CALL FOR PAPERS: Superstition and Magic in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Princeton Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference, April 20, 2018

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Michael Bailey

In an age when authorities attempt to assault our modern modes of critical thinking, the term “superstition” and its premodern associations take on rearranged values. Current political discourse denounces fake news and climate change as humbug with a zeal not unlike that of medieval and early modern establishments censuring false prophets and fallacious astrologers. Given these similarities, the classic narrative of a medieval society emerging into a modern one, “the disenchantment of the world” (Max Weber), urgently needs reappraisal. This conference proposes the examination of a wide range of evidence in various genres over time in order to foster this dialogue. In returning to the original meaning of “superstition” as an excessive fearfulness or belief, or a misapprehended and abused knowledge of a supernatural subject, how can we refine our understanding of superstition and magic in the premodern world? How can we make the overlaps between science, superstition, and magic productive?

We invite interdisciplinary submissions on diverse topics related to medieval and early modern superstition and magic. Some themes of the conference include, but are not limited to:

• Control and influence exerted by the Church and universities
• The historical development of demonology 
• The Witch Crisis: gender and authority 
• Elite vs. folk magic; paganism and popular religion
• Heresy and superstition
• Depiction of magical elements in literature and visual culture
• The impact of various religious reform movements, including the Reformation and Counterreformation, on belief, magic, and ritual
• Music and metaphysics 
• Oaths, incantations, and spells: the power of words
• Natural philosophy: astrology, alchemy, medical practices, etc.
• Material history and archaeology 
• Co-mingling of Eastern and Western traditions; book magic; Kabbalah
• Esoteric belief systems and the rise of secret societies
• The law: ordeals, witch-hunts, and policing of superstitious practices

In order to support participation by speakers from outside the northeastern United States, we are offering limited subsidies to help offset the cost of travel to Princeton. Financial assistance may not be available for every participant, with funding priority going to those who have the farthest to travel. Speakers will have the option of staying with a resident graduate student to defray their expenses.
Interested graduate students should submit abstracts of no more than 500 words to Sonja Andersen and Jonathan Martin at superstition2018@gmail.com by February 15, 2018.

All applicants will be notified about their submissions by February 24, 2018. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.

The Musical Humanism of the Renaissance and its Legacy

Online registration is now open for the University of Warwick’s Conference.

To book a place please visit:

“The Musical Humanism of the Renaissance and its Legacy”

Conference details:
Warwick in Venice, 2-4 June 2016

Theme: In modern Western culture, music is often defined as the art of feeling or the language of the soul. This conception of music has its origins in the musical humanism of the Renaissance, whose influence on musical thought was as enduring as it was widespread. Even though Renaissance humanism had no concrete link to the musical practice of antiquity, humanistic concerns were pivotal for the development of contemporary music and musical thought. Ancient and medieval stories about musical ethos, in particular about the power of music to move the passions, were of special interest to Renaissance scholars. This conference will investigate these Renaissance conceptions of the connection between music and mind, their origins, and how they were ultimately developed into our modern notion of music as an expressive art.

For more information, please contact us at j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk.

Jacomien Prins
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR)
University of Warwick, IAS, Millburn House
Coventry CV4 7HS

t.: +44 (0)24 765 73639
e.: j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk
e-Portfolio: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/about_us/centrestaff/researchfellows/prins/


https://www.facebook.com/jacomien.prins ~ @JacomienPrins

CRASSH: Descartes and Ingenium

14 March 2016 - 15 March 2016
Sidgwick Hall, Newnham College
Cambridge

Further information and online booking available at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26342
Email enquiries to gm367@cam.ac.uk.

Summary:
A two-day conference which will explore the significance of the notion of ‘ingenium’ for Descartes and his circle, and place it in the context of contemporary pedagogy, erudition, philosophy, mathematics, and music. This event is part of the research project, Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science, a five-year ERC funded project based at CRASSH, University of Cambridge .

Convenors:
Richard Serjeantson and Raphaële Garrod with Alexander Marr, Jose Ramon Marcaida, and Richard Oosterhoff

Speakers:
Igor Agostini (FrU Salento), Roger Ariew (EU S Florida), Michael Edwards (Cambridge), Dan Garber (Princeton), Raphaële Garrod (Cambridge), Emma Gilby (Cambridge), Denis Kambouchner (Sorbonne Paris 1), Richard Oosterhoff (Cambridge), Martine Pécharman (CNRS, Paris), Lucian Petrescu (Université libre de Bruxelles), David Rabouin (Diderot Paris 7 CNRS), Sophie Roux (ENS ULM), Dennis Sepper (EU Dallas), Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge), Justin Smith (Diderot Paris 7), Theo Verbeek (Utrecht).

Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. Funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ ERC grant agreement no 617391 and Trinity College Cambridge

Gaenor Moore Research Project Administrator, CRASSH +44 (0)1223 760488 | gm367@cam.ac.uk |www.crassh.cam.ac.uk | University of Cambridge, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Early Modern Literary Geographies

Early Modern Literary Geographies
Oxford University Press

Series Editors: Julie Sanders, Newcastle University and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr, Pennsylvania State University.

Influenced by the work of cultural and human geographers, literary scholars have started to attend to the ways in which early modern people constructed their senses of the world out of interactions among places, spaces, and embodied practices. Early Modern Literary Geographies will feature innovative research monographs and agenda-setting essay collections that partake of this “spatial turn.” The term “literary geographies” is to be understood capaciously: we invite submissions on any form of early modern writing that engages with the topics of space, place, landscape and environment. Although English literature is at its centre, Early Modern Literary Geographies will feature scholarship that abuts a range of disciplines, including geography, history, performance studies, art history, musicology, archaeology and cognitive science. Subjects of inquiry might include cartography or chorography; historical phenomenology and sensory geographies; body and environment; mobility studies; histories of travel or perambulation; regional and provincial literatures; urban studies; performance environments; sites of memory and cognition; ecocriticism; and oceanic or new blue studies.

Advisory Board:
Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography, University of Warwick
Steve Hindle, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, Huntington Library
Bernhard Klein, Professor of English, University of Kent
Andrew McRae, Professor of English, University of Exeter
Evelyn Tribble, Donald Collie Chair of English, University of Otago
Alexandra Walsham, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge
Lesley Cormack, Dean of Arts, University of Alberta
Dan Beaver, Associate Professor of History, Penn State University
Steven Mullaney, Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan

Enquiries to: julie.sanders@ncl.ac.uk and gas11@psu.edu

Samuel Daniel, Poet and Historian: A Two-day Conference

Thursday and Friday, 10-11 September 2015 at The Royal College of Music, London

Conference Organizers: John Pitcher (St John’s College, Oxford) &Yasmin Arshad (UCL)

It is a great pleasure to announce the first major Conference devoted to Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), presented by UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges, the English Faculty at Oxford University, St John’s College Oxford, and the Royal College of Music.

Samuel Daniel was a very considerable poet, writer, historian and man of letters. He is however the least studied and least understood of the major Elizabethans. Daniel was taught at Oxford by John Florio, and he did much to introduce Italian sweetness and ease of writing into the bloodstream of English poetry. He was also an impressive historian. He had extensive personal connections with the rich and powerful of the day, and with leading scholars, antiquarians, lawyers and academics. Daniel’s brother, John Danyel (1564-1625), was a musician of the first rank, who wrote songs and lute pieces that by general agreement keep company with Dowland's finest compositions. The Daniel brothers, who were very close, collaborated fruitfully on several occasions, but their work together has rarely been looked at.

This is the context for this interdisciplinary Conference, which will explore the full range of Daniel's interests in poetry, history and music, and how these come together in his work. Specific attention will be paid to the influence of continental artists on his writing, his importance as a student of history, especially medieval history, his achievements as a poet and writer, and his links to the world of music and the arts, through his brother John Danyel and others, Ferrabosco and Inigo Jones among them. The Daniel brothers were at the very centre of artistic achievement and thinking in early modern England and the papers will reflect this, with discussions of English Renaissance masques, costumes, portraits and architecture, as well as the manners and tastes of the social elite and their patronage. Samuel Daniel’s role in bringing the Italian High Renaissance into English culture, especially through his translations and poetry, will be of special interest. There is a programme of eight academic panels in sequence (no parallel sessions) over the two days, with two or three 20-minute papers in each, from 22 speakers. The Conference will include many firsts—including a reading of the prose History.

There will be a concert of John Danyel’s music, with some poetry from Samuel Daniel, on the Thursday evening, 10 September, at the Britten Theatre. This will be the first time the Daniel brothers’ work has been looked at together in performance. This will be led by Sam Brown of the Royal College of Music, with staged readings of selections from The Complaint of Rosamond, Musophilus and ‘Ulysses and the Siren’ performed in association with Globe Education, by the Dolphin’s Back theatre company.

Confirmed Speakers include: Warren Boutcher (QMUL); Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham); Martin Shepherd (Editor, John Danyel’s works); Christopher Goodwin (Lute Society); Karen Hearn (formerly of the Tate, Hon. Professor UCL); Lucy Gent (independent scholar).

