CALL FOR PAPERS: Othello's Island 2019: The 7th Annual Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Event Date: 15 Apr 2019 to 18 Apr 2019.   Nicosia, Cyprus

A collaboration between the Centre for Visual Arts and Research, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Cyprus, the University of Kent and the University of Sheffield.

Founded in 2012, Othello's Island is an annual conference looking at Medieval, Renaissance and early modern history, literature, art and other culture, held at the Centre for Visual Arts and Research (CVAR) in Nicosia, Cyprus. It brings together a wide range of academics and research students, from all over the world, to discuss their work in what we describe as a multi-disciplinary event.

​Sometimes the themes of different papers can seem very diverse, but a multi-disciplinary approach means that we encourage participants to listen to a wide range of papers, in different discipline areas, in the belief that this can lead to new, sometimes remarkable, insights.

The Centre for Visual Arts and Research (CVAR), is located in the centre of the old town of Nicosia, capital of Cyprus. In its medieval streets, surrounded by the huge Venetian walls, you will find lovely museums, shops, cafes and restaurants, as well as medieval and renaissance buildings, harking back to the medieval and renaissance period, when Cyprus was ruled by the French Lusignan royal family. Perhaps most notable of the house was the last Queen of Cyprus, Catherine Cornaro, whose portrait was painted by Giorgione, Titian and other Renaissance artists.

For 2019 we are basing the conference around three themes. These are:

• Medieval and Byzantine literature, art, architecture, culture and history
• Shakespeare and his contemporaries
• Early modern women writers

We also welcome proposals for ‘wild card’ papers outside of the above categories. If your proposed paper does not fit into any of the above categories, you are still welcome to submit.

​​​CALL FOR PAPERS - DEADLINE 31 JANUARY 2019

If you would like to submit a paper for possible presentation at the conference please send an abstract and a brief CV (resumé) by e'mail to arrive not later than 31 January 2019.

The abstract should include:

Your full name
Your institutional affiliation (if any)
Your e'mail address
The title of your proposed paper
Your abstract (must be in English and not longer than 300 words long).

​In general we will try to let you know if your paper has been accepted not later than 28 February 2019. If you require a decision before 28 February 2019 ​on whether your paper will be included in the colloquium, please indicate this in your e'mail. Usually this will be because you need to make a funding application or other arrangements.

Papers can only be presented in person. We are sorry, we do not allow proxy or Skype-style presentations.

​All proposals and any questions should be sent to Dr Michael Paraskos with the subject line Othello 2019.  You are also advised to visit our website at www.othellosisland.org for more information.

London Renaissance Seminar: Early Modern Women and Genre

Christine de Pisan, ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’

Saturday 1st December, 1-5pm
Keynes Library (Room 114), 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck

Join us for an afternoon of papers on women writers, civil war elegy, modes of translation, female attribution and early modern European epic.

Speakers include:

Hero Chalmers (Cambridge)

Erin McCarthy (National University of Ireland, Galway)

Carla Suthren (York)

Mihoko Suzuki (Miami)


The London Renaissance Seminar (LRS) is a forum for the discussion of all aspects of early modern history, literature, and culture. It meets regularly at Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square. Anyone with a serious academic interest in the Renaissance is welcome and no registration is necessary.

For further information about this seminar contact Sue Wiseman or Elizabeth Scott-Baumann .

To join the LRS mailing list, please contact Tom Healy.
Twitter: @LondRenaissance

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Second Annual Early Modern Women Writers' Colloquium (2018)

At the 6th Annual Othello's Island Conference 2018
Centre for Visual Arts and Research, Nicosia, Cyprus
25 to 27 March 2018

Keynote lecture by: Professor David Norbrook

Full information at www.othellosisland.wixsite.com/emww

Lead Convenors: Dr. Stella Achilleos (University of Cyprus) and Professor James Fitzmaurice (Northern Arizona University)

About the Conference: We are very pleased to announce that our keynote speaker at the Second Annual Early Modern Women Writers' Colloquium in 2018 will be Professor David Norbrook, Emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, who will deliver a lecture titled 'Providence and Displacement: Writing Lucy Hutchinson's Life'.

