Dreams & Dreaming: Disciplinary Perspectives & Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Friday 25th January 2013 10am – 5pm Room G16, Main Building

This event is free – registration essential

Studying the phenomenon of dreaming can reveal deep and surprising truths about human experience, consciousness, and memory. Academics from disciplines as diverse as psychology, cognitive neuroscience, cultural studies, philosophy, psychoanalytic studies, anthropology and history can agree with this: but what are the ‘truths’ that these various disciplines have discovered and are they compatible with one another?

This workshop will bring together experts on dreaming to present dream research from the perspective of their discipline. It will be an opportunity for those with other disciplinary perspectives to learn from, to challenge, and to explore alternative ways of understanding dreams. It will also be an opportunity for researchers to reflect collectively on the relationship between the ‘folk psychological understanding’ of dreaming and the understanding encoded in their own and others’ disciplinary approaches. The hope is that participants will form a network of experts opening up potential for future collaborative research and projects.

Speakers:
Dr Robin Carhart-Harris (Neuroscience, Imperial college)
Josh Cunliffe (Psychosocial studies, bbk)
Prof Angus Gowland (History, UCL)
Professor Jim Hopkins (KCL)
Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska (Psychoanalysis & Film Studies, BBK)
Dr Hugo Spiers (Neuroscience, UCL)
Dr Laurence Spurling (Psychosocial Studies, BBK)
Prof Charles Stewart (Anthropology, UCL)
Dr Rachael Wiseman (Philosophy, Visiting Fellow, BIH)

Workshop organised by Dr Rachael Wiseman, Visiting Fellow Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

The UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, Seminar Series (Various Dates)

The UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges is delighted to announce that our first event of 2013 will be a special lecture by Professor Nigel Smith of Princeton University. He will speak on Literature, Politics and the Dutch Republic.

The lecture will take place at 6pm on Thurs 24th January in Christopher Ingold G21, Ramsay Lecture Theatre. All welcome. For maps and directions, please see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/find-us.

Other events this term are:
Wed 6th February, Foster Court 114, 6pm: Early Modern Women and Drama
Special guest speakers: Alison Findlay (Lancaster) and Marion Wynne-Davies (Surrey).
Yasmin Arshad (UCL) and Emma Whipday (UCL) will also introduce their forthcoming production of Samuel Daniel's Tragedie of Cleopatra (see below).

Sun 3rd March: a performance of Samuel Daniel's Tragedie of Cleopatra. Further details to follow. 
This production is generously supported by the 'Gained in Translation' programme of the UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction, the UCL European Institute, and FIGS (Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies, Arts and Humanities, UCL).

20th March, Foster Court 114, 4.30pm: Social, Intellectual and Political Networks and Exchanges across the Italian Peninsula (1500-1700)
Speakers: Simone Testa (British Library) and Gianfrancesco Lorenza (Royal Holloway).

Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Medicine Seminars

A seminar series, open to all, on the History of Health and Medicine at King’s College, London, generously supported by the Principal’s Innovation Fund. NB All seminars start at 6pm EXCEPT on 13th February when we start at 6.30 pm.

God and the Plague
Wednesday 23rd January 2013 – Safra Lecture Theatre
Andrew Cunningham (University of Cambridge)

Medicine, Religion and the Politics of Healing in Early Modern England
Wednesday 6th February 2013 – K3.11
Peter Elmer (University of Exeter)

Miraculous Cures and a Martyr's Virtue in the Twelfth Century
Wednesday 13th February 2013 AT *6.30* – Anatomy Museum, Floor 6, King’s Building
Miri Rubin (Queen Mary, University of London)
[Please note this seminar follows a half-day workshop between 2.00 and 4.45 on Portraiture and Death. For further details contact Dr. Keren Hammerschlag: keren.hammerschlag@kcl.ac.uk]

Religious Affiliation and Medical Practice in Early Modern Bristol
Wednesday 20th February 2013 – K3.11
Jonathan Barry (University of Exeter)

