CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Artisans of the Surface' 1450-1750

20-21 September 2018,  King's College London

This workshop focuses on the practices of a range of artisans (tailors, barbers, cooks, cheesemakers, gardeners, and agronomists) and their relationships with the fields of meteorology, botany, natural history, medicine, earth sciences, and veterinary medicine. These artisans and their practices shared a set of skills related to the observation and manipulation of human and non-human surfaces. We will explore how, and if, practical knowledge about the surface of things and bodies (and their storage and preservation in relation to specific environmental conditions) led to the concept of nature and matter as composed of layers, and how such a framework contributed to the demise of traditional Galenic and Aristotelian views on nature.

This workshop also aims at getting past the dichotomies between quantitative and qualitative knowledge and between natural philosophy and the arts, and so we intend to broaden the focus to include a set of artisans who have traditionally remained invisible from accounts of this ‘age of the new’. We will explore the many different ways in which ‘modern science’ emerged, the relationships between social and cognitive practices, and the contribution that non-mathematical sciences gave to the mental habits of observing, collecting, experimenting with, and manipulating natural matter.

Confirmed speakers are Emanuele Lugli (York) on tailors, Elaine Leong (MPIWG, Berlin) on domestic health practices, Bradford Bouley (UC Santa Barbara) on butchers, Maria Conforti (La Sapienza) on the surface of the earth, and Carolin Schmiz (EUI) on barber-surgeons. Sandra Cavallo (Royal Holloway) will offer final remarks. We welcome proposals that complement these topics, in particular those that address the relationships between gardening, natural history, and medicine; cooking and knowledge; work on animal skin; leatherwork; or veterinary medicine. Presentations will be followed by ample time for discussion and reflection, and so we are happy for works in progress.

Proposals (up to 250 words) for 20-minute papers should be sent to Paolo Savoia at renaissanceskin@kcl.ac.uk by 8 June 2018. We may be able to provide speakers with reasonable accommodation and travel costs. Please indicate when you apply if you will require assistance with expenses.


Dr. Paolo Savoia|Postdoctoral Research Fellow
'Renaissance Skin' (Wellcome Trust)
King's College London|Strand|London WC2R 2LS|room K0.27
Phone: +393332802718|Email: paolo.savoia@kcl.ac.uk
Twitter: @RenSkinKCL
https://renaissanceskin.ac.uk/

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.

CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Locating the Ancient World in Early Modern Subversive Thought'

Newcastle University, 12th-14th April 2018

Dichotomies have long been used to define the intellectual developments of early modern Europe - reason and faith; authority and subversion; science and humanism; radicalism and tradition; heterodoxy and orthodoxy — with classical thought usually located on the side of tradition, a behemoth of learning which inhibited man’s reason and his ability to learn through observation. Such unilinear accounts of the progression to modernity have been subjected to increasingly numerous challenges in the last two decades, as scholars have sought to demonstrate that the ideas which drove Europe towards the Enlightenment were far more complex and multi-layered than suggested by the traditional narratives.

The aim of this conference is to expand on this revived appreciation of the classical influence in early modernity by looking specifically at the role played by the ancient world in that sphere from which it has most usually been excluded: subversive literature. The idea that the texts, philosophies, and exempla of the ancient world might have served as significant tools for those who sought to undermine and challenge political, religious and cultural authority stands in direct opposition to the traditional role assigned to the classics in this period. Emphasising an interdisciplinary approach, this conference will draw scholars together to build a coherent picture of how the classical tradition functioned as a tool for subversion, illuminating a previously neglected aspect of the ancient world in the early modern thought.

The keynote speakers will be Peter Harrison (University of Queensland) and Marianne Pade (Danish Academy at Rome).

We are inviting abstracts for papers of thirty minutes on topics including, but not limited to:

• Ancient philosophical involvement in epistemological challenges to traditional understandings of knowledge and belief
• Ancient theories of natural philosophy in the debates concerning God and the universe in both religion and science
• The contribution of ancient texts to the arguments for natural religion, and against magic, miracles, and the supernatural
• Classical rhetoric and literary forms as models for argumentation in subversive treatises, polemics, pamphlets, poetry, and other literary genres
• Ancient religion in the construction of arguments in favour of toleration, and the establishment of a civil religion
• The function of ancient examples in radical political ideologies, including republicanism, democracy, and theories of resistance and revolution
• Classical scholarship as a tool for subversion, and print culture as a sphere facilitating this function of the classics

If you would like to offer a paper for the conference, please submit an abstract of 300 words to Katherine East by 9th February 2018.

