Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant, Travel and the Making of Enlightenment Knowledge

A conference exploring the many legacies of the C18th naturalist and travel writer Thomas Pennant (1726-98) at the Linnean Society, Burlington House, Friday 16 November 2018

With a separate evening event at Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square, Thursday 15 November, details below.

Organized by the AHRC-funded ‘Curious Travellers’ project in conjunction with the Linnean Society.

For more information SEE HERE.

10.00: Coffee and arrivals  

10.15: Welcome from Isabelle Charmantier (Linnean Society) and Mary-Ann Constantine and Nigel Leask (Curious Travellers Project)  

10.30-12.30 Session One
Short presentations and launch of online edited texts by project members:

• Luca Guariento, ‘Curious Travellers and Curious Editors: XML and 0ther scary things behind the curtain.’  
• Alex Deans, ‘Dialogue and encounter: introducing the Curious Travellers Scottish editions’  
• Ffion Mair Jones, 'This delicious frenzy...': The Correspondence of Thomas Pennant and Richard Bull, 1773–1798.  
• Elizabeth Edwards, ‘‘Bag men, Itinerant Artists and sorts of fleeting customers”: voice and narrative in manuscript Welsh tours.’  

12.30-1.30 Lunch and a chance to see the exhibition of natural history books by Pennant and his contemporaries  

1.30-3.00 Session Two

• [Short presentation]: Kirsty McHugh, ‘Anne Lister’s Tours of Wales and Scotland’.  
• Miranda Lewis, ‘Mapping Lines of Communication: Thomas Pennant in Early Modern Letters Online’  
• Edwin Rose, 'From Specimen to Print: Thomas Pennant's British Zoology, 1766-1812'  
• Dòmhnaill Uilleam Stiùbhart, ‘Rev. John Stuart of Luss: pioneer lichenologist, Biblical translator, 'pedantic coxcomb'’  

3.15-3.30 Tea-break

3.30–5:00 Session Three

• [Short presentation:] Professor Debarati Bandyopadhyay (Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India), ‘Thomas Pennant and Ecocriticism’.  
• John Bonehill, 'Scotland's portraiture: the illustration of Pennant's Tours'  
• Carl Thompson, ‘Women travellers and their (many) contributions to late 18th and early 19th science’  
• Concluding remarks: Nigel Leask and Mary-Ann Constantine  

Registration: £25 waged with buffet lunch (£20 without lunch); £15 (£10) unwaged. For more information contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk (01970 636543) or visit www.curioustravellers.ac.uk

Register here  (01970 636543)

Dr Isabelle Charmantier
Head of Collections
The Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BF, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7434 4479 EXT 223 | www.linnean.org | Charity Reference No. 220509

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Thursday 15 November

Note that on the evening before the conference (15th November) there will be a separate ticketed event at Dr Johnson’s House, Gough Square, when Professor Murray Pittock and Professor Nigel Leask will give talks on the Scottish Tours of Dr Johnson and Thomas Pennant. This accompanies our current exhibition “Curious Travellers”: Dr Johnson and Thomas Pennant on Tour, at Dr Johnson’s House, 5 Oct- 12 Jan 2018. www.drjohnsonshouse.org

CALL FOR PAPERS: ‘On Belonging: English Conceptions of Migration and Transculturality, 1550 – 1700’,

TIDE Conference, 26 - 28 July 2018
London Campus, University of Liverpool, 33 Finsbury Square EC2A 1AG

How did early modern processes of global exchange influence English identity? How did the movement of peoples, objects, and ideas across the globe shape English concepts of self and belonging, both at home and abroad?

Join the ERC-funded ‘Travel, Transculturality, and Identity in England, 1550 – 1700’ (TIDE) project to explore these questions through a three-day interdisciplinary conference in summer 2018.

Confirmed Speakers: Raingard Esser, Katy Gibbons, Imtiaz Habib, Claire Jowitt, Beverley Lemire, Gerald MacLean, Angela McShane, Sarah Knight, Barbara Ravelhofer, Edmond Smith

We invite proposals for papers that examine human mobility both into and out of England, and that cover topics from the Tudor and Stuart periods, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Legal and political processes of defining and regulating national identity and the rights of strangers, aliens, and foreigners, as well as of natural-born English men and women
• The various forms of forced and voluntary global movement
• Local and global migration patterns
• Travellers, diplomacy, and trade
• Migrant case studies: individual go-betweens and transcultural agents
• The effect of mobility on English taste and consumption (from music to the arts, dietary habits to vices)
• The role of non-English objects on English social rituals and ways of life
• Representations of English encounters with other peoples in literary forms and imaginative discourse

