Italian Altarpieces in Context: Spatial and Material Environments for Sacred Art in the Renaissance Church Interior AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) with the National Gallery

The Department of History of Art at the University of Warwick and the National Gallery, London invite applications for a three-year AHRC funded collaborative doctoral studentship to begin in October 2012. Drawing on the National Gallery’s superlative collection of Renaissance religious painting, the project will investigate the historic conditions of display for painted altarpieces in Italian churches.

Renaissance altarpieces displayed in gallery spaces are fundamentally dislocated from their original contexts. As well as the secularisation of setting, these images have lost a wealth of physical paraphernalia that circumscribed their visibility for Renaissance audiences (material trappings which have traditionally been passed over by art historical research). By gathering together disparate information from published and unpublished sources, the project aims to clarify a range of perceptual factors that regulated viewing for Renaissance audiences (natural lighting conditions, artificial lighting technology, veiling practices, the surrounding colours and textures of the Renaissance church interior).

The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by Dr Donal Cooper (University of Warwick) and Carol Plazzotta (Myojin Curator of 16th Century Italian paintings, National Gallery). Applicants should be holders of a good first degree (at least 2:1 or equivalent). A relevant Masters degree, completed or close to completion, is also expected. A background in the Renaissance period will be advantageous, as will knowledge of Italian and/or Latin, and experience of working with relevant primary sources.

The successful candidate will meet the AHRC's criteria for eligibility, including residency criteria and be able to demonstrate the potential to develop advanced research skills. The award pays tuition fees and a maintenance grant each year (£14,140 in 2012-13) for a maximum of three years of full-time doctoral study, subject to evidence of satisfactory progress.

All candidates must apply via the University of Warwick's online postgraduate admission system. You will need to submit personal details and those of two academic referees. In addition you should upload a CV and a response to the project proposal, including relevant experience and particular interests (two pages maximum). Please specify ‘AHRC CDA studentship on Italian Altarpieces’ in the section of the form under the funding being sought.

Further particulars are available to download here.

For informal enquiries, please contact Donal Cooper at D.A.Cooper@warwick.ac.uk

The deadline for the receipt of applications is 5pm on Friday 20 July 2012. We anticipate interviewing shortlisted candidates at the National Gallery in London on Tuesday 31 July 2012.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Thomas Traherne Studies and their Future Directions / Future Directions for Traherne Studies

Selwyn College, University of Cambridge
14-15 December, 2012

Thomas Traherne (c.1637-1674) was a polymath with a distinctive theological vision. He wrote extensively, but remains a relatively obscure figure in seventeenth-century studies. Traditionally misunderstood as a figure somewhat out of his time, he is frequently considered within the contexts of medieval mysticism or post-Enlightenment Romanticism, when in fact he was strongly engaged with the thought of his age. Traherne read, noted and wrote upon a great variety of subjects – philosophical, theological, literary and scientific – perhaps remarkably considering his geographical circumstances and the relative privacy of his life. His works are grounded in many influences and reveal a great openness as to what writings, ancient and modern, could offer inspiration and guidance. This is a writer that believed, rather emphatically, that it would be possible both to discover and to communicate to others the intrinsic nature of “ALL THINGS”.

The aim of this symposium is to address the interdisciplinarity of Traherne’s work, with the hope of encouraging future interdisciplinary collaboration in Traherne studies. We are particularly interested in bringing together the endeavours of literary criticism – which cover an early and persistent association between Traherne and the metaphysical poets, the historicising of Traherne and a more recent interest in the manuscript evidence – with the fields of theology and philosophy, in which Traherne has been considered as a Christian mystic, an Anglican founding-father, a spiritual brother to the Cambridge Platonists, or a unique theological thinker with relevance to broader discussions on the practice of theology.

This will be the first academic symposium on Traherne since the discovery of the new manuscripts in 1996/7. The works of the Lambeth Palace MS (Inducements to Retiredness, A Sober View of Dr Twisse, Seeds of Eternity and The Kingdom of God) and the unfinished biblical epic, The Ceremonial Law, have opened up previously unknown aspects of Traherne’s thought and shone new light on the more well-known poems, Centuries, Thanksgivings and Select Meditations. We especially welcome papers that focus on the content of the Lambeth MS and The Ceremonial Law, and work that considers ways of responding to the overall question of the symposium: what is the way forward for Traherne studies?

