CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Art and the Verdant Earth: The Green Worlds of the Renaissance and the Baroque

Call for contributions to a multi-author essay collection:

The green mantle of the earth! This age-old metaphor casts the greening of the earth as a divine marvel while also calling upon poets and artists to re-fashion the greenness of nature into art. Ecological writers like Rachel Carson and E. O. Wilson used the expression as a poetic figure for the terrestrial vegetation we take for granted. The topic of Art and the Verdant Earth is the representation of vegetation in the art of the Old Masters. Its ambition is to reveal the visual poetics underpinning the pictorial expression of greenery in images that are traditionally called landscapes.

We invite essays on the visual poetics of a verdant earth. How did artists in Early Modern Europe compete with poets (and Nature) in the fashioning of natural imagery? How did they manage/ manipulate the infinitude of irregularities that is nature’s way? What can be said of the many types of landscape painting (pastoral, sylvan, rural, wilderness, or even river views, clearings, and distressing wastelands) in light of a poetics of vegetation, and in light of the realities of land use? Artists, we believe, followed a kind of lyrical naturalism, which turns the phenomena of nature into the common themes and recurrent motifs of visual poetry. It also links the inexhaustible treasures of the natural world to the poets whose epithets for green matter served as precepts that directed artists in the discovery of just those traits – be it the obdurancy of an oak or the pliancy of a willow- that turn vegetation into eloquent depiction.

This collection of essays is being seriously considered by Ashgate Publishing. Edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger and Leopoldine Prosperetti, it will draw from art history, literature, gender studies, emblem studies, environmental studies, natural philosophy, natural theology, and botany to treat ideas of verdancy and vegetation in the Renaissance. 

Topics might include:

• the technical problem of unstable pigments and the difficulty of achieving a durable color green
• from Giorgio Vasari and Karel van Mander to Goethe: theoretical perspectives on greenery in art
• the Renaissance print and the dissemination of vegetal imagery
• theologies of greenery: the vegetative argument in theology and philosophy
• the role of vegetation in the painted landscape
• the authority of poetry in natural imagery: from Virgil to Goethe
• no Tree, No Pastoral. Trees and pastoral scenery
• women, Luxuria and the color green: vegetative imagery and gender
• masters of vegetal imagery in the European canon
• sylvan moments in European art
• historically envisioning greenery and modern environmentalism

Finally, we welcome articles that address the very topical question, “Was the Renaissance green?”

Art and the Verdant Earth: The Green Worlds of the Renaissance and the Baroque will be an illustrated volume, with individual contributors responsible for any permission and/or art acquisition fees. Final essays, of approximately 8,000 words (incl. notes), and all accompanying b&w illustrations/permissions will be due in spring 2016. For consideration, please send an abstract (max. 500 words), a preliminary list of illustrations (if applicable), and to a 100-word biography to leopoldine@jhu.edu, april.oettinger@goucher.edu, & GoodchildKH@Wofford.edu by August 15. 2015. Acceptance notifications will be emailed by mid-September.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Chiaroscuro as Aesthetic Principle (1300-1600)

Chiaroscuro since Leon Battista Alberti’s De Pictura (1435) has been one of the central subjects characterising painting and sculpture in practice and theory in Italy. Primarily, it concerns the articulation of plastic qualities, the formulation of relief, both in painting and sculpture. In the northern tradition, too, chiaroscuro has been highly valued. Through chiaroscuro, the textures of materials and the structural fabric of their surfaces, including their eye-catching highlights, have been evoked. Chiaroscuro goes hand in hand with an intensification of optical qualities.

In the Cinquecento, the significance of chiaroscuro underwent an important change. The evocation of plasticity and corporeality through a chiaroscuro that created relief was now in part replaced by a tonally defined chiaroscuro, which focused on pictorial qualities. This is the case, for example, in the Clair obscur prints, which developed in both, northern and Italian art. These different uses of chiaroscuro are each linked to differently grounded aesthetic commitments.

Within the context sketched above, we want to understand chiaroscuro as a distinctive aesthetic principle. Our chronological focus is on the period from 1300 to 1600.

The following sections are envisaged:

- chiaroscuro and monochrome painting
- chiaroscuro in the context of drawing and prints
- chiaroscuro and sculpture
- chiaroscuro in the art of Leonardo da Vinci

Further relevant proposals may be added: suggestions will be gladly received.

Interested scholars are cordially invited to present their researches and ideas in the framework of the conference. Please send your abstract (max. 300 words) for a c. 20-minute presentation together with your Curriculum Vitae by August 15, 2015 by email to: claudia.lehmann@ikg.unibe.ch

Presenters will be contacted in September 2015.

CALL FOR EDITORS: Journal of the Northern Renaissance

The Journal of the Northern Renaissance is seeking new recruits to its editorial team. Established in 2009, JNR is a peer-reviewed, open-access online journal dedicated to the study of both the cultural productions and the concept of the Northern Renaissance.

