CALL FOR PAPERS: Decadence, Magic(k), and the Occult

Goldsmiths, University of London, 19-20 July 2018
Keynote speaker: Professor Patricia Pulham (University of Surrey)

Nineteenth-century Decadence coincided with a resurgence of esotericism, alternative religions, and a belief in magic as a rejection of secularism and science. Until now, this intersection has been most richly considered in relation to Catholicism. Most well-known is Huysmans’s tetralogy, which traces Durtal’s movement from the Black Mass to the monastery. However, Decadent literature has a much more complicated relationship with mystical, supernatural, and magical realms, one which extends beyond a simple rejection of Christian faith and has a legacy reaching beyond the long nineteenth century.

This two-day interdisciplinary conference is organized by the Decadence Research Unit at Goldsmiths. Our aim is to investigate the role of occultism and magic(k) in the Decadent literary and artistic tradition through a consideration of the relationship between Decadence and the esoteric revival of the fin de siècle, providing an opportunity to re-examine the Occult roots of Decadence and explore the wide range of artistic responses to the blurred boundaries between Decadence, mysticism, ritual, and the Dark Arts. Is the meeting of practical magic and literary esotericism indicative of a symbiotic relationship between Decadence and the Occult, or does it represent merely another aspect of the Decadent rejection of mainstream ideologies?

We welcome proposals on any aspect of Decadence from any era, in relation to magic(k) and the Occult. Papers (about 20 mins in length) might include discussion of, but are not limited to:

• Occult/Decadent poets: Charles Baudelaire, Remy de Gourmont, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean Lorrain
• Occult/Decadent artists: Henry de Groux, Jean Deville, Fernand Khnopff, Felicien Rops
• Great beasts: Aleister Crowley, Joséphin Péladan, W. B. Yeats
• Salons and sects: the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
• Satanic and occult feminism: Berthe de Courrière, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Althea Gyles
• Big ‘Isms’: Spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, Neo-Paganism, Symbolism
• Freemasonry, Theosophy, and New Age Spirituality
• Aesthetic esotericism and Decadent occulture
• Geomancy and liminal spatiality
• Poetry and ritual magic(k)
• Occlusion and the ocular
• Music and mysticism
• Rituals and rivalries
• Incubi and succubi

Abstracts of 500 words plus brief biography should be sent to: dru@gold.ac.uk by 31st March 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS: Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World

16-19 May 2018

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Minneapolis, USA
Keynotes: Surekha Davies (Western Connecticut State University) and Vladimir Urbanek (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)

The Programme Committee for the 7th Annual Scientiae Conference invites submissions for individual papers or special panels on the disciplines of knowing in the early modern world (roughly 1400-1800), to be held at the University of Minnesota, 16-19 May 2018.

The major premise of the Scientiae Conference series is that knowledge during the early modern period was pre-disciplinary, involving complex mixtures of theories, practices and objects, which had yet to be separated into their modern ‘scientific’ configurations. Although centred on attempts to understand and control the natural world, Scientiae addresses natural philosophy, natural history, and the scientiae mixtae within a wide range of related fields, including but not restricted to Biblical exegesis, medicine, artisan practice and theory, logic, humanism, alchemy, magic, witchcraft, demonology, divinatory practices, astronomy, astrology, music, antiquarianism, experimentation and commerce. The conference and the sessions are interdisciplinary and intended to foster debate, one of Scientiae’s defining values.

While the Programme Committee welcomes proposals for 20-25 minute papers from any disciplinary perspective, we would like to encourage submissions that seek to examine modes of early modern knowledge formation and application that cross traditional national, geographic, linguistic or intellectual borders.

For 2018, we would also like to invite proposals for a series of special 2-hour interdisciplinary panels. These should be organised by theme and include three speakers and a commentator who treat the issue from different disciplinary perspectives.

The Program Committee welcomes sessions that present the scholarship of members at various stages of their careers. However, graduate student speakers must be advanced students who have completed coursework, examinations, and much of their dissertation research, and expect to defend their dissertations in the next two years.

Individual papers should include a 250-word abstract and a 1-page CV. Panel proposals should consists of a single 250-word description of the theme under discussion, and three 100-word outlines of how each paper will contribute to this theme, and from what discipline/angle.

Email proposals to: scientiaeminnesota [at] gmail.com

Deadline: 25 November 2017.

We will notify all contributors by 5 January.

