Virgins, Wives, Mothers. National Personifications in Early Modern Europe
Institut historique allemand (IHA), Paris
29–31 March, 2016

Following on the work carried out by Maurice Agulhon comprehensive research has been conducted into the French national allegory Marianne and her sisters in other nation-states in modern times. With respect to the period before the French Revolution, however, there are still very few studies of such personifications of the state or political entities, to say nothing of comparative approaches examining these various allegories together. This is despite the fact that they have common roots, which frequently go back to antiquity. Roman coins, for example, featured towns or regions in the form of female figures. The goddess Minerva, in particular, served as an iconographic model for such depictions, which were then taken up again in the Renaissance and ultimately handed down through Cesare Ripa’s famous Iconologia. Christian theology contributed to the development of this symbolic representation by introducing another chaste female figure: the image of the Virgin Mary, queen of heaven, mother and saint, could thus become a symbol of monarchy or of the early modern state, especially in connection with the motif of the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden, which likewise symbolises sovereign territory. Within these pictorial traditions, the correlation between which has yet to be investigated, such personifications can be interpreted not only as virgins but also as wives (of the ruler) or mothers (of the nation). This secularisation of the iconography, which often supplements rather than replaces its religious content, has precursors in the late Middle Ages. These personifications thus served the purpose of glorification and then of political propaganda, especially when the concept of sovereignty was developed. This colloquium will examine the creation and use of state or national personifications in the period from the 13th to the 18th century together with relating pictorial symbolism and gender-theory perspectives. Consideration will be given to both republics and monarchies, especially Venice, Genoa and the other Italian city states, the United Netherlands, the Swiss Confederation, Poland and Russia, the Holy Roman Empire and its various territorial states, France, the Iberian monarchy, England and the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden as well as the United States at the time of its emergence. This subject, which is multi- and interdisciplinary by definition, is aimed at historians and art historians as well as researchers from the fields of theology, political philosophy, law, classical studies and gender studies.

This call for papers is an invitation to researchers to propose topics for the colloquium. Please send your proposal (approx. one page) together with a short curriculum vitae and a few literature references to personnification@dhi-paris.fr by 26 July, 2015 at the latest. Early-stage researchers, who are examining relevant issues in their master’s thesis, dissertation or as post-docs, are expressly invited to attend. The speakers’ travel and accommodation costs will be reimbursed.

Shakespeare and Education
University of Brighton
29-30 April, 2016

Speakers include:

Prof. Catherine Belsey (Swansea), Prof. Michael Dobson (tbc – Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham), Prof. Alexa Huang (tbc -George Washington), Prof. Coppélia Kahn (Brown), Dr. Sean McEvoy (Varndean College), Prof. Shormishtha Panja (Dehli) and Dr. Emma Smith (Oxford).

With participation from RSC Education and Cambridge Schools Shakespeare.

2016 will mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, provoking renewed interest in his work, his legacy and his contemporary cultural capital. As teaching methods change, pedagogy develops, technologies advance and culture evolves, what role does Shakespeare play now and in the future of teaching and learning? How do we incorporate performance practice in the teaching of Shakespeare in Literature – and vice versa? What part does education play in the construction of our public ‘memory’ of Shakespeare at this time of commemoration?

Proposals for 20 minute papers or practical workshops are particularly welcome on the following topics:

• Shakespeare and broadcast media / Digital Shakespeares.
• Integrating performance practice in teaching Shakespeare in literature courses.
• Leaving Shakespeare out: the case for not studying Shakespeare.
• Shakespeare and the educational trip, literary tourism, theatre reconstruction.
• Re-writing Shakespeare in the classroom: creative writing and dramatic practice.
• Shakespeare and educational transitions: exploring the challenges and possibilities of Shakespeare as a rare constant in education across levels, widely taught from primary to postgraduate.
• Shakespeare and education policy: determining the curriculum and the canon?
• Commemoration and education – approaching anniversaries and the effects of constructions of public memory on student experience of learning.

DEADLINE: email your proposal and short bio. to C21Writings@Brighton.ac.uk by 10 July 2015.

