectivity has been the subject of scholarly interest for some time, but little attention has been given to what, in historical terms, might well prove to be something of an anachronism. Concepts such as ‘inwardness’, ‘repression’, ‘sublimation’, and the ‘unconscious’ itself have all informed scholarly debate, but there has been little attempt to explore their historical specificity. Thomas Hill’s Interpretation of Dreams (1571), and Timothy Bright’s Treatise on Melancholy (1584), as well as Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1627) all have much to say about what we have come to regard as the ‘unconscious’, and these writings are supplemented by such writers as Thomas Nashe, and the plays of Shakespeare and his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries and successors.

The purpose of this one-day symposium is to seek to explore what might be provisionally labelled ‘The Renaissance Unconscious’. Papers are invited on a range of topics that might be gathered together under this heading:

• Dreams and Nightmares
• Renaissance creativity
• The ‘political’ unconscious
• Renaissance repression
• Terror
• The patriarchal unconscious
• Subjectivity
• Imaginary and Symbolic orders
• The Renaissance ‘mirror’
• The Elizabethan World Picture and its discontents
• Psychomachia and ‘character’
• Renaissance fantasy
• Renaissance Science Fiction

We particularly welcome contributions from those working in interdisciplinary fields in the period, and we would wish to extend a very warm invitation to human scientists, musicologists, archaeologists, librarians and museum curators, as well as those working in literary or historical fields. The colloquium is scheduled to take place in the Iris Murdoch Centre at the University of Stirling on Saturday, 25 February.

Proposals for papers may be sent (by email or hard copy) to Professor John Drakakis, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA or by email to john.drakakis@stir.ac.uk by 1 December 2005

Click here for the Renaissance Unconscious Registration Form

Professor John Drakakis (University of Stirling)
Professor Jonathan Sawday (University of Strathclyde)

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers from postgraduate researchers, which explore any aspect of ‘Conflict and Authority’ during the early modern period.

Themes could include: social breakdown; gender crises; patriarchy; sexual deviance; war; crime and punishment; religious dissent; rioting; sub-cultures; violence and aggression; revolution; ridicule.

Please be imaginative in your interpretation of the theme. 

Please submit your abstract proposals of no more than 300 words to

Jennie Jordan
School of Arts, Communication and Culture,
Nottingham Trent University,
Clifton Lane,
Nottingham, NG11 8NS
UK

Tel: 44 (0)115 848 3545
E-mail: jenniejordan_forward@hotmail.com

Deadline for submission of proposals is Wednesday 4th January 2006

Click here to download a flyer.

> Reformation and its Consequences, London Renaissance Seminar
Saturday 28 January 2006 between 2pm-6pm
Birkbeck, University of London

Council Room, Main Building, Birkbeck College, Malet St, London WC1E 7HX

1:30 - 2:00     Coffee

2:00 - 3:30     David Loewenstein (Wisconsin):
'Writing and the Persecution of Heretics in Henry VIII's England: The Examinations of Anne Askew'.
                      Matt Dimmock (Sussex):
'Recasting a Rhetoric of Heresy: St Paul, the Prophet Muhammad and the Reformation in England'

3:30 - 4:00     Tea

4:00 - 5:30  Alexandra Walsham (Exeter):
'The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Memory and Legend in Early Modern Britain'

                   John Cooper (York):
'The Mental World of Francis Walsingham'

5:30 - 6:00    Drinks

Seminars are free and all are welcome.

Please contact Prof Thomas Healy (t.healy@bbk.ac.uk) for further details.

> Renaissance Greek (16 September 2005)
Room 4053, Arts Block, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

> Conversations with Angels, 9-10 September 2005
CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1RX

Convenors:
Lauren Kassell (University of Cambridge)
Joad Raymond (University of East Anglia)

In medieval and renaissance Europe angels were a topic in which theology, natural philosophy and politics converged. This conference will bring together historians of these fields and critics working on visual, musical and literary representation, to consider medieval and renaissance concepts of the nature, office and significance of angels, and the ways in which literal and figurative dialogues with angels were conducted.

Please contact Lauren Kassell with any enquiries about the academic content of this event: ltk21@cam.ac.uk

> Material Cultures and the Creation of Knowledge Conference (22-24 July 2005)
University of Edinburgh

For further information, E-mail: materialcultures@ed.ac.uk

> Early Modern Studies in Scotland Seminar (May 2005)
University of Aberdeen

In May the first Early Modern Studies in Scotland Seminar took place in Aberdeen, with speakers from Aberdeen, Dundee and Exeter.  The next seminar will now take place at Edinburgh in March.  A seminar in Dundee will run in May 2006, and St Andrew will host a seminar in October/Nov 2006.

> Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference (7–9 April 2005)

>Biblical Exegesis and the Emergence of Science in the Early Modern Era

Birkbeck, University of London, 26-27 November 2004

This conference aims to examine how biblical hermeneutics in the early modern period contributed to the natural philosophy of the era. The emphasis of the conference - on biblical reading practices, rather than 'religion' in general - is intended to focus on the specific procedures of interpretation and to propose models for how these techniques of exegesis interacted with scientific thought and discourse on the natural world in the era.

The conference presents an international selection of scholars from a variety of fields – the history of philosophy, theology, science, literature and intellectual history – who will explore a wide range of issues in the natural philosophy of the era, including medicine, astronomy and aspects of the occult. A broad range of exegetical techniques and interpretative philosophies will also be discussed and the uses of the Bible in the era will be examined from various angles. The range of thinkers who intertwine exegetical thought with the natural philosophy is testament to the importance of both: among those being discussed are Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Newton, Hooke, Paracelsus, Mersenne, Timothey Bright, Thomas Browne and Milton. The scope covered at the conference will ensure that in the relation of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century exegesis and science are given in-depth coverage.

For further information, please contact Dr Kevin Killeen and Dr Peter Forshaw

> Domestic and Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (26–27 November 2004)

Victoria & Albert Museum, London
This two-day conference invites reflections on the still under-researched characteristics of the institutional interior and on the reciprocal influence between the domestic and the institutional space in an age marked, in many European towns, by the growing presence of institutions. Although the issue has so far been explored in particular in relation to Catholic areas (especially Italy and Spain) we also hope to attract studies on other European countries and on the Protestant world. We aim to bring together social, architectural and art historians to explore the relationship between institutional interiors, gender and class; the way in which spatial arrangements contributed to forging the inmates’ behaviour and, in turn, the way in which the inmates themselves shaped the institutional space they inhabited; the range of objects that were available and circulated between houses and institutions; the transfer of rituals and models in interior decoration, furnishings, images from the domestic to the institutional interior and vice versa. For further information see the website of the AHRB Centre for the Study of Domestic Interior: www.rcs.ac.uk/csdi/ or contact the Centre at csdi@rca.ac.uk; tel: +44 (0) 20 7590 4183. Participating Institutions: Royal College of Art, Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Bedford Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London.

> Petrarch (1304–1374): translations, interpretations and appropriations through the ages (26–27 November 2004)

> Petrarch and the Renaissance (14–16 October 2004)

> Colloquium: University ceremony and festival in early modern France, Italy, and Spain (17 September 2004)

University of Warwick, AHRB Centre for the study of Renaissance elites and court cultures.
Speakers in this interdisciplinary colloquium will include Professor Peter Davidson (Aberdeen); Dr. Jonathan Davies (Warwick); Dr. Andrew Hegarty (Magdalen College History, Oxford); Dr. Judi Loach (Cardiff); Professor Alison Saunders (Aberdeen); and Dr. Alison Shell (Durham). For further information, please contact the colloquium organizer:
Dr. Sarah Knight,
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance,
University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7AL
E-mail: S.M.Knight@warwick.ac.uk
Tel: 02476-573089.

> ‘The Mistress-court of Mighty Europe’: configuring Europe and European identities in the Renaissance and early modern period: Literature – History – Representation (11–13 September 2004)

> The Tudor age: literary and cultural perspectives (7–9 September 2004)

> Renaissance imprisonment (1450–1700) (3–4 September 2004)

> Europe and the Islamic World: Cultural Transformations, 1453–1798 (14–16 July 2004)

> Literary culture in Spain and England (25 June 2004)

Strand Campus, King’s College, London
Another event in the season marking the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of London in 1604. The negotiations took place at a time when English literary and musical culture were particularly strong, while in Spain, prose fiction, the theatre and music were flourishing. By coincidence, the courtiers detailed to look after the Spanish delegation at Somerset House included the King’s Men, the group of players of whom Shakespeare was one. This was also the year in which the first masque was devised for Anne of Denmark: what influence was the queen consort to have on the artistic life of King James’s court? The first year of James’s reign had been marred by an outbreak of the plague which had kept the London theatres closed; 1604 was thus a new beginning in literary, as well as diplomatic, terms. Admission £25, to include lunch and drinks reception. To register, contact the Central Enquiries Unit, King’s College, London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS; tel: 020 7848 2929 or
E-mail: events@kcl.ac.uk