Spenser Society Conference: The Place of Spenser / Spenser’s Places

The Fifth International Spenser Society Conference

Dublin, 18-20 June 2015

The International Spenser Society invites proposals for their next International Conference, to be held in Dublin, Ireland. The conference will address Spenser’s places – domestic, urban, global, historical, colonial, rhetorical, geopolitical, etc. – but also the place of Spenser in Renaissance studies, in the literary tradition, in Britain, in Ireland, in the literary and political cultures of his own moment.

Additionally, a series of programmed focus panels will offer opportunities for discussion of recent important initiatives and directions in Spenser studies: editing; biography; style; Ireland; philosophy and religion; teaching; and digital approaches.

We welcome abstracts from Spenser scholars and Renaissance scholars, graduate students and faculty, for papers that address Spenser’s historical, cultural and literary environments. These include the places and spaces in which he worked and the places and positions through which we approach that work.

The conference will take place in historic Dublin Castle (http://www.dublincastle.ie/) in the heart of the city, with accommodation available in local hotels. It follows the success of four previous ISS conferences, at Princeton (1990), Yale (1996), Cambridge (2001), and Toronto (2006).

An optional bus tour to Kilcolman castle, County Cork and other Spenser-related sites will take place June 21st.

Plenaries: Helen Cooper (University of Oxford), Jeffrey Dolven (Princeton University), Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin)

Confirmed speakers/presiders: Andrew Hadfield, Beth Quitslund, David Lee Miller, Julian Lethbridge, Ayesha Ramachandran, Joseph Loewenstein, Andrew Zurcher, David Wilson-Okamura, Patricia Palmer, Willy Maley, Susannah Brietz Monta, Kevin De Ornellas

Abstracts should be submitted directly to the conference website: www.spenser2015.com

The closing date for submissions is 15 September 2014

Suggested topics might include (but are not restricted to) the following:

• The reception of Spenser’s poetry
• Spenser among the poets
• Spenser and political writing
• Digital Spenser
• Spenser and the Sidneys
• Spenser’s place in Renaissance studies
• Spenser’s Europe
• Spenser’s place in Irish studies
• Spenser’s social networks
• Spenser and the politics of space
• Spenser’s imaginative spaces
• Spenser and early modern Dublin
• Editing Spenser
• Spenser and early modern London
• Spenser in Munster
• Spenser and Shakespeare
• Spenser and Raleigh
• Spenser’s Atlantic world
• Spenser, history and historiography
• Spenser and archaeology
• Material Spenser/Spenser’s materials
• Structural/topomorphic approaches
• Spenser’s style
• Religion and philosophy
• Spenser’s Books
• Teaching Spenser

We also invite proposals for poster-board demonstrations of relevant digital and other projects.

Conference Organisers:

Jane Grogan (University College Dublin), Andrew King (University College Cork), Thomas Herron (East Carolina University)

Sponsored by the International Spenser Society

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/iss/

Dan Geffrey with the New Poete: Reading and Rereading Chaucer and Spenser

An international conference at the University of Bristol, Friday 11th – Sunday 13th July 2014. Supported by the Department of English and the Centre for Medieval Studies.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers:

Prof. Judith Anderson, Indiana University, Bloomington
Dr. Helen Barr, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Prof. Helen Cooper, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge

There is a persistent discussion between scholars of the medieval and early modern periods about how both periods are conceptualised and about the interrelations between them. How can reading, or rereading, the connections between these two poets contribute to this discussion? Chaucer is customarily read as a poet of the High Middle Ages, whose valorisation of the vernacular had a profound influence on the poetry of subsequent centuries. Spenser is often read as a poet of the High Renaissance for whom continuity with the past (literary and historical) was a paramount issue. What are the connections between these poets and how can they help to shape revisionist discussions about the periodisation of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance? This conference aims to reread the connections between Chaucer and Spenser, in the light of recent critical methodologies and reformulations of historical continuity and difference. The organisers hope to publish a selection of the resultant papers as a single volume, so the following questions seek to elicit contributions that collectively have a sense of coherence, without constraining what contributors wish to discuss.

• How has the relationship between Chaucer and Spenser been read and how can it be re-read?
• How do these two poets together help us periodize / deperiodize / reperiodize the medieval and the early modern?
• What kind of continuum do they share? Is their relationship continuous, radically other, both or neither? Can we reconceptualise descriptions of poetic similarity or difference through discussing Chaucer and Spenser together?
• Can we think of their connection in terms of anticipation as well as influence?
• What can we learn about the phenomenon of intertextuality by rereading the connections between these two poets?
• Does Spenser present us with one Chaucer or many? How has this affected later versions of Chaucer?
• Do these two poets take analogous approaches to the task of making poetry?
• How do earlier fifteenth- and sixteenth-century readings and adaptations of the Chaucerian canon affect Spenser’s readings of it?
• How might a greater variety of critical approaches reveal new connections between the poets? (e.g. ecocriticism, posthumanism, studies of material cultures, studies of the digital humanities, cognitive approaches, histories of the emotions, disability studies)
• How does Chaucer imagine his poetic followers? What would Chaucer think of Spenser?