Constitutional Patriotism: Founding Documents and the Emotions from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Human Rights
Majestic Roof Garden Hotel, 55 Frome Street, Adelaide, South Australia
17-18 September, 2015

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Prof. Paul Halliday, History and Law, University of Virginia
• Prof. Sharon R. Krause, Political Science, Brown University
• Prof. David V. Williams, Law, The University of Auckland

When it was sealed in 1215, Magna Carta was essentially just a treaty between an embattled Norman king and his fractious Anglo-Norman aristocracy, and most of its provisions were irrelevant to the vast majority of the common people. It is only in retrospect, and through its investment with patriotic emotion by interested rhetoricians like Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries, that this document and its origins at Runnymede have come to symbolize liberty resisting arbitrary power through ‘due process’ of law.

Arguably, the treatment of Magna Carta by Blackstone (and countless others across the centuries) is an example of ‘constitutional patriotism’. Constitutional patriotism is the practice of constructing a unifying ideology that emphasizes emotional attachment to the arrangements of government, and is common in multi-ethnic and/or pan-national states that are or aspire to be democracies. Jurgen Habermas developed the concept in the context of post-war Germany as a means of combating nationalistic and racial approaches to establishing state identity. As such it is a useful heuristic tool for discussing foundational constitutional documents and their subsequent emotional appeal (or lack of it).

Indeed studying constitutional patriotism may assist in understanding the causes and consequences of collective emotions generally, because affective investment in ink and parchment surely requires special efforts of rhetorical engineering and particular forms of reception.

Papers are now sought that address this theme within a European context, or a global context linked to a European past, between 1200 and the present day. Within the conference theme, papers may wish to explore, but are not limited to:

• Consideration of one or more of the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Waitangi and the UN Declaration of Human Rights in this context.
• Prospects for affective engagement with UK constitutional re-arrangements following the 2014 Scottish referendum and for the European Union and its project of state-building by treaty more generally.
• Modern Australian patriotism and the significance of key documents, as opposed to other symbolic notions or objects such as ANZAC memorials.
• Comparison of the use of emotional rhetoric in documents from different contexts.
• Other critical applications of constitutional patriotism in historical contexts of the UK, Europe, Australia and the US.

Interdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words, and a short bio, should be emailed to Jacquie Bennett, jacquie.bennett@adelaide.edu.au, by Friday 10 July 2015.

Deadline: Friday 10 July 2015

Notification of acceptance: Friday 31 July 2015

Long abstracts for circulation: Tuesday 1 September 2015

Registration: opens Monday 6 July 2015

Submissions and enquiries to: Jacquie Bennett, jacquie.bennett@adelaide.edu.au

‘Shared Invention: From Antiquity to the 21st Century’
Clermont-Ferrand, Aubusson and Limoges
6–8 April, 2016

An international colloquium entitled ‘Shared Invention: From Antiquity to the 21st Century’ will be held 6–8 April 2016, and proposals for papers are now being accepted. The colloquium is being organized by Laurence Riviale and Jean-François Luneau, lecturers at Blaise Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand (France), in partnership with Musée national Adrien Dubouché, Limoges (France) and Cité de la Tapisserie, Aubusson (France). It will take place in Clermont-Ferrand, Aubusson and Limoges. ‘Shared invention’, or collective creation, is the chosen theme for this international colloquium, whose aim is to enable art historians working in a range of fields to understand better creation in the fine arts and production in the decorative arts.

When an artist’s work of art is translated into another medium, if the craftsman is not himself the inventor, but only a docile workman, how can differences in two items made by two craftsmen according to the same design be accounted for, but by a margin of liberty and sensitivity in which the very personality of the maker expresses itself? This margin will be at the heart of the debate, taking into account historical, social, and cultural contexts of all the periods in question.

