Society for Neo-Latin Studies, Annual Lecture

November 28th 5 p.m.

‘Warwick in London’ premises, The Shard (32 London Bridge St, London SE1 9SG)

Dr Catarina Fouto (KCL)
‘Horace, Prudentius and Buchanan in Jacobus Tevius’s Epodon libri tres (1565): Classical and Christian Letters in Counter-Reformation Portugal’

Diogo de Teive (Jacobus Tevius) is often remembered as Buchanan’s friend and companion in misfortune when he was convicted in 1551 at the hands of the Portuguese Inquisition. However, after his conviction Teive went on to become one of the most successful Portuguese court poets of his time, boasting the patronage of Cardinal Henrique, the regent and Portuguese General Inquisitor.

While the expurgated reading of Horace’s Epodon and the deliberate imitation of Prudentius’s Peristephanon in Teive’s Epodon libri tres are in tune with the orthodoxy which prevailed at that time at the Portuguese court, there are also subtle examples of ambiguity towards it in this work. In Book II, which contains hymns to patron saints of Portugal, Teive celebrates the work of Prudentius and George Buchanan, establishing a genealogy of literary prestige which effaces the religious divide between Protestantism and Catholicism.

Due to security policy at The Shard, all visitors need to sign in: please contact Dr. Andrew Taylor (awt24@cam.ac.uk) before November 20th if you would like to attend the lecture.

‘Moveable Types: People, Ideas and Objects: Cultural exchanges in Early Modern Europe’

University of Kent, 27th-29th November

'Moveable Types' is a three-day conference, held at the University of Kent, which aims to re-examine the processes of cultural exchange in early modern Europe. Traditional historiography has tended to focus on a bilateral transfer of cultures, which, however meaningful, also lift out individual moments of cultural exchange from the environment which made such encounters not only possible, but also significant. By considering cultural exchange in discrete, isolated moments, one runs the risk of oversimplifying the complex networks of cultural exchange in Europe, and thereby skewing European history into a nation-centred perspective.

Recent scholarship such as histoire croisée, entangled histories, cultural translation and actor network theory (ANT) are, meanwhile, looking at such processes in their entirety, as a noisy hubbub rather than a dialogue between binaries (writer and reader, buyer and seller, one nation and another). These approaches explore a network of different elements and characters, all of which are given equal agency in shaping each others' views of the world.

This conference will explore the implications of these recent developments in scholarship by inviting papers with an interdisciplinary approach to cultural exchange in the early modern period. The objective is thus to question the binaries of traditional scholarship, and to suggest new ways of considering the cultural connections that were being formed, broken and reformed in this period.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews);
Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford);
Gilles Bertrand (Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble);
Ruth Ahnert (Queen Mary, University of London).

We invite papers on the following topics:

• literary translation and adaptation;
• exchange of ideas (scientific, humanist, technological, artistic);
• epistolary networks;
• theory of cultural exchange or cultural networks;
• paths of ambassadors, sailors, traders, book pedlars and other travellers;
• news, gossip and news books;
• spaces of cultural exchange: cities, fairs, universities, theatres;
• the making, trading, and consumption of consumer items;
• any other paper relating to early modern cultural exchange.

Abstracts should be sent to moveabletypesconference@gmail.com before 1st of August 2014 and should not be longer than 300 words. Please include affiliation and contact information, as well as a short biographical note, on a separate document. For more information please visit http://moveabletypes.wordpress.com/ or e-mail moveabletypesconference@gmail.com.

Conference Sponsors:
'Moveable Types' is supported by The Royal Historical Society, The University of Kent's School of History, The Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (KIASH), and Text and Event in Early Modern Europe (TEEME).

CALL FOR PAPERS: British Society for the History of Science Annual Conference 2015

2 – 5 July 2015, Swansea University

The BSHS Annual Conference will take place from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 July 2015 at Swansea University.

The BSHS Conferences Committee now invites proposals for individual papers and for sessions from historians of science, technology and medicine, and from their colleagues in the wider scholarly community, on any theme, topic or period. Proposals are welcomed from researchers of all nationalities at all stages of their careers. Participation is in no way limited to members of the Society, although members will receive a discount on the registration fee. Offers of papers and sessions should be directed to bshs2015programme@bshs.org.uk which is the address for all enquiries about the programme (see below for enquiries about local arrangements).

