Medieval and Early Modern Spaces and Places, The Open University

The Open University will be hosting their annual two-day conference on spaces and places on 23-24 February 2018

The conference will examine life in buildings, institutions and broader geographical areas from a variety of perspectives and will consider the following questions:
  • How were medieval and early modern spaces adapted and transformed through the movement of material and immaterial things?
  • Which particular aspects of political, social and economic infrastructures enabled the exchange of objects and ideas?
  • To what extent did a sense of place depend upon the activities taking place there?

Further details here    Register Here

Provisional Programme

Friday 23 February

9:45-10:00 Registration

10:00 Introductory remarks (Helen Coffey and Leah Clark)

10:15 Spaces and Bodies
  • Anuradha Gobin, University of Calgary: ‘Subverting Spaces of Control: Transformation, Deviance and Identity Formation in the Dutch Republic’
  • Michael Grillo, University of Maine: ‘Spatial Memory, Mapping and Perspective in the Wake of the Plague’
  • Naomi J. Barker, The Open University: ‘Intellectual polyphony: Music at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, 1600-1630’

11:45 Break

12:15 Travels and Movement
  • Jennifer Allport Reid, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘‘Fallen Am I in Dark Uneven Way’: Wandering from the Road in Early Modern Folklore’
  • Lisa Regan, University of California, Berkeley/IES, Vienna: ‘When the City Gates Close: Wayfaring Chapels and the Disciplining of Space’

13:15 Lunch

14:15 Sacred Spaces I
  • Zahra Ahari, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran: ‘Transformation of Mosalla into space of spectacle in Safavid Isfahan’
  • Judith Utz, Freie Universität Berlin/Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome: ‘Materiality and Space. Southern Italian Exultet scrolls in their liturgical setting’

15:15 Break

15:45 Sacred Spaces II
  • Julia Kotzur, University of Aberdeen, ‘Performing Spatial Change: Transformations and Redefinitions of Religious Space in Jonson’s The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair’
  • Kader N. Hegedüs, University of Lausanne, “A scant map of this”: John Donne and the (Un)mapping of the Reformation’

17:15 End (Reception/Dinner in evening)


Saturday 24 February
10:00 Domestic Spaces
  • Stephanie Bowry, University of Leicester: ‘”A goodly Gallery with a most pleasaunt Prospect […]”: Early Modern Gardens and Galleries as Entangled Spaces’
  • Lynsey McCulloch, Coventry University: ‘Choreographing the Early Modern Garden’
  • Audrey Thorstad, Bangor University: ‘”When thou comes to a lordis gate”: Hospitality and Socialising Spaces in Tudor Castles’

11:30 Break

12:00 Women and Domestic Space
  • Ja Young Jeon, City University of New York: ‘“Enter my closet”: The Gendered Early Modern Closet in The Changeling’
  • Eva Lauenstein, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘Within these tombes enclos’d’: Interring Renaissance Love in Mary Sidney Herbert’s Antonius

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Urban Spaces
  • Luise Scheidt, University of Cambridge: ‘An Iconography of Warfare: The Representation of Battle and Military Success in Early Modern Venetian Spaces’
  • Koching Chao, University of York: ‘Constituting Public Piazza in Trecento Communal Statues: Framing Montepulciano’s Piazza Grande in 1337’

15:00 Break

15:30 Performance Spaces
  • M.A.Katritzky, The Open University: ‘Transnational interpretations of theatrical space at the 1589 Florentine intermedi’
  • Michael Gale, The Open University: ‘Music-making and identity-formation in the Elizabethan universities’

17:00 End