Cornelis Schilt

All Souls College Seminar in the History of Pre-Modern Science

Trinity Term 2018
Conveners: DMITRI LEVITIN and PHILIPP NOTHAFT

All sessions will be held on Wednesdays, 5.00–6.45pm. Please note that the location will alternate between the Wharton Room and the Hovenden Room – details for each individual seminar are provided below. Access to the College is via the entrance on the High Street; please ask at the porter’s lodge for further directions, or consult the information at Visiting the College. All very welcome.


25 April MICHAEL HUNTER (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘The “Decline of magic” reconsidered’ [Wharton Room]


2 May MAXIMILIAN SCHUH (Heidelberg), ‘Perceptions of nature between scholastic knowledge and individual observation: William Merle’s weather diary (1337-1344) and his De prognosticatione aeris (1340)’ [Hovenden Room]


9 May FELICITY HENDERSON (Exeter), ‘Robert Hooke, art, and craft in Restoration London’ [Wharton Room]

16 May ANDREW WILSON (All Souls College, Oxford), ‘The transmission of mechanical technologies between the Mediterranean and China in antiquity’ [Hovenden Room]

23 May MONICA AZZOLINI (Bologna), ‘News from Sicily: Italian naturalists and the Royal Society on volcanic eruptions and earthquakes’ [Wharton Room]


30 May MONICA AZZOLINI (Bologna), ‘News from Sicily: Italian naturalists and the Royal Society on volcanic eruptions and earthquakes’ [Wharton Room]

6 June MARIE-ALINE THÉBAUD-SORGER (Centre Alexandre-Koyré, Paris; Maison Française, Oxford), ‘“Airs” as boundary objects: the elaboration of a collective knowledge at the crossroad of chemistry, practical arts, and medicine in the eighteenth century’ [Wharton Room]


13 June ANUJ MISRA (Observatoire de Paris), ‘Atha brahmāṇḍanirmāṇa: an Aristotelian view of the cosmos in a sixteenth-century Sanskrit text on mathematical astronomy’ [Hovenden Room]

CALL FOR PAPERS: Superstition and Magic in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Princeton Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference, April 20, 2018

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Michael Bailey

In an age when authorities attempt to assault our modern modes of critical thinking, the term “superstition” and its premodern associations take on rearranged values. Current political discourse denounces fake news and climate change as humbug with a zeal not unlike that of medieval and early modern establishments censuring false prophets and fallacious astrologers. Given these similarities, the classic narrative of a medieval society emerging into a modern one, “the disenchantment of the world” (Max Weber), urgently needs reappraisal. This conference proposes the examination of a wide range of evidence in various genres over time in order to foster this dialogue. In returning to the original meaning of “superstition” as an excessive fearfulness or belief, or a misapprehended and abused knowledge of a supernatural subject, how can we refine our understanding of superstition and magic in the premodern world? How can we make the overlaps between science, superstition, and magic productive?

We invite interdisciplinary submissions on diverse topics related to medieval and early modern superstition and magic. Some themes of the conference include, but are not limited to:

• Control and influence exerted by the Church and universities
• The historical development of demonology 
• The Witch Crisis: gender and authority 
• Elite vs. folk magic; paganism and popular religion
• Heresy and superstition
• Depiction of magical elements in literature and visual culture
• The impact of various religious reform movements, including the Reformation and Counterreformation, on belief, magic, and ritual
• Music and metaphysics 
• Oaths, incantations, and spells: the power of words
• Natural philosophy: astrology, alchemy, medical practices, etc.
• Material history and archaeology 
• Co-mingling of Eastern and Western traditions; book magic; Kabbalah
• Esoteric belief systems and the rise of secret societies
• The law: ordeals, witch-hunts, and policing of superstitious practices

In order to support participation by speakers from outside the northeastern United States, we are offering limited subsidies to help offset the cost of travel to Princeton. Financial assistance may not be available for every participant, with funding priority going to those who have the farthest to travel. Speakers will have the option of staying with a resident graduate student to defray their expenses.
Interested graduate students should submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to Sonja Andersen and Jonathan Martin at superstition2018@gmail.com by February 15, 2018.

All applicants will be notified about their submissions by February 24, 2018. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.

CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Locating the Ancient World in Early Modern Subversive Thought'

Newcastle University, 12th-14th April 2018

Dichotomies have long been used to define the intellectual developments of early modern Europe - reason and faith; authority and subversion; science and humanism; radicalism and tradition; heterodoxy and orthodoxy — with classical thought usually located on the side of tradition, a behemoth of learning which inhibited man’s reason and his ability to learn through observation. Such unilinear accounts of the progression to modernity have been subjected to increasingly numerous challenges in the last two decades, as scholars have sought to demonstrate that the ideas which drove Europe towards the Enlightenment were far more complex and multi-layered than suggested by the traditional narratives.

The aim of this conference is to expand on this revived appreciation of the classical influence in early modernity by looking specifically at the role played by the ancient world in that sphere from which it has most usually been excluded: subversive literature. The idea that the texts, philosophies, and exempla of the ancient world might have served as significant tools for those who sought to undermine and challenge political, religious and cultural authority stands in direct opposition to the traditional role assigned to the classics in this period. Emphasising an interdisciplinary approach, this conference will draw scholars together to build a coherent picture of how the classical tradition functioned as a tool for subversion, illuminating a previously neglected aspect of the ancient world in the early modern thought.

The keynote speakers will be Peter Harrison (University of Queensland) and Marianne Pade (Danish Academy at Rome).

We are inviting abstracts for papers of thirty minutes on topics including, but not limited to:

• Ancient philosophical involvement in epistemological challenges to traditional understandings of knowledge and belief
• Ancient theories of natural philosophy in the debates concerning God and the universe in both religion and science
• The contribution of ancient texts to the arguments for natural religion, and against magic, miracles, and the supernatural
• Classical rhetoric and literary forms as models for argumentation in subversive treatises, polemics, pamphlets, poetry, and other literary genres
• Ancient religion in the construction of arguments in favour of toleration, and the establishment of a civil religion
• The function of ancient examples in radical political ideologies, including republicanism, democracy, and theories of resistance and revolution
• Classical scholarship as a tool for subversion, and print culture as a sphere facilitating this function of the classics

If you would like to offer a paper for the conference, please submit an abstract of 300 words to Katherine East by 9th February 2018.

See Locating Subversion for further information.


Katherine A. East
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
School of History, Classics, and Archaeology
Newcastle University

Call for Submissions: Esoteric Traditions and Their Impact on Early Modern Art

Zephyrus Scholarly Publications, LLC is seeking papers for an upcoming anthology on the impact of esotericism on the art produced during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, though papers on slightly earlier or later works will also be considered. 

Subjects may include but are not limited to:

• Hermeticism
• Neoplatonism
• Kabbalah
• Prophetism
• Rosicrucianism
• Freemasonry
• Alchemy
• Magic
• The occult 

Please send a 300 word abstract by March 31, 2017 to Lilian H. Zirpolo via email at L H Zirpolo.

Institute of Historical Research: Society, Culture and Belief Seminar Season 2016-17

Seminars will take place in the John S. Cohen Room (203, second floor) at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London, WC1, on the following Thursdays at 5.30 p.m. All are welcome!

13 October
Chris Kissane (London School of Economics)
The Eaters: Deciphering Early Modern Food Cultures

Long overlooked by historians, food has in recent decades become a prominent subject in historical study. Food cultures and 'foodways' have emerged as a growing focus of early modern cultural history. The study of food, however, often remains diffuse in its methodologies, and its relationship to wider cultural history is unclear. Examining fast-breaking events in Reformation Zürich, this paper asks how we can more rigorously approach and 'decipher' early modern food cultures.

10 November
Tawny Paul (University of Exeter)
Work culture, occupation and masculine identity in eighteenth-century Britain

It is well known that people in early modern Britain undertook multiple jobs in order to make a living. The occupational titles that men claimed in legal and institutional settings did not necessarily reflect the work that they undertook. While this relationship between title and work poses challenges for understanding men’s productive activities, it also opens up a number of questions related to identity. Work is often given a central place in accounts of masculine status. What happened, however, when men undertook multiple jobs? How did men account for their worth and status against plural employments? This paper draws on the diaries of three male artisans in the pre-industrial eighteenth century to investigate how men “accounted” for their work in social and cultural terms. It challenges some of the prevailing associations between occupation and masculinity, and investigates the interrelationship between labour, leisure, skill, income and status.