As several members of the current editorial team will be either moving on or taking up additional duties over the coming year, we are looking for three new editors. For each of these roles (see below) previous editorial experience and/or knowledge of online publishing and coding would be valuable but is not necessarily required. Equally important will be a willingness to learn and to work together with fellow editors, and a passionate interest in the Northern Renaissance, reflected in both a research specialism and a broader curiosity about the wider field.

JNR’s remit includes literature, art and architectural history and material cultures, musicology, philosophy, politics, theology and the history of science. In recruiting new editors we hope to strengthen the journal’s interdisciplinary nature, and we would therefore welcome applications from across this range of disciplines. We would also especially welcome prospective editors from outside the UK, and those who are working on less-studied aspects of the Northern Renaissance.

These positions are, at present, unpaid: we all give our time voluntarily. However, they do offer an invaluable opportunity to develop useful skills and networks, to witness the peer reviewing and publishing process from within, and to broaden one’s engagement with the rich variety of contemporary scholarship on the Renaissance in the north and its manifold conceptualisations.

The roles we are seeking to fill are as follows:

(a) Associate/General Editor

The new editor will work with the current editor and associate editors to produce new issues, identify and approach peer reviewers, and determine the future direction of the journal. S/he will also help develop Polaris, a new JNR venture publishing shorter discussion pieces and polemics. We hope to recruit an associate editor who in 6-12 months’ time will be ready and willing to take over as General Editor, with overall responsibility for JNR. We would expect the new editor to already be an established scholar with a good publication record. An ability to network, and to engage with topics and scholars beyond one’s immediate research specialisms, would also be invaluable.

(b) Associate Editor (Reviews)

JNR publishes book and exhibition reviews on a rolling basis. We are looking for a new reviews editor who will take responsibility for soliciting books for review, identifying and contacting reviewers, and editing and posting reviews to the journal website as they are received.

(c) Assistant Editor

The assistant editor will aid the editorial team in preparing articles for online publication, and also contribute to the running of Polaris. The role would be ideally suited to a doctoral student.

To apply for one or more of these posts, please send a short CV (no more than 4 sides) to northernrenaissance@gmail.com, together with a brief covering letter or email (no more than 500 words) saying why you think you would be well suited to JNR, by 1 September 2015. Informal enquiries can also be addressed to us at this email address.

Journal of the Northern Renaissance (ISSN: 1759-3085)
General Editor: Dr Patrick Hart
Associate Editor: Dr Sebastiaan Verweij
Associate Editor: Dr Elizabeth Elliott
Reviews Editor: Dr Catriona Murray
Assistant Editor: Alexander Collins

LRS: The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service

Saturday 18th July 2015, 2pm-6pm

Room 538, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX

In early modern England, domestic conduct literature, legal treatises, and state-sanctioned homilies propagated the ideal of the home as a self-contained system of government; the loyalty of domestic servants was therefore of political significance. Performances of domestic service onstage explored early modern anxieties and fantasies concerning the interference, surveillance, and potential insubordination of the early modern servant, and the conflicts of loyalty and illicit knowledge that domestic service entailed. This half-day symposium brings together historians, literary scholars, and actors to explore the relationship between the experience of servants in early modern England, and the representation of servants onstage. Talks will be illustrated by performances of depositions from church court records and scenes from plays.

2pm Welcome

2.05pm Laura Gowing (King’s College London), ‘Performing Service: Stories from the London Church Courts’ (with performances of depositions)

3.10pm Coffee break

3.25pm Catherine Richardson (Kent), ‘Work and Leisure: Domestic Behaviour and the Quotidian Spaces of Service’ (with performances of depositions)

4.30pm Performances of scenes from domestic tragedies

4.45pm Drinks

5pm Roundtable discussion, with all speakers and actors

5.45pm Final remarks

This event is organised by Emma Whipday (Oxford); please email emma.whipday@magd.ox.ac.uk with any queries.

The London Renaissance Seminar meets at Birkbeck, University of London to discuss topics in the culture of the Renaissance. Anyone with an interest in the Renaissance is welcome to attend. London Renaissance Seminar contact s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk; mailing list contact: t.f.healy@sussex.ac.uk

Four Junior Research Fellowships, UCLIAS

UCL Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (UCLIAS)

Four Junior Research Fellowships

UCL invites outstanding scholars working in the fields of Literary, Film, Historical or Cultural Studies to apply for a Junior Research Fellowship (postdoctoral) at the UCL Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (UCLIAS). Details of the Fellowships and the application process may be retrieved from the following webpages:

Jobs.ac.uk: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ALK264/ias-junior-research-fellows/
Jobs at UCL: http://tinyurl.com/nf5tk2w

Applicants should contact an appropriate member of the relevant department to discuss their project before submitting their online application.