Dedicated to women writers from the period 1500 to 1700 (approximate dates), the Early Modern Women Writers' Colloquium forms a strand within the annual interdisciplinary "Othello's Island" conference on Byzantine, Medieval, and Renaissance studies. The strand was held informally at the fourth Othello's Island conference in 2015, and became a formal feature in 2016 at the fifth Othello's Island in 2016. This developing tradition continues at the sixth Othello's Island Conference in 2018, where we will again welcome papers on women writers in all languages of the early modern period, with a particular emphasis on the writers Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and their contemporaries. The strand includes papers on women writers themselves, but also associated topics, such as the representation of women and women writers in work by male writers of the period, women publishers, and also the popular round table discussion, held outside under the olive trees, as a true academia, in the courtyard garden at CVAR.

If you would like to submit a paper to the Early Modern Women Writers strand of Othello's Island, please follow the instructions below. If you have any questions, please do contact us. Participants in the Early Modern Women Writers strand can, of course, attend all the other papers and events of the Othello's Island Conference, and we encourage participants to do so. The Early Modern Women Writers strand is held in association with the International Margaret Cavendish Society.

Full Papers (20 minutes plus questions)
If you are interested in giving a talk at the conference please submit a proposal for a paper. Standard papers are 20 minutes long, followed by 5 or 10 minutes for questions. Proposals for papers should comprise a cover sheet showing:

Your title (eg. Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof. etc.) and full name
Your institutional affiliation (if any)
Your postal address, email address and telephone number
The title of your proposed paper

With this you should send a proposal/abstract for your paper of no more than 300 words and a copy of your CV/resume to info@othellosisland.org with the subject line EMWW 2018.

All papers must be delivered in English and in person by the author of the paper. We cannot accommodate speakers wishing to present using Skype (or similar), or proxy presentations.

Deadline for submissions: 22 December 2017.

Please visit our website at www.tiny.cc/emww2018 before submitting your proposal.

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

Women and Shakespeare Day Conference

Sat, 23 Jul 2016 at 10:00 - Chawton, United Kingdom

Event Description

Shakespeare is celebrated for having created some of Western theatre’s most iconic female roles, yet characters such as Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew and Isabella in Measure for Measure continue to perplex as much as they fascinate readers, audiences, and theatre practitioners. His works have inspired a rich tradition of women’s writing and in the theatre women such as Ellen Kean, Ellen Terry, and Edy Craig have been influential in shaping Shakespeare in performance. In the year of the 400th anniversary of his death, this event will consider the part women have played in constructing Shakespeare’s reputation and ensuring his ongoing fame.

The event will conclude with a Jubilee Promenade Performance of the most iconic of Shakespeare’s women, directed by Elaine McGirr (Royal Holloway, University of London). This will include both silent tableaux and characteristic speeches from the original plays and from eighteenth-century adaptations. Highlights are Lady Constance’s maternal passion, Cordelia’s triumphant final speech, and Margaret of Anjou, ‘the she-wolf of France’.

Speakers include:

Ailsa Grant Ferguson (University of Brighton): ‘Original’ practice? All-female Shakespeare from suffragettes to Smooth Faced Gentlemen

Gail Marshall (University of Leicester): Women and Shakespeare in 1859

Fiona Ritchie and Peter Sabor (McGill University): Shakespeare in the letters, journals and novels of Frances Burney and Sarah Harriet Burney

Ann Thompson (King’s College London): The Taming of the Shrew: the play we love to hate

Tickets: Delegate £45 Student/Friend £35 WhenSaturday, 23 July 2016 from 10:00 to 18:00 (WhereChawton House Library - Chawton, GU34

Tickets at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-and-shakespeare-day-conference-tickets-24958342073

Margaret of Anjou: A ‘New’ Play by Shakespeare

To mark 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death Professor Elizabeth Schafer and Philippa Kelly, Resident Dramaturg at the California Shakespeare Theater and the Napa Shakespeare Festival, have pirated Margaret of Anjou from the Henry VI tetralogy and Richard III. The result could change the way we see Shakespeare; it proves that he wrote a female role that is an ‘Everest’ on a par with King Lear. As Margaret matures from feisty princess to scheming queen, from cold blooded killer to grief-stricken mother, from shameless adulteress to cursing crone, the hapless men who surround her are unable to withstand the fury of her ‘tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide’.