We welcome interventions from a variety of approaches, methodologies, and disciplines. Please send abstracts of up to 300 words and a short biographical note including institutional affiliation (250 words) to tide@liverpool.ac.uk by 15 February 2018 for contributions in any of the following formats:

• Traditional 20-minute papers
• Complete panels of 3 x 20 minute or 4 x 15-minute papers
• Roundtable discussions
• ‘Exploration sessions’ that focus on particular research questions, provocations, or relevant ‘state-of-the-field’ discussions.

Proposals for complete panels and roundtables should have contact details of all confirmed participants.

Coordinators of exploration sessions will be expected to offer a brief introduction to their questions and methods before inviting a broader discussion with other attendees. These informal and flexible sessions will encourage helpful scholarly discussion and input for researchers (doctoral and early career, as well as more established scholars), particularly those embarking on new projects.

Conference participants will be able to sign up for exploration sessions on a first-come, first-served basis at the time of registration.

Conference fee: £80
Subsidised fee for students: £40
Conference Reception: £20

We will offer a small number of conference bursaries, which include a fee waiver and £50 travel grant for student delegates presenting a paper or organising an ‘exploration session’. Please include a separate 1-page CV and a 300-word statement in addition to your abstract if you wish to be considered for these bursaries.

Tide Project

CALL FOR PAPERS: Nomadic Objects: Material Circulations, Appropriations and the Formation of Identities in the Early Modern Period (16th-18th c.)

International Conference – March 2-4, 2017

Musée National de la Renaissance (Écouen), Musée Cognac-Jay (Paris, 3e),
Maison de la Recherche de l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris, 5e)

This interdisciplinary conference, organized by the Universities Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris Diderot, Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, and Paris 13, in partnership with two museums of the Paris region, the Musée National de la Renaissance in Écouen and the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris, and supported by the Ile-de-France Region, seeks to confront the material history of early modern objects with their artistic and literary representations.

It proposes to look at the various “traces” left by material culture as it circulated and was appropriated. Studying the history of material culture (be it dress and personal accessories, everyday and decorative objects, art works, and technical, scientific, or musical instruments…) sheds light upon the various processes of cultural appropriation, transculturation or hybridization that accompanied such material circulations across Europe or between Europe and the rest of the world. Material objects, whether commodities, tools, devotional objects or works of art, can all be considered as bearers or vehicles of cultural identities. By travelling across space they call into question national, religious and linguistic boundaries. 

The early modern period (1500-1800) corresponds to a period when national identities became more firmly entrenched in Europe with the definition of clearer national territories, languages and religious traditions. The establishment of such boundaries resulted from the development of a new political philosophy, born in part in reaction to Renaissance court culture and its intrinsic nomadism (A. M. Thiesse, La Création des identités nationales, 1999).  Following the trajectories of objects as they crossed these boundaries brings into focus the tension between sedentariness and nomadism that Daniel Roche identified as a key element in the advent of modernity (Humeurs vagabondes, 2003).

In addition to the tight network of material circulations within Europe linked to trade, diplomatic exchanges, aristocratic modes of life or religious exile at a time defined by intense religious and political strife, more complex trajectories yet are to be traced. In the context of proto-globalization and of the rise of international trading companies, goods often followed global paths, coming from distant locations and transiting through a number of countries or cultural spaces before reaching their destinations. Because these objects found their way into artistic and literary representations, they also generated in turn less material forms of circulation, posing the question of multi-layered processes of appropriation.

We are seeking proposals that address such processes of circulation and appropriation by looking at the reception of these objects in literature and the arts or at their production and consumption, and the craftsmanship, techniques or practices thereby implied.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Legal and illegal networks for the circulation of objects and goods, whether through trade, smuggling or personal relationships
• Diplomatic gifts and exchanges
• Travelling objects in court culture
• Objects in exile and objects of the exiles
• The transmission of craftsmanship and technologies and its links to human migrations
• Decorative, artistic and literary motifs, and their circulations from one country to another
• The meaning and implications of literary and artistic appropriations of objects
• Processes of linguistic appropriation and cross-fertilization linked to the circulation of objects
• The notion of proto-globalization and its economic, social, material, cultural and artistic manifestations

We hope that this conference will bring into play a variety of methodologies and foster a fruitful dialogue between different disciplines (History, Material Culture, History of technologies, Art History, European Languages and Literatures, Anthropology, Archaeology…). Outreach activities, such as workshops and round-tables open to the general public, will also be included in the program. We welcome proposals from established scholars, doctoral students, curators and other professionals working on or with early modern objects. We particularly encourage proposals discussing objects in the collections of the Musée de la Renaissance or the Musée Cognacq-Jay.