See Locating Subversion for further information.


Katherine A. East
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
School of History, Classics, and Archaeology
Newcastle University

Locating the Ancient World in Early Modern Subversive Thought

12th – 14th April 2018
The Boiler House, Newcastle University

The aim of this conference is to expand on this revived appreciation of the classical influence in early modernity by looking specifically at the role played by the ancient world in that sphere from which it has most usually been excluded: subversive literature. The idea that the texts, philosophies, and exempla of the ancient world might have served as significant tools for those who sought to undermine and challenge political, religious and cultural authority stands in direct opposition to the traditional role assigned to the classics in this period. Emphasising an interdisciplinary approach, this conference will draw scholars together to build a coherent picture of how the classical tradition functioned as a tool for subversion, illuminating a previously neglected aspect of the ancient world in the early modern thought.

Featuring keynote speakers Peter Harrison (University of Queensland) and Marianne Pade (Danish Academy at Rome).

There is no delegate fee for this conference, but if you plan to attend please email Katherine East to register for the event by Monday 9th April.


PROGRAMME

Thursday 12th April

13.30-14.00 Coffee and Registration

14.00-14.30 Welcome Address

14.30-16.30 Panel One: Institutions of Religion

Alasdair Raffe (Edinburgh): ‘Numa in Plaid: Scottish Interpretations of Roman Religion, c. 1602-1759’

John Holton (Newcastle): ‘Thomas Hobbes, Diodorus Siculus, and Early Human Society’

Ashley Walsh (Cambridge): ‘Ciceronianism and the Multitude in the Civil Religion of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’

17.00-18.00 Keynote Address

Marianne Pade (Danish Academy at Rome): ‘Thucydides vs Aristotle: Leonardo Bruni on Popular Government’

18.00-19.00 Drinks Reception

Friday 13th April

9.30-11.30 Panel Two: Rewriting the Natural World

Valentina Zaffino (Pontifical Lateran University): ‘Subverting Aristotelianism through Aristotle: Giordano Bruno’s Interpretation of the Physics’

Karine Durin (Nantes): ‘Dangerous Pliny: Natural Philosophy and the Limits of Christian Orthodoxy in the Renaissance’

Michelle Pfeffer (Oxford): ‘William Coward (1657-1724), the Material Soul, and ‘Undeniable History’: a Physician’s Critical Study of Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian Pasts’

11.30-12.00 Break

12.00-13.30 Panel Three: Pagan Belief

Jonathan Nathan (Cambridge): ‘Orthodox Atheism and the Manuscript Theophrastus Redivivus’

Tim Stuart-Buttle (York): ‘Pagan Philosophy and Early Modern Natural Law Theory: John Maxwell’s Edition of Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturae (1727)’

13.30-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.30 Panel Four: The Power of Words

Callum Murrell (Durham): ‘The Invention of Subversion: Fiction and Narrative in the Elizabethan Star Chamber’

Julianne Mentzer (St Andrews): ‘“Give me my fee!”: Transgressive Use of Rhetoric in The Dutch Courtesan’

Rowland Smith (Newcastle): ‘The Persecuting Pagan and the Philosophic Protestant: Julian the Apostate in English Reception from Marvell to Gibbon, by way of Hampton Court and Voltaire the Bigot’

17.00-18.00 Keynote Address

Peter Harrison (University of Queensland): ‘The Authority of the Ancients: the Case of Heterodox Religion in Seventeenth Century England’

18.00 Drinks Reception and Conference Dinner

Saturday 14th April

9.30-11.30 Panel Five: Popular Politics

Astrid Khoo (KCL): ‘Subverting Cicero: Roman Republican Polemic in Milton’s Defensio Pro Populo Anglicano’

Dikaia Gavala (Aberdeen): ‘“Rise before the Majesty of the People”: Popular Republicanism in Restoration Drama’

Minchul Kim (St Andrews): ‘War and Patriotism: Roman History and Military Government in the French Revolutionary Debates’

11.30-12.00 Break

12.00-13.30 Panel Five: Epicurean Echoes

Jessica Pirie (Birmingham): ‘Aphra Behn’s The Young King and the Lucretian Revival’

Jared Holley (EUI): ‘Epicureanism and Popular Sovereignty in Rousseau’

13.30 Lunch and Farewells



Dr Katherine A. East
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
School of History, Classics and Archaeology
Newcastle University
Katherine East