Birkbeck Institute for Social Research/Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities: Development of Psychoanalytic Concepts

Freud’s Models of the Mind : Dreams, Symptoms and the Topographical Model
Thursday 17th January 7.30pm – 9pm Venue: Archaeology G6 Lecture Theatre (UCL) 31-34 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PY

Speaker: David Bell

Having situated psychoanalysis within this broader context, this lecture will go to consider Freud’s first model of the mind and will explore the structure of explanation characteristic of his approach to dreams and symptoms

The Development of Psychoanalytic Concepts – Lecture 2
Register here – places still available
Suggested readings are here

David Bell is the Visiting Professorial Fellow in both the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He is giving a series of lectures and workshops during the year, all of which are open to members of the public as well as students from any institution.

The Eighth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine

Maaike van der Lugt (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7 / Institut Universitaire de France)

"Generatio: medieval debates about procreation, heredity and 'bioethics'"
Thursday 17 January 2013, 4.30pm
Department of History and Philosophy of Science Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH

In medieval debates, the idea that the mixture of substances provided by parents determines the appearance and sex of the child coexisted, without contradiction, with the conviction that environmental and behavioural factors also play an important part. Even though the scholastics invented the concept of hereditary disease, distinctions now common between heredity and development, between the acquired and the inherited, had only limited relevance. Generatio, not heredity, was the central concept. Generatio wasn't just the stuff of scholastic speculation. As is the case today, debates about the mechanism of conception, the nature of the substances involved, and the development of the seed into a viable human being had larger moral, legal and practical significance. Several of these issues will be addressed in the lecture: whether abortion must be equated with murder, the treatment reserved for 'monstrous' births, and the extent to which there was room, within the medieval concept of generatio, for eugenics.

There will be tea before the lecture, at 4pm, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 6pm.

The same day at 11.30 Dr van der Lugt will lead a workshop discussion of precirculated texts on "The invention of hereditary disease in medieval medicine"

The concept of hereditary disease – which would play a crucial role in modern debates about heredity – is a medieval creation. Taking their cue from Arabic medical treatises, scholastic physicians forged the concept of hereditary disease by transferring the traditional, legal sense of the adjective (related to the transmission of goods) to the biological realm. However, Western physicians went beyond their sources. They developed legal analogies, defined the types of illnesses that are passed on by heredity, and proposed various causal patterns to account for them. The most articulate medieval discussions, which explicitly distinguish between the hereditary and the congenital, date from around 1320. Hereditary disease remained, nevertheless, relatively marginal in later medieval medicine, especially compared to debates about plague; the latter not only challenged dominant theories of disease, like hereditary disease, but also constituted an urgent threat for whole populations.

<Wellcome Lecture 2013>

Medieval Manuscripts Seminar: A typology of magical diagrams in medieval manuscripts

17 January 2013 – room 264 (second floor) Senate House, 5.30pm.

Dr Sophie Page (History, UCL) is speaking on ‘A typology of magical diagrams in medieval manuscripts’

For further information contact Pamela.Robinson@sas.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Women and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Paris)

International conference, 21-22 June 2013, Paris, France

University Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370)
and University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)

The multiplication of cabinets of curiosities and the obsession with novelty are evidence of the development of a “culture of curiosity” in the early modern period. While curiosity had long been considered as an intellectual vice, associated with hubris and the original sin, and described by Augustine as “lust of the eyes”, it became a virtue in the 17th century. One of the main reasons for this transformation was the continued efforts of natural philosophers to demonstrate that curiosity was morally acceptable in order to legitimise their scientific endeavour. Francis Bacon and his followers thus insisted on the code of conduct of natural philosophers, the usefulness of the knowledge they were seeking and the discrepancy between their own research and occult sciences. All of them championed the “good curiosity” of the natural philosophers, as opposed to the “bad curiosity” of men and women interested in magic, and in trivial and superficial matters.