For Conference information, and registration (which includes lunch and refreshments on both days and the concert ticket) please visit: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/eme/eme-events/samueldaniel

Early booking is suggested as space is limited. We have a number of graduate bursaries generously made available by the SRS. Please contact us about this, and with any other queries at danielconference@ucl.ac.uk

The Concert at the Britten Theatre is also open to members of the public: To book tickets please contact the RCM Box Office on 020 7591 4314, weekdays 10.00am – 4.00pm, or visit http://www.rcm.ac.uk/events/listings/details/?id=743368

We are grateful for the generous support of: The Society of Renaissance Studies; Globe Education; Oxford English Faculty; St John’s College Oxford; UCL‘s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges; UCL European Institute; UCL English Department; UCL Joint Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies (JFIGS); and the Royal College of Music (RCM).

Music in the Early Modern Indoor Playhouse

Thursday 2 July, 6pm. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe
With Dr Simon Smith (The Queen’s College, Oxford) and Dr Will Tosh.

Cast and consort members TBC.

Join the Globe’s Early Modern Music Research Associate Simon Smith as he explores music and space in the early modern indoor playhouse. We might assume that seventeenth-century musicians kept to the gallery as the action unfolded below, but as Simon will reveal, early musicians were much more mobile than we have thought. This workshop will feature excerpts from plays including the little-staged The Insatiate Countess, and live musical performances by Globe musicians including a lutenist, cornett- and sackbut-players.

To book tickets, please visit https://tickets.shakespearesglobe.com/eventlist.asp?shoid=603

(£12/£7 student)

International Research Symposium: Hearing the Voice, Hearing the Soul

5th June 2015, 9.30am-6.30pm at Warwick University, the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), Millburn House, Millburn Hill Road, Coventry

Symposium theme
Just as music has fascinated scholars in the Western world continuously for thousands of years, so time and again they have felt the need to explain its power. During the Renaissance a revival of interest for ancient theories about the power of music began. Many philosophers, humanists and music theorists writing about music found themselves caught in the Plato-Aristotle controversy. They had to make a choice between two radically different theories of the constitution of the human soul: a Platonic one, originating from the Timaeus, which stated that music has a great influence on the human soul because they are somehow similar, and an Aristotelian one, originating from On the Soul, which did not postulate any special relationship between music and the soul. Privileging one philosophical model over the other brought along entirely different beliefs about the nature of music, what it does, or what it should do. The body of doctrine around these two sources, combined with Christian ideas about music and the soul and all kinds of medical and music-theoretical ideas was pervasive till the beginning of the seventeenth century. And yet, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, to learn about music’s power meant turning not to these ancient sources and their reception, but to works on the soul such as Descartes Passions of the Soul and Hobbes’ Human Nature. The purpose of this symposium is to track and to interrogate the nature, life span, and eventual radical transformation and/or demise of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance conceptions of the belief in music’s deep connections with human life.

Please note that registration is open for the following symposium.

Delegates may view the programme and register here 

Queries: j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk

The conference is part-funded by the Royal Music Association (RMA), and is supported by the University of Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre (HRC), Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), and Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR).

Jacomien Prins
IAS Global Research Fellow
Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR)
University of Warwick, IAS, Millburn House
Coventry CV4 7HS
United Kingdom

e.: j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk
w.: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/about_us/centrestaff/researchfellows/prins/

Echoes of an invisible world:
http://www.brill.com/products/book/echoes-invisible-world

CALL FOR PAPERS: Johannes Tinctoris and Music Theory in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance

9–10 October 2014
Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, University of London

Keynote Speaker: Dr Stefano Mengozzi (University of Michigan), ‘Johannes Tinctoris, the Ambiguity of Language, and the Nature of Music-Theoretical Knowledge’

Birmingham Conservatoire, in association with the Institute of Musical Research, invites proposals for individual 20-minute papers (to be followed by 10 minutes of discussion) for inclusion in this two-day conference. Papers may either directly address Tinctoris’s own theoretical writings, musical compositions, biography, and their cultural, historical and intellectual contexts, or deal with broader approaches to music theory, its status and function in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. We are also interested in proposals relating to technologies of presentation for modern readers, and relationships between medieval music theory and other aspects of musical analysis and criticism.

Proposals should consist of a title, an abstract of up to 250 words and a biographical note of no more than 150 words; they should be sent to ronald.woodley@bcu.ac.uk by Thursday 1 May 2014.

It is anticipated that delegate fees will be waived for speakers, though it is unlikely that other travel and accommodation costs can be supported.

This conference marks the culmination of the first phase of the research project ‘The Complete Theoretical Works of Johannes Tinctoris: A New Digital Edition’ (2011–14), which has been generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and hosted by Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University. The edition, as well as further information about the project, is ongoing at:

www.earlymusictheory.org/Tinctoris

Information regarding booking for delegates will be circulated in May–June 2014.