8 December
Jennifer Spinks (University of Manchester)
Magic, Emotions and the Global Supernatural in Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe

16th-century European Christians collected and circulated many reports of magical rites, figures and objects from beyond Europe’s borders. Chronologically, these coincided with an increasing fear of the Devil and of witchcraft within Europe. This paper draws upon a range of printed travelogues, wonder books and demonological treatises to explore the powerful emotions depicted in and roused by reports of non-European diabolical magic. It asks why this material gained so much polemical traction within northern European print culture, and examines what it can tell us about domestic European anxieties during an era transformed by religious conflicts and global encounters.

19 January
James Fisher (King’s College London)
The Creation of “Book-Farming”: Appropriating and Codifying Agricultural Knowledge in 17th & 18th-Century England

The growth of agricultural books in the early modern period is usually interpreted in terms of how they facilitated the spread of knowledge and contributed to innovations in the practice of farming. However, this focus on the relation between books and technological changes ignores their role in relation to social and institutional changes. This paper argues that agricultural books facilitated a redistribution of knowledge within rural society, by appropriating and codifying the knowledge possessed by common husbandmen in the interests of gentlemen landowners and large tenant farmers. It aims to highlight the hidden struggles around “book-farming”.

16 February
Richard Thomas Bell (Stanford University)
The Company of Inmates: Collective Identity and Self-government in the Seventeenth-century London Prison

This paper will analyse the collectives and customs through which inmates managed life in prison in seventeenth-century London, from the formal and officially sanctioned to the informal and subversive, uncovering their potential to ease hardships and provide solidarity, as well as exposing risks of inefficiency, constraint and corruption. It will discuss how and why prisoners laid claim to certain models of authority and communal identity—especially office-holding and the notion of prisons as ‘little commonwealths’—and the implicit claim to a place within wider civil society and politics that this entailed.

16 March
Jennifer Bishop (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge)
Making a Record of the Self: Individual Stories and Collective Histories in the Archives of the London Livery Companies, c.1540-1660

11 May
Tim Wales and James Brown (University of East Anglia)
'Shamefully Disordered with Excessive Drinking': Clerical Intoxication in Early Modern England

Allegations of drunkenness in a range of social spaces loomed large in the trials of many clergymen prosecuted for misbehaviour in early modern England's ecclesiastical courts. However, the issue of clerical intoxication has received little sustained attention, either from church historians or within the burgeoning field of alcohol and drug history. Drawing on fresh archival research undertaken by the ESRC/AHRC research project 'Intoxicants and Early Modernity: England, 1580-1740' (https://www.intoxicantsproject.org), this paper uses systematic analysis of over fifty trials from the well-documented dioceses of Norwich and Chester to explore the practices, representations, and legal uses of the drunk vicar in the long 17th century.


Katharine Hodgkin
Professor of Cultural History
Director, Raphael Samuel Research Centre
School of Arts and Digital Industries
University of East London
Docklands Campus, University Way
London E16 2RD
020 8223 2934

www.raphael-samuel.org

CALL FOR PAPERS: ‘Fate and Fortune in Renaissance Thought’

Albrecht Dürer ~ Fortuna

A one-day Colloquium to be held at the University of Warwick on 27th May 2016

Keynote address: Dilwyn Knox (University College London).
Respondent: Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London)

The aim of the colloquium is to explore the significance of the concepts of fate and fortune in Renaissance thought. While having a significant medieval background in theological texts and in The Consolation of Philosophy and other philosophical treatises, these concepts received new interpretations during the Renaissance period. The cause was a renewed interest in Cicero’s treatises, as well as in Alexander of Aphrodisias and Stoic philosophy. On the other hand, the question of fate and fortune seems to be closely related to religious disputes of the sixteenth century.

Hopefully, the colloquium will contribute to a better understanding of these concepts and their crucial role in the history of Renaissance thought. Despite some valuable publications on the topic, a number of its aspects still remain unclear. The interdisciplinary character of the conference would allow to explore the place of fortune and fate in religious, philosophical and artistic contexts in the Renaissance.

A number of fundamental questions will be addressed including:

• The classical tradition and its contribution to the (re)consideration of these concepts in the Renaissance
• Renaissance Stoicism and the reception of Alexander of Aphrodisias 
• Religious controversies in the sixteenth century and the disputes on free will, fate and fortune in theological texts. 
• Determinism
• Fate and fortune in respect of controversies on astrology and magic in the Renaissance 
• The image of fate and fortune in Renaissance art

Please send a title and abstract of no more than 250 words as well as a one-page CV to O.Akopyan@warwick.ac.uk no later than 1 February 2016.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural

"Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural" an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published biannually by Penn State Press, actively seeks submissions of articles and will consider proposals for special themed issues, subject to review.

