Monthly Archives: March 2016

Shakespeare: The Sonnets Out Loud

Shakespeare: The Sonnets Out Loud
A Street Contemporary Drama Presentation

Date: 30 April, 2016
Time: 7:00pm (Duration 225 minutes, including interval)
Venue: The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Cost: Full: $35; Concession: $30; Group 4+: $25
More info and tickets: http://www.thestreet.org.au/shows/shakespeare-sonnets-out-loud

A rare opportunity to enjoy a complete reading of every one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

Are you a diehard Sonnet 18 or Sonnet 130 populist, or do you prefer the “procreation” sonnets, perhaps the “avoidance” sonnets, the dark lady sequence, or the ‘Will’ poems?

Shakespeare took the sonnet and transformed it into a fluent and flexible form that could turn itself to any subject. The Sonnets have invited imitation, homage, critique, parody and pastiche over the last four hundred years and continue to be infinitely quotable popping up everywhere – in film, song, stories, and life!

So put up your sonnet radar, and get ready to seize the day. Enjoy these famous works and words read by renowned Shakespearean actor William Zappa and outstanding vocalist actor Tobias Cole, with live accompaniment, in an absorbing evening directed by Dianna Nixon.

So which 14 lines would you choose?

Australian Feminist Studies, Themed Issue: Feminist Engagements With Archives and New Modes of History – Call For Papers

Australian Feminist Studies is seeking contributions in the form of original articles (up to 8,000 words) for a 2017 themed issue covering feminist engagements with archives and new modes of history (literary history, social and cultural history, the history of sexuality). Shorter thematic pieces (up to 5,000 words) may be considered for the journal’s Feminist Debates and Reflections sections.​

Submissions must do more than simply draw on archival source material, they should include explicit engagement with new thinking around archives and archiving. Proposals covering any discipline or national domain are welcome.

Questions explored may include (but are not limited to):

  • How do new debates concerning sex, gender and sexuality reframe what we do in and with archives?
  • Are our understandings of evidence and the empirical shifting?
  • What does it mean to take archives and archiving as the subjects of our investigations as feminist researchers?
  • What does it mean to ‘archive feminism’?
  • Does the digital archival environment speak to a new political economy of archives and archiving and what does this mean for feminist research?

Submission Instructions

Abstracts (500 words) should be submitted by 15 May, 2016 with accepted articles due 1st October 2016. Inquiries and abstracts can be sent to afs@newcastle.edu.au. ​

Submissions should be formatted according to the journal’s house style. All submissions will be peer-reviewed as per the journal’s policy.

Visit the journal’s homepage or read the full Instructions for Authors.

Professor Hilary Gatti, English Department Research Seminar @ University of Sydney

“The Liberty Discourse in Early Modern Europe 1500-1650: Milton’s Areopagitica in context”, Professor Hilary Gatti
English Department Research Seminar, University of Sydney

Date: Wednesday April 6, 2016
Time: 3:00–5:00pm
Venue: John Woolley Building, Room S226, University of Sydney

All welcome!

My contribution will start by emphasizing the recent emergence of Milton the prose writer as a fully autonomous figure and no longer as a mere adjunct of the great epic poet (writing with his left hand). That the considerable recent attention to Milton’s prose has led to a lively interpretative debate is considered here as a positive aspect of the liberty discourse which is the subject of my recent book Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe: from Machiavelli to Milton (Princeton University Press, 2015). The second part of the paper will reconsider the treatment of Milton’s Areopagitica in my book, emphasizing in particular the Italian influence on Milton’s idea of liberty, and the limits he places on that idea.

Hilary Gatti was born and studied in Great Britain, until she married and moved to Italy in 1961. She started teaching English Language and Literature in the Letters and Philosophy Faculty of the State University of Milan in 1964, and then as Associate Professor in the Letters and Philosophy Faculty of the State University of Rome “La Sapienza” until her retirement in 2006. She has published extensively on renaissance literature and philosophy, and is the author of The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England (Routledge), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science (Cornell University Press) and Essays on Giordano Bruno (Princeton University Press). Her most recent book, Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe: from Machiavelli to Milton was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. A Festschrift in her honor, edited by Martin McLaughlin of the University of Oxford, Ingrid D. Rowland of the University of Notre Dame, and Elisabetta Tarantino, was published by Legenda in October, 2015.

ANZAMEMS Conference Panel: Keeping it in the Family: Mobility, Exchange, and Adaptation in an Age of Discovery, Trade Expansion and Settlement, 1400–1800 – Call For Papers

Panel CFP, ANZAMEMS 2017:

Keeping it in the family: mobility, exchange, and adaptation in an age of discovery, trade expansion and settlement, 1400–1800

Castas en Nueva EspanÞa. Joseì Joaquiìn Magoìn'

Castas en Nueva EspanÞa. Joseì Joaquiìn Magoìn

Family networks transcending national ties and traditional boundaries relating to gender, class, religion, and race, were central to the project of discovery, trade expansion and settlement in the early modern period. This was a period of flux and roles and relations within and outside households were affected. While prolonged absences from home could lead men to establish second families, their wives and daughters had the opportunity to oversee households and businesses.