Possible topics for papers might include, but are not limited, to:

• Identifying Thomas Traherne: Thomas Traherne as Poet, Theologian, Mystic, Heretic, Career Cleric, Platonist, Aristotelian, Anglican... How do we situate Traherne in his time? Is it still appropriate to associate him with the Romantics, or the metaphysical poets? How do we arbitrate between competing pictures of Traherne?
• Influences on Traherne: The Cambridge Platonists, the Royal Society, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, the church fathers
• Material Texts: The formation and editing of the manuscripts
• Interdisciplinary approaches to Traherne: Traherne as poetic-theologian / theological-poet
• New approaches to Traherne: Traherne and music, Traherne and art, Traherne and poetry, Traherne and ecology

We invite proposals for 20-25 minute papers – please send an abstract of 300 words, along with a short biographical statement, to Cassie Gorman (ceg47@cam.ac.uk) and Beth Dodd (esd26@cam.ac.uk). The deadline for abstracts is August 17th, 2012. We will inform applicants about acceptance by the end of August.

Research Fellowship at Warburg: Europe and the Arab World in the Middle Ages

The publishing house Brill (Leiden), is generously sponsoring a new annual research Fellowship at the Warburg Institute’s Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE). The Fellowship has been made possible by the “Sheikh Zayed Book Award” which was awarded to Brill Publishers in March 2012 for publishing excellence in Middle East and Islamic Studies.

The Brill Fellowship at CHASE to be held in the academic year 2012-13 will be of two or three months duration and is intended for a postdoctoral researcher. The Fellowship will be awarded for research projects on any aspect of the relations between Europe and the Arab World from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

The closing date for applications is the 5th July 2012. Please visit our website for more details (http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/fellowships/brill-chase/).

Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference 2012

A provisional programme for the 2012 Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference (31 Aug. & 1 Sept.) is now available on our website. Registration is now open, and can be completed here. The conference fee remains the same as last year (€30 or €20 for students/seniors/unemployed). We will also be going for dinner in O'Connell's Restaurant, Donnybrook on Friday, 31 August - dinner costs an additional €55.

The conference plenary address will be delivered on Friday, 31 August by Prof. John Patrick Montaño (University of Delaware), on the topic of 'Humiliation, Destruction and Death: Violence and Cultural Difference in Tudor and Stuart Ireland'.

We hope to see many of you there. If you have any queries, please let me know.

Best wishes,
Eoin Kinsella

Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference
University College Dublin
31 August - 1 September 2012

www.tudorstuartireland.com
Follow @TudorStuartIre on Twitter

Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Map of Early Modern London project, Canada

The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) project invites applications for a post-doctoral fellowship valued at $32,500 per year for up to two years. The successful applicant will be expected to join the project on site in Victoria, BC, and work closely with the project director, developers, and research assistants in the next phase ofMoEML's development. He or she will take a leading role in the ongoing identification of all the features of the Agas Map (Civitas Londinum); textual and critical work on the map; ongoing work on the encyclopedia of early modern streets and sites; and the editing, markup, annotation, and creation of a critical apparatus for a versioned edition of the 1598, 1603,1633, and modern texts of John Stow's A Survey of London. 

 The successful applicant will also be encouraged to work on related projects, to bring his or her particular research interests to MoEML, and to help shape MoEML's future. Applicants need to have a strong background in the literature of early modern London, preferably in textual criticism, drama, chronicle histories, civic literature, pageantry, and/or the geohumanities. Facility with literary computing and some knowledge of TEI are essential. Experience with editing, historical or literary GIS, and databases is desirable.

MoEML is an established project with SSHRC funding and ongoing technical support from the Humanities Computing and Media Centre at the University of Victoria. MoEML is directed by Janelle Jenstad (Department of English, University of Victoria), and overseen by advisory and editorial boards. The summary fromMoEML's SSHRC Insight Grant can be found atmapoflondon.uvic.ca/SSHRC2012.htm.

The University of Victoria is committed to providing an environment that protects and promotes the human rights of all persons and and affirms the dignity of all persons. MoEML is committed to honouring the Collaborators' Bill of Rights.

Enquiries and applications may be sent to MoEML via Janelle Jenstad atjenstad@uvic.ca. Electronic application packages should include a statement of relevant experience, a full CV, reference letters (or the names of referees), and links to the applicant's projects and publications. All applications received by July 17, 2012 will be acknowledged. Interviews will be conducted via Skype the following week.

Shakespeare (the journal) - new publication procedures, now ‘Online First’

The Routledge journal Shakespeare (ISSNs 1745-0918 Print, 1745-0926 Online) appears online every three months with an annual printed volume of four issues.

