Premodern Queenship and Diplomacy in Europe: Workshop

Two workshops, open to the public, part of the ‘Premodern Queenship and Diplomacy in Europe’ conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, 11-13thSeptember 2014.

Friday 11 September, St Gregory’s Centre, Canterbury Christ Church University

The early modern dance workshop examines the sexual politics of early modern diplomacy by way of non-verbal codes of conduct. Dr Anne Daye’s workshop relies fully on audience participation, as she will recreate a ballet scene from The Nine Muses: A Trope for Peace in Female Diplomacy. Through the precision of dance, Anne Daye will bring to life the means by which early modern queens could engage with diplomacy, at the same time as revealing the limitations to their power.

For more information about the dance workshop, please see the dance workshop webpage: http://www.premodernqueenship.com/#!untitled/c1mij

Saturday 12 September, St Gregory’s Centre, Canterbury Christ Church University

The early modern performance workshop seeks to investigate the complex and fascinating ways in which Elizabethan dramatists theatricalised British& European Queenship. Whether they staged events from the thirteenth century, or, provided flattering portraits of Elizabeth I, early modern dramatists were keen to reimagine Queenship and diplomacy. The workshop is important in investigating three major Elizabethan dramatists, John Lyly - who introduced Queens onto the early modern stage - Shakespeare, and Marlowe, to assess how the early modern theatre contributed to cultural and social understandings of powerful Queens. Featuring a talk by Dr Andy Kesson (Roehampton), the drama workshop explores the textual and performative means available to premodern elite women to engage informally with diplomacy. It will be followed by scenes from three plays by five professionally trained actors, Sophia Kayes, Sarah Mackenzie, Stephanie Winiecki, Ruth Rundle and Brian McMahon. The aim of the workshop is to invoke audience participation via an open floor discussion at the end of the performance between the actors, literary specialists and audience members.

For more information about the drama workshop, please see the drama workshop webpage: http://www.premodernqueenship.com/#!untitled/c152x

Symposium on the History of Newspapers and Serials during the 17th and 18th Centuries

The editors of the journal Media History are holding a one day symposium at which issues relating to the history of newspapers and other serials, during the 17th and 18th centuries, will be discussed. The event will be held on Tuesday 9th September at King’s College, London and will provide an opportunity for specialists in a range of areas to discuss ideas and strategies with an invited audience of not more about twenty-five people who themselves have some relevant research experience.

The papers, with their provisional titles will be given by:

• Dr Michael Harris, Birkbeck College, University of London: ‘A structure for research in London newspapers ca. 1680-1720’.
• Dr Jason McElligott, Marsh’s Library, Dublin: ‘The poor relation? Writing the history of the Irish newspaper in the long eighteenth century.'
• Dr Noah Moxham, University of St Andrews: ‘Science in 17th century serials’.
• Professor Joad Raymond, Queen Mary College, University of London: ‘17th-century news networks’

The purpose of the day is to encourage discussion about the subject in a group of specialists small enough for the exchanges to be detailed and productive.

There is no registration fee for the event, and tea and coffee will be provided. Registration will be from 9.30 and the papers will start at 10.am. The day will be finished by 4.30pm. The venue is:
Kings College London, Virginia Woolf Building, 22 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6NR. The room details will be forwarded nearer the date.

If you can attend, please email Tom O’Malley, at tpo@aber.ac.uk. by 18th of August.

We would very much like to have your input at the event. We would be grateful if you could let us know whether you can attend.

Organised by the Media History Journal - http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13688804.asp

Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World, 1100–1600

September 8–9, 2014, Queen Mary University of London 

Registration is now open for the conference of the international Leverhulme Network ‘Cartography between Europe and the Islamic World, 1100–1600’. The conference aims to promote comparative, cross-disciplinary scholarship on Islamic and European cartography by bringing together experts in these two fields. 

Partners: Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten (LMU Munich), École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), The Bodleian Library, Factum Arte,Warburg Institute, British Library.

Monday September 8

9.15-10.30 Welcome and Plenary
Emilie Savage-Smith (University of Oxford): Title tbc

Respondent: Jerry Brotton (Queen Mary) 10.30-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.15 Session 1 Chair: Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary)
Jean-Charles Ducène (Ècole pratique des hautes études): The Map entitled Geography

used by Ibn Sa‘îd (13th c.) and al-‘Umarî (d. 1348) as Source

Stoyanka Kenderova (Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library Bulgaria): The Balkan Peninsula Represented on Al-Idrisi’s Maps

12.15-1.00 Lunch
1.00-2.00 Session 2 Chair: Alfred Hiatt (Queen Mary)

Technology/Innovation in the History of Cartography (Pelagios, Factum Arte) 2.00-3.45 Session 3 Chair: Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute)

Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller (Archivo de la Corona de Aragón):

Stefan Schröder (University of Helsinki): Transcultural Knowledge and Latin- Christian Cartography in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century. Impact and Function of Arabic Elements in the World Map of Pietro Vesconte.