If there was indeed a “rehabilitation of curiosity” in the early modern period, did it have any impact on women’s desire for knowledge? The emergence of women philosophers at the time (Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Lady Ranelagh, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Catherine of Sweden, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catherine Trotter, etc.) may indicate that their curiosity was now considered as legitimate and morally acceptable – or at least that it was tolerated. Yet it has been suggested that the new status of curiosity in the early modern period led instead to an even stronger distrust for women, who were both prone to curiosity and curiosities themselves. The June 2013 conference on “Women and Curiosity” aims at assessing the impact of the alleged “rehabilitation of curiosity” on women in the early modern period, by analysing discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity. Iconographic and fictional representations of curious women and female curiosity might also give an insight into the relations between women and curiosity in the early modern period (for example, Cesare Ripa’s allegory of curiosity as “a huge, wild-haired, winged woman” in Iconologia (1593), or representations of emblematic curious women such as Eve, Dinah, Pandora, etc.). The origins of these discourses and representations, as well as their premises, might also be investigated: to what extent did the condemnation of women’s curiosity reveal a fear of disorder and transgression? Did it betray male anxiety about female sexuality or about the mystery of birth? Was it justified by medical interpretations of curiosity, such as a specific humoural condition?

Women’s own conception of curiosity / curiosities in the early modern period might also be of interest, especially as it is rarely studied. The conference on “Women and Curiosity” will thus give us the opportunity to focus on what women themselves wrote about curiosity in their treatises, fictional works, translations, and correspondences. Did women writers consider curiosity as intrinsically female? How did they react to male discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity? What representations of curiosity did they give in their texts?

Please send an abstract for 25-minute papers and a biographical note to Sandrine Parageau (sparageau@hotmail.com) or Line Cottegnies (line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) by 30 January, 2013.

UCLA Visiting Fellows in History of the Material Text

The UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies announces two two-year visiting positions in History of the Material Text, to be housed in the Departments of History and English, respectively. 

These positions are designed to enable participation in the life of the Center and the appropriate Department, as well as fuller use of the riches of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the Special Collections of the UCLA Libraries. We seek scholars of early modern studies (16th-18th centuries), broadly defined, whose expertise includes but is not limited to book history, history of the material text, and print cultures, in Europe and beyond. Applicants should have received their doctorates in the last six years (no earlier than July 1, 2007 and no later than September 30, 2013).

Visiting fellows will teach two courses per year in their respective Department, one of which would be at the Clark Library. Fellows are also expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center’s working groups and other research initiatives.

Fellows will receive a stipend of $50,000 per year, plus benefits for the fellow and dependents and a $3000 research fund.

Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae,
20-page writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to:Barbara Fuchs, Director
Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies
310 Royce Hall Box 951404
UCLA
Los Angeles CA 90095-1404

Letters of recommendation may also be submitted electronically to:
c1718cs@humnet.ucla.edu

Application dossiers are due by Feb. 1, 2013.The position is subject to final administrative approval. UCLA is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

Call for papers: "Teaching and Publishing Mathematics and Science in the Society of Jesus in Early Modern Europe"

Wuppertal, 12-13 June, 2013

The workshop "Teaching and Publishing Mathematics and Science in the Society of Jesus in Early Modern Europe" is being organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. The Society of Jesus was a key player in the systematic dissemination of up-to-date knowledge of science and mathematics during the early modern period. The aim of the workshop is to take stock of the scope and impact of Jesuit mathematical and scientific teaching and publishing in early modern Europe. Special attention will be paid to the question of how to assess the Jesuit's influence in these fields in ways that go beyond the study of particular Jesuit authors or colleges.

For further information on the topic, please get in touch with Volker Remmert:  remmert@uni-wuppertal.de.

The workshop's ambit invites interdisciplinary collaboration.

Proposals for papers from all who can contribute to the topic are therefore welcome. Special consideration will be given to proposals from young scholars.

