CALL FOR PAPERS: Green Britain: Nationhood and the Environment 1500-1750

25th June 2016, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon

CfP deadline: 31st March 2016

Abstracts of 250 words for papers of no more than twenty minutes in length to be sent to greenbritain2016@gmail.com

Keynote speaker: Professor Karen Edwards, University of Exeter

During the early modern period, national identity was increasingly defined by the dynamic between people and the environment they populated. While many still longed for the pastoral ideal of Britain as the ‘Eden of Europe’, the looming threat of pollution, natural disaster, resource depletion, and urbanisation beset the thoughts of contemporary writers, theologians, and politicians. Though it had been long held that the environment had an observable influence on the fortunes of a nation and the character of its citizens, the inhabitants of early modern Britain now became gradually conscious of their impact on the natural world. Environmental issues of increasing variety and scale plagued early modern Britain as society struggled to sustain a rapidly expanding population. From changes in agricultural land use and poor forestry management, to the increasing reliance on the smog-inducing ‘sea-coal’ for fuel, many feared adverse effects on the minds, bodies, and souls of British citizens. Against this backdrop of environmental degradation, Britons were also forced to contend with the harshest decades of the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ and a series of extreme weather events that were habitually seen as acts of divine retribution against the Lord’s elect nation. Further to this, new scientific developments in meteorology and geography, and the rise of Baconian methodology, increasingly affected the contemporary theory and practice of environmental governmentality. Differences in race, ethnicity, and national character were explained according to climate and colonies judged on their suitability to the British complexion, with climatological observations acting as an incentive for colonial exploitation.

Beyond vague collocations of Merry England’s ‘green and pleasant lands’, ‘Green Britain’ therefore aims to explore the complex relationship between national identity and the environment in a period of tumultuous ecological change. What conclusions can we derive from the study of early modern environmental issues, and how can we apply these to the complex idea of the early modern identity? To what extent is nationhood defined by the dynamic that exists between people, space, and place? And furthermore, is it possible to define an early modern attitude toward green issues? To this end, we invite proposals for both panels and papers based on the themes of nationhood and/or early modern ‘green’ issues for our one-day interdisciplinary symposium on 25th June, 2016.


Topics may include, but are not limited to:
  • Travel writing
  • Emerging scientific discourses
  • Climate theory
  • Pollution
  • Space and place
  • Cartography and map-making
  • Seascapes and maritime history
  • Town and country
  • Cultivation and Agriculture
  • Geography and Meteorology
  • Astrology and Cosmology
  • Enclosure and land ownership
  • Colonialism and Empire
  • Providence and providential disaster
  • Natural philosophy
  • Ecological issues
  • Diseases and cures
  • Vegetarianism
  • Animals and animal rights
https://greenbritain.wordpress.com/
@greenbritain16

CALL FOR PAPERS: MEMS Summer Festival

17th-18th June 2016

MEMS Summer Festival is a two-day celebration of all research in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the study of religion, politics, history, art, drama, literature, and everyday culture of different nations from c.400-1800. The festival is designed to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines, academic schools and institutions in order to foster conversations, build a greater sense of community, and develop a research network for all masters and PhD postgraduate students and academic staff within the South-East of England.

We would like as many students and staff as possible to come and talk about their work, and therefore invite the following:
  • Abstracts of c.250 words for individual research papers of 20 minutes in length on any subject contained with Medieval and Early Modern studies. Early work is as welcome as more advanced projects, and in each case we’re interested to hear about your methodologies and working practices.
  • Abstracts of c.700 words from a group of three who would each like to present a subject specific panel with research papers of 20 minutes in length. Ideas from CHASE students so far include medieval patronage of all kinds, for which separate a call will be sent out, and early modern written cultures.

If you have an idea but no fellow panellists, we are happy to publicise it for you through our channels and under our Festival banner, but with your own contact details. Please contact us at the email below.

This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase some of your own research, share ways of working, benefit from the ideas of others, and develop networks for future collaboration.  This year’s festival will be held at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Please submit all paper and panel applications to: memsfestival@gmail.com by 15th April 2016.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, the Consortium for the Humanities of the Arts South-East England, and the Eastern Arc Research Consortium.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Early Medieval Graphicacy in a Comparative Perspective

International Conference: Early Medieval Graphicacy in a Comparative Perspective
University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo
9–10 June, 2016

Conference Website

Organizers: Prof. Ildar Garipzanov and Dr Romy Wyche

This conference is the last of a series for the Graphicacy and Authority in Early Medieval Europe Project. The aim of the project has been to gather scholars from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the increasing role of non-figural graphic devices across a wide range of media, from manuscripts to architecture and mass-produced objects.

