Shakespeare FuturEd is an international conference exploring the nexus of Shakespeare Studies and Education to be held at the University of Sydney on 1 and 2 February 2019. 

We are seeking proposals for papers, panels and workshops that interrogate and experiment with new directions in Shakespeare pedagogy in theory and practice. We welcome proposals from primary and secondary teachers, tertiary educators, researchers, theatre practitioners, and anyone with an interest in Shakespeare and education.

What does Shakespeare education look like now? Where is it headed? What are its accepted norms and critical problems? How is it theorised? How does Shakespeare education manifest in institutions such as schools and universities? How is it performed by theatre companies and community organisations? How is it affected and transformed by digital, virtual and blended learning initiatives and contexts? What is the role played by collaborative educational projects and informal learning environments? How does present Shakespeare education—its theory, practice and needs—relate to imagined or experimental futures for education?

Keynote speakers:

Catherine Beavis, Professor, Curriculum, Pedagogy, Assessment and Digital Learning, and Deputy Director, REDI: Research for Educational Impact, Deakin University

Joanna Erskine, Head of Education, Bell Shakespeare

Laura Turchi, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Houston

Find out more about the CFP here. Ready to register? Registration is free and available via this link.

Paper proposals are invited for this international conference to be held at Bangor University, North Wales, 26-28 June, 2019. ‘This conference is the latest event in association with the International Research Network, Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon  (https://www.surrey.ac.uk/womens-literary-culture-medieval-canon).

Keynote Speakers:

Jonathan Hsy, The George Washington University
Shazia Jagot, The University of Surrey
Elaine Treharne, Stanford University

Our last conference, held at Bergen in 2017, encouraged lively conversations that focused predominantly on European texts and authors. At Bangor we aim to extend this dialogue by speaking internationally, and examining how our understanding of medieval European women writers and the canon might be enhanced by taking a more global perspective. What new light is shed by adopting a global perspective on medieval women’s literary modes and practices? What evidence exists for social and intellectual connectivity between European women’s textual culture and that of women living in the lands that border the Mediterranean and beyond? How do medieval women represent the global in their works and to what purposes?

The conference will be full of conversation: a series of ‘In conversation with’ network members, poster presentations, panel discussions, and twenty-minute papers. We welcome individual and collaborative papers that speak internationally on topics that might include the following:

• Women as authors
• Women as patrons
• Book ownership and use in the household
• Genre and gender
• Literary reception
• Women as translators
• Women readers
• Book ownership in women’s religious communities
• Manuscript production
• Literary influence
• Textual transmission
• Collaboration
• Women, Literature and Location: place, travel, pilgrimage
• Women, Literature and Life-course
• Literature and Trade

Paper abstracts of no more than 250 words, plus a short biography, should be sent to Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at s.niebrzydowski@bangor.ac.uk and Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy at e.mcavoy@swansea.ac.uk no later than 31 October 2018. Successful speakers will be notified shortly thereafter, and online registration will open in late November 2018.

The Academic Board for Othello’s Island invites applications to present papers at the 6th edition of Othello’s Island, the 6th annual interdisciplinary conference on Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern art, literary, archaeological, historical and cultural studies. This will take place in Nicosia, Cyprus, in April 2019 and is organised in association with the University of Nicosia, the University of Kent, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University.

We are interested in hearing papers on diverse aspects of Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance and early modern art, literature, history, society and other aspects of culture. A special colloquium will also be held as part of the conference in 2019, focusing on Early Modern Women Writers,.

Our remit is broad, and so papers do not have to be related to Shakespeare, Cyprus or the Mediterranean. It is worth looking at the range of papers from past conferences to see that previous speakers have covered topics ranging from slavery in medieval Cyprus and Malta, to the impact of Italian Renaissance art on Cypriot Byzantine painting, and even discussion on the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

In the seven years of its existence, Othello’s Island has developed a reputation as one of the most liberal-minded and friendly medieval and renaissance studies conferences in the world today, and it is also genuinely interdisciplinary. In part this is due to the relatively small size of the event, which generates a true sense of community during the conference.

Our location in Cyprus allows for visits to some stunning medieval museums and other sites, including the French gothic cathedrals of St Sophia in Nicosia, and St Nicholas in Famagusta, and we are housed in the centre of the medieval old town of Nicosia, with its narrow winding streets and impressive city walls and gate houses.

Deadline for submissions is 31 December, 2018.

For the full call for papers please visit www.othellosisland.org

Lead Academic Co-ordinators: Prof. James Fitzmaurice (Northern Arizona University, USA); Prof. Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University, UK); Dr Sarah James (University of Kent, UK; Dr Michael Paraskos FRSA (Imperial College London, UK)

Academic Board: Dr Stella Achillaos (University of Cyprus, Cyprus); Jane Chick (University of East Anglia, UK); Prof. James Fitzmaurice (Northern Arizona University, USA); Prof. Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University, UK); Dr Sarah James (University of Kent, UK); Dr Richard Maguire (University of East Anglia, UK); Dr Michael Paraskos (Imperial College London, UK); Dr Laurence Publicover (University of Bristol, UK); Prof. David Rollo (University of Southern California, USA); Dr Rita Severis (CVAR, Cyprus); Prof. Astrid Swenson (Bath Spa University, UK); and, Dr Violetta Trofimova (St Petersburg University, Russia)

The early modern court adopted and developed exemplary cultural practices where objects and spaces became central to propagating power as well as places for exchange with other powers. This combination of images, objects, and sounds confronted the senses, making a powerful and distinctive impression of the resident family and the region they represented: flickering candlelight on glass and gold vessels adorned credenze (sideboards); musical instruments announced royal entries or provided entertainment; brightly coloured tapestries covered the palace walls along with paintings of biblical or mythological stories; cabinets displayed antiquities or rarities; perfume burners permeated the air; while the smells and tastes of rare delicacies at the centre of dining tables made for a multi-sensory spectacle.