Join us at the Broadway Theatre, Catford at 4pm on Thursday 17th March 2016 for a work in progress reading, followed by a Q&A with Professor Schafer and members of the cast. Tickets are FREE but should be booked in advance here.

This event is part of the Catford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Festival and is supported by Royal Holloway, University of London.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal: Women and Science Issue

The next Forum for Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 11, issue 1, to be published October, 2016, will be on women and science.

Topics to be considered may include any subject that addresses the activity of women in science (including medicine), natural philosophy, or natural history broadly conceived in the period from 1350 to 1750. Forum pieces may consider, for example, women as scientists in any field, the influence of women as patrons of scientists and academies, or the scientific study of gender.

Proposal on related topics are welcome. Please send an abstract of 300 words to either mlindemann@miami.edu or msuzuki@miami.edu. We will respond promptly. The completed Forum essays of approximately 3000-3500 words will be due on January 15, 2016.

Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the only journal devoted solely to the interdisciplinary and global study of women and gender during the years 1400 to 1750. Each volume gathers essays on early modern women from every country and region, by scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines, including art history, cultural studies, music, history, languages and literatures, political science, religion, theatre, history of science, and history of philosophy.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Early Modern Women and the Book: Ownership, Circulation, and Collecting

Proposals are sought for a panel — “Early Modern Women and the Book: Ownership, Circulation, and Collecting” — to be proposed for the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) in Montreal and Longueuil, Quebec, July 6-11, 2015.

We seek proposals for papers that examine early modern British women who owned books, circulated books, or created libraries or book collections between 1500-1700, a period that saw increased literacy and a revolution in book production and circulation. Scholars have reconstructed and assessed the collections and libraries of Renaissance men, including Harvey, Dee, Jonson, Hales, and Drake; women’s book ownership, as a subject of scholarly inquiry, “awaits its historian,” observes David McKitterick (2000) in a study of Elizabeth Puckering’s library. What resources (commonplace books, poetry miscellanies, inventories, etc.) shed light on women’s circulation of books within communities? What are the marks — figurative, material, cultural — of women’s book usage, ownership, and collecting? What can the creation of book collections or libraries tell us about social status, family ties, confessional affiliations, education, economic status, travels? What methodologies illuminate these interrelated topics?

By Oct. 1, 2014, please send a file containing a 350 word abstract and a 50-word biographical statement to Leah Knight (lknight@brocku.ca), Micheline White (micheline.white@carleton.ca), and Elizabeth Sauer (esauer@brocku.ca) for consideration.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Women on Trial

“Women on Trial”

Drawing on a wide range of historical and literary examples – from Anne Askew to Mary Stuart, A Warning for Fair Women to The Winter’s Tale – we ask what it meant to be a woman on trial in the early modern period. This session attends to the myriad ways in which women were placed ‘on trial’: by considering the idea of the woman as witness, litigant, and defendant; by imagining the role of the law in shaping female identity; and by examining contemporary literary portrayals of the plight of ‘women before the law’.

Scholarship on slander and defamation has already identified the central role women played in certain forms of litigation, while the figure of the woman on trial is a familiar dramatic spectacle, playing a central role in Webster’s The White Devil, Arden of Faversham, Thomas Tomkis’ Lingua, and the anonymous Swetnam, The Woman-Hater Arraigned by Women (pictured above). Nonetheless, the woman on trial is infrequently discussed in literary scholarship as a discrete category. We aim to assemble experts from a range of fields, pursuing a multiplicity of contexts (such as Inns of Court, ecclesiastical ‘bawdy’ courts, and witch trials) to interrogate this neglected history.