The panel will investigate the extended family in its widest sense – encompassing mistresses as well as wives, children – legitimate and illegitimate, apprentices, servants and slaves. Families who maintained a connection to their place of origin are as significant as those for whom the dislocation was permanent for, as Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks has shown, interactions and relationships between individuals who are mobile affect those within their network who are not and so even fixed locations can be ‘saturated with transnational relationships’.

The panel will convene at the ANZAMEMS Eleventh Biennial Conference at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 7-10 February 2017.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

  • Merchant, maritime and/or military families/households
  • The division between public and private spheres
  • Education and mobility
  • Wardship and/or adoption and/or illegitimacy
  • Families in new worlds
  • Families and possessions
  • The family in text and image
  • Love, loss and memory
  • Race and/or gender and family
  • Faith and family
  • Guilds and/or apprentices and family
  • Servitude and/or slavery and the impact on family

If you would like to contribute a paper to this panel, please send the following to Heather Dalton at hdalton@unimelb.edu.au by 30 July, 2016 (with the subject line ‘Family’):

  • Paper title
  • Abstract (up to 150 words)
  • Your name, affiliation, and email address
  • An indication of AV requirements

ESRA 2017: Shakespeare and European Theatrical Cultures: AnAtomizing Text and Stage – Call For Papers

European Shakespeare Research Association
Shakespeare and European Theatrical Cultures: AnAtomizing Text and Stage
University of Gdańsk and The Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, Poland
27–30 July, 2017

This conference will convene Shakespeare scholars at a theatre that proudly stands in the place where English players regularly performed 400 years ago. This makes us ponder with renewed interest the relation between theatre and Shakespeare. The urge to do so may sound like a commonplace, but it comes to us enhanced by the fact that in the popular and learned imagination alike Shakespeare is inseparable from theatre while the theatre, for four centuries now, first in England, then on the continent (Europe) and eventually in the world, has been more and more strongly defined and shaped by Shakespeare. Shakespeare has become the theatrical icon, a constant point of reference, the litmus paper for the formal, technological and ideological development of the theatre, and for the impact of adaptation and appropriation on theatrical cultures. Shakespeare has served as one of the major sources for the development of European culture, both high and low. His presence permeates the fine shades and fissures of a multifarious European identity. His work has informed educational traditions, and, through forms of textual transmit such as translation and appropriation, has actively contributed to the process of building national distinctiveness. Shakespeare has been one of the master keys and, at the same time, a picklock granting easier access to the complex and challenging space of European and universal values.

We would like to invite papers and talks on the uses of Shakespeare in theatrical cultures across Europe and beyond, with a focus on textual/performative practices, on the educational dimension of Shakespeare in theatre, on the interface between text, film and stage productions, on his impact on popular culture, on Shakespearean traces in European collective and individual memory, and on his broader cultural legacy. We particularly welcome contributions to a debate about deploying Shakespeare in the local and more globally-oriented theatrical cultures, and in cross-cultural exchanges and negotiations.

Potential topics to be addressed:

  • theatre in education/education in theatre, teaching (drama/theatre) through Shakespeare
  • theatrical cultures across the centuries – from the Early Modern period till today
  • Shakespeare in translation (interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic)
  • textual performances/performative texts
  • Shakespeare in performance in European cultures
  • re-defining identities through Shakespeare on stage/theatrical transits across borders
  • Shakespeare on European screens
  • theatrical culture Shakespearean screen and stage productions
  • (European) popular traditions and Shakespeare
  • Shakespeare in (European) Academia and beyond
  • European Shakespeare theatre networks
  • Shakespeare, theatre and the new media
  • commemorating Shakespeare in Europe
  • theorising (Shakespearean) theatre practice
  • performance theory in Shakespearean context
  • Shakespeare criticism in daily press and popular media
  • Shakespeare and the dramaturg in today’s theatre
  • digital Shakespeare in European theatre/performance databases

Members of ESRA are invited to propose a panel and/or a seminar that they would be interested in convening. Proposals of 300-500 words (stating topic, relevance and approach) should be submitted by a panel convenor (with the names of the panellists) and 2-3 potential seminar convenors from different countries who have agreed to work together.

Please submit your proposals by 31 May, 2016 to: Dr. Aleksandra Sakowska, the Gdańsk conference secretary gdansk@esra2017.eu.

Slow mail should be addressed to:

Prof. Jerzy Limon, University of Gdańsk, Institute of English and American Studies, ul. Wita Stwosza 51, 80-308 Gdańsk, Poland.