Proposals for individual papers should include an abstract of no more than 250 words, be comprehensible to a non-specialist audience and avoid footnotes. Sessions, of either ninety minutes or two hours, should normally consist of three or four papers. They may also have a commentator. Proposals for alternative types of session, such as ‘round-tables’ (e.g., history of science and ‘impact’; managing research teams in history of science), are strongly encouraged. Please discuss your ideas for such alternative sessions well in advance of the submission deadline.

The deadline for proposals is 31 January 2015.

Further details on how to submit individual abstracts and session proposals are now available on the BSHS website at http://www.bshs.org.uk/conferences/annual-conference/2015-swansea.

Venue and accommodation

The conference will be held at the Singleton Park campus of Swansea University, which overlooks the magnificent sandy beach of Swansea Bay and adjoins Singleton Park proper, containing botanical gardens, boating lake, and acres of open meadow. It will start on the evening of 2 July with a plenary lecture delivered by Prof Iwan Morus (Aberystwyth University). Friday evening will offer a change of scene, with an opportunity to take in some of the sites and dining options of the city. On the Saturday evening, we shall remain on campus for the Presidential address and conference dinner featuring Welsh cuisine.

Delegates choosing to stay in the en-suite accommodation on campus will be no more than ten minutes from the dining facilities and the venue for the academic sessions, the appropriately-named Faraday Building. The programme will include parallel themed sessions, an opportunity to explore the archives and museums of the University and the city, and optional excursions to local sites of interest. An inclusive conference package will be available. Twin rooms can be requested. All enquiries relating to the local arrangements should be directed to bshsswansea2015@bshs.org.uk.

About the area
Swansea University was founded in 1920 as the fourth college of the University of Wales. It became a university in its own right in 2007. Currently it is enjoying the kudos of having been shortlisted by the Times Higher for ‘University of the Year 2014’, and the anticipation of expanding on to a second campus, due to open in 2015. History of science, medicine, and technology takes place at the University in a number of guises: in the activities of the historians of science based in the large History & Classics department, whose interests span the ancient world to the twentieth century; in the cross-campus collaboration that has led to the University become a leading centre for Disability History; in the ‘Science, Scientists, and Society’ seminar convened by staff within the College of Science; in work on the Dillwyn family, whose diverse nineteenth-century interests encompassed pottery, photography, astronomy, and literature; and in the ongoing historical work on the metal industries of South Wales, which includes the Cu@Swansea project to preserve, interpret, and regenerate the Hafod-Morfa copperworks in the Lower Swansea Valley. The University’s Richard Burton Archives contain not only the eponymous collection of the actor’s papers but also the papers of Raymond Williams, part of the South Wales Coalfield Collection, and many materials concerning the metal industries of South Wales and the families who dominated them in the nineteenth century.

Swansea, Wales’s second-largest city, is situated on the sandy southwest Wales coast, not far from the Brecon Beacons, and serves as the gateway to the Gower peninsula, the first site in Britain to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Direct trains to Swansea run from London Paddington and Manchester Piccadilly, taking approximately 3 hours and 4 hours respectively; buses run directly from the train station to the University via the city centre. Swansea can also be reached by intercity coach services. The nearest airports are at Cardiff, and then Bristol. The attractions of Swansea include two medieval castles, the Swansea Museum (formerly the Royal Institution of South Wales), the National Waterfront Museum, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, West Glamorgan Archives, and the Dylan Thomas Centre. It can serve as your staging post for day-trips and vacations further afield: to Worm’s Head and Rhossili Bay, named Britain’s best beach by TripAdvisor; to the castles of Gower; to the National Botanic Garden of Wales at Llanarthne; further west to Pembrokeshire and the spectacular Pembrokeshire Coast Path; northeast to the Brecons; or southeast to Wales’s capital city, Cardiff. Further information on getting to Swansea can be found here. General tourist information for the area is available here, with information specific to the city to be found at here

Dr Ben Marsden
Senior Lecturer, Department of History
Associate Member, Department of Music

Director, Centre for History and Philosophy of Science,Technology and Medicine (CASS)
Chair, BSHS Conferences Committee

Crombie Annexe
Meston Walk
Aberdeen AB24 3FX
United Kingdom
e-mail: b.marsden@abdn.ac.uk
phone: +44 (0)1224 272637 (office)
web: www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/history/

Recent publications:
http://www.pickeringchatto.com/titles/1498-9781848933620-uncommon-contexts
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415520430/

The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013683.
Tha Oilthigh Obar Dheathain na charthannas clàraichte ann an Alba, Àir. SC013683.