Camilla Erculani’s Lettere di philosophia naturale

Wednesday 24 February 2016, 6pm
UCL, Italian Seminar Room, Foster Court 351

Eleonora Carinci (University of Cambridge), “Principiando a mezzo del soggetto”: Le Lettere di philosophia naturale di Camilla Erculiani e il genere epistolare

This paper considers Erculiani's Lettere di philosophia naturale (Cracow, 1584) in the context of the sixteenth-century Italian epistolary tradition. The Lettere is the only known example of a work of natural philosophy published by an Italian woman in the sixteenth century. Basing her theory on the thought of Plato, Aristotle and Galen, Erculiani, an apothecary from Padua, attempted to demonstrate the natural cause of the Great Flood by establishing a dialogue with her correspondents. I will explore the relationship between the choice of the epistolary genre and gender issues, and the ways – in particular letter-writing and conversations with physicians and philosophers – in which Erculiani participated as a woman in contemporary philosophical debate.

Eleonora Carinci graduated in Italian literature at La Sapienza – Università di Roma. In 2009 she was awarded a PhD at St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge, with a thesis entitled Lives of the Virgin Mary by Women Writers in Post-Tridentine Italy. She specializes in Italian Renaissance and Counter-Reformation literature and culture, with a particular interest in non-canonical literature, religious writings, early modern vernacular natural philosophy, women’s writings and gender issues, and has published a number of articles on these topics. She worked in particular on Moderata Fonte, Vittoria Colonna, Lucrezia Marinella, Maddalena Campiglia, Chiara Matraini, Pietro Aretino and Camilla Erculiani. In 2012-13 she was the Rubinstein Fellow of the Society for Renaissance Studies. She is currently working on a modern critical bilingual edition of Camilla Erculiani’s Lettere di philosophia naturale (1584) to be published in 'The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe' series (Toronto, CRRS).

Annalisa Ricciardi (Senate House Library), “Io vo cercando occasione di ragionar con voi con gli inchiostri ...” Bernardo Tasso’s Letters to Pietro Aretino on Behalf of Giovanni Antonio Clario: A Reformed Printer

This paper will focus on the professional itinerary of the Neapolitan “poligrafo” Giovanni Antonio Clario. At the turn of 1544 he moved from the Kingdom of Naples to Venice, the main printing centre of Italy at that time. His personal itinerary invites reflection on the role of entrustment letters, which he carried with him to Venice and played a primary role in the development of his career. I shall reconstruct Clario’s personal and professional itinerary to throw light on this new category of letterati who used political contacts to further their career in the print sector.

This paper will also examine the spiritual dimension of this new type of figure. Clario’s literary output still resonates with the spiritual anxiety common to sixteenth-century men of letters, who often expressed religious ideas through printed works. In the case of Clario, we see it best in his translation of Valdès’ Dos Dialogos, a political and spiritual work of art used by contemporaries to engender debate about the Reformation, not only among the ruling class but also among the popular and subaltern classes, which helped it make a concrete cultural impact.

Annalisa Ricciardi is currently working at Senate House Library, University of London, as a cataloguer on the "Shakespeare Project". She has previously worked at Sotheby’s Institute of Art Library, the British Library and Tate Britain Archive & Library Department. In 2009 she completed a PhD on the routes and the culture of pilgrimages in the Euro-Mediterranean Middle Ages at Università del Salento, Lecce. She has also published articles on the inquisition and heresy in early modern Venice, such as her entry for ‘Giovanni Antonio Clario’ in Adriano Prosperi, John A. Tedeschi and Vincenzo Lavenia (eds), Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione (2010).

Please note that the papers will be in Italian and English.

ALL WELCOME!

To find the Italian Research Seminar Room:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/selcs/italian/images/MapToFC351.jpg

Our full calendar for the current term: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/selcs/italian/research-seminars

You are also welcome to become a friend of the UCL Italian Departmental Research Seminars on Facebook at http://goo.gl/YwKHn and follow us on Twitter @UCLItalianSemin

Andrew Campbell
a.campbell@ucl.ac.uk

Thomas Harriot Seminar 2015

Durham Castle, University of Durham, 6-7 July 2015

The Thomas Harriot Seminar celebrates the life and times of the mathematician Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), and welcomes papers on Harriot himself as well as on the history of mathematics and science in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century more generally. We particularly welcome papers on subjects of interest to Harriot, which included: pure and applied mathematics, the new world, astronomy, natural philosophy, alchemy, optics, linguistics, and the art of war. For more information about the Seminar please visit the Thomas Harriot Seminar website:


Richard Osterhoof (CRASSH University of Cambridge) “Gabriel Harvey and the utility of mathematics”

Robert Goulding (University of Notre Dame), “Through a glass, darkly: shadows, light, and prismatic colours.”