300-word proposals, along with a brief CV (1 page maximum), should be sent by September 15, 2016 to the conference organizers at objetsnomades2017@gmail.com

Call for Submissions: Epistolary Discourse: Letters and Letter-Writing in Early Modern Art

While cultural historians have recently published a number of studies on letters and letter-writing in Early Modern Europe, the subject has not been sufficiently explored from an art historical perspective. Though some texts on Early Modern private life offer insight on the prominence of the theme in art, a more exhaustive analysis is in order, especially since letters and letter-writing are depicted in art in other contexts besides the domestic realm. Indeed Early Modern epistolary discourse falls into both private and public categories. 

In the private sector, the Early Modern period saw a significant increase in literacy, especially among women, mainly due to the development of the printing press and the subsequent proliferation of texts. Women no longer dictated their letters to others, but wrote them themselves. As letter-writers, they could now take on intimate roles, such as that of mothers, lovers, or travelers, without the intrusion of a writing assistant. 

In the public sector, members of the papal curia exchanged letters to publicize new statutes, while spiritual leaders in general often corresponded to offer religious instruction and guidance. 

Travelers wrote letters to inform of their experiences abroad, and merchants used the rhetorical form to exchange information on financial events or to issue letters of credit and other financial instruments. Further, the renewed interest in antiquity during the Renaissance revealed the epistolary discourse of Pliny, Cicero, Seneca, and others, resulting in the revival of humanistic epistles, such as those composed by Erasmus of Rotterdam. 

For the learned, letters could be a form of rhetorical self-fashioning, as often these were made public, revealing the friendships and patronage they enjoyed from powerful individuals. 

No less significant is the fact that a new literary genre emerged at this time: the novel written in epistolary form. Examples include Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloise (1661) and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded(1740). 

Zephyrus Scholarly Publications LLC is seeking papers for an upcoming anthology on letters and letter-writing in Early Modern art. Papers dealing with any aspect of this theme will be considered. 

Please send a 300 word abstract by July 1, 2017 to Lilian H. Zirpolo at L H Zirpolo (deadline extended).

LRS: Anglican Global Crossings and the Specters of Islam in the Early Modern Period

London Renaissance Seminar Summer Lecture 13 July 2015
5.30pm, Room 112, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1

Wine will be served.  All welcome. Any queries please contact s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk

We welcome Professor Jyotsna Singh to deliver the London Renaissance Summer Lecture, and to be London Renaissance Summer Fellow. Do join us for the lecture which inaugurates her fellowship:

Anglican Global Crossings and the Specters of Islam in the Early Modern Period

This paper offers a comparative re-examination of the narratives of two Anglican Ministers, interested in travel writing — Samuel Purchas( 1555-1626), and Edward Terry (1519-1660). I focus on how both offer complicated mediations of Islam, bringing to life the global crossings and identity formations of both Christians and Muslims. Terry spent three years in India, 1616-19, as the Chaplain for Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador to the Mughal Court of the Emperor Jahangir and emissary of the East India Company. His detailed journal, A Voyage to East India (1625 and 1655) contains an important discussion of Indian religions, most notably of the differences between Hindus and “Mahometans.” It is telling that Terry’s journal was published by Samuel Purchas in his huge anthology of travel writings, Purchas, his Pilgrimage or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed … (1614) and in, another edition, Purchas, His Pilgrimes (1625), both of which focus on Islam in Book III. How do Islam and Christianity emerge in these Anglican accounts? While both Anglicans rejected Islam, viewing "religion" as synonymous to Christian truth, they also interpreted Islam with some complexity and ambiguity, notable in their efforts to categorize new ethnographic knowledge about the Muslim world. Finally, the discourse of “religion” that emerges in these Anglican accounts serves as an important context for understanding other Christian engagements with Islam in India and elsewhere, including those of other English Chaplains, Jesuits, and Dutch religious personages.

Jyotsna G. Singh, Professor Department of English, Michigan State University.

The London Renaissance Seminar meets at Birkbeck to discuss topics in the culture of the Renaissance. Anyone with an interest in the Renaissance is welcome to attend. Seminars are usually held in the School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square.

