Medievalism: Its Centers and Margins
28th International Conference on Medievalism
St. Norbert College (De Pere, Wisconsin)
October 17-19, 2013

In addition to the authors, texts, and considerations that normally form the core of studies in medievalism, what authors occupy, haunt, or draw the boundaries of what we consider proper matter for this field? What currently lies outside that we should certainly include, and what perhaps lies near the center that doesn’t really fit at all? Within the texts we study, what ideas or approaches form the core, and what has lingered at the margins, or what do we need to bring from outside toward center state for careful study and consideration? Participants should feel welcome to submit abstracts directed to the conference theme or on any other aspects of medievalism–the study of later ages’ use of the material of the Middle Ages–that they choose to explore.

St. Norbert College (De Pere, Wisconsin) is just four miles from Green Bay and ten minutes from Green Bay Austin Straubel Airport (with daily service to Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Atlanta), about a two-hour dirve north from Milwaukee and four hours’ drive from Chicago.

Publication Opportunities: Presenters may feel welcome to submit papers to The Year’s Work in Medievalism (edited by E. L. Risden). Longer articles (over 6000 words) should be submitted to Studies in Medievalism (edited by Karl Fugelso).

For more information, please visit: http://www.medievalism.net/

Deadline For Submissions: July 1, 2013

Please send papers, abstracts, or session proposals to:
Edward Risden, Professor of English
St. Norbert College
100 Grant St.
De Pere, WI 54115

or

edward.risden@snc.edu

Intellectual Networks in the Long Seventeenth Century 
Durham University
30 June-2 July, 2013

Durham’s Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies — now part of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies — has, since its foundation in 1985, organized over a dozen high-profile international conferences. Next year’s event, which both continues that tradition and celebrates the Centre’s new role within one of Durham University’s flagship research institutes, will address the topic of ‘Intellectual Networks in the Long Seventeenth Century.’

The conference will explore the emergence and consolidation of systems of intellectual and cultural exchange during the long seventeenth century, while assessing their lasting influence on the history of scholarship, literature, diplomacy, science, and religious communities. The sub-topics listed below offer some guidance for the submission of proposals. Special emphasis will be placed on the relationship between the British Isles and the wider world:

• Erudite correspondence
• Academic networks: knowledge transmission and cultural change
• Diplomacy, high and low
• Literary circles
• Scientific institutions and the history of medicine
• Intellectual exchange among/within religious communities
• Book trade and collectorship
• Counter-intelligence and the political and religious underground
• Women and intellectual exchange
• Popular cultural exchange

Proposals for 20-minute papers and full panels should be submitted to early.modern@durham.ac.uk  by 15th January 2013. Replies will be sent in early February 2013. Details concerning travel and accommodation for both speakers and delegates will be made available around the same time. It is hoped that the conference will give rise to an edited volume of selected essays.

The conference is taking place at an exciting time for seventeenth century and early modern studies at Durham. Recent significant developments include:

• The re-opening of Cosin’s Library (1699) on the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palace Green following a major restoration project; the collection, now part of Durham University Library, was assembled by the great seventeenth-century book collector John Cosin, Bishop of Durham (1595-1672)
• The joint custodianship of the library and archive of Ushaw College, shared between the trustees of the archive and Durham University Library
• A related international conference on Early Modern English Catholicism taking place at Ushaw College (28 June to 1 July 2013), with which the present conference will share a joint keynote lecture from Professor Eamon Duffy (Cambridge) on the evening of 30 June

For further details visit: http://www.dur.ac.uk/imrs/newsandevents/research/cfp

Keynote: J. Michael Dash (Professor of French, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University) 

Isles and exiles: both of these terms evoke very concrete realities, and yet both terms also open themselves to numerous less literal interpretations that allow us to reconsider these two interlinked but distinct concepts.

We are looking for contributions that focus on either of the two terms, or on the relationship between the two, regardless of whether the approach taken favors a literal or a conceptual perspective. In light of the multidisciplinary scope of this theme, we encourage proposals from a variety of fields including – but not limited to – history, post-colonial studies, comparative literature, digital humanities, art history, and media and cultural studies.

(Ex)isles will address notions and subjects such as: the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, or between the former colonizer and the formerly colonized; the relationship between centers and peripheries; population displacements; diasporas; communities; margins; isolation; rupture; journeys; temporal displacements; the question of the native and of the ethnographic encounter; the myth of the noble savage; the place of the island in fairy tales and the marvelous; explorations; discoveries; tourism; cartography; penal colonies; pirates and piracy.

Graduate students who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of roughly 250 words. Abstracts must be sent, as attachments, to brown.equinoxes@gmail.com before January 15, 2013. Emails should include the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and contact information. Presentations, whether in English or in French, should not exceed 20 minutes.

