Italian Altarpieces in Context: Spatial and Material Environments for Sacred Art in the Renaissance Church Interior AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) with the National Gallery

The Department of History of Art at the University of Warwick and the National Gallery, London invite applications for a three-year AHRC funded collaborative doctoral studentship to begin in October 2012. Drawing on the National Gallery’s superlative collection of Renaissance religious painting, the project will investigate the historic conditions of display for painted altarpieces in Italian churches.

Renaissance altarpieces displayed in gallery spaces are fundamentally dislocated from their original contexts. As well as the secularisation of setting, these images have lost a wealth of physical paraphernalia that circumscribed their visibility for Renaissance audiences (material trappings which have traditionally been passed over by art historical research). By gathering together disparate information from published and unpublished sources, the project aims to clarify a range of perceptual factors that regulated viewing for Renaissance audiences (natural lighting conditions, artificial lighting technology, veiling practices, the surrounding colours and textures of the Renaissance church interior).

The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by Dr Donal Cooper (University of Warwick) and Carol Plazzotta (Myojin Curator of 16th Century Italian paintings, National Gallery). Applicants should be holders of a good first degree (at least 2:1 or equivalent). A relevant Masters degree, completed or close to completion, is also expected. A background in the Renaissance period will be advantageous, as will knowledge of Italian and/or Latin, and experience of working with relevant primary sources.

The successful candidate will meet the AHRC's criteria for eligibility, including residency criteria and be able to demonstrate the potential to develop advanced research skills. The award pays tuition fees and a maintenance grant each year (£14,140 in 2012-13) for a maximum of three years of full-time doctoral study, subject to evidence of satisfactory progress.

All candidates must apply via the University of Warwick's online postgraduate admission system. You will need to submit personal details and those of two academic referees. In addition you should upload a CV and a response to the project proposal, including relevant experience and particular interests (two pages maximum). Please specify ‘AHRC CDA studentship on Italian Altarpieces’ in the section of the form under the funding being sought.

Further particulars are available to download here.

For informal enquiries, please contact Donal Cooper at D.A.Cooper@warwick.ac.uk

The deadline for the receipt of applications is 5pm on Friday 20 July 2012. We anticipate interviewing shortlisted candidates at the National Gallery in London on Tuesday 31 July 2012.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Thomas Traherne Studies and their Future Directions / Future Directions for Traherne Studies

Selwyn College, University of Cambridge
14-15 December, 2012

Thomas Traherne (c.1637-1674) was a polymath with a distinctive theological vision. He wrote extensively, but remains a relatively obscure figure in seventeenth-century studies. Traditionally misunderstood as a figure somewhat out of his time, he is frequently considered within the contexts of medieval mysticism or post-Enlightenment Romanticism, when in fact he was strongly engaged with the thought of his age. Traherne read, noted and wrote upon a great variety of subjects – philosophical, theological, literary and scientific – perhaps remarkably considering his geographical circumstances and the relative privacy of his life. His works are grounded in many influences and reveal a great openness as to what writings, ancient and modern, could offer inspiration and guidance. This is a writer that believed, rather emphatically, that it would be possible both to discover and to communicate to others the intrinsic nature of “ALL THINGS”.

The aim of this symposium is to address the interdisciplinarity of Traherne’s work, with the hope of encouraging future interdisciplinary collaboration in Traherne studies. We are particularly interested in bringing together the endeavours of literary criticism – which cover an early and persistent association between Traherne and the metaphysical poets, the historicising of Traherne and a more recent interest in the manuscript evidence – with the fields of theology and philosophy, in which Traherne has been considered as a Christian mystic, an Anglican founding-father, a spiritual brother to the Cambridge Platonists, or a unique theological thinker with relevance to broader discussions on the practice of theology.

This will be the first academic symposium on Traherne since the discovery of the new manuscripts in 1996/7. The works of the Lambeth Palace MS (Inducements to Retiredness, A Sober View of Dr Twisse, Seeds of Eternity and The Kingdom of God) and the unfinished biblical epic, The Ceremonial Law, have opened up previously unknown aspects of Traherne’s thought and shone new light on the more well-known poems, Centuries, Thanksgivings and Select Meditations. We especially welcome papers that focus on the content of the Lambeth MS and The Ceremonial Law, and work that considers ways of responding to the overall question of the symposium: what is the way forward for Traherne studies?

