The 6th Annual International Conference of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Oct. 26-27, 2012
Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan

This conference is under the auspices of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan.

Due date for abstract submission: March 15, 2012

Call for Papers

“Infinite riches in a little room”: Collecting as a Cultural Practice and Literary Theme in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Collecting is a topic which has attracted much attention in recent years. William Gibson, the pioneer of cyberpunk fiction, observed that “the idea of the Collectible is everywhere today.” Yet, if we are to believe one critical study of the subject, the cultural practice of collecting goes back to the mythical beginnings of humanity: “Noah was the first collector. Adam had given names to the animals, but it fell to Noah to collect them … And Noah, perhaps alone of all collectors, achieved the complete set.” (John Elsner and Roger Cardinal) A more recent collector, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669-626 BCE) may not have had a complete set, but he did maintain a great library that held thousands of clay tablets. The Hellenistic Greeks and Romans collected books, statues, gems, etc. and created the first musea, those of Alexandria and Pergamon being the most prominent examples. They also wrote about collecting and were avid encyclopedists. Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia is the model for many later writings in the genre which includes Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (ca. 630), the 10th Century Byzantine Suda, and Vincent of Beauvais’ high medieval Speculum majus (13th Century). The monastic libraries of the Middle Ages and their scriptoria copied and collected books and in doing so preserved the European heritage. Yet, it was the global commerce in knowledge, people, and objects during the age of discovery and exploration which aroused a passion for collecting as never before as princes, scientists, merchants, and artists all over Europe from Ferrante Imperato in Naples to Peter the Great in Russia competed in creating increasingly spectacular and luxurious studiolos, cabinets of curiosities, Wunderkammer, and Kunstkamers. Yet, the habit could be costly. King Charles I of England, a lavish spender and great collector of art, first lost his kingdom and then his life. Less than a decade later, the Dutch painter Rembrandt ran into debts and had to sell his house and his collections.

TACMRS provides an interdisciplinary forum for discussions and debates on collecting as a cultural practice and literary theme from Antiquity to the Renaissance and seeks to create dialogue between and across disciplines and periods. We encourage submissions with crosscultural approaches, and on this premise welcome papers that reach beyond the traditional chronological and disciplinary borders of classical, medieval and Renaissance studies. Thus, in addition to the historical categories and thematic questions raised above, topics such as collecting  practices East and West; the representation of ancient libraries, collectible objects or cultural treasures in modern literature and film; the cabinet of curiosities in modern art; and other topics that engage critically with the conference theme will be considered. In addition, as in years past, TACMRS welcomes papers on any other subjects that fall within the historical periods and disciplinary areas covered by the Association.

Please note: All papers are required to be written and presented in English.

Guidelines for Abstract Submission:

Abstracts of a maximum of 350 words should be sent via e-mail to Dr. Henk Vynckier, Chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tunghai University (flld@thu.edu.tw) with a subject line: “Submission for the 6th TACMRS Conference” by no later than March 15, 2012.

Please note: Abstracts should be typed in fonts of size 12 and spacing of 1.5 and saved in MS Word format. Do not include the name or other identifying information of the author(s) in the abstract; there will be a blind review of the submissions. Information regarding academic affiliation of presenter(s) should instead be included in the accompanying email.

Important Dates:

Due date for abstract submission: March 15, 2012
Notification of abstract acceptance: May 1, 2012
Deadline for registration: Oct. 1, 2012
Due date for full paper submission: Oct. 5, 2012

Further information:

Please contact either Ms. Sherry Jan (Assistant) (Phone Number: 04-2359-0121 Ext. 31200) and (sj1109@thu.edu.tw), or Dr. Henk Vynckier (Chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tunghai University) (hvynck@thu.edu.tw).

The 11th Biennial International Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
Topic: Shakespeare and Emotions
27–30 November 2012
The University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia
Conference Website

Abstract deadline: 1 July 2012. **Edit** the deadline has been extended until 15 September 2012.

The study of emotions in history, literature, and other aspects of culture is a burgeoning field, and Shakespeare takes a very central and influential place. The conveners invite papers on any aspect of the ways in which Shakespeare and/or his contemporaries represented emotions in poetry, drama, and other works, and/or how these representations have been received by audiences and readers from the sixteenth century to the present day.