Glyn Parry (University of Roehampton), “The Ordeal of Thomas Digges”

Cathy France (University of Leeds), “Thomas Digges and the ballistic trajectory”

Stephen Johnston (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford), “Edward Wright at Sea – Detected and Corrected”.

David Harris Sacks (Reed College, Oregon), “Learning to Know: Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Harriot in Oxford.”

Todd Andrew Borlik (University of Huddersfield), “John Dee’s ‘Hydragogie’ and Fen Drainage in the Seventeenth Century”

Susan Maxwell (Independent Scholar), “Preparing for circumnavigation: Thomas Cavendish and Francis Drake”

Registration fee: £95 (includes accommodation at the Castle, drinks reception, conference dinner on the 6th and buffet lunch on the 7th). Non-residential fee (without dinner and lunch): £35. Two bursaries are available for MA or PhD students, covering residential registration (if you would like to apply for one of these, please email the Chairman explaining why attending the seminar would be useful to your research). To register please email the Chairman Dr Stephen Clucas.


Dr Stephen Clucas
Editor, Intellectual History Review
Reader in Early Modern Intellectual History,
English and Humanities,
Birkbeck, Univesity of London,
Malet Street,
London WC1E 7HX

Magic and Intellectual History

Thursday 5th March 2015 - CREMS, University of York

A day symposium – Keynote speaker: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck)

This symposium will explore the place of magic in the intellectual culture of early modern England and Europe. It will focus on how magic was perceived and understood in philosophical, religious and scientific thought, and the ambivalence that surrounded it as topics of scholarship.

Papers might attend to the following:

• How did early modern thought accommodate magic into its disciplines?
• Why was magic the object of so much ‘elite’ scientific and philosophical thought?
• Magic and the study of nature
• Magic and the ineffable
• Redefining the parameters of magic
• Magic and religion.
• The occult and hidden operations of nature
• Scepticism and magical thought
• Magic and language / magic and metaphor
• Literature and the portrayal of magic
• Magic and the devil
• Magicians and their day-jobs.

Call for Papers: Abstracts by 15th October (c. 250 words)

Contact: Kevin Killeen, kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

This symposium is part of a diffuse and ongoing Thomas Browne Seminar that has digressed quite far: http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/


Overview

The Thomas Browne Seminar is a forum for exploring the intellectual history of the seventeenth century, the relations between its apparently incompatible disciplines and the social, scientific and political contexts in which they arose. It is not, by any means, restricted to Thomas Browne himself, but also examines more broadly the intellectual culture in the mid-seventeenth century.

Papers are invited on any aspect of mid-century culture, the history of science and scholarship, religious and antiquarian thought, natural history, politics and the history of trivia, in particular, but not restricted to, those related to Browne. As the seminar will involve an ongoing series of meetings, ideas for future seminars are also invited.

The TBS is run jointly by the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Thomas Browne was a significant figure in the scholarly and scientific community of the seventeenth century, who nevertheless defies categorisation and whose blend of humanism, scholasticism and natural philosophy is testament to the intellectual flux of the period.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Magic and Intellectual History

Thursday 5th March 2015 - CREMS, University of York

A day symposium – Keynote speaker: Dr Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck)

This symposium will explore the place of magic in the intellectual culture of early modern England and Europe. It will focus on how magic was perceived and understood in philosophical, religious and scientific thought, and the ambivalence that surrounded it as topics of scholarship.

Papers might attend to the following:

• How did early modern thought accommodate magic into its disciplines?
• Why was magic the object of so much ‘elite’ scientific and philosophical thought?
• Magic and the study of nature
• Magic and the ineffable
• Redefining the parameters of magic
• Magic and religion.
• The occult and hidden operations of nature
• Scepticism and magical thought
• Magic and language / magic and metaphor
• Literature and the portrayal of magic
• Magic and the devil
• Magicians and their day-jobs.

