CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Dare to Tell': Silence and Saying in Ben Jonson

1st – 3rd April 2016, School of English, University of St Andrews

A conference in the 400th anniversary year of the publication of Jonson’s 1616 first Folio of Works.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Martin Butler (University of Leeds)
Professor Julie Sanders (University of Newcastle)

World premiere of Ben and Jamie by Brean Hammond

‘Our looks are called into question, and our words,

How innocent soever, are made crimes;

We shall not shortly dare to tell our dreams,

Or think, but ’twill be treason’ (Sejanus (1603), 1.1.67-70)

What does it mean to be called into question, to speak out or to stay silent, to have innocent thoughts, guilty looks, or culpable dreams? Jonson’s plays, comic and tragic, foreground the processes of imaginative interpretation that condition people’s actions, values and their very being.

On this prominent anniversary of Jonson’s publication of his 1616 first Folio of Works, this conference will explore themes of publication and performance broadly conceived to include the following themes:

• Authority, collective imagination, individual autonomy, and conscience – including as these issues relate to legal authority and questions of freedom of speech and thought, conscience and religion in 2016.
• Self-consciousness, acting, performance, reception, re-imaginings of the canon.
• Interpretation, defamation, equivocation, censorship, satire, criminality and innocence.
• Cultural ideologies, political subversion, social transgressions.

Please send your abstract of 300 words, along with a brief biography that includes your title and institutional affiliation, to jonson.conference@gmail.com no later than 26 February 2016.

The conference will also include:

• Brean Hammond’s new play about Jonson’s connections with Scotland, Ben and Jamie, at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews.
• Viewing and Discussion of Jonsonian texts at the University of St Andrews’ Special Collections (featuring Jonson’s first Folio of Works, printed by William Stansby in 1616 and sold by Richard Meighen).
• Performance of a Jonson play and a workshop on Jonson and drama (details to be confirmed).

General questions can be directed to the conference organisers Akihiko Shimizu, Julianne Mentzer, Peter Sutton, Rebecca Hasler and Zoë Sutherland at jonson.conference@gmail.com.

Download Call for Papers as a pdf.

Montaigne in Early Modern England and Scotland

Dates: Fri.-Sat. 6-7 Nov. 2015

Confirmed speakers:

Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary)
Will Hamlin (Washington State)
Katie Murphy (Oxford)
John O’Brien (Durham)
Richard Scholar (Oxford)
David Louis Sedley (Haverford)

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University invites proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of the reception of Montaigne’s Essais in England and the larger Anglophone world, including Ireland, Scotland, and North America, during the first two hundred years following their initial publication in French. Any approach to the study of Montaigne’s influence is welcome, including literary criticism, philosophy, theology, psychology, history of science, and history of the book. Authors to consider range from Bacon and Hobbes up to Locke and Hume, and include literary figures, as well, such as Florio, Cornwallis, Daniel, Shakespeare, Jonson, Burton, Browne, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift, and Sterne. Early career academics and postgraduates are encouraged to apply, as well as more established scholars. For consideration, please send a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a one-page CV to montaigneinearlymodernengland@gmail.com no later than 1 August 2015.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/imems

Fools and Folly in Early Modern Europe

Saturday 18 February 2012
https://www.soton.ac.uk/cmrc/news/conferences/2011_12/18_fools_and_folly.html

A one-day symposium hosted by the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture at the University of Southampton and Chawton House Library, Hampshire

This one-day symposium on Fools and Folly in Early Modern Europe will bring together historians, art-historians and literary scholars from the UK, Europe and beyond who are currently working on folly. While the 'wisdom' of folly in the early modern period has become a familiar concept, it has lacked significant cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural investigation. This symposium will include papers on Erasmus's character of Folly; the fools of Tudor interludes, French 'soties' and Shakespearean drama; king's fools and court jesters; carnivals and festive folly; and the representation of folly in art. Speakers will examine and consider the many manifestations of folly in early modern Europe and consider its different political, religious and social purposes. The event will also, via roundtable discussions, invite contributions about other research into folly, and related foolish things.

Speakers include:
Professor Luc Duerloo (Antwerp) on Hapsburg court culture
Dr Peter Happé (Southampton) on Ben Jonson
Professor Richard Hillman (Tours) on Mad Discourse
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb (UEA) on Tudor natural fools
Dr Alexander Samson (University College London) on Spanish folly and madness
Dr Peter Sillitoe (V&A) on Masques
Professor David Smith (New Hampshire) on Jan Steen
Professor Greg Walker (University of Edinburgh) on John Heywood
Dr Anna Whitelock (Royal Holloway) on Archie Armstrong

The symposium will be held in the unique setting of Chawton House Library, an Elizabethan manor house and former home of Jane Austen's brother. Coffee, lunch, tea and drinks will all be provided.

Registration cost: £40. Some postgraduate bursaries will also be available.

For further details and to register, please contact: Dr Alice Hunt; a.hunt@soton.ac.uk