Monday 18 July
Session one (11.00-1.00)
1.1 ‘The Italian Academies: new research horizons’ (Chair: Jane Everson, RHUL). Dr. Simone Testa (RHUL and BL), ‘From the Italian Academies to the Republic of Letters. A project online’. Mr. Denis Reidy (BL), ‘Illustrating the Italian Academies: an initial survey’.
Dr. Lisa Sampson (Reading), ‘Theatre in the Italian Academies of the Veneto, c.1540- 1600’.
1.2 ‘Miscellanies, Commonplacing and the Gathered Text’ (Chair: Elizabeth Scott- Baumann).
Adam Smyth (Birkbeck), ‘Little Gidding and the material word’. Rebecca Bullard (Reading) ‘Cast-off clasps: manuscript, print and disorder in Margaret Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies (1653)’. Helen Hackett (UCL), ‘“Authorship, manuscript networks and miscellaneity”: Constance Fowler’s verse miscellany’.
1.3 ‘Commercial Empires’ (Chair: Esther Mijers, Reading). Siobhan Talbott (Manchester), ‘“By the Treaty of Union their whole trade would be ruin’d”: seventeenth-century Scottish commercial empires’. Arthur Weststeijn, ‘The Dutch idea of commercial empire’.
1.4 ‘Preaching, proselytising and politics’ (Chair: Mary Morrissey, Reading). Laura Branch, ‘Evangelical Exchange: The Letters of John Johnson, c.1542-1552’. Jonathan Willis (Durham), ‘Preaching God’s Law: the Decalogue in Reformation England’.
Adrian Magina (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), ‘Rediscovering Europe: Catholic missionaries in southern Hungary-Banat (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries)’.
Lunch
Session two (2.00-4.00)
2.1 ‘Cultures of Knowledge: An intellectual geography of the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters’. A report on the AHRC-funded project based at the University of Oxford. Dr James Brown (University of Oxford, Project Coordinator), ‘Reassembling the Republic of Letters: networking intellectual communities in the past and the present’.
Dr Anna Marie Roos (University of Oxford, Research Fellow), ‘Natural Philosophy and the Republic of Letters: Sir Isaac Newton, Martin Lister (1639–1712), and the making of telescopic mirrors’. Dr Kim McLean-Fiander (University of Oxford, Editor), ‘The Cultures of Knowledge Union Catalogue: A new resource for sharing, refining, and exploring early modern correspondence’.
2.2 ‘Miscellanies, Commonplacing and the Gathered Text’ (Chair: Rebecca Bullard, Reading). Michael Hetherington (Magdalene College, Cambridge), ‘Constructing and construing the Elizabethan printed miscellanies: miscellany form and the claims of rational hermeneutics’.
2.2 ‘Miscellanies, Commonplacing and the Gathered Text’ (Chair: Rebecca Bullard, Reading). Michael Hetherington (Magdalene College, Cambridge), ‘Constructing and construing the Elizabethan printed miscellanies: miscellany form and the claims of rational hermeneutics’.
Austen Saunders (Wolfson College, Cambridge), ‘Commonplacing, social reason and the poetic form of The Faerie Queene’. Jennifer Batt (English Faculty, Oxford), ‘John Dunton and the commonplace poem’.
2.3 ‘Maps and plans as information’ (Chair: TBA). R. W. Hoyle (Reading), ‘Surveyors and estate management in England, c.1580-1640: what were measured surveys for?’. Liz Griffiths (Exeter), ‘Project management and knowledge transfer in seventeenth- century Norfolk’. Heather Falvey (Cambridge), ‘The “grownde included within the greene color”: William Jordan’s pre-enclosure survey of Duffield Frith’. David Marsh (Birkbeck), ‘Communicating through Cartography: Faithorne and Newcourt’s 1658 “Exact Delineation of London”’.
2.4 ‘Practical divinity’ (Chair: Rachel Foxley, Reading). Hilary M. Bogert-Winkler (Connecticut), ‘“Prayerful Protest”: Alternative liturgies and theological dissent in Interregnum England’. Richard Bell, ‘“Salute all the Saints in the gaol”: evangelical inmates in the mid- seventeenth century’.