"Preternature" provides an interdisciplinary, inclusive forum for the study of topics that stand in the liminal space between the known world and the inexplicable across cultures and historical periods. The journal embraces a broad and dynamic definition of the preternatural that encompasses the weird and uncanny-magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, occultism, esotericism, demonology, monstrophy, and more, recognizing that the areas of magic, religion, and science are fluid and that their intersections should continue to be explored, contextualized, and challenged.

Visit the journal website at:

https://www.editorialmanager.com/preternature/default.aspx

Or contact the editor, Debbie Felton (Classics, Univ. of Mass), felton@classics.umass.edu for further details.

Beliefs Under Pressure: Religion, Community and Identity in the Early Modern World

Thursday 10 September 2015, Julian Study Centre, University of East Anglia

The School of History will be hosting a one day conference for graduate students and early career researchers to present papers and exchange ideas about the social and cultural history of religion and community, c. 1500-1800. The conference is intended to provide an informal forum for emerging researchers to discuss the varied modes of communication across the period, and different ways in which identities were formed, contested and transformed.

The event will run 9:30-17:00, with coffee and lunch provided. Please send all enquiries to Sarah Hall and Tory Lewis at beliefsunderpressure@gmail.com.

Registrations are via Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beliefs-under-pressure-religion-community-and-identity-in-the-early-modern-world-tickets-17226421691

Registrations close at 9am on Monday 24 August. Please note: refunds cannot be guaranteed after this date.


Sarah Hall & Tory Lewis
'Beliefs Under Pressure' Organisers
School of History
University of East Anglia
Norwich Research Park
NR4 7TJ
beliefsunderpressure@gmail.com



9:30 Registration

10:00 Panel 1 – chaired by Tory Lewis
“Deprived Cathedral Clergy and English Catholicism, 1553-1574” – Frederick Ernest Smith, University of Cambridge
“‘A Frogge of Your Owne Slime’: Seventeenth-Century English Baptists and the Struggle for Legitimacy” – Matthew Bingham, Queen’s University, Belfast
“Catholic or Protestant? James Cunningham and the mystics of Fife, c.1700” – Michael Riordan, University of Cambridge

11:30 Coffee

12:00 Panel 2 – chaired by Danny Buck
“Sir Edward Lake and the Ex Officio Oath: the Theory and Practice of Unlawful Ecclesiastical Discipline in Restoration England” – Jens Åklundh, University of Cambridge
“Religion and the Common Law in Taylor’s Case (1675)” – David Kearns, University of Sydney
“Protest, Magic and the Reformation” – Caitlin Philips, University of Durham

13:30 Lunch

14:30 Panel 3 – chaired by Sarah Hall
“‘The City of the Waters’: Representing the Sea and the Protestants of La Rochelle (1565- 1575)” – Rebecca Pillière, University of Warwick
“The Puritan Belief-Formation Process in Warfare” – Matthew Rowley, University of Leicester

15:20 Short break

15:30 Panel 4 – chaired by Sarah Hall
“‘I am Scotsman and a Presbyter’: Archbishop James Sharp and the Restoration Church Settlement” – Andrew Carter, University of St Andrews
“Uses and Abuses of Trust: Catholicism and Confessional Coexistence in England, c.1688- 1750” – Carys Brown, University of Cambridge

16:30 Final Thoughts
17:00 Drinks in the Square
19:00 Dinner at The Unthank Arms, Newmarket Street

Magic and Intellectual History – York CREMS (Updated)

Thursday 5th March 2015, Treehouse, Humanities Research Centre, University of York, 9.30-5.30

Keynote Speaker: Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck)

Open to all – entrance free and no registration required

10.00-11.30 - Natural Magic
Rinotas Athanasios (Athens), Compatibility between Philosophy and Magic in the Work of Albertus Magnus
Ovanes Akopyan (Warwick), From Marsilio Ficino to the Bible: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and his circle on magic, prisca theologia and Aristotle
Allison Kavey (CUNY), Agrippa's Magical Cosmology

Coffee 11.30-12.00

12.00-1.00- Magicians? John Dee and Kenelm Digby
Todd Borlik (Huddersfield), Magic as Technological Dominion: John Dee and the Draining of the English Fens
Mark A. Waddell (Michigan State), Sympathy and Lies: Plausibility, Credibility, and the Weapon Salve in Early Modern England