This year the Open University’s Spaces & Places conference will address the theme of ‘Experiencing the Court’ by exploring the senses and the lived experiences of courtly life, whether based in a particular residence or defined by the travels of an itinerant ruler. The conference will take place at the Open University’s partner institution Trinity Laban Conservatoire on 3 – 4 April 2019.  As Trinity Laban’s King Charles Court was once the site of Greenwich Palace, it is a fitting venue for a conference exploring court life. This annual conference is fundamentally interdisciplinary: literary, musical, architectural, artistic and religious spaces will be the subjects of enquiry, not as discrete or separate entities, but ones which overlapped, came into contact with one another, and at times were in conflict.

The conference will examine life at court and will consider the following questions:

• How can approaching the court in terms of the senses provide new methodologies for understanding each institution?
• How were medieval and early modern courtly spaces adapted and transformed through the movement of material and immaterial things?
• Which particular aspects of political, social and economic infrastructures enabled the exchange of objects and ideas?

Papers that address new methodologies, the digital humanities, object-centred enquiries, cross-cultural comparisons, or new theoretical perspectives are particularly welcome.

Please send a 150 word abstract along with a short biography to Leah Clark (leah.clark@open.ac.uk) and Helen Coffey (Helen.coffey@open.ac.uk) by 15 November 2018.

For further information, see http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/medieval-and-early-modern-research/spaces-and-places-2019

Paper proposals are invited for the conference Women & Power: Redressing the Balance, to be held at the University of Oxford, 6-7 March, 2019

Throughout 2018 the National Trust is running a programme of public events, exhibitions and new interpretation to mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act which granted some women the right to vote in British parliamentary elections for the first time. We are one of many heritage, cultural and academic institutions marking this anniversary.

Many of the programmes, exhibitions and events responding to the centenary this year are not only exploring the stories of 100 years ago but openly questioning the representation of women’s lives in the histories inherited by curators and researchers, and experienced in public life, today. This two day conference will bring together researchers and heritage professionals to reflect on previous practice, explore the delivery of and response to events of 2018, and look forward to the future of representing women’s histories.

Papers are invited on, but by no means limited to, the following topics:

• Innovative responses to celebrating the 2018 centenary in the cultural, heritage and academic spheres
• Examples of knowledge exchange and public engagement between academia and the cultural and heritage sectors, centred on women’s histories
• Case studies of socially engaged and participatory practice exploring women’s histories
• The practical challenges of researching, teaching and interpreting women’s histories
• Examples of addressing intersectional barriers to accessing women’s histories, in particular working class women, women of colour, and LGBTQ+ women
• Public, press and audience responses to spotlighting women’s histories

The conference programme will include 20-minute papers and a number of shorter spotlight talks.  We also welcome innovative ideas for panel discussions (maximum three speakers plus chair). Please specify which you are applying for in your abstract. We hope to publish a selection of revised conference papers in a peer-reviewed journal or as an edited collection after the conference.

Please send abstracts of between 200 and 300 words to ntpartnership@humanities.ox.ac.uk along with a short biography by 29 October, 2018.

This conference is jointly organised by the National Trust and the University of Oxford. For further information, see http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/call-papers-women-power-redressing-balance

Paper proposals are invited for a two-day symposium on Complaint and Grievance: Literary Traditions
14-15 February 2019
National Library of New Zealand / Victoria University of Wellington, NZ.

‘O woe is me / To have seen what I have seen, see what I see’. Shakespeare’s Ophelia, wooed and cast aside by her one-time lover, Hamlet, amplifies her woe in the open-ended expression of grief that characterises complaint, a rhetorical mode that proliferates from the poetry of Ovid to the Bible, from the Renaissance to the modern day.

This symposium explores the literature of complaint and grievance, centring on the texts of the Renaissance but welcoming contributions from related areas. Shakespeare (A Lover’s Complaint) and Spenser (Complaints) are central authors of Renaissance complaint, but who else wrote complaint literature, why, and to what effect? Female-voiced complaint was fashionable in the high poetic culture of the 1590s, but what happens to complaint when it is taken up by early modern women writers? What forms—and what purposes—does the literature of complaint and grievance take on in non-elite or manuscript spheres, in miscellanies, commonplace books, petitions, street satires, ballads and songs? What are the classical and biblical traditions on which Renaissance complaint is based? And what happens to complaint after the Renaissance, in Romantic poetry, in the reading and writing cultures of the British colonial world, in contemporary poetry, and in the #metoo movement?

Keynote speakers:

• Professor Danielle Clarke, University College, Dublin
• Professor Kate Lilley, University of Sydney
• Professor Rosalind Smith, University of Newcastle, Australia

We invite anyone with an interest in the literature of complaint and the politics of grievance to submit a 250-word paper proposal by 31 October 2018 to the conference organiser, Sarah.Ross@vuw.ac.nz.

This conference is supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund, as part of the three-year project ‘Woe is me: Women and Complaint in the English Renaissance’.