Plenary One: Howard Hotson (Oxford), ‘Cultures of communication in an age of crisis: the multi-layered network of Samuel Hartlib’.
Conference reception followed by dinner (University Library and Palmer Building)
Plenary Two: Dror Wahrman, ‘The media revolution in early modern England: an artist’s perspective’.
Tuesday 19 July
Session three (9.15-11.00)
3.1 ‘Republics of letters’ (Chair: Dr Simone Testa, BL and RHUL).
Noah Moxham (QMUL), “Traffickers in intelligence”: Correspondence networks and the culture of the early Royal Society’. Thomas Roebuck (Magdalen College, Oxford), ‘British antiquaries in the Republic of Letters, 1590-1640’.
Diane Watts (Reading), ‘Pierre Des Maizeaux and the Rainbow Circle’.
3.2 ‘Miscellanies, Commonplacing and the Gathered Text’ (Chair: Michelle O’Callaghan, Reading). Elizabeth Heale (Reading). ‘“The Devonshire Manuscript” and the role of verse in social communication and exchange amongst a Tudor elite’.
Claire Bryony Williams (Sheffield), ‘‘“Soe woemen are deceau’d | Goe hang thee in thy garters”. Having the last word; wit and female answers in National Art Library (V&A) MS Dyce 44’. Nelleke Moser (Amsterdam), ‘”Such as I found in English”: English authors in a Dutch woman’s manuscript miscellany of 1669’.
3.3 Pretending to be Scots (Chair: TBA). Irina Iakovleva (Ulyanovsk, Russia), ‘The Casket Letters attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots: the constructional approach’. Lauren Stewart, ‘“Leave off your Scotch, and speak me English, or something like it”: Perceptions and representations of northern English and Scots in the seventeenth century’.
3.4 ‘From the Text to the Body: Strategies of communication in How-to-Manuals (1500-1800)’. Daniel Jaquet (Geneva), ‘The Manuals of Jorg Wilhalm, 1522-43: Displaying martial skills “By the Book”’.
Erzsi Kukorelly (Geneva), ‘Shopping with a knife: Communicating embodied knowledge in eighteenth-century conduct manuals for young women’. Dora Kiss (Geneva), ‘Cultural Communication in eighteenth-century Belle Danse’.
Session four (11.30-1.00)
4.1 ‘Citizens of the world’ (Chair: Mark Hutchings, Reading). Florin Ardelean (Cluj-Napoca, Romania),‘Military innovation and mercenary service in the early modern period: Foreign soldiers in the service of the Transylvanian Principality, 1541-1691’. Miguel Dantas da Cruz (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CEHC, Lisboa, Portugal & PIUDH) and Graça Almeida Borges (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CEHC, Lisboa, Portugal & EUI), ‘Exchanging technical knowledge for social progression in the eighteenth-century Portuguese empire: the global circulation of André Ribeiro Coutinho’. Andrei Pogacias, ‘Nicolae Milescu: a Moldavian Marco Polo in the seventeenth century’.
4.2 ‘Miscellanies, Commonplacing and the Gathered text’ (Chair: Adam Smyth, Birkbeck). Edward Smith (Sheffield), ‘Manuscripts in the family: the scribal context of BL, Add. Ms 36,529’.
Jessica Edmondes (Sheffield), ‘Gentilitie imagined Anno 1580: figuring social rank and partisan malice in an Inns of Court heraldic blazon’. Christopher Burlinson (Cambridge), ‘Richard Corbett and William Strode: institutional and social relationships in seventeenth-century Oxford miscellanies’.
4.3 ‘Knowing about Ireland’ (Chair: Richard Hoyle, Reading). Gerald Power, ‘Reporting on Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII’. Mark Hutchinson, ‘The emergence of ‘the state’ in Irish government correspondence, 1578-82’. Christian Anton Gerard, ‘Britomart’s sex sets “British” on fire: the Faerie Queene’s queer Britain’.