We invite proposals for papers considering how various treatments of ‘women on trial’ can help us better understand the legal, social, and emotional position of early modern women. Please email a 150-word abstract and 1-page CV to panel organisers Dr Derek Dunne and Dr Toria Johnson at rsawomenontrial@gmail.com, by May 15, 2015.

http://rsa.site-ym.com/blogpost/1262816/214169/Women-on-Trial

CALL FOR PAPERS: European Women in Early Modern Drama

Convenors: Dr Edel Semple, University College Cork, e.semple@ucc.ie
Dr Ema Vyroubalova, Trinity College Dublin, vyroubae@tcd.ie

While England’s early modern drama presents us with a plethora of foreign female characters – women such as Franceschina, the eponymous villain in The Dutch Courtesan, Queen Katherine in Henry VIII, the displaced Bella-Franca in Four Prentices of London, and Tamora in Titus Andronicus – no single study has taken these pervasive and significant figures as its focus. This seminar seeks to redress this gap in existing scholarship by exploring representations of European women in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Building on work by critics including Ton Hoenselaars, Jean E. Howard, Lloyd Edward Kermode, Michele Marrapodi, Jean-Christophe Mayer, Marianne Montgomery, and Jane Pettegree, and drawing on recent developments in studies of gender, race, culture, and politics, this seminar aims to explore why and how early modern dramatists repeatedly fashioned female characters of distinct nationalities. How notions of gender and foreignness intersect and/or diverge in early modern English play-texts will be the central concern of the seminar.

In a range of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, foreign women are depicted as valuable links to European nations, and as threatening apertures within the English nation. In Sharpham’s The Fleer, for instance, the Italian courtesans bring strange customs to London, while in The Patient Man and the Honest Whore, the Italian courtesan is accused of spreading disease across national borders. Conversely, in Henry V, the ‘wooing’ of Katherine is a moment for linguistic exchange and she is seen as the desirable conduit to unite England and France. Thus, the seminar will consider how the staging of foreign women may enable English dramatists and their audiences to engage in debates about international relations, to deliberate on racial anxieties, to play out strategies of integration or exclusion, and to imagine England’s future vis-à-vis the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, in considering such a diverse range of characters, the seminar seeks to uncover points of commonality and difference in representations of European women, and will consider whether these women – from different nations, with varied social, religious, economic, and political identities – constitute a distinct phenomenon in the drama of the period. We are particularly interested in papers discussing theatrical depictions of European women as agents of and conduits for social, sexual, political, economic, linguistic and cultural interchange.

The papers may examine, among other aspects, representations of European women in early modern English drama in relation to:

• social, sexual, or cultural encounters and interactions
• notions and theories of race, ethnicity, hybridity, and miscegenation
• misogyny and/or xenophobia
• political and/or economic power
• crime and transgression
• linguistic exchange (e.g. accents or multilingualism)
• religious and/or social identities and groups (e.g. refugees, economic migrants)
• early modern geography and cartography
• locations and their theatrical renderings
• travel, travellers, and mobility
• early modern staging (e.g. playhouses, costumes, or stage props)
• printing and circulation of play-texts
• source texts and/or dramatic genres

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief biography (150 words) by 1 December 2014 to all seminar conveners. All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 March 2015. The deadline for submitting the completed seminar papers (3,000 words) is 1 May 2015.

Dr. Edel Semple (School of English, University College Cork)
Dr. Ema Vyroubalová (School of English, Trinity College Dublin)
Email: europeanwomenESRA@gmail.com

CALL FOR PAPERS: Rethinking Intellectual History

The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 7-9 April 2015.

The Sydney Intellectual History Network at the University of Sydney invite proposals for papers and proposals for 3-4 paper sessions for the Rethinking Intellectual History Conference.

Organisers: Stephen Gaukroger, Jennifer Milam, Glenda Sluga

The conference focuses on ten topic areas with the aim of stimulating discussion across disciplines about the past and future of intellectual history.