Visual communication in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages is conventionally analysed using methods specific to either figural imagery (and visualcy of the past) or literary productions (and literacy). In contrast, our project focuses on non-figural graphic devices which are intermediaries between texts and pictures, and which appear during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The project operates with a working hypothesis that these graphic compositions attest to early graphicacy, which has been defined as a visual mode of communication of conceptual information and abstract ideas by means of non-figural graphic devices, which may comprise inscribed letters, words, or decorative symbols. For a recent discussion of early graphicacy, click here and for more information about the project, please visit our website.

Our previous conferences have examined functions and contextual usage of graphic devices such as monograms, christograms, the staurogram, the sign of the cross and symbolic ornaments on a wide array of material as well as the monogrammatic and decorated initials, graphic symbols, and ornamental designs that appear in early medieval manuscripts. In this closing conference, we would like to include early non-figural graphic devices that are more familiar to specialists in modern graphicacy, namely maps and diagrams.

The objective of this conference is to gather scholars from a wide range of disciplines including but not limited to art history, archaeology and cultural history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the Latin West and Greek East for comparative discussions of early non-figural graphic devices in different media, regions, or chronological periods. We are especially interested in papers dealing with different forms of early graphicacy in a comparative perspective as well as common cognitive mechanisms that enable their deployment in visual communication.

Please submit your proposal (about 300 words) and a short academic CV (no more than a page) at the following link by 1 October, 2015. Places are limited to allow us to subsidise some costs, including registration fee and refreshments. If you have any question please contact Dr Romy Wyche at r.m.wyche@iakh.uio.no.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Shakespeare in the North

Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
2 June 2016

Keynote speakers: 
Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam)
Professor Richard Wilson (Kingston)
Professor Peter Davidson (Aberdeen)

The four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016 will, more than ever, focus attention on this question: where and to whom does Shakespeare belong? Much critical work has been done on Shakespeare’s global reach and ‘travels’, especially in relation to processes of colonisation and postcolonial emancipation. Through this work, Shakespeare has been shown to be ‘local’ to many environments across the globe, however problematically. Equally, thinking about Shakespeare’s role in, and appropriation and construction by the various, conflicted, diasporic, devolving and devolved communities of the British Isles has become a critical orthodoxy. Yet what of Shakespeare’s position in locations which, while not seeking independence or devolution through political means, retain a strong sense of being different and separate from official (privileged) strands of national culture? Because they do not fall neatly into the categories of either the ‘nation’ or the ‘colony’, these locations and their engagement with Shakespeare can become invisible and critically neglected. This neglect corresponds with such locations’ perceived and actual socio-political distance from sites of cultural and political power.

We therefore welcome 200-word abstracts for 20-minute papers that might address the following questions or related topics:
  • As we approach another moment of significant reflection on Shakespeare’s place in the world, can and should we speak of ‘Shakespeare in the North’?
  • When we say the ‘North’ where do we mean? What are the North’s edges and boundaries? How does addressing questions like these affect perceptions and uses of culturally central figures like Shakespeare?
  • How can we extend our understanding of the tensions involved in seeing Shakespeare as a ‘universal’ writer and seeing him as a property of a particular nation, to a micro-level of regional reception, reinvention, and appropriation?
  • In what ways has Shakespeare been appropriated in the ‘North’ of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland? What effects has this appropriation had on Shakespeare and the regions of the ‘North’?
  • How, for example, do Barrie Rutter’s Northern Broadsides challenge understandings of ‘metropolitan’ Shakespeare?
  • What might the function and history of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s annual visits to Newcastle upon Tyne tell us about the role of professional (and amateur) Shakespearean theatre in provincial locations?
  • In a political climate in which Northern territories actively query notions of ‘British unity’ (in both Scotland and Northern Ireland), what relevance might Shakespeare have to ‘Northern’ political autonomies?
  • What theoretical frameworks might be applicable to understanding ‘regional’ or local Shakespeares?
  • What is at stake in the scholarship surrounding the biographical and religious controversies surrounding Shakespeare’s ‘time’ in the ‘North’?
  • How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries demarcate and perceive the ‘North’ and Northern-ness?

Please submit abstracts to Adam Hansen by 1 January 2016 (adam.hansen@northumbria.ac.uk).

CALL FOR PAPERS: Marian Iconography East and West

The Tenth International Conference of Iconographic Studies
to be held in Rijeka (Croatia), June 02 - 04, 2016

Organizers:
Center for Iconographic Studies - University of Rijeka (Croatia) in collaboration with Study of Theology in Rijeka, University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Thessaly (Greece), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), Gregorian Pontifical University Rome (Italy)

The conference seeks to explore and discuss recent development in the dialogue between theology, art history, philosophy and cultural theory concerning the iconography of Mary in Eastern and Western art. We welcome academic papers that will approach this subject in an interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse way.