Lunch, 1.00-2.00

2.00-3.00 - Reformation, Religion and Magic
Frank Klaassen (Saskatchewan) Magic and the English Reformation: A reconsideration
Francis Young (Ely) Liturgical Change and Ceremonial Magic in Reformation England

Coffee, 3.00-3.15

3.15-4.45 - Magicians: Napier(s)? Campanella?
Alex Corrigan (Edinburgh), Was John Napier of Merchiston a Magician?
Ofer Hadass (Haifa), "An Angell's Sight": Religion and Magic in Richard Napier’s Medical Practice
Jean-Paul De Lucca (University of Malta), Tommaso Campanella between Renaissance Magic and Modern Science

5.00: Keynote
Stephen Clucas (Birbeck, University of London), Magic and intellectual history: the problem of transgression

Details and directions at: http://www.york.ac.uk/crems/
Contact: kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

Magic and Intellectual History

Thursday 5th March 2015 - CREMS, University of York

A day symposium – Keynote speaker: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck)

This symposium will explore the place of magic in the intellectual culture of early modern England and Europe. It will focus on how magic was perceived and understood in philosophical, religious and scientific thought, and the ambivalence that surrounded it as topics of scholarship.

Papers might attend to the following:

• How did early modern thought accommodate magic into its disciplines?
• Why was magic the object of so much ‘elite’ scientific and philosophical thought?
• Magic and the study of nature
• Magic and the ineffable
• Redefining the parameters of magic
• Magic and religion.
• The occult and hidden operations of nature
• Scepticism and magical thought
• Magic and language / magic and metaphor
• Literature and the portrayal of magic
• Magic and the devil
• Magicians and their day-jobs.

Call for Papers: Abstracts by 15th October (c. 250 words)

Contact: Kevin Killeen, kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

This symposium is part of a diffuse and ongoing Thomas Browne Seminar that has digressed quite far: http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/


Overview

The Thomas Browne Seminar is a forum for exploring the intellectual history of the seventeenth century, the relations between its apparently incompatible disciplines and the social, scientific and political contexts in which they arose. It is not, by any means, restricted to Thomas Browne himself, but also examines more broadly the intellectual culture in the mid-seventeenth century.

Papers are invited on any aspect of mid-century culture, the history of science and scholarship, religious and antiquarian thought, natural history, politics and the history of trivia, in particular, but not restricted to, those related to Browne. As the seminar will involve an ongoing series of meetings, ideas for future seminars are also invited.

The TBS is run jointly by the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Thomas Browne was a significant figure in the scholarly and scientific community of the seventeenth century, who nevertheless defies categorisation and whose blend of humanism, scholasticism and natural philosophy is testament to the intellectual flux of the period.

Dacre Centenary Lectures 2014: Ideas and Society c 1600-1800 (17 Oct to 28 Nov)

Venue: Oxford University Examination schools, High St, Oxford.
Time: Fridays at 5pm.

Provisional titles:

17 October: Colin Kidd, ‘Priestcraft, the Devil and the Union of 1707”

24 October: Anthony Grafton, ‘Humanism and History in the Late Renaissance: Isaac Casaubon, Polybius, and the Political uses of the Past.’

31 October: Jonathan Israel, ‘Radical Enlightenment and the French Revolution’

7 November: David Womersley, ‘Ideas and Society in the Pays de Vaud: Edward Gibbon and Georges Deyverdun read the Classics’.

14 November: Michael Hunter, ‘The Enlightenment Rejection of Magic: New Thoughts on an Old theme’.

21 November: Brian Young, ‘Hume and History’

28 November: Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes’s Leviathan and Christian Doctrine’.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Magic and Intellectual History

Thursday 5th March 2015 - CREMS, University of York

A day symposium – Keynote speaker: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck)

This symposium will explore the place of magic in the intellectual culture of early modern England and Europe. It will focus on how magic was perceived and understood in philosophical, religious and scientific thought, and the ambivalence that surrounded it as topics of scholarship.

Papers might attend to the following:

• How did early modern thought accommodate magic into its disciplines?
• Why was magic the object of so much ‘elite’ scientific and philosophical thought?
• Magic and the study of nature
• Magic and the ineffable
• Redefining the parameters of magic
• Magic and religion.
• The occult and hidden operations of nature
• Scepticism and magical thought
• Magic and language / magic and metaphor
• Literature and the portrayal of magic
• Magic and the devil
• Magicians and their day-jobs.