Women and Curiosity in Early Modern England
University Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370) and University Sorbonne Nouvelle — Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)
21-22 June 2013 

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. In Europe, the telescope, which soon became the instrument of curiosity, epitomized man’s desire to see beyond the pillars of Hercules. The physico-theological dimension of natural philosophy at the time led to considering curiosity as a wish to know God by reading the Book of Nature and unravelling its mysteries. In his article on “Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge and the Reformation in Early Modern England” (Isis, 2001, 265-90), Peter Harrison argues that there was a “rehabilitation 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 17^th 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. Thus Francis Bacon and his followers 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 who followed the Baconian programme, 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, 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. A. Capodivacca thus argues that the legitimization of curiosity came with a “degendering” or  “virilization” of this faculty (Curiosity and the Trials of the Imagination in Early Modern Italy, PhD, Berkeley, 2007, p. 7), and therefore entailed a redefinition of good and bad curiosity along gender lines. Similarly, Neil Kenny states that in early modern Europe,“much male curiosity had become good” and as a result “a much larger proportion of bad curiosity was now female” (The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany, 2004, p. 385). 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” 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. For instance, Queen Elizabeth I’s relation to curiosity, which was necessarily different from that of ordinary women, was revealed in several of her translations, in particular in her English version of Plutarch’s “De curiositate” (based on Erasmus’ Latin translation) and her Latin version of Bernardino Ochino’s “Che cosa è Cristo”; she also criticised theological and political curiosity in a 1585 address to the clergy, explicitly referring to Puritan preachers (Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592-98, eds. J. Mueller & J. Scodel, 2009). In her book The World’s Olio (1655), Margaret Cavendish gives a description of the ideal commonwealth, the ruler of which should “have none of those they call their cabinets, which is a room filled with all useless curiosities, which seems Effeminate, and is so Expensive […] almost to the impoverishing of a Kingdome”. Cavendish adds that it might be more useful to fill the room with books, which are “more famous curiosities” (p. 207). The works of Aphra Behn (who, incidentally, was a spy for King Charles II) can also be seen as a testimony on women’s relation to curiosity at the time: while the story related in Oroonoko (1688) takes place in an exotic environment teeming with curiosities, The History of the Nun (1689) presents curiosity as being natural to women (“naturally […] Maids are curious and vain”, p. 58). 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?

Papers should not exceed 25 minutes and will be given preferably in English. Please send your proposal (a 500-word abstract with a title) as well as a biographical note to Sandrine Parageau (sparageau@hotmail.com or sandrine.parageau@u-paris10.fr) and Line Cottegnies (line.cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) before January 31, 2013.

Third RefoRC (The Reformation Research Consortium) Conference
Interdisciplinary Centre ‘Middle Ages – Renaissance – Early Modern Period’
Freie Universität Berlin
May 16-18, 2013

Conference Website

The Third RefoRC (The Reformation Research Consortium) Conference will be held in Berlin May 16-18, 2013 at the Interdisciplinary Centre ‘Middle Ages – Renaissance – Early Modern Period’ of the Freie Universität Berlin.

The conference is open to individual short paper presentations (20 minutes presentation, 10 minutes discussion) and to thematic sessions of two or three short papers. While we encourage papers on the theme of the plenary papers “Anthropological Reformations – Anthropology in the Era of Reformation”, papers can focus on all disciplines related to the 16th century reformations, such as arts, philosophy, law, history, theology etc., independent of the theme of the plenary papers.

Short paper proposals can be submitted before February 15, 2013.

Plenary papers:

• Klaus Bergdolt (Cologne): Medicine and Italian Humanism in the Early 16th Century
• Jutta Eming ( Berlin): Embodied Knowledge in the ‘Historia D. Johann Fausten’
• Wolfgang Fuhrmann (Vienna): Heart and Voice – A Musical Anthropology in the Age of Reformation
• Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Penn State): Ethnography in the Catholic Overseas Missions: the Emergence of a Religious and Racial Anthropology in the Early Modern World
• Andrew James Johnston( Berlin): Reformation Robin Hood: Popular Theatre and the Religious Politics of the Shakespearean Stage
• Risto Saarinen (Helsinki): Weakness of Will: Reformation Anthropology between Aristotle and the Stoa
• Notger Slenczka (Berlin): “Theologiae proprium subiectum est homo …” (Luther). Shifts in the Structure of Theological Systems in the Wake of Reformation
• Anna Vind (Copenhagen): Faith and Emotions in the Human Being according to Luther
• Johann Verberckmoes ( Leuven): When Emotions Affect Bodies: Theories of the Passions in the Era of Reformation
• Elke Anna Werner (Berlin): Law and Grace. Pictorial Reflections on the Visualization of the Invisible and the Reordering of Faith by Lucas Cranach

For information and registration please visit: www.reforc.com or contact Herman Selderhuis, director at hjselderhuis@refo500.nl or Hannah Wälzholz, coordinator at marefn@fu-berlin.de.