The language of the workshop will be English. Submissions must include a title, an abstract (1-2 pages) of a 20 minute presentation, and a short CV (maximum one page). Submissions should be sent to Volker Remmert at remmert@uni-wuppertal.de no later than February 22, 2013.

Contributors: overnight accommodation costs will be covered. But because funds are limited, please let us know well in advance if you will need support to cover travelling expenses.

We look forward to your participation and would also be grateful if you could inform others, especially young academics, about the workshop and this call for papers.

Prof. Dr. Volker R. Remmert
Wissenschafts und Technikgeschichte
Historisches Seminar Fachbereich A
Bergische Universität Wuppertal Gaußstraße 20
42097 Wuppertal
Tel. 0202-439-2897

e-mail remmert@uni-wuppertal.de
http://www.geschichte.uni-wuppertal.de/ueber-uns/personen/hauptamtliche-professoren/prof-dr-volker-remmert.html


Rumford Scholarship 2013-2014

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) and the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) are pleased to invite applications for the 2013-2014 Rumford Scholarship.

This annual award will enable the Rumford Scholar to travel to Europe in order to undertake original research in the history of chemistry or alchemy in libraries/archives/museum collections using their particular resources. The award may be held in any European country.

The value of the award is £2300. Applications are due April 7, 2013. For more information or an application, please go to:

http://www.chemheritage.org/research/fellowships-and-travel-grants/beckman-center-fellowships/index.aspx#FellowshipsandTravelGrants

Anna Marie Roos, Ph.D., F.L.S.
Hon. Secretary of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Email: anna.roos@history.ox.ac.uk



Call for Papers: Translation and the Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Science


A one-day colloquium at the Warburg Institute, London
Friday 28 June, 2013

Organized by Sietske Fransen (Warburg Institute) and Niall Hodson (Durham University) in collaboration with Prof. Joanna Woodall (Courtauld Institute), Dr Eric Jorink (Huygens ING), and Prof. Peter Mack (Warburg Institute).

Keynote speaker: Prof. Sven Dupré (Freie Universität Berlin)

Paper proposals are invited for a one-day colloquium on the role of translation and translators in the circulation of knowledge in Early Modern science.

In recent decades, scholars have offered myriad new insights into the exchange and propagation of scientific ideas in the early modern Republic of Letters. Within this vibrant field, however, the part played by translation and translators remains little studied. This colloquium will explore the role of translation in early modern science, providing a forum for discussion about translations as well as the translators, mediators, agents, and interpreters whose role in the intellectual history of the period remains ill defined and deserves greater attention.

The topics listed below offer some guidance for proposals:
  • Philosophy and theory of translation
  • The practice of translating texts and images
  • The ‘professional translator’
  • The function and use of translations
  • Translation in academies
  • The use of auxiliary languages
  • Translation in learned correspondence
  • The readers of translations
  • Informal translations: adaptations, paraphrases, summaries

Proposals for 25-minute papers should be submitted to Niall Hodson (n.d.hodson(at)durham.ac.uk) and Sietske Fransen (sietske.fransen(at)postgrad.sas.ac.uk) by 28th February 2013. A dedicated committee will evaluate the proposals and respond to submissions by 15th March 2013.

For further details, please visit the colloquium website at:

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia/translation/

This colloquium is supported by the Warburg Institute and Durham University, and is organized in collaboration with the Visualizing Knowledge in the Early Modern Netherlands project at the Courtauld Institute, London.

Seminar on literature, learning, and the social orders in early modern Europe (various dates, All Souls College)

The following seminars will be given at 2.00 p.m. (ending by 3.30p.m.) on Wednesdays in Hilary Term 2013 in the Wharton Room, All Souls College, Oxford.