Call for Papers: Abstracts by 15th October (c. 250 words)

Contact: Kevin Killeen, kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

This symposium is part of a diffuse and ongoing Thomas Browne Seminar that has digressed quite far: http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/



Overview

The Thomas Browne Seminar is a forum for exploring the intellectual history of the seventeenth century, the relations between its apparently incompatible disciplines and the social, scientific and political contexts in which they arose. It is not, by any means, restricted to Thomas Browne himself, but also examines more broadly the intellectual culture in the mid-seventeenth century.

Papers are invited on any aspect of mid-century culture, the history of science and scholarship, religious and antiquarian thought, natural history, politics and the history of trivia, in particular, but not restricted to, those related to Browne. As the seminar will involve an ongoing series of meetings, ideas for future seminars are also invited.

The TBS is run jointly by the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Thomas Browne was a significant figure in the scholarly and scientific community of the seventeenth century, who nevertheless defies categorisation and whose blend of humanism, scholasticism and natural philosophy is testament to the intellectual flux of the period.

CALL FOR PAPERS, Scientiae 2014, in Vienna

University of Vienna, 23-25 April 2014

Keynote Speakers: Thomas Wallnig (University of Vienna) and Howard Hotson (University of Oxford)

The deadline for all abstracts is 15 October 2013

Paper and panel proposals are invited for Scientiae 2014, the third annual conference on the emergent knowledge practices of the early modern period (ca. 1450-1750). The conference will take place on the 23-25 April 2014 at the University of Vienna in Austria, building upon the success of Scientiae 2012(Simon Fraser University) and Scientiae 2013 (Warwick), each of which brought together more than 100 scholars from around the world.

The premise of this conference is that knowledge during the period of the Scientific Revolution was inherently interdisciplinary, involving complex mixtures of practices and objects which had yet to be separated into their modern “scientific” hierarchies. Our approach, subsequently, needs to be equally wide-ranging, involving Biblical exegesis, art theory, logic, and literary humanism; as well as natural philosophy, alchemy, occult practices, and trade knowledge. Attention is also given to mapping intellectual geographies through the tools of the digital humanities. Scientiae is intended for scholars working in any area of early-modern intellectual culture, but is centred around the emergence of modern natural science. The conference offers a forum for the dissemination of research, acts as a catalyst for new investigations, and is open to scholars of all levels.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

· Intellectual geography: networks, intellectual history, and the digital humanities.
· Theological origins and implications of the new sciences.
· Interpretations of nature and the scriptures.
· Antiquarianism and the emergence of modern science.
· The impact of images on the formation of early modern knowledge.
· Genealogies of “reason”, “utility”, and “knowledge”.
· Humanism and the Scientific Revolution.
· Paracelsianism, Neoplatonism, and alchemy more generally.
· Interactions between the new sciences, magic and demonology.
· The history of health and medicine.
· Morality and the character of the natural world.
· Early modern conceptions of, and practices surrounding, intellectual property.
· Poetry and the natural sciences.
· The development of novel approaches to cosmology and anthropology.
· Botany: between natural history, art, and antiquarianism.
· Music: between mathematics, religion, and medicine.
· The relationship between early modern literature and knowledge.
· Advances or reversals of logic and/or dialectic.

Abstracts for individual papers of 25 minutes should be between 250 and 350 words in length. For panel sessions of 1 hour and 45 minutes, a list of speakers (with affiliations), as well as a 500-word abstract, is required. Roundtable discussions or other formats may be accepted at the discretion of the organizing committee. All applicants are also required to submit a brief biography of 150 words of less. Abstracts must be submitted through our online submission form.

If you have any questions, please contact the conference convenor, Vittoria Feola (vittoria.feola@meduniwien.ac.at).

The 2014 conference will be held in the Juridicum at the University of Vienna, a modern conference building which is part of the ancient University of Vienna, founded in 1365. The conference will take place in the historic city centre of one of Europe’s most beautiful capitals, easy to reach by plane and train.

The Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records 1596-1634

http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/

SITE UPDATE, WITH ANIMATED FILM
The Casebooks Project website has been updated, including a short
animated film about the project. New features include an at-a-glance
guide to searching and a day with the astrologers.