The electronic issues are identical to the printed volume, including in their pagination. Because the journal has a considerable backlog of accepted articles waiting for an available slot in an issue, it can take some time before they appear even in the electronic form.

The journal has decided to adopt a publication method known an 'Online First' in which articles are made available electronically even before they are assigned to an issue. In this method, articles are copy-edited, typeset and corrected as normal. They don't have their final pagination, but are in every other respect identical to the article that will eventually be published in an issue. Once online, the articles can be cited by their Digital Object Identifier (DOI) (a unique code findable online that remains the same throughout the life of the article), and when it comes time to publish the issue, the 'Online First' articles are replaced with the fully- paginated versions.

This means that authors' work is accessible sooner than before. Feedback from authors shows that it is increasingly important to publish quickly and ensure that articles are widely available. Publishing articles online earlier also increases the citation window, so it has a positive effect on impact factors.

For the purposes of the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) appearance in the 'Online First' stream counts as publication and such an article is returnable in the census.

Information on the journal and a link to the online submission system can be found at <http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshk20/current>.

Call For Papers: Preternature Volume 3:1 The Early Modern Witch (1450-1700)

The publication of early witchcraft texts created witches by creating controversy about them. Witch-dramas, pamphlets, testimonies about witch-encounters, sermons, and accounts of trials published the anxieties, recounted the long standing suspicions, and sensationalised the physical manifestations that made women into witches. Sometimes accompanied by woodcuts, many texts insisted on the reality, materiality, and immediacy of witches and their familiars. In these, the early modern witch was represented as both a perpetrator of violence and the victim of it. The early modern witch is a fascinating enigma: a legal entity and a neighbourhood resource or nuisance, she purportedly engaged in natural and supernatural forms of wisdom with the potential to heal or harm others, or even herself. The words she spoke, mumbled could become malefic by intent, if not by content. According to the sensationalist constructions of witchcraft, her body was contaminated by the magics she used: she fed familiars with blood, grew spare parts, could not weep, and would not sink. In accounts focused on bewitchment and possessions, the witch vomited pins or personified pollution and a culturally legitimate cunning-person such as a physician or minister or exorcist acted as curative. Despite the skepticism about witches that followed Reginald Scot’s assertions and the decline of legal examinations trials, the early modern witch has remained a vital force in the cultural imagination. Witchcraft remain the focus of academic articles, scholarly volumes, digital resources, archaeological digs, children's and teenage fiction, popular media and museum studies.

This issue of Preternature, in association with the “Capturing Witches” conference, invites contributions from any discipline that highlight the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the early modern witch. Contributions should be roughly 8,000 - 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, and adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes).

Contributions must be submitted through the Preternature CMS. Deadline for final submissions is November 30, 2012.

Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the Editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be made to the Book Reviews Editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell.

Queries concerning this special volume can be sent to Professor Alison Findlay (a.g.findlay@lancaster.ac.uk) and Dr. Liz Oakley-Brown (e.oakley-brown@lancaster.ac.uk).

Full journal style guides are available at http://preternature.org. Information on the early English witch can be found at the WEME project at http://witching.org.

Details on the “Capturing Witches” conference can be found at http://www.transculturalwriting.com/?page_id=1535

Preternature is a bi-annual publication, published through Penn State Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e- book.

Negotiating Early Modern Women

Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading, UK
Early Modern Studies Conference July 12th-14th 2012

A series of panels within Reading University’s Early Modern Studies Conference (2012) will be devoted to the exploration of writing by early modern women. We would welcome proposals for panels or individual papers addressing any aspect of early modern women’s writing, but we are particularly keen to receive proposals addressing the critical assumptions underlying current scholarly practice.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Why do we study writing by early modern women?
• Can we justify the study of ‘women’ as a category?
• Is there such a thing as ‘women’s writing’?
• What can the work of individual women, or specific groups of women, reveal about women and gender in the period more generally?
• How do we understand the relationship between writing by men and that by women?
• What does women’s writing reveal about the early modern canon as a whole?
• Is it possible to reach conclusions about women and their use of literary genre?
• What new directions might we take in the study of early modern women?
• What, currently, is the place of theory in the study of early modern women?

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to Dr. Alice Eardley by January 31st 2012: a.r.eardley@reading.ac.uk

For further details see: http://www.reading.ac.uk/emrc/conferences/emrc-conference.aspx

EMRC: Annual Conference

University of Reading Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies, 12-14 July 2012

The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years, proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on research in any aspect of early modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world. This year, the plenary speakers are Professor Paul Yachnin (McGill), director of the ‘Making Publics’ project, and Professor John Morrill (Cambridge).