After the Middle Ages, during which painters and sculptors belonged to a regular, legally instituted trade, those whom we now denote ‘artists’ tried to distinguish themselves by invention, leaving execution or transposition to craftsmen, and strove to elevate their trades to the dignity of liberal arts. For Giorgio Vasari, such a claim is satisfied by the expression ‘arts of design’, which were to become the ‘fine arts’, that is, painting, architecture and sculpture. ‘Design’ thereby has became the discriminating point for all academies that were subsequently founded, from the Accademia delle arti del disegno in Florence (1563) to the French Académie royale (1648), and later on, the British Royal Academy (1768). Art historians have seldom questioned this hierarchy and have more readily studied the creations of a ‘genius’, leaving the craftsman’s production in the shadow.

But is invention only the privilege of the artist who provides the design? Recent scholarly studies have striven to understand the processes of creation at the heart of workshops through artistic documentation, such as the miscellanies of modelli and inventories of human positions collected by painters in the sixteenth century, revealing the almost universal use of what has been called, paradoxically, the ‘invention copy’ – that is, the creation of a new composition achieved by putting together heterodox bits from everywhere. This type of process highlights the role of the patron, who may be the true inventor, as he owns designs and ideas and is responsible for this aspect of the composition from beginning to end. In this case, the so-called ‘artist’ is but a kind of go-between, and can only be understood as a mere workman.

Papers devoted to etchings or engravings, stone masonry, wall-painting or paper, furnishing or fashion fabrics, chinaware, stoneware, stained glass, etc., are welcome, especially if they emphasize not only the margin of liberty mentioned above, but also the aspects of works of art appropriate to their destination and intended meaning. Summaries of 2500 or 3000 characters will be submitted, along with a short CV (three lines), before 22 June 2015, to laurence [dot] RIVIALE [at] univ-bpclermont [dot] fr, or laurence [dot] riviale [at] orange [dot] fr, or J-Francois [dot] LUNEAU [at] univ-bpclermont [dot] fr. Applicants will receive a reply in September 2015.

Centres of Diplomacy, Centres of Culture I:
The Habsburg and Papal Courts c.1450 to c.1630
The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
21-22 September, 2015

Diplomatic studies increasingly focus on the cultural and social aspects of diplomatic practice and stress the agency of individuals within international relations. Despite this, many scholars often still investigate within the parameters of national diplomatic corps or explore one end of a bilateral relationship. In contrast, this conference will focus on the cohorts of diplomats sent by different polities to the Habsburgs and Popes to explore the ways in which diplomacy fostered cultural exchange (defined broadly) at early modern courts in this crucial period for the development of the type and scope of diplomatic activity with which early modern rulers engaged. It will ask how did diplomats learn the rules of diplomatic practice from one another and their host court? To what extent did their host court learn about how to conduct longer-term diplomacy from them? How did diplomats’ enacting of their own cultural norms influence the foreign political culture in which they operated? What impact did this and the diplomatic exchange of ideas, material goods, and books have on diplomatic culture? To what extent did distinct diplomatic cultures develop at early modern courts?

This event aims to bring early career scholars working on such questions from different disciplinary angles (including, but not limited to History, History of Art, Modern Languages, English) into productive dialogue with one another. The conference will also feature a lunchtime workshop with specialists from the museum sector about working with museums for public engagement and teaching.

Proposals for 20-25 minute papers focussing on any of the Habsburg courts or the papal court are welcomed, in particular papers that deal with:

• Considerations of the ways by which diplomats learned the rules of diplomacy and of particular courts through practice or the ways in which diplomatic practice was forged through trial and error
• The role of diplomatic ritual and ceremonial in cultural exchange
• The sociability of diplomats at court and its consequences
• The cultural agency of individual diplomats and members of their households
• The role of diplomatic processes and personnel in the transnational circulation of material goods and ideas and/or the forging of cultural norms at the host court

Proposals from scholars at an early stage in their career are particularly encouraged. Thanks to generous funding from a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (BARSEA) attendance is free. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Free accommodation will be provided for speakers and speakers’ travel expenses will be reimbursed within reason. Please send proposals and a short bio (of no more than 500 words in total) to Tracey Sowerby (tracey.sowerby@history.ox.ac.uk) by June 12.

This is the first of two conferences supported by a BARSEA that will explore diplomatic cultures at early modern courts. The second, to be held in 2016 will focus on the French, English, and Ottoman courts.