Call for Papers: Abstracts by 15th October (c. 250 words)

Contact: Kevin Killeen, kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk

This symposium is part of a diffuse and ongoing Thomas Browne Seminar that has digressed quite far: http://www.york.ac.uk/english/news-events/browne/



Overview

The Thomas Browne Seminar is a forum for exploring the intellectual history of the seventeenth century, the relations between its apparently incompatible disciplines and the social, scientific and political contexts in which they arose. It is not, by any means, restricted to Thomas Browne himself, but also examines more broadly the intellectual culture in the mid-seventeenth century.

Papers are invited on any aspect of mid-century culture, the history of science and scholarship, religious and antiquarian thought, natural history, politics and the history of trivia, in particular, but not restricted to, those related to Browne. As the seminar will involve an ongoing series of meetings, ideas for future seminars are also invited.

The TBS is run jointly by the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Thomas Browne was a significant figure in the scholarly and scientific community of the seventeenth century, who nevertheless defies categorisation and whose blend of humanism, scholasticism and natural philosophy is testament to the intellectual flux of the period.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Instruments & arts of inquiry: natural history, natural magic and the production of knowledge in early modern Europe

Journal of Early Modern Studies is seeking contributions for a special issue (Spring 2014)

Editors: Dana Jalobeanu & Cesare Pastorino
Deadline 1 October 2013

We seek papers exploring the intersections between the disciplines of natural history, natural magic and the books of secrets tradition in the early modern period. We are particularly interested in the various ways in which texts and practices in the tradition of natural magic and the books of secrets were absorbed, transformed and integrated in the renovated natural histories of the seventeenth century.

Further details at:
http://www.zetabooks.com/newsflash/cfp-jems-spring-2014.html

Guidelines for authors:
http://www.zetabooks.com/download2/JEMS-Guidelines.pdf

Please send your contribution by 1st of October 2013 to dana.jalobeanu@gmail.com.

dr. Dana Jalobeanu
University of Bucharest
Faculty of Philosophy
Splaiul Independentei 204
Bucuresti

The Natural Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: its context and developments

Organised by Daniel Garber (Princeton University), Noel Malcolm (All Souls College) and Martine Pércharman (CNRS-MFO).

The speakers will be: Philip Beeley, Stephen Clucas, Daniel Garber, Franco Giudice, Francesca Giuliano, John Henry, Douglas jesseph, Cees Leijenhorst, Agostino Lupoli, Timothy Raylor and Elaine Stroud.

The sessions will be chaired by Noel Malcolm, Kinch Hoekstra, Luc Borot, Catherine Wilson, Daniel Garber and Martine Pécharman.

The Natural Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Its Context and Development

Date: Friday 03 Feb 2012 (All day) to Saturday 04 Feb 2012 (All day)
Place: Friday: MFO - Saturday: All Souls College
Research programme: Modernities

Friday 3 February, Maison Française d’Oxford

Morning Session
Chair: Noel Malcolm (All Souls College, Oxford)

10.30-11.30 Timothy Raylor (Carleton College, Northfield)
Hobbes's Method of Composition and its Implications

11.30-12.30 Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck College, London)
Defining the Terms of Motion in Hobbes's Natural philosophy

Afternoon Session I
Chair: Kinch Hoekstra (University of California, Berkeley)

14.00-15.00 John Henry (University of Edinburgh)
Galileo, Hobbes, and the Physics of Simple Circular Motion

15.00-16.00 Douglas Jesseph (University of South Florida)
Hobbes on the Foundations of Natural Philosophy

Afternoon Session II
Chair: Luc Borot (MFO)

16.30-18.00 Daniel Garber (Princeton University)
Hobbes, Descartes, and Laws of Nature

Francesca Giuliano (Università del Salento)
Response to Dan Garber

Saturday 4 February, All Souls College

Morning Session I
Chair: Catherine Wilson (University of Aberdeen)

9.30-10.30 Franco Giudice (Università degli Studi di Bergamo)
The Place of Optics in Hobbes's Natural Philosophy

10.30-11.30 Elaine Stroud (University of Wisconsin)
Lines of Vision: A Construction Integrating Physics, Geometry, and Psychology

Morning Session II
Chair : Daniel Garber ( Princeton University)

11.45-12.45 Philip Beeley (Linacre College, Oxford)
Experimentarian Philosophers. Hobbes's Writings on Pneumatics and their Reception by Boyle and Wallis

Afternoon Session
Chair: Martine Pécharman (CNRS-MFO)

14.00-15.00 Agostino Lupoli (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Hobbes’s Concept of Accident

15.00-16.00 Cees Leijenhorst (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Causality and Representation in Hobbes's De Corpore