Convenor: Dr Neil Kenny

PROFESSOR PETER BURKE, Univ. of Cambridge 16 Jan.: 'The social history of history in early modern Europe'

DR ROWAN TOMLINSON, Bristol Univ. 23 Jan.: 'Method, judgement, and social origin: theories and practices of historia in late Renaissance France'

DR JONATHAN PATTERSON, Univ. of Cambridge 30 Jan.:'Understanding avarice through the social orders in early modern France'

PROFESSOR JANE STEVENSON, Univ. of Aberdeen 6 Feb.: 'Martha Marchina: poetry and social mobility in Baroque Rome'

PROFESSOR HOWARD HOTSON, Univ. of Oxford 13 Feb.: 'Universal education: Comenius' pampaedia and some seventeenth-century critics'

PROFESSOR DAVID NORBROOK, Univ. of Oxford 20 Feb.: 'Gentry and gender: Lucy Hutchinson and the social interpretation of the English Civil War'

DR HELENA SANSON, Univ. of Cambridge 27 Feb.: 'Women, language, and access to learning in early modern Italy: an investigation across social classes'

PROFESSOR STEPHEN MILNER, Univ. of Manchester 6 Mar.: 'Pop go the classics: vernacular humanism and the social world of Renaissance Florence'

Call for Papers: “Early modern Baconians: science, politics and philosophy”

This special issue of SOCIETY AND POLITICS aims to gather together articles dealing with the formation, evolution and influence of Francis Bacon’s thought. We are particularly interested in articles exploring the influence of Francis Bacon’s ideas upon seventeenth and eighteenth century European thought: from science to politics, and from religion to the evolution of literary forms and genres. Our purpose is to accommodate a diversity of approaches, coming from different fields. We welcome articles on experiment and experimental science, natural history, medicine of the mind, the Baconian ‘method’, the advancement of learning, religion and theology, politics and the reformation of law, fables and projects for ‘scientific’ or ‘esoteric’ societies (inspired by Francis Bacon’s writings). SOCIETY AND POLITICS welcomes research coming from different fields and strongly encourages cross-disciplinary approaches.

SOCIETY AND POLITICS is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by “Vasile Goldiș” Western University of Arad, Romania. See http://uvvg.ro/socpol/.

Papers no longer than 8.000 words and book reviews no longer than 800 words should be submitted by email to Dana Jalobeanu,dana.jalobeanu@celfis.ro and Oana Matei, oanamatei@yahoo.com by the 10th of February 2013.

For the authors guidelines see:
http://uvvg.ro/socpol/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&amp;id=48&Itemid=53

Two Ph.D Studentships: 1. Thomas Browne's Library and 2. Thomas Browne's Correspondence

Two Ph.D Studentships - deadline 4th February

PhD Studentship, University of York: Thomas Browne’s library and sources (3 years, from September 2013) – an AHRC-funded studentship

This cross-disciplinary project will create an intellectual map of the library of Thomas Browne by tracing the relationships between his books as listed in the unusually detailed 1711 sales catalogue, and will produce an archaeology of Browne’s thought, with attention to the influence of classical, medieval, and Renaissance sources. It will map the holdings of his library onto his own work, and make a detailed case-study of at least one of his book-clusters (in, e.g., medicine, natural philosophy, travel literature, biblical scholarship, or patristics). The successful applicant will not necessarily be expected to have advanced knowledge of Browne’s library and works, but will be expected to offer a preliminary vision of an approach to Browne’s work in relation to the history of ideas.

The project will re-establish, in particular, the often- neglected relationship between Browne’s great encyclopaedic workPseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) and the books ‘behind’ it. It will have two broad aims, the first relating to the library itself, and the second a case study in the organisation of knowledge.

Among the ideas that the first part of the project might consider are: Renaissance classical reception; the material reconstruction of the past within libraries; taxonomies of library arrangement; the conceptualisation of early-modern reading through study of Browne’s catalogue of error (Pseudodoxia); a catalogue with an intriguing relationship to sources that are deemed to be unreliable or mistaken; the relationships between books, and the distributions of knowledge, that inhere in the structures of libraries and catalogues. How are clusters within Browne’s library related to the intellectual roots of his encyclopaedic frameworks? How do his books reveal a broader 17th-century intellectual landscape and his own social, cultural and political milieu? What can the library teach us about the acquisition and organisation of knowledge in the period?

