CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference Splendid Encounters VI: Correspondence and Information Exchange in Diplomacy (1300-1750)

Nova University of Lisbon
28th — 30th September 2017

Splendid Encounters 6 is one of a series of international and interdisciplinary conferences which aim to bring together scholars from the broadest range of perspectives to consider diplomacy and diplomatic activities in the late medieval and early modern period. After successful meetings in Warsaw, Bath, Florence, Budapest and Prague, we wish to invite you to join us for another event, hosted by Nova University of Lisbon.

Collecting and transferring information is a major aim of diplomacy, and one not confined to diplomats strictly speaking. People of different ranks and functions were still connected to diplomatic activity — ambassadors, nuncios, chargés d’affaires, secretaries and agents, members of ambassadorial households, consuls and merchants, and even the aides employed as middlemen or translators.

Just as varied as the agents were the methods used to obtain access to the latest news and information useful to ruler or country. As diplomatic networks grew bigger and bigger in size and reach in this period, so did the need to find reliable sources of news and to develop ways to efficiently deliver them.

These are some of the issues that will be addressed at the upcoming conference, Splendid Encounters VI. The conference will focus on the role of news and information transmitting in diplomatic practices within and outside Europe between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In assessing the role of diplomats and networks in such exchanges, this edition of Splendid Encounters also breaks away from traditional chronological and geographical approaches.

Please email by 15 March 2017 to se6.lisbon@gmail.com your abstract for either 20‒minute individual papers or 90‒minute sessions (to comprisea panel, roundtable, project presentation, etc.).

We especially encourage proposals dealing with:

• Diplomatic correspondence: evolution, importance, cyphers, etc.
• Diplomats and diplomacy as a subject of news
• The languages, forms and performance of (written and oral) communication
• East–West/North–South encounters
• Channels of contact; Europe, Africa, Asia, America
• Diplomatic communication across cultures and the culture(s) of diplomatic communication
• Practices of information exchange in empire, states, regions
• The personnel of news networks
• Continuity and change in the long run: from ‘medieval’ to ‘early modern’

Applicants will be notified of acceptance by 15th April.

Contact for general queries Dr Anna Kalinowska: se6.lisbon@gmail.com and for Lisbon arrangements Dr Tiago Viúla de Faria: tiago.faria@fcsh.unl.pt

Two Postdoc Research Associateships in Early Modern English Literature

University of Geneva – Department of English

Job Description:
Applications are invited for two Postdoc Research Associateships in the English Department at the University of Geneva. The aim of the Associateships is to contribute to a research project, led by Lukas Erne and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, on early modern German versions of plays by Shakespeare. The plays will be retranslated and edited as part of the research project, so at least a passive knowledge of German is required. Successful candidates will work under the guidance of Professor Erne, to whom informal enquires may be made on lukas.erne@unige.ch. The posts are part-time (ca. 70%), initially for 12 months, renewable once (so two years in all) available from 1 September 2016 or earlier.

Responsibilities:
The postholder will be responsible to Professor Lukas Erne for carrying out work in relation to the research project.

Person Specification:
A PhD in early modern English studies completed after September 2013
A good knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays
The ability to work well and co-operatively with the other project members
Knowledge of German and fluent knowledge of English
Fluent knowledge of French is not a requirement for the position

Salary:
Ca. CHF 56,000 pa (= ca. £ 38,000 / EUR 50,000 / $ 55,000)

Closing Date:
15 March

Interviews:
Interviews are scheduled to take place in late March and April.

To Apply:
By email to lukas.erne@unige.ch, with covering letter and curriculum vitae, including the names and (email) addresses of two referees. A writing sample will be required later in the process from shortlisted candidates.

The positions are advertised online at http://www.unige.ch/lettres/angle/en/emplois/.

CFP: Reconsidering Popular Comedy, Ancient and Modern

Date: Wed 28 - Fri 30 August 2013.
Location: University of Glasgow
Convenors: Costas Panayotakis and Ian Ruffell

The comic theatre of Greece and Rome, like that of many other crucial periods
of comic history (e.g. Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; music hall; vaudeville)
is often described as popular comedy. This conference aims to investigate the
extent, limits and utility of considering comic drama to be "popular". We are
particularly interested in the modes of performance and reception of comedy.
How far does performance in front of a mass audience shape the form and
language of comedy? How genuinely "popular" are different comic traditions? To
what extent and in what ways do "elite" and "popular" interact in the original
and subsequent contexts of reception? Is "popular comedy" a useful term or is
it subsuming other more challenging concepts (such as, for example, class)?
And to what extent can parallel themes in the production and reception of
popular comedy be seen across cultures? The conference begins with the comic
traditions of Greece and Rome, but is intended to broaden out the question to
consider popular comedy in other periods and modes.

Confirmed speakers:
Martin Revermann (Toronto), James Robson (Open), Ralph Rosen (Penn), Alan
Sommerstein (Nottingham), Gonda van Steen (Florida) and Peter Wiseman
(Exeter).

The conference is supported by a grant from the Institute for Classical
Studies.

We would like to invite proposals for papers of around 30 minutes in length
on any aspect of the above. Titles and abstracts of no more than 250 words
should be sent to Ian Ruffell (ian.ruffell@glasgow.ac.uk) by January 31, 2013.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please don't
hesitate to contact either of us.