4.4 ‘New meanings and misreadings: The play of words on the early modern stage’ (Chair: Paul Quinn). Andrew Duxfield (QUB), ‘Christopher Marlowe: New information and old wisdom’. Chloe Preedy (York), ‘“Dangers is in Words”: Linguistic evasion and the Marlovian Protagonist’.
Barbara Wooding (Birkbeck), ‘Staging the unspeakable: Circumventing theatrical censorship in Jacobean England’.
Session five (2.00-3.30)
5.1 ‘Merchant information’ (i) (Chair: TBA). Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli (Florence), ‘The information networks of Renaissance merchants’. Reiko Takeda (OU), ‘Writing for profit: The business communication of some sixteenth- century Bristol merchants’. Claudio Marsilio (Milan), ‘“A wise man is always ready to face a disaster”. Seventeenth- century Genoese exchange fairs: financial operators’ professional skills and market information’.
5.2 ‘Donne in the hands of manuscript collectors’ (Ben Burton) Daniel Starza Smith (UCL), ‘Tracking Donne through a false miscellany, BL Add. Ms 23,229’. Joshua Eckhardt (Virginia Commonwealth University), ‘The manuscript verse miscellany as continuation of Camden’s Remains’. Victoria E. Burke (Ottawa), ‘“The disagreeable figure of a common-place”: form and influence in Katherine Butler’s late seventeenth-century verse miscellany’.
5.3 ‘Competing for hearts and minds in Elizabeth’s reign’ (Chair: Helen Parish, Reading). Katy Gibbons (Portsmouth), ‘Communicating the Catholic cause: the exile activity of Ann Percy, Countess of Northumberland’.
Jonathan Harris (New College, Oxford), ‘Declaring Treasons: Government Pamphlets and their Readers’. Sue Simpson (Southampton), ‘Getting the Message home: Sir Henry Lee’s iconic appeals to Elizabeth I’.
5.4 ‘James I causes anxiety’ (Chair, Ralph Houlbrooke, Reading). Thomas Davies(Aberystwyth), ‘A Mirror for a Monarch: Dramatising anxieties surrounding the succession of James I’. Mark Hutchings (Reading), ‘Friends and relaciones: Nottingham goes to Spain’. Paul Quinn (Chichester), ‘I wrote to the King a few days ago’: Censors, plays and interpretative correspondence in the reign of James I’.
Session six (4.00-5.30)
6.1 ‘Merchant information’ (ii) (Chair, TBA). Dr Andrey Makarov (Saratov State Polytechnic University), ‘The communication and social networks of the early modern European family: the comparative social history of English and Swedish Merchant families in seventeenth century’. Pat Hudson (Cardiff), ‘Commercial correspondence: British traders’ letters in the long eighteenth century’.
6.2 Roundtable discussion: using databases to discuss poetry.
6.3 ‘Elizabethan government’ (Chair: TBA) Cathryn Enis (Reading), ‘Marching down Watling Street to London: the threat of invasion from Ireland, the earl of Leicester’s acquisition of Drayton Bassett and a Warwickshire case of trespass’. Janet Dickinson (Durham and Reading), ‘Court Politics and the Earl of Essex’. Neil Younger (Vanderbilt), ‘The Earl of Essex and the Elizabethan Counties’.
6.4 ‘Dramatic exchanges’ (Chair, TBA). Carolyn D. Williams (Reading), ‘Now he has taught me to write letters, you shall have longer ones’: Epistolarity in early modern Drama’. Laurie Ann Mckee (Northumbria), ‘“The Play Began Never Till Now!” Creating contracts in Fulgens and Lucres and The Knight of the Burning Pestle’. Ian Munro (Irvine), ‘Wit, exchange, and complement in Love's Labour's Lost’.
5.45 Plenary 3 Andrew Hadfield (Sussex), ‘Lying and early modern literature’
8.00. Conference Dinner at the Sizzling Spice, 62 Christchurch Road.
Wednesday 20 July
Session seven (9.15-11.00)
7.1 ‘News’ (Chair, Andrew Hadfield, Sussex). Andrew Pettegree (St Andrews), ‘Making the News in sixteenth-century Germany’.