1. History of economic thought

2. Women and intellectual history

3. Biography, autobiography and individual life

4. History/historiography of intellectual history and hstory of ideas

5. Visual ideas and the history of art

6. ‘Ancient and modern ‘debates

7. The project and process of Enlightenment

8. History of science and intellectual history

9. History of political thought

10. History of legal thought

In addition to sessions devoted to the specific conference themes, there will also be a general section covering any aspect of intellectual history. The organisers welcome abstracts of individual papers as well as proposals for sessions of 3 papers. Abstracts of the proposed papers and proposals for sessions should be sent, by 30 November 2014, to the conference committee: sihn.rih@sydney.edu.au

Deadline for submissions: 30 November 2014
Website: http://sydney.edu.au/intellectual-history/news-events/rih-conference-2015.shtml

Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy

Dublin, 27-28 June, 2014

2014 marks the 350th anniversary of a key year in English-language women's literary history. 1664 witnessed not only the publication of Katherine Philips's supposedly unauthorised Poems but also her untimely death at the age of 32. 'Katherine Philips 350: Writing, Reputation, Legacy' - an international conference to be held at Marsh's Library, Dublin - will celebrate this important anniversary in a city where Philips spent the most productive and high-profile year of her literary career. It will offer the opportunity not only to re-evaluate Philips's literary achievements, but also to reassess her influence on later seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century women's writing.

The conference programme will include plenary lectures by Professor Elizabeth Hageman (University of New Hampshire) and Professor Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth University). It will also include a visit to the site of Smock Alley Theatre, where Philips's play Pompey was performed in 1663.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Texts, canon and circulation
• Philips's life and afterlife
• Language and form
• Letter-writing
• Drama
• Translation
• Philips as reader and critic
• Archipelagic contexts
• Politics and religion
• Friendship and sexualities
• Literary networks

Titles and abstracts (of up to 250 words) for papers should be sent to
katherinephilips350@gmail.com by 31 August 2013. Please also include your name, institutional affiliation (where applicable), and email address.

A selection of essays based on papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of Women's Writing in 2015.

Further information about the conference will be posted at katherinephilips350.wordpress.com.

We look forward to seeing you in Dublin in 2014!

Marie-Louise Coolahan and Gillian Wright, conference organisers

CALL FOR PAPERS: Medieval & Early Modern Cultures of War and Peace: Women and War

Saturday 23rd November 2013 at Homerton College, University of Cambridge

This one-day conference is part of an ongoing annual academic series focusing upon the many and various medieval and early modern cultural investments in armed combat and conflict resolution. This interdisciplinary conference explores these cultural investments with particular reference to questions of the role of women in terms of both warfare and the construction of peace. It is envisaged that delegates will be addressing this subject from a number of disciplinary perspectives, and presentations on the following subjects relating to the medieval and early modern periods would be particularly welcome: 



• the representations of martial women across a range of media, especially but not exclusively those Thomas Heywood chose as 'the most worthy women in the world' in 1640 (e.g. the Biblical Deborah and Judith, the Pagan Bunduca and Penthisilea, and the Christian, Elpheda, Margaret (wife of Henry VI) and Elizabeth I)
• writings by women who discuss their experiences of war;

• representations of women's experience in medieval conflicts, as non-combatants and combatants, victims and aggressors, subjects and authors. In particular, this panel invites contributions on Joan of Arc and/or her literary legacy; Christine de Pizan and women's writings on the ethics of war; or any other subject concerned with women's experience of medieval warfare and/or its ethical/literary representation;

• the way women are represented on stage in plays that deal explicitly with their experience of war; this session will relate to a performance of Jane Lumley’s Iphigeneia that will be staged on the evening of the conference.

These and other related subjects will be considered for presentation at this conference. Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to the conference organizers, Professor Geoff Ward (gw355@cam.ac.uk) and Professor Marion Wynne-Davies (m.wynne-davies@surrey.ac.uk) no later than Friday 27th September.

All abstracts should include the proposer’s name, title, mailing address, email address, institutional affiliation, student/employed status. Please note that there will be four panel sessions: of these some will require papers (no longer than 2000 words) to be circulated beforehand by the panel chair in order to facilitate discussion, while others will ask panel members to address key questions circulated by the panel chair.

