CALL FOR PAPERS: An Anatomy of England: Material culture and early modern character sketches

ONE-DAY CONFERENCE: 8 Nov. 2019

Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines – Paris Saclay, Laboratoire DYPAC (Dynamiques Patrimoniales et Culturelles) EA 2449

The early 17th century vogue for the literary genre of the character sketch reached a height in England after the Protestant humanist Isaac Casaubon published his Latin translation of Theophrastus’s Characters in 1592. Many authors engaged in the challenging formal and stylistic constraints of the character sketch and contributed anatomies of early modern English society. While the golden age glorifying the early Stuarts was celebrated in masques, and the iron age was castigated in pamphlets, character sketches turned out to be precious tools, either to celebrate ideal types and the Christian-Stoic ethos, or to shed light on the alteration process within a changing world, if not a poisoned world, as testified by the sensational Overbury murder case in 1613.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Maternal Influences in the Medieval and Early Modern World


4 November 2019
Queen Mary University of London
maternalinfluences.home.blog

We are seeking participants for a workshop on medieval and early modern motherhood. In recent years, scholarship has sought to illuminate motherhood in the medieval and early modern world as a distinct category of experience in the lives of women. This workshop will consider the various ways in which pre-modern motherhood was medicalised, moralised, theorised and visualised from conception and pregnancy through to childbirth, child-rearing and other ‘alternative’ ways of mothering.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
  • Rituals of motherhood such as churching or lying-in ceremonies
  • Breastfeeding and infant feeding
  • Midwives and mothers; wet-nurses and mothers
  • Advice to mothers
  • Women’s writings about motherhood
  • Religion and motherhood (including saints and spiritual motherhood)
  • Maternal authority, particularly over children
  • Relationships between mothers and fathers

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to maternalinfluences@gmail.com by 14 June. Please indicate in your email whether you would like to present a traditional 20-minute paper or a 5-10-minute overview of your research. We especially welcome PhD students and ECRs.

If you have any questions, please contact Catherine Maguire or Lauren Cantos.