Vacancy: Two Early Modern Positions, University College Dublin

Two early modern posts at University College Dublin, both
starting in January 2012: a one-year Teaching Fellowship (salary
E33,645 p.a.) and a one-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship (salary E31, 730
p.a.). Both positions are for one calendar year, and full details can
be found on the UCD website. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will work on an
exciting new project based on the rich collections of the numerous
rare books libraries of Dublin, and IT/website-building skills will be
an advantage.

For informal enquiries about the teaching fellowship, please contact
Prof. Anne Fogarty (anne.fogarty@ucd.ie); for informal enquiries about
the post-doctoral fellowship, please contact Dr Jane Grogan
(jane.grogan@ucd.ie).

Please note: the application deadline is 13th November 2011.

Applications must be made online, through the UCD website:
http://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/


Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Visiting Professorship of British Literature English Department

The English Department at the University of Connecticut invites
applications for the Lynn Wood Neag Distinguished Professorship of
British Literature.  The appointment for this one-term visiting
professorship is for the spring semester of 2012 (January 9 to May
18).  


The applicant should be an established scholar of British
literature from a British university. Specific expertise in Scottish
literature is preferred. The Neag professor will teach two courses-one
undergraduate and one graduate-and will present one public lecture.


Generous compensation suitable to a professorship in the United
States, supplemented by housing and a reimbursement for transportation
up to $2,000 (US).  Please send a letter and c.v. to Wayne Franklin,
Head, Department of English, NEAG, University of Connecticut, 215
Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT  06269-4025 or e-mail your letter and c.v.
to robin.worley@uconn.edu. Consideration of applications will begin
immediately.



The British Milton Seminar: Call for Papers


AUTUMN MEETING, Saturday 22 October 2011

PRELIMINARY NOTICE / CALL FOR PAPERS

Venue: In the Birmingham and Midland Institute on Saturday 22 October 2011.  There will be two sessions, from 11.00 am to 12.30 pm, and from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm.

We currently intend that each session will have two papers (of approx. 25-30 minutes each), for which proposals are invited.

Please send proposals to Professor Thomas N. Corns no later than 22 August 2011.

Thomas N. Corns
Joint Convener


The Senses in Early Modern England 1485-1668


A conference hosted by the London Renaissance Seminar, Shakespeare’s Globe and Birkbeck, University of London

Prof. Erica Fudge, University of Strathclyde (Keynote Speaker)
Dr Farah Karim-Cooper, Shakespeare’s Globe (Keynote Speaker)


What did early modern subjects understand by the term “the senses”? What relationships and hierarchies were posited amongst the senses? How reliable were they in facilitating communication, understanding or knowledge? What kinds of sense experiences were implied in the production and consumption of texts in manuscript, print and performance?

There has been increased attention in early modern studies to various aspects of sense experience. Recent work is increasingly sensitive to the ways in which the senses were conceptualised at a particular historical moment, in terms of their relative significance, the physiological processes that they entailed, and the forms of experience and knowledge that they might facilitate for a subject. Such research foregrounds the importance of cultural context to sensory experiences, necessitating close attention to the particular ways in which early modern subjects both understood and experienced their own senses. This is visible in the posited ‘hierarchy of the senses’, and in the different understandings of the workings of the body and its relationship with the world; indeed, the place and nature of sensory experience in the relationship between outside phenomena and inner knowledge was central to the many epistemological questions being explored during the period. This conference aims to examine these culturally specific configurations and their importance to texts and performances; this importance is visible in many ways – in performance and reception at the theatre, in reading habits and indeed in conceptions of ‘reading’ itself, in the various ways in which senses appear in texts for rhetorical or other purposes, even in the relationships between the exterior, the body, cognition and selfhood explored in canonical texts of the period. We aim to bring together the latest research on this significant and critically current topic.

The conference will consist of a Friday evening postgraduate forum at Shakespeare’s Globe, and a day-long Saturday postgraduate conference at Birkbeck, University of London, with keynote papers from Dr Farah Karim-Cooper and Professor Erica Fudge. We welcome submissions in the form of 20 minute papers on subjects including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Theoretical and practical understandings of the experience and/or functioning of the senses,
  • How the senses appear in texts of various kinds,
  • How understandings of the senses shaped theatrical practice in England,
  • How such understandings may have shaped audience experience of drama,
  • The various sensory experiences of reading ,
  • Differing relations with the senses in different fields of artistic production,
  • The relationship between the senses, cognition and selfhood,
  • More recent theories of sensory experience/aesthetics and their relevance to early modern texts and contexts.

Please send an abstract of 250-300 words to Jackie Watson, Birkbeck College, at jwatso05@mail.bbk.ac.uk by Friday 24th June 2011, including your name, institution, position (e.g. PhD Student) and email address. We would also welcome joint submissions of 2-3 abstracts that could form a panel of 20 minute papers. 


"All the King's Fools", at Hampton Court Palace


You are warmly invited to a half-day academic symposium at Hampton Court Palace on Thursday 6 October 2011.

Entitled 'All the King's Fools', the symposium is part of a funding grant from the Wellcome Trust to explore the history of disability and the tradition of the fool at the Tudor court through a series of public engagement performances by actors with learning disabilities. The symposium is an opportunity to explore some of the research supporting this grant, as well as seeing the performances themselves.  The project is the result of a collaboration between Historic Royal Palaces, the University of East Anglia, Foolscap Productions, the Misfits Theatre Company, Oxford Brookes University, and Past Pleasures, and pilot performances were funded by the Arts Council.

Registration will start at 12 noon, and the day will finish by 17.30. In this time, there will be four or five short papers, including by me, Prof. Thomas Betteridge, Christopher Goodey, and Dr Elizabeth Hurren, and a chance to see two performances. Refreshments will be provided. Further details will be supplied to those that wish to attend.

If you able to come, you must RSVP, with your name, affiliation, and the names of anyone who will accompany you, for catering and security reasons, by Friday 23 September. 

With best wishes,
Professor Thomas Betteridge
tbetteridge@brookes.ac.uk