Marie-Louise Leonard (Glasgow), ‘Communication in Crisis: Plague in Mantua, 1576-7’. Brodie Waddell (Cambridge), ‘The food market in times of hunger’.
7.2 ‘Collecting and exchanging’ (Chair, TBA). Mark Empey (UCD), ‘Sir James Ware (1594-1666): historian, politician and manuscript collector’. Leah R. Clark (Alfred University, New York), ‘Material translations: Collecting and cross-cultural exchange in the Italian courts’. Tracey A. Sowerby (St Hilda’s, Oxford), ‘Portraits and Tudor diplomatic exchanges’.
7.3 ‘Aspects of Catholicism’ (Chair: Mary Morrissey, Reading). Elizabeth Ferguson (Christ Church, Oxford), ‘The lives of saints and a reformed Catholicism’. Jenny Sager (Jesus College, Oxford), ‘a monstrous head of brass’: Idolatrous Spectacle in Robert Greene’s Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1587) and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589). Caroline Watkinson (QMUL), ‘Engaging Nuns: Exiled English Convents and early modern print Culture’.
Session eight (11.30-1.00)
8.1 Treason and Censorship (Chair, TBA). Christopher Nicholson (SSEES, London), ‘Treason in Bohemia and Hungary in the early sixteenth century’. Neil Tarrant, ‘Giambattista Della Porta and the censorship of alchemy’
8.2. ‘Late seventeenth-century Catholicism’ (Chair, Stephen Taylor, Reading) Eoin Devlin (Cambridge), ‘Restoration prince: the historical consciousness of James II’. Lisa Diller (Southern Adventist University), ‘A Catholic Reformation of Manners’. Gabriel Glickman (Hertford College, Oxford), ‘Christian Reunion, the Anglo-French alliance and the English Catholic imagination, 1660-1688’.
8.3 Political information Daniel Saraiva (Rio de Janeiro), ‘The censored government: political information in early modern Portugal’. Simon Healy (History of Parliament Trust), ‘Finance, politics and the search for credible commitment in England, c.1580-1640’. Richard Hoyle (Reading), ‘Petitioning as political communication: The politics of rural weaving communities’.
8.4 ‘Audiences and readerships for late seventeenth-century poetry’ (Chair: Mary Morrissey). Joseph Shub (London), ‘Audience/Reader: The construction of the addressee in Milton’s prose and verse’.
Rory Tanner (Ottawa), ‘Caroline state poetry and early-modern media literacy’. Nicholas von Maltzahn (Ottawa), ‘Paper work: Andrew Marvell as secretary-poet’.
Session nine (2.00-3.30)
Lunch
9.1 ‘Diplomacy and trade’ (Chair TBA). Stephan Schmuck (UCC), ‘The Provenance of Turkish News: the curious case of Franz Billerbeg’. Roeland Harms (Utrecht), ‘Trading literature. Media changes and the dissemination of literary stories in the eighteenth and nineteenth century’.
9.2 ‘The picaresque and the folk-hero: negotiating history, politics and place’ (Chair, TBA). Maya Mathur (Fredericksburg), “Like Bees that swarme about the hony hive”: Political exchange in The Life and Death of Jack Straw and 2 Henry VI.
David Peacock (Newbury), ‘Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury: Fiction or History?’ Rebeca Helfer (Irvine), ‘Exchanging Places: Locational Memory in Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller’.
9.3 ‘Communicating royalty’ (Chair, TBA). Linda Briggs (Warwick), ‘“Avoir esté composé pour faire entendre”: Exchanges of expectation in the royal entries of Charles IX (1564-66)’. Thomas Ewen Daltveit Slettebø (Bergen), ‘The king, the priest and the parishioners: Royal propaganda in sermons during the period of autocracy’.
9.4 ‘Active readers’ (Chair: TBA)/ Elke Huwiler, ‘Exchanging ideas through theatre: Secular plays of early modern Switzerland’. Ailsa Grant Ferguson, ‘“Accept of these play-games as you please”: Wither’s “wise” reader in the Emblems’.
Tea, conference closes