There are paradoxes to be explored — how ‘the bodily turn’ of physiological influence on emotions could in turn generate more modern models of inner consciousness alone; how concepts rooted historically in Elizabethan and Jacobean England could be adapted to fit the philosophies and concepts of later ages, through eighteenth-century literature of sensibility, nineteenth-century and Darwinian approaches, twentieth-century psychologism stimulated by Freud, and a host of others. Did Shakespeare tap into a ‘collective unconscious’ of ‘universal’ stories, or did he arbitrarily choose stories to dramatise which his affective eloquence incorporated into world literature? Why have his works proved so durable in their emotional power, both in themselves and adaptations into other media such as opera, music, film and dance? Equal attention is invited to plays in performance and in ‘closet’ critical readings, as well as textual studies and adaptations.

The New Fortune Theatre, built in 1964 to the exact dimensions of The Fortune playhouse that rivaled Shakespeare’s Globe in seventeenth-century London, will be available for original practice performances, open rehearsals, and stage-based research papers, etc.

Abstracts of c.200 words should be submitted for consideration to conference@anzsa.org, addressed to Bob White, Chris Wortham, Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers, Mark Houlahan, and Brett D. Hirsch. Abstracts should be received by 1 July 2012. **Edit** the deadline has been extended until 15 September 2012.

Details about keynote speakers, travel and accommodation, and the conference programme will be posted on the conference website as they become available.

Achronicity/Anachronism (1000-1700): an Interdisciplinary Conference
February 21–23, 2013
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Sponsored by the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Call for Papers

Anachronism is a term that seems to presuppose a fixed and dominant temporal order, a chronological sequence within which each element or event occupies its own proper coordinates within the orderly flow of time. A Greek term, the “anachronistic” has become inseparable from its close Latin counterpart, the “preposterous”—literally, the before-behind. Anachronism has often been seen as a fault; a fault either testifying to a given culture’s lack of historical consciousness and historicist sensibilities, e.g. the Middle Ages’s supposed inability to think in historicist terms, or else as a type of scholarly error. Anachronism is an accusation, an error, a transgression, a stigma. The charge of anachronism seeks to reveal a critical failure to understand the pastness of the past. This perceived failure in turn exposes to ridicule scholars, artists, and entire cultures that are guilty of this charge.

Yet arguably, even the most academically disciplined ways of thinking historically cannot proceed without disavowed acts of anachronism. As scholars of the “medieval” and “early modern” eras, we know that the very names attached to our historical fields of specialty are the product of creative anachronism. The Middle Ages could not become its middling self until the moment of its death, the advent of the Renaissance. What is more anachronistic than the idea of “The Renaissance,” imagined as a phoenix-like return to antiquity that completely circumvents history—the “Middle Ages” itself?

Furthermore, medieval and early modern texts bear evidence of a multiplicity of temporalities that allow for various and varied experiences of time itself. This heterogeneous premodern notion of time includes Biblical time, historical time, seasonal time, and times for worship. It recognizes diverse practices of typological or allegorical reading that coexist with literal reading, and it suggests a complex understanding of notions such as originality, authenticity, and authority. In the context of this conference, achronicity refers to this productive multiplicity of temporalities.

This conference will provide a select group of scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplinary fields in the humanities an opportunity to investigate together the creative potential of anachronism and/or achronicity. It addresses the ways in which temporality was conceptualized, experienced, strategically exploited, aesthetically constructed and ideologically challenged in the medieval and early modern periods. Some of the questions driving this conference are: How can anachronism/achronicity be strategically deployed to highlight problematic aspects of temporality? How can anachronism/achronicity be used to signify competing temporal frames? How does anachronism/achronicity contribute to expressing complex schemes of history, e.g. by linking the eschatological to everyday experience? How does anachronism/achronicity point to the materiality of the historical object itself?

Please submit 500 word abstracts to Prof. Christoph Brachmann (AnachronicityUNC@gmail.com) by April 30, 2012.