The themes and subjects can include the following:
  • early representations of Mary
  • images of intercession and authority
  • devotional iconography
  • Mary Mother of God
  • Virgin as queen
  • Mary as Ecclesia
  • Mary and Eve
  • Life of the Virgin
  • post-Tridentine iconography
  • hermeneutical and phenomenological aspects of Mary

Paper proposals should be submitted electronically to cis@ffri.hr
Deadline for paper proposals: March 30, 2016

Contact person:
Sanja Jovanović
Center for Iconographic Studies
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Rijeka
Sveucilisna avenija 4
51 000 Rijeka
Croatia
E-mail: cis@ffri.hr


A paper proposal should contain:
1. full name, institution, affiliation, address, phone number(s), e-mail address
2. title
3. abstract (maximum 2 pages – 500 words)

Deadline: March 30, 2016

Invitations to participate will be sent out by email before April 15, 2016
There is NO registration fee
Administration and organizational costs, working materials, lunch and coffee breaks during conference as well as all organized visits are covered by the organizers.
All presented papers will be published in the thematic issue of the IKON journal in May 2017.

Please contact us for any additional information.
web page: http://ikon.ffri.hr
Download info .pdf

The Musical Humanism of the Renaissance and its Legacy

Online registration is now open for the University of Warwick’s Conference.

To book a place please visit:

“The Musical Humanism of the Renaissance and its Legacy”

Conference details:
Warwick in Venice, 2-4 June 2016

Theme: In modern Western culture, music is often defined as the art of feeling or the language of the soul. This conception of music has its origins in the musical humanism of the Renaissance, whose influence on musical thought was as enduring as it was widespread. Even though Renaissance humanism had no concrete link to the musical practice of antiquity, humanistic concerns were pivotal for the development of contemporary music and musical thought. Ancient and medieval stories about musical ethos, in particular about the power of music to move the passions, were of special interest to Renaissance scholars. This conference will investigate these Renaissance conceptions of the connection between music and mind, their origins, and how they were ultimately developed into our modern notion of music as an expressive art.

For more information, please contact us at j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk.

Jacomien Prins
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR)
University of Warwick, IAS, Millburn House
Coventry CV4 7HS

t.: +44 (0)24 765 73639
e.: j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk
e-Portfolio: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/about_us/centrestaff/researchfellows/prins/


https://www.facebook.com/jacomien.prins ~ @JacomienPrins

CALL FOR PAPERS: Shakespeare and Cervantes: 1616 - 2016

2016 marks the fourth centennial of the death of the greatest Renaissance writers: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. Potential contributors are invited to celebrate their global cultural legacy. Submissions might address any related issues including, but certainly not limited to, the following:

  • The myth of authorship: Cervantes’s fictitious authorship (Mata, 2008) and the Shakespeare authorship question (Bradbeer and Casson, 2015)
  • Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’s role in the genealogy of such modern ideas as love and friendship (Donskis, 2008) as well as in the humanist educational revolution;
  • The two writers’ concerns overlapping with our understanding of Green politics (Egan, 2006);
  • Imitating and imitated: Shakespeare, Cervantes, and the dynamics of literary influence;
  • Servants’ resistance (Shin, 2010) in Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ works as a literary solution to the narrative and ideological problem of ineffectual or tyrannical authority;
  • Popular historical and political appropriations of Shakespeare and Cervantes as part of a wider popular culture interest and investment in the Renaissance (Semenza, 2010);
  • Shakespeare, Cervantes, and the problem of adaptation: the wide variety of guises under which their work circulates;
  • Shakespeare’s wife (Greer, 2008), Cervantes’s daughter, and the ‘problematic’ woman (Gay, 1994) in their life and works;
  • The roots of political theory and the discourse of politics in the writings of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Cascardi, 2012).

Deadline for article submission: 1 June 2016. We welcome papers in English, Spanish, French, German, and Romanian. Please send the abstracts (ca 200 words), the full paper (up to 7000 words), as well as a brief biographical note (ca 400 words) to the following addresses: lumi_t@yahoo.com, corneliamacsiniuc@yahoo.com

For details regarding style, please visit the following page:http://meridiancritic.usv.ro/index.php?page=instructions-to-authors 

We also welcome book-length studies in the field of literature and linguistics, published in 2015, to be reviewed in our journal. Please send the books to the following address: Meridian critic, Facultatea de Litere şi Ştiinţe ale Comunicării, Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” Suceava, Str. Universităţii nr. 13, 720229 Suceava, Romania