We would welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on any aspect of early modern literature, history, art, music and culture. Panels have been proposed on the following themes and further panels or individual papers are also invited on these topics or any other aspect of early modern studies:

• Making publics • Gathered texts: print and manuscript • Politics and Biblical Interpretation • Negotiating early modern women’s writing • Passionate bodies, passionate minds • Prince Henry: role, rite, and rhetoric

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the Conference Committee, Dr. Chloë Houston, by 9 January 2012, c.houston@reading.ac.uk.

Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.

http://www.reading.ac.uk/emrc/conferences/emrc-conference.aspx

Call for Papers: The Reception of Newton

At the Edward Worth Library, Dublin
12-13 July 2012

Information and Registration: eaboran@tcd.ie

Theme:

In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to the elucidation of the precise nature and scope of Newton’s influence on eighteenth-century science in particular, and on Enlightenment culture more generally. The Edward Worth Library is uniquely positioned to contribute to ongoing reassessment. An early eighteenth century library belonging to a Dublin physician, Edward Worth (1678-1733), the Library and its holdings bears witness to the spread of newtonianism in Ireland. Worth’s collection reminds us of the range and depth of the newtonian impact on Europe and the crucial role played by second generation newtonians in clarifying, classifying and re-presenting Newton’s ideas. To mark Dublin City of Science 2012 the Worth Library is organising a two-day conference to explore the many facets of Newton’s legacy. It is envisaged that a selection of the papers will be published.

Speakers include: Professor Mordechai Feingold (Caltech); Professor Sarah Hutton (Aberystwyth University); Professor Robert Iliffe (University of Sussex); Dr Scott Mandelbrote (Peterhouse College, Cambridge); Professor William Newman (Indiana); and Professor Lawrence M. Principe (Johns Hopkins University).

Abstracts of 300 words and a short author profile should be sent to Dr Elizabethanne Boran (eaboran@tcd.ie) no later than 1 March 2012. Independent scholars and researchers from all disciplines are welcome. Accommodation and registration costs will be covered and a small number of travel bursaries are available.

Organisers: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian, The Edward Worth Library, Dublin.
Professor Mordechai Feingold (Caltech).
This is a partner conference of Dublin City of Science 2012.
www.edwardworthlibrary.ie

Society For Renaissance Studies: Biennial Conference

The 5th Biennial conference of the Society for Renaissance Studies will be held at the University of Manchester, UK, July 9-11, 2012

Accompanying events are being planned in the Whitworth Gallery, Chetham's Library, the John Rylands Library, the People's History Museum, the Royal Northern College of Music, and other cultural institutions in the city.

In addition to scholarly papers, the conference will offer workshops on publishing, funding applications, teaching, and public engagement, as well as tours of libraries.

Plenary Speakers

Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris/ Collège de France/ University of Pennsylvania)

Alan Stewart (Columbia University)

Bette Talvacchia (Connecticut University)

Call For Papers

We invite proposals for panels on any aspect of Renaissance history, art, literature or culture, and for individual papers on one of the following themes:

* Materiality, book history and textual culture
* Premodern gender and histories of sexuality
* Emotion and the senses
* Translation and/ or intercultural exchange
* Cities, topographies, urbanisation and visualising the urban
* Athleticism, competition, and the body
* Science and enquiry
* In addition there is an open strand

The 'Renaissance' will be broadly defined from the mid-1300s to the early 1700s (and globally understood), but papers that engage with questions of periodisation, disciplinarity and the later representation of this period are also welcomed (seehttp://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRSAboutUsPage.html).

Proposals (paper: 400 words, panel: 1000 words) are welcome from postgraduates as well as established scholars and they should be sent by Friday 16 September 2011 to the conference organizer (decisions on papers to be made by the end of October):

Dr Jerome de Groot
English and American Studies
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
United Kingdom
SRS2012@manchester.ac.uk

http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/srsnc/

Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Conference

Further details (including a full programme, registration forms and information about accommodation) will be posted on the conference website as soon as they become available.

Please note that the Society is particularly keen to encourage postgraduates to offer papers, and we will be able to offer some bursaries to cover registration and accommodation expenses. Details on bursaries to follow on the conference website.

Please note that the SRS has agreed with the Renaissance Society of America: RSA members will not have to join the SRS to participate in this conference.