London Renaissance Seminar: Renaissance Loves II

22 November, 1.30pm-5.00pm, room tbc, Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1

1.30pm COFFEE

2.00pm Dr Sarah Carter (Nottingham Trent University), ‘ “With kissing him I should have killed him first”: Death in Ovid and Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis’

Dr Eric Langley (UCL), ‘Try a little extendedness: paying attention to Renaissance tenderness’

TEA

4.00pm Ms Catrin Griffiths (Birkbeck), ‘Brotherly loves: Robert and Roger Boyle and the sanctified romance body’

DRINKS

The organisers for this event are Linda Grant (RHUL), Judith Hudson (Birkbeck), Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck)

It is funded by Royal Holloway & Birkbeck.

Contact: s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk.

The London Renaissance Seminar meets at Birkbeck College, University of London to discuss topics in the culture of the Renaissance. Anyone with an interest in the Renaissance is welcome to attend. Seminars are usually held in the School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square.

London Renaissance Seminar contact s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk
London Renaissance Seminar mailing list: t.f.healy@sussex.ac.uk

Forum for European Philosophy Public Lecture: Ethics Matters in the Family

Thursday 13 November, 6.30-8.00pm
Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE

Adam Swift, Professor of Political Theory, University of Warwick

Chair: Gabriel Wollner, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow

The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions vary about how much control parents should have over their children’s upbringing. Adam Swift will discuss the ethics of parent-child relationships, telling us why the family is valuable, who has the right to parent, and what rights parents should -- and should not -- have over their children.

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSEfamily

Podcasts of most FEP events are available online after the event. They can be accessed at www.philosophy-forum.org

CALL FOR PAPERS: European Women in Early Modern Drama

Convenors: Dr Edel Semple, University College Cork, e.semple@ucc.ie
Dr Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin, vyroubae@tcd.ie

While England’s early modern drama presents us with a plethora of foreign female characters – women such as Franceschina, the eponymous villain in The Dutch Courtesan, Queen Katherine in Henry VIII, the displaced Bella-Franca in Four Prentices of London, and Tamora in Titus Andronicus – no single study has taken these pervasive and significant figures as its focus. This seminar seeks to redress this gap in existing scholarship by exploring representations of European women in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Building on work by critics including Ton Hoenselaars, Jean E. Howard, Lloyd Edward Kermode, Michele Marrapodi, Jean-Christophe Mayer, Marianne Montgomery, and Jane Pettegree, and drawing on recent developments in studies of gender, race, culture, and politics, this seminar aims to explore why and how early modern dramatists repeatedly fashioned female characters of distinct nationalities. How notions of gender and foreignness intersect and/or diverge in early modern English play-texts will be the central concern of the seminar.

In a range of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, foreign women are depicted as valuable links to European nations, and as threatening apertures within the English nation. In Sharpham’s The Fleer, for instance, the Italian courtesans bring strange customs to London, while in The Patient Man and the Honest Whore, the Italian courtesan is accused of spreading disease across national borders. Conversely, in Henry V, the ‘wooing’ of Katherine is a moment for linguistic exchange and she is seen as the desirable conduit to unite England and France. Thus, the seminar will consider how the staging of foreign women may enable English dramatists and their audiences to engage in debates about international relations, to deliberate on racial anxieties, to play out strategies of integration or exclusion, and to imagine England’s future vis-à-vis the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, in considering such a diverse range of characters, the seminar seeks to uncover points of commonality and difference in representations of European women, and will consider whether these women – from different nations, with varied social, religious, economic, and political identities – constitute a distinct phenomenon in the drama of the period. We are particularly interested in papers discussing theatrical depictions of European women as agents of and conduits for social, sexual, political, economic, linguistic and cultural interchange.

The papers may examine, among other aspects, representations of European women in early modern English drama in relation to:

• social, sexual, or cultural encounters and interactions
• notions and theories of race, ethnicity, hybridity, and miscegenation
• misogyny and/or xenophobia
• political and/or economic power
• crime and transgression
• linguistic exchange (e.g. accents or multilingualism)
• religious and/or social identities and groups (e.g. refugees, economic migrants)
• early modern geography and cartography
• locations and their theatrical renderings
• travel, travellers, and mobility
• early modern staging (e.g. playhouses, costumes, or stage props)
• printing and circulation of play-texts
• source texts and/or dramatic genres

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (150 words) by 1 December 2014 to all seminar conveners. All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 March 2015. The deadline for submitting the completed seminar papers (3,000 words) is 1 May 2015.