Women and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Paris)

International conference, 21-22 June 2013, Paris, France

University Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370)
and University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)

The multiplication of cabinets of curiosities and the obsession with novelty are evidence of the development of a “culture of curiosity” in the early modern period. While curiosity had long been considered as an intellectual vice, associated with hubris and the original sin, and described by Augustine as “lust of the eyes”, it became a virtue in the 17th century. One of the main reasons for this transformation was the continued efforts of natural philosophers to demonstrate that curiosity was morally acceptable in order to legitimise their scientific endeavour. Francis Bacon and his followers thus insisted on the code of conduct of natural philosophers, the usefulness of the knowledge they were seeking and the discrepancy between their own research and occult sciences. All of them championed the “good curiosity” of the natural philosophers, as opposed to the “bad curiosity” of men and women interested in magic, and in trivial and superficial matters.

If there was indeed a “rehabilitation of curiosity” in the early modern period, did it have any impact on women’s desire for knowledge? The emergence of women philosophers at the time (Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Lady Ranelagh, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Catherine of Sweden, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catherine Trotter, etc.) may indicate that their curiosity was now considered as legitimate and morally acceptable – or at least that it was tolerated. Yet it has been suggested that the new status of curiosity in the early modern period led instead to an even stronger distrust for women, who were both prone to curiosity and curiosities themselves. The June 2013 conference on “Women and Curiosity” aims at assessing the impact of the alleged “rehabilitation of curiosity” on women in the early modern period, by analysing discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity. Iconographic and fictional representations of curious women and female curiosity might also give an insight into the relations between women and curiosity in the early modern period (for example, Cesare Ripa’s allegory of curiosity as “a huge, wild-haired, winged woman” in Iconologia (1593), or representations of emblematic curious women such as Eve, Dinah, Pandora, etc.). The origins of these discourses and representations, as well as their premises, might also be investigated: to what extent did the condemnation of women’s curiosity reveal a fear of disorder and transgression? Did it betray male anxiety about female sexuality or about the mystery of birth? Was it justified by medical interpretations of curiosity, such as a specific humoural condition?

Women’s own conception of curiosity / curiosities in the early modern period might also be of interest, especially as it is rarely studied. The conference on “Women and Curiosity” will thus give us the opportunity to focus on what women themselves wrote about curiosity in their treatises, fictional works, translations, and correspondences. Did women writers consider curiosity as intrinsically female? How did they react to male discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity? What representations of curiosity did they give in their texts?

Please send an abstract for 25-minute papers and a biographical note to Sandrine Parageau (sparageau@hotmail.com) or Line Cottegnies (line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) by 30 January, 2013.

Shakespeare and Feminism: The Eventful History of Juliet and her Romeo

Lecture on Monday 4 February at 5.30 in the Council Room, King’s Building, King’s College London

Catherine Belsey (University of Swansea) will give a lecture on ‘The Eventful History of Juliet and her Romeo’.

The lecture will be followed by a reception.

Catherine Belsey’s most recent book is A Future for Criticism (2011). After many years at Cardiff University as Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, she is now research professor at Swansea University. She is author of Why Shakespeare?(2007) as well as Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden (1999) and The Subject of Tragedy(1985). Her Shakespeare in Theory and Practice (2008) indicates how her two major interests have interacted, as does Critical Practice (1980, 2002). The theory takes centre stage in Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002) and Culture and the Real (2005).

This is one of a series of lectures presented by the London Shakespeare Centre at King’s College London, featuring distinguished speakers whose publications and teaching have had a major impact on how we read Shakespeare today in the aftermath of th ‘literary theory’ revolution of the late twentieth century to which they have all made significant contributions.

The next lecture will be on 18 March when Coppelia Kahn of Brown University will speak on ‘Feminist Criticism, Queer Theory, and Shakespeare in the Twenty-first Century’.

Call for Papers: Women and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (Paris)

International conference, 21-22 June 2013, Paris, France

University Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370)
and University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)

The multiplication of cabinets of curiosities and the obsession with novelty are evidence of the development of a “culture of curiosity” in the early modern period. While curiosity had long been considered as an intellectual vice, associated with hubris and the original sin, and described by Augustine as “lust of the eyes”, it became a virtue in the 17th century. One of the main reasons for this transformation was the continued efforts of natural philosophers to demonstrate that curiosity was morally acceptable in order to legitimise their scientific endeavour. Francis Bacon and his followers thus insisted on the code of conduct of natural philosophers, the usefulness of the knowledge they were seeking and the discrepancy between their own research and occult sciences. All of them championed the “good curiosity” of the natural philosophers, as opposed to the “bad curiosity” of men and women interested in magic, and in trivial and superficial matters.