Costas Panayotakis
(costas.panayotakis@glasgow.ac.uk)

Ian Ruffell
(ian.ruffell@glasgow.ac.uk)

Transitions Conference: CFP

The research centre hosts a biannual conference devoted to early modern literary culture, place, and the history of the book. Following upon the success of our inaugural conference, Book Encounters, 1500-1750, this year’s conference will focus on the theme of Transitions, whether material, spatial and/or temporal in the period 1500-1750. This conference will held 4-5 July, 2013 at our wonderful Corsham Court centre, just outside Bath.

Plenary Speakers:
Professor Julie Sanders (University of Nottingham)
Professor Marcus Walsh (University of Liverpool)
Professor Henry Woudhuysen (Lincoln College, University of Oxford)

Transitions 1500-1750 aims to explore a wide range of transitions from a variety of critical and historical perspectives. We are particularly interested in papers that reflect on the impact that such transitions had on early modern subjects, institutions, material culture, habits of thought as well as literary, social and cultural practices. Different disciplinary perspectives are especially encouraged.

Possible topics of study include:

• Transitional years (eg, 1534, 1558, 1603, 1660, 1707)
• Celebrating/marking/remembering transition
• Continuity/discontinuity
• Succession literature
• From stage to page
• From manuscript to print (and vice versa)
• Generic shifts
• Shifting author-patron, author-readership relations
• Progression/relocation/translocation
• Historical/literary historical constructions of transition
• The intersection of the residual and the emergent

Please send proposals for papers (20mins) and any queries to transitionsatbathspa@gmail.com by 1 March 2013.

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)

‘Fame and Fortune: The Mirror for Magistrates, 1559-1946’

An International, Interdisciplinary Conference
14th-15th September 2012, Magdalen College, Oxford

Participants: Scott Lucas, Mike Pincombe, Liz Oakley-Brown, Jennifer Richards, Angus Vine, Jane Griffiths, Jessica Winston, Kavita Mudan Finn, Cathy Shrank, Paulina Kewes, Harriet Archer, Gillian Hubbard, Meredith Skura, Matthew Woodcock, Bart van Es, Tom Davies, Michelle O’Callaghan, Anthony Martin, Andrew Hadfield.

The first major conference on the Mirror for Magistrates, ‘Fame and Fortune’ will bring together scholars from around the world to explore what’s next for this rich and undervalued work. Broadening investigation into the Mirror’s development during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, papers will take in the intellectual and political contexts of the Mirror’s inception, the later editions which appropriated and reconfigured the original text, and the profound influence the collection had on prose fiction, verse historiography, tragedy and complaint. We will consider the impact of successive editorial strategies on our interpretation of the text, while a range of interdisciplinary critical approaches will extend the framework within which the Mirror has been analysed, and prompt new directions for research.

The Mirror for Magistrates (1559) looks like a collection of verse complaints by unfortunate figures from England’s past. These complaints catalogue the fates of kings and rebels, for whom ambition, envy and betrayal have led to violent deaths, and a tendency to moralise.

But the verses alternate with a prose narrative which describes how they came to be written and collected. William Baldwin, and the poets he enlisted to help him, run into problems as they try to reconstruct late medieval history from the chronicles they have to hand: who do we trust when sources disagree? Should a bad character’s complaint be badly written? Is it right to rebel against a corrupt ruler, and is it the poet’s business to get involved in politics? Cutting to the heart of early modern debates on tyranny, duty and free speech, and critiquing contemporary historiographical practice, the hubbub of voices must be kept at a safe fictional remove to avoid the censor, or worse.

Part encyclopaedia, part project blog, the text keeps the Mirror we are promised tantalisingly out of reach as Baldwin and his band of co-authors rampage through British history, bickering about art, impersonating headless corpses, and uncovering the risks we take when we surrender the written or spoken word to interpretation.

The 1559 Mirror grew as it was reprinted in expanding editions between 1563 and 1578, to satisfy huge popular demand. Meanwhile, John Higgins and Thomas Blenerhasset wrote prequels to Baldwin’s late medieval material, extending the scope of the project back into ancient British legend and capitalising on its commercial success. The texts were read by Spenser, Shakespeare, Harvey, and Jonson; they are named-checked in Bartholomew Fair, and underpin the plots of Cymbeline and King Lear, as well as inspiring countless imitations in poetry and prose, on and off the early modern stage. In 1610, Richard Niccols brought almost all of the disparate Mirrors together in the final early modern edition; Joseph Haslewood edited the collection in 1815. Most recently, Lily B. Campbell published critical editions of Baldwin, Higgins and Blenerhasset’s work in 1938 and 1946. Unwieldy and unconventional, the Mirror has always evaded firm definitions. This conference aims to celebrate its complexity, innovation and vast influence, which even today continue to surprise.

Please visit www.mirrorconference2012.com or emailmirrorconference2012@gmail.com to register or for more information.

Reevaluating the Literary Coterie, 1550-1825

We would like to invite you to a new seminar series ‘Reevaluating the Literary Coterie, 1550-1825’. We will meet at UCL on Wednesday evenings approximately fortnightly throughout Autumn 2012. We are grateful to the UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchange and the UCL Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies for helping us organize, fund, and promote what should prove a fascinating set of discussions.

Papers will focus on: specific English language coteries active in Great Britain and Europe between 1550 and 1825; an examinations of the conditions and structures which lead to the creation, sustenance, and demise of coteries; and consideration of the viability of the coterie as a hermeneutic model useful to current criticism.

The series will comprise of four ninety-minute seminars with each session containing two chronologically-linked papers of thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of conversation.

We should have titles by the start of next week and for a list of dates and speakers please see our blog at: http://theliterarycoterie.blogspot.co.uk/

And if you’ve got any questions about the series please email us on: reevaluatingcoteries@gmail.com