Dr. Edel Semple (School of English, University College Cork)
Dr. Ema Vyroubalová (School of English, Trinity College Dublin)
Email: europeanwomenESRA@gmail.com

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Halved Heart, Shakespeare and Friendship

17 – 19 April 2015

For men and women in Shakespeare’s England, friendship was a relation that spanned the exquisite virtue of amicitia perfecta and the everyday exchanges of neighbourliness and commerce. A friend might be ‘another self’, but it was essential to be wary of false friends or flatterers. The complex nature of early modern friendship was a rich source of inspiration for early modern dramatists. Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe is pleased to announce our spring  conference, The Halved Heart: Shakespeare and Friendship (Friday 17 – Sunday 19 April 2015), and we invite proposals for papers and panels.

Speakers may address the Renaissance fascination with the ethical demands of idealised friendship, or the pragmatic reality of instrumental alliances, as explored on stage. Papers might consider the theatre as a site of social promiscuity, where spectators could be instructed in the arts (and hazards) of friendship even as such relationships were enacted in the auditorium. Or they might examine the overlap between friendship and eroticism, and the points of conflict between friendship and other forms of social alliance such as marriage, or the relationship between monarch and subject.

The conference will conclude on Sunday 19 April with a staged reading by a company of Globe actors of The Faithful Friends (Anon., King’s Men, c.1614).

Proposals of no more than 300 words for papers (or panels of up to three papers) may be submitted to Dr Will Tosh on will.t@shakespearesglobe.com.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 12 December 2014.

The conference is for scholars and students but is open to all members of the public who are interested in debates about early modern theatre and friendship.
shakespearesglobe.com/education

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Idea of Logic, Historical Perspectives

Workshop at the 5th World Congress on Universal Logic, 25-30 June 2015 - Istanbul, Turkey

Workshop organized by: Juliette Lemaire (CNRS, Centre Léon Robin, France) & Amirouche Moktefi (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia)

Logic as a discipline is not characterized by a stable scope throughout its history. True enough, the historical influence of Aristotelian logic over the centuries is something of a common denominator in Western philosophy. But Aristotelian logic certainly was not alone (see stoic logic for instance), not to mention non-western logics. Even within the Aristotelian tradition there is significant variability. Furthermore, as is well known, in the 19th century logic as a discipline underwent a radical modification, with the development of mathematical logic. The current situation is of logic having strong connections with multiple disciplines - philosophy, mathematics, computer science, linguistics - which again illustrates its multifaceted nature. 

The changing scope of logic through its history also has important philosophical implications: is there such a thing as the essence of logic, permeating all these different developments? Or is the unity of logic as a discipline an illusion? What can the study of the changing scope of logic through its history tell us about the nature of logic as such? What do the different languages used for logical inquiry - regimented natural languages, diagrams, logical formalisms - mean for the practices and results obtained?

This workshop will focus on both the diversity and the unity of logic through time. Topics may include:

• Historical analyses on what specific logicians or logic traditions considered to be the nature and scope of logic. 
• Historical analyses illustrating differences in scope and techniques with respect to the current conception of logic, but also suggesting points of contact and commonalities between these past traditions and current developments 
• Historical and philosophical discussions on the place of logic among the sciences and its applications/relations with other disciplines, now and then. 
• Discussions of the logical monism vs. logical pluralism issue in view of the historical diversity/unity of logic over time 
• General philosophical reflections on what (if anything) the diversity of scope and practice in the history of logic can tell us about the nature of logic and the role of universal logic as such. 

Abstracts (500 words maximum) should be sent via e-mail before DECEMBER 1ST, 2014 to:

juliette.lemaire@paris-sorbonne.fr [1]
and/or
moktefi@unistra.fr [2]

Notification of acceptance: December 15th, 2014
More information on the congress is available at:
http://www.uni-log.org/enter-istanbul [3]


Links:
------
[1] mailto:juliette.lemaire@paris-sorbonne.fr
[2] mailto:moktefi@unistra.fr
[3] http://www.uni-log.org/enter-istanbul

Second Call for Papers: 6th Norwegian Conference on the History of Science

Oslo, 11-13 February 2015

We are pleased to invite proposals for the 6th Norwegian conference on the History of Science, which will take place in Oslo, Norway, 11-13 February 2015, and is organized by the Norwegian Museum for Science and Technology. The conference will bring together scholars working on the history of science, medicine and technology on any theme, topic or period to discuss historical, epistemological, political, institutional and ethical issues of relevance to both a Scandinavian and international audience. Building upon the success of the previous meetings, which encouraged national cooperation and the strengthening of ties with the broader international community, we welcome proposals from researchers of all nationalities at all stages of their careers.