Project Team and Programme Committee:
Professor Ronald Woodley: Principal Investigator
Dr Jeffrey J. Dean: Senior Researcher
David Lewis: Researcher
Christian Goursaud: PhD Student

Second Annual Postgraduate Renaissance Symposium: Music and the Visual Arts

Event to take place: Saturday 18 January 2014, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN

We are delighted to announce that our keynote address will be given by Professor Iain Fenlon (King’s College, Cambridge)

There was a strong relationship between music and the visual arts during the Renaissance. The function, meaning, audience and patronage of both strands of the arts were often extremely closely aligned. Music and the visual arts in the Renaissance paralleled one another in the creation (or dissolution) of national style, portrayed the same religious, mythological and secular sources in analogous institutional and private spaces, and drew inspiration from one another in engaging audiences of all types – sacred and secular, elite to illiterate.

The study (and experience) of music and art has occurred largely separately, however. Hence, the wariness of students of Renaissance art and music to explore the relationship between their own discipline and their close yet unfamiliar counterpart has resulted more in the appropriation rather than synthesis of diverse research skills. This symposium hopes to break down these historiographic boundaries and explore the numerous instances of interdisciplinarity that exist in Renaissance scholarship. We invite postgraduate and early career scholars of all disciplines to present instances of this relationship in their research, and to use this symposium as an opportunity for exploratory and open-minded discussion of aural and visual experience in Renaissance culture and historiography. We are particularly keen to encourage participants to consider ways of presenting interdisciplinary research in engaging and inventive ways.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

• joint musical and commissions
• patronage
• devotional function
• the relationship of art and music to physical space
• audiences / congregations
• relationships between the senses and the arts
• commemorative art and music
• historiography (of interdisciplinary study)
• mnemonics
• curatorial, performative, and museological approaches to Renaissance culture
• contemporary or modern relationships in hermeneutic interpretation

The Renaissance Symposium offers the opportunity for research students at all levels from universities in the UK and abroad to present their research and receive feedback in a friendly and constructive environment. We cannot offer travel subsidies for speakers, and therefore students from outside London are encouraged to apply to their institutions for funding to attend the symposium.

Please send proposals of no more than 250 words and your academic CV by 4 November 2013 to renaissanceartandmusic@gmail.com

Organised by Harriette Peel (The Courtauld Institute of Art), Matthew Laube (Royal Holloway), & Katie Bank (Royal Holloway)

Shakespeare, Music and Performance

An international conference to be held at Shakespeare's Globe 3-5 May 2013

To find out more or register go to: Shakespeare's Globe Conferences
For more information contact Farah Karim-Cooper 

Head of Research & Courses, Globe Education
020 7902 1439

Conference Schedule:

Friday 3rd May

9.30am-10.00am:

Coffee & Registration

10.00am – 10.30am: 

Welcome & Introduction

Professor David Lindley (University of Leeds) 

Dr Farah Karim-Cooper (Shakespeare’s Globe)

10.30am – 11.30am: 

KEY NOTE: Professor Linda Austern (North Western University) 

11.30am – 11.45am: Coffee Break 

11.45am – 1.15pm: 

PANEL - Music in the Shakespearean Theatre 

Simon Smith (Birkbeck)
Paul Faber (University of Leeds)
Katherine Hunt (London Consortium and Birkbeck)

1.15pm – 2.15pm: 

LUNCH 

2.15pm – 3.30pm: 

PANEL - Song
Professor Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford) 

Bill Barclay (Shakespeare’s Globe)

3.30pm – 3.45pm: 

Coffee Break 

3.45pm – 5.00pm: 

Composer Q&A 

Todd Barton (Composer and Sound Designer)

7.30pm – 9.30pm:
Early Modern Music Concert

The remainder of the conference schedule

Forum for European Philosophy Event | Singing Neanderthals? The Evolution of Music and Language

Tuesday 22 May, 6.30-8.00pm
Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE

Steven Mithen, Professor of Early Prehistory and Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Reading. He is the author of The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body

Chair: Kristina Musholt, LSE Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and Deputy Director of the Forum for European Philosophy

The relationship between music and language has been discussed by philosophers ever since Giambattista Vico in the 17th century, and probably before. Today many disciplines contribute to this debate, notably neuroscience and comparative ethology. This lecture will bring a perspective from archaeology, interpreting the artefacts and fossils of our extinct stone-age ancestors and relatives. It will find that they may have been singing long before they were speaking.

Podcasts of most FEP events are available online after the event. They can be accessed at www.philosophy-forum.org

All events are free and open to all without registration
For further information contact Juliana Cardinale: 020 7955 7539
J.Cardinale@lse.ac.uk

Forum for European Philosophy
Cowdray House, Room G.05, European Institute
London School of Economics, WC2A 2AE
www.philosophy-forum.org