RELEASE 7
Release 7 includes images to accompany our transcriptions of the first
six volumes of Napier's casebooks - MSS Ashmole 175 (1597), 182
(1597-8), 228 (1598-1600), 202 (1600), 404 (1601-2) and 221 (1602-3). An
archive of a further six volumes of images - MSS Ashmole 174 (various
dates), 181 (various dates), 204 (various dates), 239 (1610-11), 237
(1614-15), and 238 (1630) - has also been released, together with
calendar entries listing salient details of all the cases recorded in
them.

PUBLIC LECTURE
Lauren Kassell will give the Gideon de Laune Lecture at the Worshipful
Society of Apothecaries of London on Tuesday, 28 January at 6 pm, under
the title 'And the doctor noted her words': Medical Casebooks in
Shakespeare's England. For further information and registration details
see:
http://www.apothecaries.org/faculty-of-the-history-philosophy-of-medicin
e-parm/eponymous-lectures/.

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Visit http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/ for the latest updates
to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and
Richard Napier's Medical Records
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Dr Lauren Kassell
Department of History & Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge
Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH www.hps.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 767173
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Pembroke College
Cambridge CB2 1RF
www.pem.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 330897

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Instruments & arts of inquiry: natural history, natural magic and the production of knowledge in early modern Europe

Journal of Early Modern Studies is seeking contributions for a special issue (Spring 2014)

Editors: Dana Jalobeanu & Cesare Pastorino
Deadline 1 October 2013

We seek papers exploring the intersections between the disciplines of natural history, natural magic and the books of secrets tradition in the early modern period. We are particularly interested in the various ways in which texts and practices in the tradition of natural magic and the books of secrets were absorbed, transformed and integrated in the renovated natural histories of the seventeenth century.

Further details at:
http://www.zetabooks.com/newsflash/cfp-jems-spring-2014.html

Guidelines for authors:
http://www.zetabooks.com/download2/JEMS-Guidelines.pdf

Please send your contribution by 1st of October 2013 to dana.jalobeanu@gmail.com.

dr. Dana Jalobeanu
University of Bucharest
Faculty of Philosophy
Splaiul Independentei 204
Bucuresti

Medieval Manuscripts Seminar: A typology of magical diagrams in medieval manuscripts

17 January 2013 – room 264 (second floor) Senate House, 5.30pm.

Dr Sophie Page (History, UCL) is speaking on ‘A typology of magical diagrams in medieval manuscripts’

For further information contact Pamela.Robinson@sas.ac.uk

The Birkbeck Early Modern Society’s 6th Student Conference | ‘Science, Magic and Religion’ [CALL FOR PAPERS]

Keynote speaker: Emeritus Professor Michael Hunter

Saturday 22 September 2012, 10.00-16.30

The Birkbeck Early Modern Society is pleased to announce its 6th annual student conference on the theme of ‘Science, Magic and Religion in the Early Modern Period’. This event is to mark the retirement of Professor Michael Hunter, specialist in the history of science in seventeenth-century England, particularly the work of Robert Boyle. Professor Hunter’s scholarly interests also include the history of the early Royal Society, visual culture, witchcraft and changing attitudes towards magic. Our conference theme reflects his work.

This conference provides an ideal forum to showcase student research as well as opportunities to develop presentation skills.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for papers lasting 20-25 minutes (about 2,000-2,500 words). Please email your abstract to Dr Laura Jacobs, Secretary, Birkbeck Early Modern Society, bbkems@gmail.com by 5pm on Thursday 19 July, 2012.

Societas Magica: International eColloquium, Thomas Vaughan's Alchemy and the Reform of Ritual Magic in Seventeenth-Century England

Lauren Kassell (Cambridge University)

AGR 2D71, 1:00pm Thursday, February 9 (7 pm GMT)
(NOTA BENE: The announced time is local time in Cambridge, UK.)

At present we have been able to establish nodes in electronic seminar rooms in Waterloo, Saskatoon, Cambridge, and Paris. For those who wish to establish a node your own institution, we plan to expand in the future, once we have the technical expertise. 

In the meantime, those who wish to participate you can still do so independently by going to the following URL, downloading the software, and logging on on the day of the talk.

Software Download

However you are able to join us, I look forward to your participation in what will unquestionably be a valuable and rewarding talk.

Frank Klaassen
frank.klaassen@usask.ca