Greg Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Director of the Leeds Humanities Research Institute, and President of the British Society for the History of Science will give the opening plenary lecture on "We Need to Talk about Mendel: Raw Peas, Cooked Data, and the Lessons of History for Genetics." Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Professor of History of Science, Departments of History and Biology, University of Florida will give the conference's public lecture on "It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature: The History and evolution of Infectious Disease." Finally, Gard Paulsen, historian and author of “Building Trust: The History of DNV, 1864-2014,” will give a second plenary lecture on "The Norwegian Truth: On the Legitimacy of Ship Classification and Commissioned History."

Proposals for organized sessions, alternative types of sessions, such as round-tables, and individual papers are especially welcomed. Presentations will be scheduled for 20 minutes, allowing for up to 10 minutes for discussion. No speaker may present in more than one session. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Programme Committee on the basis of their scientific merit and relevance.

Planned session proposals should include:
• a brief description of the panel’s aims (150 words maximum),
• a session title,
• an individual abstract for each paper in the session (250 words maximum),
• titles for all individual abstracts,
• full contact details of the organiser and all speakers,
• details of any specific audiovisual equipment required.

Individual paper proposal should include:
• a paper title,
• an abstract (250 words maximum),
• 5 keywords,
• full contact details,
• details of any specific audiovisual equipment required.

All proposals should be sent as a single electronic document to: 6nchs2015@tekniskmuseum.no. The conference language will be English. The deadline for submissions is 14 November 2014.

For conference news and announcements, please regularly check the conference website: http://6nchs2015.weebly.com/

For any queries regarding the conference, please contact: 6nchs2015@tekniskmuseum.no.

PhD Funding: School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds

The School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds is pleased to inform potential applicants for postgraduate study that it is able to offer up to 18 fully-funded PhD scholarships for UK/EU students for 2015-16 entry, plus further scholarships for international students.

For more information about postgraduate study in History & Philosophy of Science and/or Philosophy at Leeds see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125152/postgraduate/1979/.

For full, regularly updated information on upcoming awards and deadlines, including application procedures, see the University of Leeds Postgraduate Scholarships site http://scholarships.leeds.ac.uk/.


Funding opportunities for full-time or part-time PhD study include the following:

UK/EU STUDENTS

• Up to two School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science Scholarships - UK/EU Fees + £14,000 Maintenance (Awards may be made on a rolling basis after 2 FEBRUARY 2015)
• Up to six White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities AHRC Studentships (Deadline 2 FEBRUARY 2015)
• Up to five University of Leeds 110th Anniversary Research Scholarships (Deadline: 18 FEBRUARY 2015)
• Up to two University of Leeds Research Scholarships (Deadline: 13 MARCH 2015)
• University of Leeds Endowed Research Scholarships (Deadline: 1 JUNE 2015) 

• Two studentships on the AHRC-funded project "Scientific Realism and the Quantum", starting 1 March 2015, and working with Dr Juha Saatsi and Prof. Steven French (Deadline: 1 DECEMBER 2014)

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

• University of Leeds International Research Scholarships - 18 in total (Deadline: 19 JANUARY 2015)
• China Scholarship Council-University of Leeds Awards - around 15 in total (Deadline: 2 JANUARY 2015)
• Up to two School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science Scholarships - £14,000 Maintenance + a contribution to fees equivalent to UK/EU Fees (Awards may be made from 2 FEBRUARY 2015). N.B. This is a partial scholarship; to be eligible for consideration, applicants will be expected to demonstrate their ability to pay the remainder of their international fees (i.e. approx. £9000 p.a.). 

Correspondence regarding the application procedure may be directed to prhs_pgenquiries@leeds.ac.uk.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those interested in applying are advised to contact potential supervisors at an early stage. You should contact them by email, either directly or through the relevant postgraduate research tutor:

Prof. Pekka Vayrynen for Philosophy (p.vayrynen@leeds.ac.uk)
Dr Juha Saatsi for History and Philosophy of Science (j.t.saatsi@leeds.ac.uk)
Dr Jamie Dow for Applied Ethics (j.dow@leeds.ac.uk)
Dr Sean McLoughlin for Theology and Religious Studies (s.mcloughlin@leeds.ac.uk)

You are invited to consider visiting Leeds, by arrangement, to meet potential supervisors and current students, attend seminars, and explore the university's excellent resources. Modest travel bursaries are available for such purposes.