The second part of the project will develop from out of the candidate’s own interests, based on one or more of Browne’s fields of knowledge. The student will be based at the University of York in the Department of English and Related Literature, under the supervision of Dr Kevin Killeen (co-editor of Pseudodoxia within the Browne edition, together with Prof Will West and Prof Jessica Wolfe) and will come away from the award with original research that sheds new light on the intellectual history of the era.

As part of the AHRC-funded edition of The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne (8 vols, OUP 2015-2019; general editor, Prof Claire Preston), the student will interact extensively with the eleven editors, two post-doctoral researchers, and a second doctoral student in contributing to its intellectual, analytical, and textual framework. The student may be expected to contribute, as directed, to background research on the edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

Enquiries are welcome. Please contact either Dr Kevin Killeen (kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk) or Prof Claire Preston (c.e.preston@bham.ac.uk), specifying ‘PhD1’.

PhD studentship, University of Birmingham: Thomas Browne’s Correspondence (3 years, from September 2013) – an AHRC-funded studentship

The early-modern letter – its generic codes; the material circumstances of composition, dispatch, receipt, and circulation; the influence of epistolary habits of thought on other kinds of writing, and especially literary writing – is a flourishing field, and the edition of Browne’s correspondence carefully attends to such issues. His large epistolary corpus – personal, familial, professional, and natural-philosophical letters by and to him over a long career – give an unparalleled picture of 17th-century intellectual exchange, and of the development of his ideas and of his other works. The PhD based in this rich material will be informed by some of the following questions: how does Browne’s correspondence inform and/or challenge our understanding of his major works? how did scientific knowledge develop and circulate through epistolary exchanges in this period? how did the material conditions and constraints of the letter condition the genesis and communication of Browne's ideas? The student will benefit from a sustained engagement with Browne's correspondence; although contributing to the published volume of correspondence, and to the edition as a whole, the dissertation will be independent of them. Its precise topic will be developed by the student with the supervisors, but will demand the development of the student’s palaeographical and other textual skills. It will consider, too, of the correspondence of other key figures of the period – for example, Spenser, Bacon, Boyle, and Oldenburg. The range of incidents, topics, sources, and correspondents presented by Browne's letters requires command of antiquarian, medical, geological, botanical, theological, and other discourses. Advances in archival description and cataloguing, and improvements in humanities computing, offer in this dynamic field an auspicious moment for a doctoral project with great interdisciplinary scope and opportunity to master and exploit the full range of new publication and dissemination technologies in digital humanities.

Co-supervised by Prof Claire Preston (Birmingham), the general editor of the AHRC-funded Browne edition, and Dr Andrew Zurcher (Cambridge), co-editor of Browne’s correspondence, the student will be formally attached to the Birmingham Department of English, where there is deep editorial and early-modern expertise across the departments of English and History, and in the vibrant interdisciplinary Centre for Reformation and Early-Modern Studies. In addition, the student will have support from the Cambridge Centre for Material Texts (based at the English Faculty), with its strengths in the study of medieval and early-modern printed and manuscript materials. As part of the AHRC-funded edition of The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne (8 vols, OUP 2015-2019), the student will interact extensively with the eleven editors, two post-doctoral researchers, and a second doctoral student in contributing to its intellectual, analytical, and textual framework. The student may be expected to contribute, as directed, to background research on the volume of Browne’s letters that forms part of the edition.

Enquiries are welcome. Please contact either Prof Claire Preston (c.e.preston@bham.ac.uk) or Dr Andrew Zurcher (aez20@cam.ac.uk), specifying ‘PhD2’.