If there was indeed a “rehabilitation of curiosity” in the early modern period, did it have any impact on women’s desire for knowledge? The emergence of women philosophers at the time (Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Lady Ranelagh, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Catherine of Sweden, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catherine Trotter, etc.) may indicate that their curiosity was now considered as legitimate and morally acceptable – or at least that it was tolerated. Yet it has been suggested that the new status of curiosity in the early modern period led instead to an even stronger distrust for women, who were both prone to curiosity and curiosities themselves. The June 2013 conference on “Women and Curiosity” aims at assessing the impact of the alleged “rehabilitation of curiosity” on women in the early modern period, by analysing discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity. Iconographic and fictional representations of curious women and female curiosity might also give an insight into the relations between women and curiosity in the early modern period (for example, Cesare Ripa’s allegory of curiosity as “a huge, wild-haired, winged woman” in Iconologia (1593), or representations of emblematic curious women such as Eve, Dinah, Pandora, etc.). The origins of these discourses and representations, as well as their premises, might also be investigated: to what extent did the condemnation of women’s curiosity reveal a fear of disorder and transgression? Did it betray male anxiety about female sexuality or about the mystery of birth? Was it justified by medical interpretations of curiosity, such as a specific humoural condition?

Women’s own conception of curiosity / curiosities in the early modern period might also be of interest, especially as it is rarely studied. The conference on “Women and Curiosity” will thus give us the opportunity to focus on what women themselves wrote about curiosity in their treatises, fictional works, translations, and correspondences. Did women writers consider curiosity as intrinsically female? How did they react to male discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity? What representations of curiosity did they give in their texts?

Please send an abstract for 25-minute papers and a biographical note to Sandrine Parageau (sparageau@hotmail.com) or Line Cottegnies (line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) by 30 January, 2013.

Unsealed - The Letters of Bess of Hardwick

Now at The National Archives, from 27 November 2012 to the end of February 2013.

The correspondence of Bess of Hardwick (Elizabeth, countess of Shrewsbury) will be explored in a new exhibition at The National Archives – ‘Unsealed: The Letters of Bess of Hardwick’.

One of Elizabethan England's most famous figures, Bess of Hardwick was an influential matriarch and dynast, lady at Elizabeth I's court, and the builder of great stately homes like Hardwick Hall. All of the Elizabethan world populated her letters: dukes and spies, queens and servants, friends and lovers. She wrote hundreds of letters throughout her life - they were her lifeline to her travelling children and husbands, to the court at London and news from the world at large. This travelling exhibition, on loan from Hardwick Hall, features images and letter facsimiles that bring Bess and her correspondents to life, and visitors can explore Bess’s world through a series of podcasts on food, fashion and gossip.

To mark the launch of the exhibition Dr Alison Wiggins will be giving a free talk on the letters at The National Archives on 29 November at 14:00, where there will also be the chance to see some of Bess’s original letters.

Unsealed: The Letters of Bess of Hardwick can be seen at The National Archives from Tuesday 27 November 2012 to the end of February 2013, and is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, and supported by the National Trust and the University of Glasgow.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/787.htm

The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444.


Dr. Katy Mair
Medieval and Early Modern Team
Advice and Records Knowledge
The National Archives
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
020 8392 5330 (ext. 2787)

Call for Papers: Women and Maps in Early Modernity

Abstracts are invited for papers about "Women and Maps in Early Modernity," for a possible SSEMW Co-Sponsored Session at the American Historical Association's annual meeting in Washington DC in January 2014.