You are also strongly encouraged to attend (in most cases following application) the university's Postgraduate Open Day on Friday 6 February 2015, 11am-4pm (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/info/20021/postgraduate/268/), when you will have opportunity to meet potential supervisors, current postgraduates, and the postgraduate team.



Dr Jon Topham
Senior Lecturer in History of Science &
Director of Postgraduate Research

School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT

Tel: +44 (0)113 34 32526
Fax: +44 (0)113 34 33265

Call for Papers: Recent European (Re)translations of Shakespeare

29 June - 2 July 2015, University of Worcester, UK
A seminar at the ESRA conference

Conveners: Lily Kahn (UCL), l.kahn@ucl.ac.uk
Márta Minier (University of South Wales), marta.minier@southwales.ac.uk
Martin Regal (University of Iceland), martinregal@gmail.com

The longevity of Shakespearean translations is generally somewhat limited. Although some canonical translations have a relatively long life as literary works and/or in the theatre, it is common for Shakespeare to be retranslated periodically. Within Europe there is a widespread phenomenon of systematic series of (re)translations of Shakespeare’s complete works; in recent years this trend has given rise to the WSOY Finnish Complete Works, completed in 2013, the new Polish Complete Works, the New Romanian Shakespeare series, and others. In addition, specially commissioned individual retranslations designed for specific productions are a common feature of the European theatrical scene. Examination of the rich variety of issues surrounding this phenomenon of retranslation in the European context can provide valuable insights into the theory and practice of Shakespearean interpretation.

This proposed seminar will bring together scholars, editors and practising translators engaged in the production and analysis of Shakespearean translations. It will also be open to dramaturges or directors who would like to comment on working with new or revised (that is, dramaturgically adjusted) translations. Proposals will be welcomed on topics including but not limited to the following:

• factors galvanising the decision to produce new translations, including philological and interpretive shifts, changing conventions of theatre, and the emergence of new performance and directorial styles; 
• the collaborative framework behind commissioned translations and the relationship between the translator and other stakeholders;
• societal perceptions of the modern Shakespeare translator; trends in the selection of different translation strategies (e.g. foreignising vs. domesticating);
• comparisons between alternative translations of the ‘same’ play (both synchronically and diachronically);
• different translations of a single play by the same translator; the use of updated and otherwise modified versions of existing translations in new productions instead of commissioning completely original work; 
• the critical reception of new translations both in textual format and in theatrical contexts.

We will consider papers focusing on academic translation series not necessarily intended for performance in addition to those specifically commissioned or designed for theatrical use that may not be as suitable for employment in educational contexts.

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (150 words) by 1 December 2014 to all seminar conveners. All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 March 2015. The deadline for submitting the completed seminar papers (3,000 words) is 1 May 2015.



Conference Announcement

The traffic of Shakespeare’s stage invites spectators and readers to travel to different places, imagined and real. Italian and French cities – Verona, Venice, Mantua, Padua, Florence, Milan, Rome, Navarre, Roussillon, Paris, Marseilles – set the scenes of his plays. Rome, Athens, Ephesus and Troy occasion travels in time. On Britain’s map – divided in King Lear – other places are mapped: Scotland, England, Windsor, the Forest of Arden, York. Viola arrives on ‘the shore’ of Illyria while, in The Winter’s Tale, the action shifts between Bohemia and Sicilia. Othello sets up camp in Cyprus and Don Pedro returns, victorious, to Messina. Within the confines of one play, Hamlet, too, maps Europe: from Elsinore, Laertes requests permission to return to France; the Mousetrap is set in Vienna, which will become the setting for Measure for Measure; Hamlet is sent to England, and on his way encounters the Norwegian army marching across Denmark on its way to Poland.

Time and geographical travels map a whole continent and its social, political and cultural exchanges – a feature that Shakespeare’s plays shared with his early modern contemporaries as much as they have with his readers, editors, translators, spectators, film adaptors and critical commentators since.

The 2015 ESRA conference continues the long-standing dialogue between Shakespeare’s Europe and Europe’s Shakespeare(s). It asks scholars to take a look at the wider playwriting context of the early modern period and the European reception of Shakespeare as a subject that has been continuously developing, not least due to Europe’s several recent remappings. Twenty-five years since the first events that focused exclusively on European Shakespeares (Antwerp 1990) and Shakespeare in the New Europe (Sofia 1992), ESRA 2015 invites a look back at 425 years of European Shakespeare and towards a vigorous debate on what Shakespeare means for Europe today, as well as on ESRA’s place in Shakespeare Studies, European and beyond.