How to apply for either or both studentships:

Applications for these posts should first be made directly to Professor Preston. The successful candidates will then be asked to apply formally to the respective universities. If you wish to be considered for both studentships, you need to send a full application (described below) for each one. Remember to specify which post your application refers to (PhD1 or PhD2)

Qualifications: the successful candidate will have a very good undergraduate degree in English Literature or a closely related subject such as intellectual history or comparative literature; and normally an MA or MPhil, preferably in an early-modern literary topic (although relevant cognate subjects can be considered). If you are already embarked on a PhD we are unable to consider you for these studentships. Only UK citizens are eligible.

Application materials (2 hard copies and an electronic copy):
  • a cv including information about your undergraduate and MA/M.Phil educational history with degree and exam results, and any awards; special skills or experience (eg, language proficiency, relevant undergraduate dissertation or long essay topics, etc); and publications (if any).
  • a covering letter of no more than one A4 side describing your preparation and qualification for, and interest in, one or both of these posts.
  • two letters of reference, at least one of which should be from your post-graduate supervisor.
  •  a sample of academic writing, preferably from your post-graduate degree, of no more than 3000 words (in other words, a chapter or section of the MA/MPhil), or a short academic publication. 

Submission of material:

The material listed above (hard copies and electronic copy) is to be sent directly to Professor Preston, Department of English, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston B15 2TT, and reach her by 4 February, 2013. Candidates should ask their referees to send their letters directly to that address or to c.e.preston@bham.ac.uk by the same date. Letters of references will not be sought, so it is your responsibility to make certain they are sent in time. If you wish, you may send an SAE with your application so that you can be informed when/whether all your materials have arrived.

Interviews will be conducted Thursday 28 February in Edgbaston.

Questions about these posts are welcomed, and can be directed to Professor Preston by email.

Call for Papers: Educating Women, an inter-disciplinary conference

Thursday 18 July 2013 | Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent UK

There have been issues around women and education since before Christine de Pizan wrote in 1404 that 

"Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did."

Progress since then has been varied. Lady Margaret Beaufort founded two Cambridge colleges in the early 1500s but it is less than 60 years since women were first awarded degrees from Cambridge. In the UK, although STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects are integral to our economic success this is still a male dominated sector and in the last 10 years there has been no improvement in the uptake of women in mathematical sciences – 38% of students – or engineering and technology, where just 15% of students are women. Globally while the gender gap has narrowed over recent years, statistics from UNESCO in 2011 showed that girls are still at a disadvantage: in South and West Asia for example only 1 in 2 women can read or write compared with 7 out of 10 men. 

The idea for this conference, which will consider the education of and by women from the middle ages to the present day, came from a mother and daughter’s interests in education and early modern women. Scholars from all disciplines are invited to discuss issues around educating women (and girls) with a view to understanding the realities. 

Guidelines for submission of paper/symposia abstracts 

Abstracts for papers should not exceed 300 words. Symposia proposals and submissions from postgraduate students are welcome. The conference language is English. Possible topics could include (but are not restricted to): 
  • informal and formal education of women and girls 
  • pre-modern scholarly women 
  • attitudes to educating/educated women 
  • global inequalities 
  • girls, women and lifelong learning 
  • women leaders in education 
  • feminist/anti-feminist influences on educating women 

All abstracts for papers or other suggested presentations must be submitted by Monday 28 January 2013 to education.research@canterbury.ac.uk. 

Acceptance will be confirmed by Thursday 28 February 2013. 

It is hoped to publish a book of papers from the conference. 

For questions and enquiries about submissions, please contact lynne.graham-matheson@canterbury.ac.uk or helen.graham-matheson.12@ucl.ac.uk. 

Further details about the conference will follow.

Call for Papers: The Medici and the Levant

Deadline: February 11, 2013, Florence
Begins: Friday, June 7, 2013

The Medici Archive Project is organizing a one-day conference in English and Italian at the Archivio di Stato in Florence dedicated to new research trajectories on the relations between the Medici and the wide cultural, social and geographic area that in time has come to be identified as ‘the Levant.’ The period covered will extend from 1532, when the Medici received the ducal title, until the death of the last member of the dynasty in 1743.

