The Renaissance Diary...: Women's Studies

Showing posts with label Women's Studies. Show all posts

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.

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

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.

Eleventh Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine

Thursday, 14 January 2016, 4.30pm

Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science,

Free School Lane, Cambridge

Michael Stolberg (University of Würzburg) will speak about 'Curing diseases and exchanging knowledge: sixteenth-century physicians and their female patients'

In the sixteenth century, 'diseases of women' – thought to originate from their womb – and matters of generation, pregnancy and childbirth attracted growing attention in learned medical writing. So far we know very little, however, about how commonly women consulted physicians – rather than midwives and wise women – in such matters and what they could expect. Drawing on the notebooks and practice journals of sixteenth-century physicians, this lecture will examine the place of gynecological and obstetrical problems in ordinary medical practice. It will trace the ways in which physicians acquired the knowledge and the skills they needed to diagnose and treat these patients – including foetal anatomy, manual examination and the use of the speculum. And it will show that learned physicians were even prepared to take the empirical knowledge of non-academic healers and ordinary womenfolk seriously in this domain to which they traditionally had only limited access.

There will be tea before the lecture, at 4pm in Seminar Room 1, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 6pm in Seminar Room 1.

***************************************************

Plus, earlier in the day (11:30, Seminar Room 1), Michael Stolberg will lead a discussion about uroscopic pregnancy diagnosis in early modern Europe 11.30am in Seminar Room 1 – all welcome

Historians like Barbara Duden have lamented a devaluation of women's authentic experience of 'being with child' by modern methods of 'objective' pregnancy diagnosis. This argument is somewhat at odds with the finding that another 'objective' method – examining women's urine for signs of pregnancy – was widely requested and practised in early modern Europe. Records of inquests against unlicensed uroscopists, physicians' personal notes and case histories and visual representations of uroscopic pregancy diagnosis in early modern genre painting suggest a complex interplay of female expectations, physicians' reservations and a desire to unveil the secrets of women even against their wishes.

Suggested reading: Michael Stolberg, Uroscopy in Early Modern Europe (2015), pp. 1-2, 5-8, 105-10, 117-21, 160-6. Copies of the book and a document consolidating the selected pages are on reserve in the Whipple Library. Please email if you need help accessing the readings.

These events are a collaboration between Generation to Reproduction (http://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/) and the Casebooks Project. They are supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Visit http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/ for the latest updates to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records

Dr Lauren Kassell
Department of History & Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH www.hps.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 767173

Pembroke College
Cambridge CB2 1RF
www.pem.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 330897

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

London Shakespeare Seminar: Spring Term

Monday 26 January, 17:00-19:00
Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London

To start off the new year, Margreta de Grazia (Shakespeare Verbatim; Hamlet Without Hamlet) will be speaking on ‘The Origin of Shakespeare’s Life’. This will be followed by a Q&A. There will also be an opportunity to go out for dinner and continue the conversation.

Monday 23 February, 17:00-19:00
Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London

This week, our theme is Shakespeare, Religion, and Usage. To discuss this, we will hear papers from Brian Cummings (Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity and Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture; The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, AND 1662) and Michael Silk (The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature and Thought; Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy). This will be followed by a Q&A. There will also be an opportunity to go out for dinner and continue the conversation.

Monday 16 March, 17:00-19:00
Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London

In March, our topic is stanza forms in Shakespeare’s narrative poems. Delivering papers this week will be Sarah Ross (Women, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Britain; Katherine Austen’s Book M) and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture, 1640-1680; The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women, 1558-1680). This will be followed by a Q&A. There will also be an opportunity to go out for dinner and continue the conversation.

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: 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.

Educating Women, an inter-disciplinary conference

Thursday 18 July 2013 | Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent UK

There have been issues around women and education since before Christine de Pizan wrote in 1404 that

"Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did."

Progress since then has been varied. Lady Margaret Beaufort founded two Cambridge colleges in the early 1500s but it is less than 60 years since women were first awarded degrees from Cambridge. In the UK, although STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects are integral to our economic success this is still a male dominated sector and in the last 10 years there has been no improvement in the uptake of women in mathematical sciences – 38% of students – or engineering and technology, where just 15% of students are women. Globally while the gender gap has narrowed over recent years, statistics from UNESCO in 2011 showed that girls are still at a disadvantage: in South and West Asia for example only 1 in 2 women can read or write compared with 7 out of 10 men.