Funding: RSA Grants for Renaissance Studies

The RSA is pleased to announce that the 2015 Research Grant competition is now open. For the 2015 grant cycle, the RSA will award thirty-three (33) individual grants to scholars working in the field of Renaissance Studies. The average grant is $3,000 for one month of research or travel. 

During the past five years, the RSA has awarded grants to more than 100 scholars working on topics from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century; a list of previous award winners is posted on the RSA website. 

Additional details about the application process, eligibility, residential awards, non-residential awards, publication subventions, and more are all available at the RSA website: http://www.rsa.org/Grants 

CALL FOR PAPERS: British Milton Seminar

The Spring 2015 meeting of the British Milton Seminar will be held on Saturday 14 March 2015.

Venue: The Birmingham and Midland Institute on 14 March 2015. 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 Dr Sarah Knight (sk218@leicester.ac.uk) and/or Dr Hugh Adlington (h.c.adlington@bham.ac.uk) by no later than 16 January 2015.

Sarah Knight and Hugh Adlington
Joint Conveners

You can follow the British Milton Seminar at: http://britishmiltonseminar.wordpress.com/

Just click on 'Follow' and you will receive automatic email updates

PhD Studentship: Oxford Brookes University - Department of English and Modern Languages

Qualification type: PhD
Location: Oxford
Funding for: UK Students, EU Students
Funding amount: £14,000
Hours: Full Time

Placed on: 3rd November 2014
Closes: 24th November 2014

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
To mark its 150th Anniversary, Oxford Brookes University is pleased to offer a full-time PhD Studentship in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, starting in January 2015. Applications are invited for a PhD Studentship in ‘Melancholy Past, Melancholy Present’: Renaissance History of Women’s Melancholia through archival, literary and dramatic sources. The supervisory team will be led by Dr Katharine Craik, Reader in Early Modern Literature (1500-1750). The aim of the research project is to shed light from fresh historical perspectives on the major contemporary problems of clinical depression. Drawing on a range of literary, dramatic and archival sources, the project seeks to explore the forms of knowledge which melancholia involved in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to consider the contribution such knowledge may make to public health today. A full project description will be provided in the application pack.

The successful candidate will receive an annual payment of £14,000 for a maximum of three years to cover Home/EU fees (currently £3,966 per annum) and provide a stipend towards living expenses.

As a successful applicant, you will be supported by an inter-disciplinary team and will join a supportive and research-active Department. For more information on the Department of English and Modern Languages, visit www.english-languages.brookes.ac.uk.

Eligibility: Applications are invited from Home/EU students only. We are looking to recruit a candidate of the highest quality and who is capable of submitting a Ph.D. thesis within 3 years. Applicants are expected to have completed a relevant Masters degree prior to the Studentship start date. The Studentship holder may also be required to complete supplementary research methods training in their first year of study. Applicants should also be able to demonstrate strong research capabilities and be fluent in spoken and written English.

Deadline: The closing date for applications is 17:00 on Monday 24th November

Interview date: Interviews will be held on in the week commencing 8th December.

Start date: January 26th 2015

How to apply: To request an application pack, a project description and for further details of how to apply, please contact the Research Administrator, Charmian Hearne. Please specify which studentship you are applying for.

Email: chearne@brookes.ac.uk

CALL FOR PAPERS: Domestic Devotions in the Early Modern World, 1400-1800

An Interdisciplinary Conference 9-11 July 2015 University of Cambridge

Across faiths and regions and throughout the world, the home was a centre for devotion in the early modern period. Holy books, prayer mats, candlesticks, inscriptions, icons, altars, figurines of saints and deities, paintings, prints and textiles all wove religion into the very fabric of the home. While research into religious practice during this period often focuses on institutions and public ceremonies, it is clear that the home played a profound role in shaping devotional experience, as a place for religious instruction, private prayer and contemplation, communal worship, and the performance of everyday rituals.

The ERC-funded research project Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home will be hosting this three-day international interdisciplinary conference in July 2015. The project team invites proposals for 20-minute papers that explore domestic devotions in the early modern world. Papers may consider this theme from a variety of perspectives, including material culture studies, art and architectural history, gender studies, theology, religious studies, economic and social history, literary studies, musicology, archaeology and anthropology. Topics may include, though are not limited to:

• The use of images, objects or books in private devotion 
• Daily life and life cycles 
• The relationships between collective (e.g. institutional or non-familial) devotion and private devotion 
• The role of the senses in spiritual experience 
• The production and ownership of religious objects found in the home 
• Gender, race or age and devotional life 
• Policing and regulating household religion 
• Encounters between different faiths and traditions in domestic context 
• Domestic devotional spaces 
• Music in domestic devotion 
• Devotional literature

Plenary speakers will be Debra Kaplan (Bar-Ilan University), Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center) and Virginia Reinburg (Boston College).

Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words to Maya Corry at mc878@cam.ac.uk, Marco Faini at mf531@cam.ac.uk, and Alessia Meneghin at am2253@cam.ac.uk by 7th January 2015. Along with your abstract please include your name, institution, paper title and a brief biography. Successful applicants will be notified by 7th February 2015. For further information on Domestic Devotions see our website http://domesticdevotions.lib.cam.ac.uk/

College accommodation will be bookable nearer the time. Registration fees (tbc) will be kept as low as possible and graduate bursaries will be available to help with costs. 

Images provided by the Fitzwilliam Museum MS 336, folio 2r & PD158-1963

Persecution, Punishment, and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages

10th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference
CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, November 7, 2014

The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, the CUNY Graduate Center’s student-run organization for medieval studies, announces its tenth annual Graduate Student Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, November 7, 2014. This year's theme, Persecution, Punishment, and Purgatory, is designed to address a number of methodological, historical, and theoretical issues within the diverse fields of medieval studies ranging from late antiquity to the early modern period. We invite grad students to submit proposals.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Origins and uses of persecution
• The result of religious and ethnic pogroms
• Forced conversions and expulsions
• Persecution as a method of socio-cultural nation and identity formation
• The character of legal and extra-legal punishment,
• Punishment as a form of discipline
• Self-inflicted punishment
• The role of punishment in the family
• The variations of punishment based on class, status, and gender
• Punishment as social control
• Concepts of the afterlife
• The relationship between sin/punishment and the afterlife
• Liminal spaces
• Peripheries

Please send 200-word abstracts by Friday, August 15th, 2014 to medievalstudy@gmail.com

Call for Papers: Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern World

Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) Aberystwyth-Bangor

Biennial conference, 3rd-5th September 2015, Bangor University

Confirmed Keynote Speaker:
Michal Biran (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Daniel Carey (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Judith Jesch (University of Nottingham)

The meeting points between travel, mobility, and conflict are numerous. Travel can be a conflictual experience; in medieval Europe, movement may be perceived as being restricted to travel motivated by the exigencies of piety, pillage, or trade. It would however be too easy to suggest a clear binary between a medieval state of stasis and the more leisurely travel and exploration in the early modern period. Until relatively recently, domestic travel and voyages to the wider world remained dangerous undertakings. Utopian fiction and travel writing are two genres that have been closely aligned by scholars who recognise how these genres reshape medieval discourses on the ideal state for an early modern audience. Weary travellers arrive at geographically unspecified places comprising ideal societies, but these ideal societies occupy a liminal space between fiction and reality: these spaces are ultimately unattainable due to the imprecision and prevarication present in the narrative. This draws to focus tensions within documenting imaginary travel and the material world. Far from being a site of concord, they become spaces of conflict. Travel – whether it is real or imagined, or if it has been implemented for public or private purposes – can be obstructed by conflicts; it remains often restricted and always bitterly debated.

This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars working in the fields of medieval and early modern studies to interrogate the relationship between travel and conflict. Topics might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Travel in times of war and conflict 
• Restricted travel 
• Forbidden travel 
• Exile and travel 
• Colonial encounters 
• Piracy 
• Travel, subterfuge and deceit 
• Conflict of body and mind in travel 
• Travel, religion and conversion 
• Conflicting readings of travelogues 
• Debates on travel 
• Liminal spaces 
• Utopian/Dystopian travel 
• Travel and synaesthesia 
• Vagrancy 
• Matter, materiality and the unreal 
• Travel as a violent act 
• Remembering and forgetting travel 
• Conflict between topography and spatial movement 
• Conflict between mapped space and inhabited space 
• Language communication and miscommunication 
• Pilgrimage or Crusade 
• Migration and persecution 

We invite abstracts of 200-250 words for individual papers of twenty minutes, or of up to 850 words for panels comprising no more than three papers, to be sent to travelandconflict@gmail.com by 25th January 2015. Please send your abstract in the text of your message, and not in an attached file.

The conference organisers are Rhun Emlyn, Gabor Gelléri, Andrew Hiscock, and Rachel Willie.

Further details are available via the conference website: travelandconflict.wordpress.com, or you can follow us on Twitter @Travel_Conflict