Possible topics for papers might include, but are not limited, to:

• Identifying Thomas Traherne: Thomas Traherne as Poet, Theologian, Mystic, Heretic, Career Cleric, Platonist, Aristotelian, Anglican... How do we situate Traherne in his time? Is it still appropriate to associate him with the Romantics, or the metaphysical poets? How do we arbitrate between competing pictures of Traherne?
• Influences on Traherne: The Cambridge Platonists, the Royal Society, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, the church fathers
• Material Texts: The formation and editing of the manuscripts
• Interdisciplinary approaches to Traherne: Traherne as poetic-theologian / theological-poet
• New approaches to Traherne: Traherne and music, Traherne and art, Traherne and poetry, Traherne and ecology

We invite proposals for 20-25 minute papers – please send an abstract of 300 words, along with a short biographical statement, to Cassie Gorman (ceg47@cam.ac.uk) and Beth Dodd (esd26@cam.ac.uk). The deadline for abstracts is August 17th, 2012. We will inform applicants about acceptance by the end of August.

Research Fellowship at Warburg: Europe and the Arab World in the Middle Ages

The publishing house Brill (Leiden), is generously sponsoring a new annual research Fellowship at the Warburg Institute’s Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe (CHASE). The Fellowship has been made possible by the “Sheikh Zayed Book Award” which was awarded to Brill Publishers in March 2012 for publishing excellence in Middle East and Islamic Studies.

The Brill Fellowship at CHASE to be held in the academic year 2012-13 will be of two or three months duration and is intended for a postdoctoral researcher. The Fellowship will be awarded for research projects on any aspect of the relations between Europe and the Arab World from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

The closing date for applications is the 5th July 2012. Please visit our website for more details (http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/fellowships/brill-chase/).

Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference 2012

A provisional programme for the 2012 Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference (31 Aug. & 1 Sept.) is now available on our website. Registration is now open, and can be completed here. The conference fee remains the same as last year (€30 or €20 for students/seniors/unemployed). We will also be going for dinner in O'Connell's Restaurant, Donnybrook on Friday, 31 August - dinner costs an additional €55.

The conference plenary address will be delivered on Friday, 31 August by Prof. John Patrick Montaño (University of Delaware), on the topic of 'Humiliation, Destruction and Death: Violence and Cultural Difference in Tudor and Stuart Ireland'.

We hope to see many of you there. If you have any queries, please let me know.

Best wishes,
Eoin Kinsella

Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference
University College Dublin
31 August - 1 September 2012

www.tudorstuartireland.com
Follow @TudorStuartIre on Twitter

Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Map of Early Modern London project, Canada

The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) project invites applications for a post-doctoral fellowship valued at $32,500 per year for up to two years. The successful applicant will be expected to join the project on site in Victoria, BC, and work closely with the project director, developers, and research assistants in the next phase ofMoEML's development. He or she will take a leading role in the ongoing identification of all the features of the Agas Map (Civitas Londinum); textual and critical work on the map; ongoing work on the encyclopedia of early modern streets and sites; and the editing, markup, annotation, and creation of a critical apparatus for a versioned edition of the 1598, 1603,1633, and modern texts of John Stow's A Survey of London. 

 The successful applicant will also be encouraged to work on related projects, to bring his or her particular research interests to MoEML, and to help shape MoEML's future. Applicants need to have a strong background in the literature of early modern London, preferably in textual criticism, drama, chronicle histories, civic literature, pageantry, and/or the geohumanities. Facility with literary computing and some knowledge of TEI are essential. Experience with editing, historical or literary GIS, and databases is desirable.

MoEML is an established project with SSHRC funding and ongoing technical support from the Humanities Computing and Media Centre at the University of Victoria. MoEML is directed by Janelle Jenstad (Department of English, University of Victoria), and overseen by advisory and editorial boards. The summary fromMoEML's SSHRC Insight Grant can be found atmapoflondon.uvic.ca/SSHRC2012.htm.

The University of Victoria is committed to providing an environment that protects and promotes the human rights of all persons and and affirms the dignity of all persons. MoEML is committed to honouring the Collaborators' Bill of Rights.

Enquiries and applications may be sent to MoEML via Janelle Jenstad atjenstad@uvic.ca. Electronic application packages should include a statement of relevant experience, a full CV, reference letters (or the names of referees), and links to the applicant's projects and publications. All applications received by July 17, 2012 will be acknowledged. Interviews will be conducted via Skype the following week.