The House of Medici established an extensive network of mercantile, political and cultural relations connecting Florence and the Eastern Mediterranean since the time of Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464). However, the nature of that exchange evolved rapidly once the Medici became dynastic rulers of Florence and assumed an increasingly active role in Mediterranean and Eastern European politics. First as Dukes of Florence and then as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Medici became players in an area that extended from Safavid Persia to the Republic of Venice, passing through the era’s superpower, the Ottoman Empire. The great number of letters in the Medici epistolary collection (the “Archivio mediceo del principato”) relating to ‘Levantine’ topics bears witness to a profound and persistent vested interest that wavered between reproach and fascination, and that went beyond military, religious or diplomatic concerns.

Contributions highlighting any of the connections between the Medici state and the Levant are welcome. Preference will be accorded to papers dealing specifically with the Medici and their perception of the East/Orient, or with their reception in that part of the world.

The major themes to be addressed at this conference include:
  • Material culture exchange
  • Early modern mercantile routes and commercial activity
  • Mediterranean warfare
  • Medici Eastern diplomacy and political strategies
  • The historical and philological East
  • News dissemination; Mediterranean contemporaneity
  • Cartography; travel literature and correspondence
  • The Typographia Medicea; the use and study of Eastern languages
  • Mediterranean Jewry
  • Scientific exchange
  • Inter-religious dialogues and conflicts
  • Slavery, emigration and immigration

To apply, please submit by February 11, 2013: 1) a paper title 2) a 500-word abstract either in English or Italian explaining the contribution to current historiography 3) a curriculum vitae. Submissions should be sent via email to Dr. Maurizio Arfaioli and Dr. Marta Caroscio at: conference@medici.org.

Partial travel funding may be possible.

Deadline: February 11, 2013

Friends of the Courtauld, Spring Lectures: Visualising Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Lectures are free and open to all, and will be held at
17.30 in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

Tuesday, 15 January
Dr Eric Jorink (Researcher at Huygens ING; and Andrew W Mellon Foundation / Research Forum Visiting Scholar, Mellon MA)
Borderline Cases. Art, Science and Religion in the Dutch Golden Age

Tuesday, 29 January
Dr Alexander Marr (Lecturer in the History of Art, 1400-1700, University of Cambridge)
Ingenuity in the Gallery: the Gallery of Cornelis van der GeestRevisited

Tuesday, 5 February
Professor Rose Marie San Juan (Early Modern Italian art and visual culture, University College London)
Wax and Bone: The Re-assemblage of the Body in Early Modern Cabinets of Display

Tuesday, 26 February
Professor Sven Dupré (History of Knowledge, Institute for Art History, Freie Universität Berlin; Research Group Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)
Recipes and Images: Writing about the Visual, Visualizing Knowledge in Early Modern Antwerp

Wednesday, 13 March (Note date)
Professor Lorraine Daston (Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; Visiting Professor, Committee of Social Thought, University of Chicago )
Seeing at One Glance: The Synoptic Image in Early Modern Science

The Spring 2013 Friends Lecture Series brings together leading historians of art and of science to consider ways in which knowledge was made visible in Early Modern Europe. The series builds upon and critically engages with Svetlana Alpers’ ground-breaking book, The Art of Describing. Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (1983). It addresses a range of visual materials, including bone and wax, tables and charts, as well as oil paintings and prints. The lectures will explore the quest for knowledge with reference to physical spaces such as the humanist cabinet, the Kunstkammer and the anatomy theatre. The series is organised in conjunction with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation interdisciplinary MA on < font size="3" face="Arial,sans-serif">Visualizing Knowledge in the Early Modern Netherlands c. 1550 -1730.

Organised by Professor Joanna Woodall with Dr Eric Jorink