We seek papers from a range of disciplines -- including, but not limited to, history, art history, literary studies, and historical geography -- which address the nexus between early modern women and maps/cartography in any geographical region or culture, during the time period c. 1400-1700. Paper topics might consider women as:

- Explorers contributing data from which maps are made
- map illustrators
- printers/publishers/sellers of maps
- navigators/users of maps
- writers on the topic of cartography

Abstracts (400-500 words) for papers 20 minutes in length should be submitted by January 10, 2013, by email, to Allyson Poska (aposka@umw.edu) and Erika Gaffney (egaffney@ashgate.com).

Call for Papers: Women and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe

International conference, 21-22 June 2013

Paris, France
University Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370)
and University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)

The multiplication of cabinets of curiosities and the obsession with novelty are evidence of the development of a “culture of curiosity” in the early modern period. While curiosity had long been considered as an intellectual vice, associated with hybris and the original sin, and described by Augustine as “lust of the eyes”, it became a virtue in the 17th century. One of the main reasons for this transformation was the continued efforts of natural philosophers to demonstrate that curiosity was morally acceptable in order to legitimize their scientific endeavour. Francis Bacon and his followers thus insisted on the code of conduct of natural philosophers, the usefulness of the knowledge they were seeking and the discrepancy between their own research and occult sciences. All of them championed the “good curiosity” of the natural philosophers, as opposed to the “bad curiosity” of men and women interested in magic, and in trivial and superficial matters.

If there was indeed a “rehabilitation of curiosity” in the early modern period, did it have any impact on women’s desire for knowledge? The emergence of women philosophers at the time (Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Lady Ranelagh, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Catherine of Sweden, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell, Catherine Trotter, etc.) may indicate that their curiosity was now considered as legitimate and morally acceptable – or at least that it was tolerated. Yet it has been suggested that the new status of curiosity in the early modern period led instead to an even stronger distrust for women, who were both prone to curiosity and curiosities themselves. The June 2013 conference on “Women and Curiosity” aims at assessing the impact of the alledged “rehabilitation of curiosity” on women in the early modern period, by analysing discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity. Iconographic and fictional representations of curious women and female curiosity might also give an insight into the relations between women and curiosity in the early modern period (for example, Cesare Ripa’s allegory of curiosity as “a huge, wild-haired, winged woman” inIconologia (1593), or representations of emblematic curious women such as Eve, Dinah, Pandora, etc.). The origins of these discourses and representations, as well as their premises, might also be investigated: to what extent did the condemnation of women’s curiosity reveal a fear of disorder and transgression? Did it betray male anxiety about female sexuality or about the mystery of birth? Was it justified by medical interpretations of curiosity, such as a specific humoural condition?

Women’s own conception of curiosity / curiosities in the early modern period might also be of interest, especially as it is rarely studied. The conference on “Women and Curiosity” will thus give us the opportunity to focus on what women themselves wrote about curiosity in their treatises, fictional works, translations, and correspondences. Did women writers consider curiosity as intrinsically female? How did they react to male discourses on women as enquirers and objects of curiosity? What representations of curiosity did they give in their texts?

Please send an abstract for 25-minute papers and a biographical note to Sandrine Parageau (sparageau@hotmail.com) or Line Cottegnies (line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) by 30 January, 2013.

Negotiating Early Modern Women

Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading, UK
Early Modern Studies Conference July 12th-14th 2012

A series of panels within Reading University’s Early Modern Studies Conference (2012) will be devoted to the exploration of writing by early modern women. We would welcome proposals for panels or individual papers addressing any aspect of early modern women’s writing, but we are particularly keen to receive proposals addressing the critical assumptions underlying current scholarly practice.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Why do we study writing by early modern women?
• Can we justify the study of ‘women’ as a category?
• Is there such a thing as ‘women’s writing’?
• What can the work of individual women, or specific groups of women, reveal about women and gender in the period more generally?
• How do we understand the relationship between writing by men and that by women?
• What does women’s writing reveal about the early modern canon as a whole?
• Is it possible to reach conclusions about women and their use of literary genre?
• What new directions might we take in the study of early modern women?
• What, currently, is the place of theory in the study of early modern women?

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to Dr. Alice Eardley by January 31st 2012: a.r.eardley@reading.ac.uk

For further details see: http://www.reading.ac.uk/emrc/conferences/emrc-conference.aspx