Robin Seignobos (Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne): The Nile in Arabic and Latin Cartography (14th Century): The “Idrisian” Model and their Latin Adaptations

3.45-4.15 Coffee
4.15-5.30 Session 4 Chair: Ingrid Baumgärtner (Universität Kassel)

Emmanuelle Vagnon (Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris): The Islamic Sources of the Catalan Atlas (1375)

Piero Falchetta (Marciana National Library Venice): Influences of Islamic Geographic Knowledge in Fra' Mauro's World Map, ca. 1450

Arabic Roots of Hybrid Late Medieval mappae mundi: A Reconsideration of the On the Proposed Evidence


5.30 Reception
7.30 Conference Dinner (invited guests and conference speakers)

Tuesday September 9

9.00-10.15 Session 5 Chair: tbc
Elly Dekker (Independent Scholar): The Pair of Celestial Maps in MS Schoenberg LJS 057. A Case of Transmission from the Islamic World to Europe?

Ilana Wartenberg (University College London): Geographical Elements on the Medieval Hebrew Scientific Bookshelf

10.15-10.45 Coffee
10.45-12.30 Session 6 Chair: Peter Barber (British Library)

Pnina Arad (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Maps of the Holy Land: Objects of Devotion

Zur Shalev (University of Haifa): Geography and Orientalism: The Cippi Hebraici of Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1659)

Joachim Gierlichs (Qatar National Library): From Claudius Ptolemaeus to Carl Ritter: Qatar and the Gulf in Early European Maps

12.30-1.30 Lunch
1.30-2.45 Session 7 Chair: Jerry Brotton (Queen Mary)

Zsolt Gyözö Török (Eötvös Loránd University): Opposite Views: Source, Audience and Cartographic Representation of the 1566 Siege of Sziget in Hungary

Marian Coman (Nicolae Iorga Romanian Academy): Turks and Sea Monsters in Renaissance Cartography

2.45-3.15 Coffee
3.15-4.30 Session 8 Chair: Tony Campbell

Jeremy Ledger (University of Michigan): Geographies of Conquest: A Maghrebi Chart of the Western Mediterranean, ca. 1350

Dimitris Loupis (Harvard University): Exploring the Exchange of Skill and Style in Mediterranean Nautical Cartography. Piri Reis’s Bahriye and its Sources.

4.30-5.30 Concluding Round Table: Comparative Approaches to the History of Cartography

Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary), Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute), Hilde de Weerdt (Leiden)

To register, see http://www.cartography.qmul.ac.uk/.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Social Networks 1450-1850

The term ‘social network’ has become a prominent part of modern day discourse, and in recent years there has been rapid growth in the field of social network studies. Yet a world in which individuals are connected to one another in multifarious ways—spanning time, place, institutional affiliation, and other social boundaries—is not just a modern phenomenon. In the early modern period, neighbourhoods, villages, cities and continents were criss-crossed with relationships and ties of obligation, through which passed friendship, as well as animosity; money, ideas, information, material goods, and more. The concepts and methodologies of social network analysis, together with new digital technologies, provide the tools to uncover the nature of these communities in the past.

At stake is the very nature of society: how did people connect to one another, to what ends, and with what results? These are questions with relevance to disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. As such, this conference brings together historically minded scholars with an interest in social networks from a range of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds.

Proposals for 20-minute papers or panels of three speakers are welcome from a wide chronological and geographical reach, exploring social network concepts, methodologies and findings. For example, papers might consider:

• Methodologies: sources, challenges, and approaches; digital technologies and techniques for the collection, storage, analysis and presentation of data
• ‘Ego-centric’ or ‘whole’ networks
• Familial and kinship networks
• Merchants or trading communities
• Religious, intellectual, literary, political or institutional communities
• The cultural values underpinning social networks: for example honesty, trust, or desire for profit
• How social networks change over time
• The geographical reach of networks: local, regional, national or international; urban or rural

Deadline for submission of proposals: 31 January 2015

For individual paper proposals, please submit a title and 200-word abstract, along with contact details. For panel proposals, please include a title and 200-word abstract for each paper and contact details for one speaker on the panel. Contact: kate.davison@sheffield.ac.uk

Details about postgraduate bursaries will be publicised in due course.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Towards a History of Error

The Forschungszentrum Gotha and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin invite submission of paper abstracts for a workshop to be held in Berlin, 10-11 December 2015: Towards a History of Error.

The aim of the workshop is to identify key topics and episodes in European intellectual history of error in theology, philosophy, medicine, scholarship, and the sciences, from the late Middle Ages through the early nineteenth century. Themes include not only concepts but also methods for avoiding and eliminating error, as well as reflections on the causes and consequences of error.

Paper abstracts should be no more than 750 words long, and may be submitted in French, German, or English. Applicants are also asked to submit a curriculum vitae (including publications); applications from younger scholars are especially welcomed.

Organizers:
Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Fabian Krämer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Martin Mulsow (Gotha Research Center of the University of Erfurt)

Please submit all materials to Ms. Tanja Neuendorf by no later than October 1, 2014. Successful applicants will be notified by November 1, 2014.