The conference organisers and the Board of ESRA will confirm their final choice of panels and seminars at the beginning of July 2016. All convenors will be personally informed of the choices made and the list of seminars will be made available on the ESRA and the conference websites.

Organising committee, ESRA 2017:

  • Prof. Jerzy Limon (convenor) (University of Gdańsk and the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre)
  • Prof. Jacek Fabiszak (co-convenor) (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Polish Shakespeare Society)
  • Prof. Olga Kubińska (University of Gdańsk and the Polish Shakespeare Society)
  • Dr. Aleksandra Sakowska (University of Worcester)

11th International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies – Call For Papers

11th International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies
University of Sydney and Western Sydney University
14-17 December, 2016

Conference Website

For the first time in its history, Crossroads in Cultural Studies is coming to the southern hemisphere. Hosted by the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University, the 11th International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies will be held in Sydney, Australia from December 14th to 17th 2016. Scholars from around the world will come together in the beautiful summertime setting of Sydney University to engage with the past, present and future of cultural studies scholarship.

Keynote Speakers: Ghassan Hage, Audra Simpson, Kamala Visweswaran.

Other Plenary and Featured Spotlight Speakers Will Include: Paula Banerjee, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Alison Bashford, Amita Baviskar, Jean Burgess, John Erni, Martin Fredriksson, Steve Kinnane, Denisa Kera, Maria Lugones, Mark McLelland, Cecilia Mariz, Kado Muir, Laikwan Pang, Susanna Paasonen, Elizabeth Povinelli, Cristina Rocha, Evelyn Ruppert, Rachel Silvey, Gavin Smith, Maristella Svampa, Imre Szeman, Martina Tazzioli, Irene Watson, Brenda Weber, Nira Yuval-Davis.

The Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference has played an important role in the creation of a global discussion of Cultural Studies. It has become a major international conference where scholars from all five continents gather regularly to exchange research, views, and insights. Organized by the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS), the Crossroads conference is held every other year in different parts of the world. Previous conferences have taken place in Birmingham (United Kingdom), Urbana-Champaign (USA), Istanbul (Turkey), Kingston (Jamaica), Hong Kong (China), Paris (France), and Tampere (Finland).

A day-long postgraduate/graduate research student conference will precede the main conference (on 13 December, 2016).

  • Submit your proposal using the online forms before April 30, 2016: The call for both paper and pre-organised panel proposals is now open. Submission guidelines and forms can be accessed here.
  • ACS assistance scheme for Crossroads 2016. The Association for Cultural Studies will offer a small number of grants to assist participants from ACS under-represented regions with travel accommodation or registration expenses. Find more information here.
  • Information on registration and accommodation, and on the student pre-conference will follow soon, along with more confirmed speakers.
  • Spread the news! Please share this page with your colleagues and friends – we look forward to seeing you in Sydney in our summer 2016!

Possible topics

The conference is open to all topics relevant to cultural studies. Here are some suggested topics as food for thought, drawing on the work of our invited keynote, plenary and spotlight speakers, and on more general themes in cultural studies research. However, all contemporary cultural studies research is welcome at this conference:

  • Diversity, culture, governance
  • Indigenous knowledge and politics
  • Borders and mobilities
  • Culture, gender and decolonisation
  • Data cultures
  • Extraction: cultures and industries
  • Media regulation: from censorship to piracy
  • Popular affect online
  • Transforming christianities
  • Who counts in the anthropocene? gender, sexuality, race and class
  • Securitization
  • Australasian cultural studies
  • Consumption and everyday life
  • Critical and cultural theory
  • Digital infrastructure
  • Culture, gender and sexuality
  • Globalisation and culture
  • Human/non-human relations
  • Inter-Asian cultural studies
  • Managing cities
  • Migrant cultural studies
  • Multicultural, intercultural and cross-cultural studies
  • Popular cultures and genres
  • Public culture and cultural policy
  • Race and racism
  • Rethinking the human
  • Rural cultural studies
  • Screen and media culture
  • Transforming/Globalising universities

Morton W. Bloomfield Visiting Fellowship – Call for Applications

The Medieval Colloquium of the Department of English at Harvard University invites applications for the Morton W. Bloomfield Visiting Fellowship, a four-week residential fellowship that can be held at any time during the 2016-17 academic year (September through May). Thanks to the generosity of the Morton W. Bloomfield Fund, established in the memory of one of Harvard’s most distinguished medievalists, we are able to provide up to $3500 towards travel, accommodation, and living costs. We invite scholars at any stage of their postdoctoral career who could usefully spend a month at Harvard to apply. In the past, some fellows with sabbatical leaves have elected to spend a semester with us. Fellows are expected to attend the Medieval Colloquium and to give a paper on the subject of their research. They are also asked to meet with our graduate students, and they are welcome to attend other events at Harvard. We select fellows on the basis of the importance of their research and its interest to our intellectual community.