The idea for this conference, which will consider the education of and by women from the middle ages to the present day, came from a mother and daughter’s interests in education and early modern women. Scholars from all disciplines are invited to discuss issues around educating women (and girls) with a view to understanding the realities.

Guidelines for submission of paper/symposia abstracts

Abstracts for papers should not exceed 300 words. Symposia proposals and submissions from postgraduate students are welcome. The conference language is English. Possible topics could include (but are not restricted to):

informal and formal education of women and girls
pre-modern scholarly women
attitudes to educating/educated women
global inequalities
girls, women and lifelong learning
women leaders in education
feminist/anti-feminist influences on educating women

All abstracts for papers or other suggested presentations must be submitted by Monday 28 January 2013 to education.research@canterbury.ac.uk.

Acceptance will be confirmed by Thursday 28 February 2013.

It is hoped to publish a book of papers from the conference.

For questions and enquiries about submissions, please contact lynne.graham-matheson@canterbury.ac.uk or helen.graham-matheson.12@ucl.ac.uk.

Further details about the conference will follow.

ESRA Shakespeare Conference 2013 | Shakespeare and Myth [Call for Papers]

MONTPELLIER (France)
Wednesday 26– Saturday 29 June 2013

LIST OF SEMINARS

Early Modern Nature: Shakespeare, Science and Myth
The Early Modern Reception of Shakespeare in Print and Manuscript: The Rise of Shakespearean Cultural Capital?
Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance
“Myth” in Relation to Truth, fable, history, legend, folklore
Myth, Romance and Historiography
Mythical Performance and its Afterlife
Mythologies of Childhood
Protean Shakespeare: Adapting, Tradapting, Performing Early Modern Plays
Shakespeare and Classical Mythology: European Perspectives
Shakespeare, Myth and Asia
Shakespeare and the Myth of the Feminine
The Shakespeare Myth Reloaded: Demythologizing and Re-mythologizing Shakespeare Today
Staging the Shakespeare Myths, 2000-2012
Translating Myths and Mythologizing Translations

Deadlines for all seminars

Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a brief bio (150 words) by 1 October 2012 to the convenors of the seminar you choose. Full details are on the website.

All participants will be notified about the acceptance of their proposals by 1 November 2012. The deadline for accepted seminar participants to send their completed paper is 1 April 2013. Information about plenaries, registration costs and other practical aspects will be given in due
course.

http://www.um.es/shakespeare/esra/index.php
www.ircl.cnrs.fr
email: esraircl@univ-montp3.fr

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)

Call for Papers: Educating Women, an inter-disciplinary conference

Thursday 18 July 2013 | Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent UK

There have been issues around women and education since before Christine de Pizan wrote in 1404 that

Guidelines for submission of paper/symposia abstracts

informal and formal education of women and girls
pre-modern scholarly women
attitudes to educating/educated women
global inequalities
girls, women and lifelong learning
women leaders in education
feminist/anti-feminist influences on educating women

All abstracts for papers or other suggested presentations must be submitted by Monday 28 January 2013 to education.research@canterbury.ac.uk.

Acceptance will be confirmed by Thursday 28 February 2013.

It is hoped to publish a book of papers from the conference.

For questions and enquiries about submissions, please contact lynne.graham-matheson@canterbury.ac.uk or helen.graham-matheson.12@ucl.ac.uk.

Further details about the conference will follow.

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

Trinity College: Forum for the Study of Early Modern Women in Continental Europe

Trinity College Dublin

The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Interdisciplinary Colloquium:

Thursday 2nd – Friday 3rd September 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

In celebration of the launch of the Forum for the Study of Early Modern Women in Continental Europe, a two-day Colloquium will be held at Trinity College Dublin on Thursday 2nd – Friday 3rd September 2010.* The Forum is committed to supporting collaborative and individual research on the early modern women of Continental Europe. This encompasses the creative output of early modern women, their depiction in literary and artistic works, and their socio-historic contexts. The Forum is designed to cross both disciplinary and geographical boundaries. It is intended that a collection of articles inspired by the Colloquium proceedings will be published, subject to peer review.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to popular demand, the Colloquium has been extended to include Thursday 2nd September (afternoon only). Papers of 20 minutes’ duration, in English, are invited from across the disciplines. Should you be interested in participating in this Colloquium, please send a short abstract (200 words) of your proposed contribution to Dr Eavan O’Brien (Forum Coordinator), obriene@tcd.ie, by Friday 21st May 2010.

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