Please send 300 word proposals for 20 minute papers to chaucerspenser@gmail.com, including 5-10 keywords highlighting the content of the paper. The deadline for receipt of proposals is Monday, 28thOctober 2013.

For updates and further information, please see the conference website Dan Geffrey with the New Poete

or, follow us on twitter @chaucerspenser

Collaboration, Authorship and the Renaissance: Early Modern and Postmodern Perspectives

Queen’s University, Belfast, January 13-14, 2012

Timetable:

Friday 13th January (Seminar Room 2, International & Postgraduate Student Centre)

09.00 — 10.00 Registration/tea and coffee

10.00 — 11.15 Opening Plenary

• ‘Collaboration or Adaptation? Macro or Micro Authorship’ (Professor Gary Taylor, Florida State University) 

11.30 — 12.45 Session 1: Ambiguities and Attributions

• ‘“Cursed Locrine, looke vnto thy selfe”: The Ambiguous Labour of “W.S.”’ ( Peter Kirwan, University of Nottingham)
• ‘Collaboration and Attribution in Two Middleton-Dekker City Comedies’ (Eilidh Kane, University of Glasgow)

13.45 — 15.00 Plenary Paper 2

• ‘The Taming of the Shrew, the Coming of Sound and Authenticity’ (Deborah Cartmell, De Montfort University)

15.00 — 16.00 Session 2: Collaboration in Elsinore

• ‘Tampering with Hamlet: a model and example of collaborative negotiations’ (Maciej Piątek)
• ‘Intersubjectivity, Memory, and Hamlet’ (Rob Carson, Hobart and William Smith College)

16.15 — 17.15 Session 3: Collaboration and/in Print

• ‘“Ay, that’s the point”: punctuation and speculation in early modern printed drama’ (Ian Burrows, University of East Anglia)
• ‘Edmund Spenser’s Complaints and Paratextual Collaboration’(Rachel J. Stenner, University of Bristol)

17.30 Book launch/ Wine Reception [Venue: Old Staff Common Room]

Launch of The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (eds. Mark Thornton Burnett, Adrian Streete and Ramona Wray, Edinburgh University Press, 2011). Opening remarks by Gary Taylor.

Saturday 14th January (Seminar Room, Postgraduate Centre, 18 College Green)

09.30 — 10.00 Registration/tea and coffee
10.00 — 11.15 Plenary Paper 3

• ‘“The play of mr fletcher & owrs”: Writing and Rewriting the Early Modern Play’ (Professor Grace Ioppolo, University of Reading)

11.30 — 12.45 Session 4: Politics and Practices on the Collaborative Stage

• ‘Thomas Nashe as Dramatic Collaborator’(John Pendergast, Southern Illinois University)
• ‘“The play has no true centre”: Collaboration and Politics in Sir John van Olden Barnavelt’ (Conor Smyth, Queen’s University Belfast)

13.45 — 15.00 Session 5: Authors and Auteurs

• ‘Author and Auteur in Queer Edward II’ (John Blakeley, The University College Plymouth St Mark & St John)
• ‘Thor and back again: Kenneth Branagh and the evolution of the Shakespearean auteur’ (Kevin Murray, Queen’s University Belfast)
• ‘Shakespearean Authorship and Authority: Conjunctions Between Early Modern Enchantment in Dryden and Davenant’s Enchanted Island and Postmodern Disillusion in Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet’ (Thea Buckley, University of Birmingham)

15.15 — 16.30 Session 6: Collaboration in Modernity

• ‘Sharing Shakespeare? Authorship from a Theatre Perspective’ (Varsha Panjwani, University of York)
• [Final title tbc] (Elizabethan Reyes, University of Dallas)
• ‘From Song to Screen: Rewriting Shakespeare’s Sonnets in the Music of Henry Lawes and the Scripts of Star Trek’ (Faith Acker, University of St. Andrews)

16.45- 18.oo Session 7: Collaboration and Digital Media

• ‘Collaborative Theatre in the Fable Universe: Choices in Gameplay’ (Jonathan Malone, Queen’s University Belfast)
• ‘“fuckyeahshakespeare”: Re-Authorising Shakespeare in the Digital Commons’ (Conor Smyth, Queen’s University Belfast

6.00 p.m. Conference Dinner

Villa Italia (39 University Rd, Belfast). Approx. cost: £25-£30

For further information (e.g. re: travel, accommodation) and to book a place, contact the organisers (Conor Smyth and Kevin Murray) at: collaboration2012@qub.ac.uk as soon as possible.