CALL FOR PAPERS: The Life of Testimony / Testimony of Lives - a life-writing conference

Testimony evokes first and foremost legal connotations and images of the courtroom. In this context testimony is bound by strict procedural conventions and the act of testifying in a courtroom can incur actual legal consequences. Outside of the courtroom, however, life-writing (in its broadest sense) can serve as a form of testimony which, while not necessarily causing specific legal ramifications, presents a life’s experience for judgment by the public. This relationship between an idea of testimony and the practice of life-writing is twofold: on the one hand, authors of life-writing may have certain testimonial or confessional intentions and use writing as a way of bearing witness. Readers, on the other hand, may interpret various forms of life-writing as testimony even if the author’s intentions about recording their experience are unknown. The act of interpreting or employing life-writing as testimony thus demands ethical scrutiny from readers as well as scholars using such materials.

This conference aims to explore the notion of testimony as an idea that pervades the practice, reception and interpretation of life-writing across time periods, academic disciplines and literatures. We are interested in testimony as a broad concept, and hope to investigate its scope and impact as an interpretive lens through which the breadth of life-writing can be viewed. Not only does testimony bear witness to the lives of individuals, it takes on a life (and even an afterlife) of its own as it is read and reinterpreted throughout history.

Confirmed Keynotes: Professor Paul Strohm (Columbia University), Professor Roger Woods (Nottingham University).

Papers are invited from all scholars (including postgraduate students) across the fields of (comparative) literature, history, philosophy, art, cultural studies, religious studies, curation and conservation of archival material, memory studies, and film studies. Topics could include but are not limited to:

· The ethics of producing, reading and interpreting life-writing as a form of testimony
· Stylistic, rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions of life-writing
· The relationship between authors and readers of life-writing
· Truth and subjectivity
· The afterlife of testimony
· Images as testimony
· Culture as testimony, eg. published diaries of Holocaust survivors
· Persuasion and manipulation of and within life-writing sources
· Instrumentalisation of life-writing for political purposes
· Life-writing as (historical) evidence and the act of bearing witness
· Life-writing and the law
· Reappropriation and adaptation of life-writing in popular culture
· History and the individual
· Challenges and conditions of writing lives

The conference will be hosted at Queen Mary University of London (Arts Two lecture theatre) on 5 and 6 May 2016, the registration fee will be £35,-/£20,- (non-concession/concession).

Please submit a short abstract (c. 300 words) and a short bio (c. 100 words) to Lotte Fikkers and Melissa Schuh at lifeoftestimony@gmail.com by Sunday 17 January 2016. Notification of acceptance will be given by 8 February 2016.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Towards a History of Error

The Forschungszentrum Gotha and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin invite submission of paper abstracts for a workshop to be held in Berlin, 10-11 December 2015: Towards a History of Error.

The aim of the workshop is to identify key topics and episodes in European intellectual history of error in theology, philosophy, medicine, scholarship, and the sciences, from the late Middle Ages through the early nineteenth century. Themes include not only concepts but also methods for avoiding and eliminating error, as well as reflections on the causes and consequences of error.

Paper abstracts should be no more than 750 words long, and may be submitted in French, German, or English. Applicants are also asked to submit a curriculum vitae (including publications); applications from younger scholars are especially welcomed.

Organizers:
Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Fabian Krämer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Martin Mulsow (Gotha Research Center of the University of Erfurt)

Please submit all materials to Ms. Tanja Neuendorf by no later than October 1, 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by November 1, 2014.

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.

Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683): Call for Papers, October 2010

Contributions are invited towards the first collection of essays on Thomas Killigrew (1612–1683), with publication designed to coincide with the quarter-centenary of his birth. Despite his influence as a courtier, exile, playwright and Restoration theatre manager Killigrew remains a surprisingly understudied figure: the last book-length study was William Reich’s edition of Claricilla in 1980; and the sole biography, by Alfred Harbage, was published in 1930. The original essays in this interdisciplinary volume will belatedly provide the sustained modern critical attention Killigrew’s life and work demand. Abstracts of 300 words on any historical, dramatic or artistic aspect of Killigrew should be emailed to the editor, Philip Major, by 1 October 2010. Critical appraisals of Killigrew’s lesser known plays would be particularly welcome.

Dr Philip Major

Birkbeck College, University of London

Email address: philip.major@bbk.ac.uk