London Renaissance Seminar contact : s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk
London Renaissance Seminar mailing list : t.f.healy@sussex.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern World

Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) Aberystwyth-Bangor

Biennial conference, 3rd-5th September 2015, Bangor University

Confirmed Keynote Speaker:
Michal Biran (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Daniel Carey (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Judith Jesch (University of Nottingham)

The meeting points between travel, mobility, and conflict are numerous. Travel can be a conflictual experience; in medieval Europe, movement may be perceived as being restricted to travel motivated by the exigencies of piety, pillage, or trade. It would however be too easy to suggest a clear binary between a medieval state of stasis and the more leisurely travel and exploration in the early modern period. Until relatively recently, domestic travel and voyages to the wider world remained dangerous undertakings. Utopian fiction and travel writing are two genres that have been closely aligned by scholars who recognise how these genres reshape medieval discourses on the ideal state for an early modern audience. Weary travellers arrive at geographically unspecified places comprising ideal societies, but these ideal societies occupy a liminal space between fiction and reality: these spaces are ultimately unattainable due to the imprecision and prevarication present in the narrative. This draws to focus tensions within documenting imaginary travel and the material world. Far from being a site of concord, they become spaces of conflict. Travel – whether it is real or imagined, or if it has been implemented for public or private purposes – can be obstructed by conflicts; it remains often restricted and always bitterly debated.

This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars working in the fields of medieval and early modern studies to interrogate the relationship between travel and conflict. Topics might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Travel in times of war and conflict 
• Restricted travel 
• Forbidden travel 
• Exile and travel 
• Colonial encounters 
• Piracy 
• Travel, subterfuge and deceit 
• Conflict of body and mind in travel 
• Travel, religion and conversion 
• Conflicting readings of travelogues 
• Debates on travel 
• Liminal spaces 
• Utopian/Dystopian travel 
• Travel and synaesthesia 
• Vagrancy 
• Matter, materiality and the unreal 
• Travel as a violent act 
• Remembering and forgetting travel 
• Conflict between topography and spatial movement 
• Conflict between mapped space and inhabited space 
• Language communication and miscommunication 
• Pilgrimage or Crusade 
• Migration and persecution 

We invite abstracts of 200-250 words for individual papers of twenty minutes, or of up to 850 words for panels comprising no more than three papers, to be sent to travelandconflict@gmail.com by 25th January 2015. Please send your abstract in the text of your message, and not in an attached file.

The conference organisers are Rhun Emlyn, Gabor Gelléri, Andrew Hiscock, and Rachel Willie.

Further details are available via the conference website: travelandconflict.wordpress.com, or you can follow us on Twitter @Travel_Conflict

CALL FOR PAPERS: Romance: Places, Times, Modes

School of English, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

21-22 September 2012

Romance has been one of the most resilient and protean of literary kinds, existing in its own right, moulding itself in other genres, and transforming itself in the long history of its aesthetic and cultural traffic from antiquity to early modern times, and between different cultures. Royal and popular, romance has absorbed, often at once, a plethora of discourses concerned with politics and privacy at crucial moments in European history and in its contacts with the worlds beyond Europe. This conference offers the chance to reassess the nature and importance of romance within the larger frame of cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, comparative, and theoretical studies. The identification of new romances, the exploration of romance in contact with other genres and modes, and cultures other than English, and the larger reflections romance facilitate in the process of absorption and reconfiguration of places and times in which it is produced—all these are topics of considerable interest and value. At a further level, such imperatives have much to suggest about the processes by which the romance itself has undergone transformation and has transformed our understanding of its place in literary history, and beyond borders and countries. Contributions to this discussion are invited, covering as wide a range in terms of period, concept and approach as critical imagination can devise, to explore the imaginative suppleness and dynamic of romance across places, times, and modes.

Topics may include but are not limited to

Ethics and politics
Movement in time and space
Travel, sea, and geography
Contacts with the East; Islam
Classics
Sources and analogues
Crossovers with other genres
Cross-national / cross-ethnic contacts
Print and manuscript
The material book
Theories of romance
Allegory
Religion
Gender and Sexuality
Romance and the arts
Translations and adaptations

A 200-word abstract, including contact information, should be sent to Goran Stanivukovic (G.Stanivukovic@ucc.ie) and Sergi Mainer (S.Mainer@ucc.ie), School of English, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, before 1 June 2012.