Applicants should send a brief letter of application, a curriculum vitae, and a two-page project description by email to Daniel Donoghue (ddonogh@fas.harvard.edu) no later than April 25, 2015. Please include details on when and for how long you would be able to be in residence. The fellowship is not normally compatible with teaching commitments at a home institution. We hope to be able to congratulate the successful applicant by the middle of May.

ANZAMEMS Member News: Derek Ryan Whaley – PATS (2016) Report

Derek Ryan Whaley, Doctoral Candidate, University of Canterbury, Christchurch

Last week, I was privileged to be among two of the foremost scholars in the world of European manuscript studies: Rodney Thomson and Margaret M. Manion. I admit that I myself am not a palaeographer or codicologist, but nonetheless I learned much at the two-day Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar held at the University of Sydney that may well help me both in my academic studies and my own personal pursuits.

The seminar series was divided into two days to cover the wide breadth of information that Thomson and Manion wished to convey to us regarding their experiences with manuscripts and their knowledge of the Fisher Library collection. What was by far the most rewarding aspect of the PATS was the hands-on interaction with around 20 medieval and early modern codices that the library holds (not counting 14 Spanish liturgical music manuscripts presented at the end of the first day). Thomson’s frequent reminder that there is always more to learn from handling the manuscript than can ever be gleaned from simply reading a transcription or viewing a digital copy was made abundantly clear to us all.

Over the course of the two days, we explored medieval manuscript preparation, organisation, bindings, writing, copying techniques, decorations, and provenance. Via our readings and Thomson’s statements, we were able to identify telling marks in the vellum leaves that told us where pages had been cut over multiple bindings, how authors ruled their lines, what the readers thought of the work, and how they portrayed their thoughts. Just like today, readers in the Middle Ages would doodle, highlight, and write notes in the margins to help them in their studies and understanding of the text. Hearing this is one thing, but seeing it firsthand in the pages is entirely another. It made the gap of time from the thirteenth century to the present seem infinitesimally small. Despite that gap, students today are little different in many ways from students then.

For me, the most helpful aspect of the PATS was right at the end, when Thomson broke down in minute detail the system he developed for cataloguing manuscripts, using an example from one of his own publications. Taking this knowledge, I was immediately able to understand a number of previously-indecipherable or seemingly-purposeless points in a catalogue that I had been using in my own research. This alone made the entire PATS worthwhile.

What was probably the most rewarding part, however, was the one-on-one interaction with the presenters. During the multiple tea and lunch breaks, I took every opportunity to ask questions about the manuscripts, the study of manuscripts, and aspects of my own research. Furthermore, the excellent group of regional students of palaeography brought me into contact with other like minds in a way I had not experienced in Australasia before.

My time at the University of Sydney was quite rewarding and the PATS held my interest throughout, even when the topic at hand was not of specific importance to my research. This was entirely due to the charismatic presentation style of Thomson and Manion and the curiosity that the manuscripts attracted.

The Oriana Chorale: How Sweet The Music…

How Sweet The Music…
The Oriana Chorale

Date: Saturday 17 April, 2016
Time: 5:00pm
Venue: University House, ANU, 1 Balmain Cres. Acton, ACT
Tickets: Adult – $30; Concession – $20; Student – $15. Book at: http://www.trybooking.com/KOCS

Oriana marks this anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with a kaleidoscope of Shakespearian songs and readings.

From the Romantic age to the present day, composers have taken Shakespeare’s immortal words and created choral settings full of beauty, style and wit.

This wide-ranging concert includes music by Brahms, Berlioz and Vaughan Williams, plus modern settings by Paul Mealor (composer for Prince William’s wedding), the great British jazz musician George Shearing, and the extraordinary Finnish choral composer Jaarko Mäntyjärvi.

The Oriana Chorale is again directed by one of Canberra’s top musicians, conductor and keyboard virtuoso Peter Young.

Singers and audiences alike will also be delighted that popular and outstanding musicians Christina Wilson and Alan Hicks will be associate artists at this interesting and enjoyable tour of just a few selected passages by the Bard — and some great songs they have inspired

King’s College: Teaching Officer in English and Bye-Fellow – Call For Applications

Teaching Officer in English and Bye-Fellow
King’s College, Cambridge

Location: Cambridge
Salary: £30,738 p.a.
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Contract / Temporary

King’s College, Cambridge seeks to appoint to a temporary fixed term (3 year) College Lectureship in English literature, with the possibility of renewal for a further two years only. Applicants should have a PhD in English literature and specialise in any period of literature from 1550 to the present day. We expect that the successful applicant will have an on-going programme of research and publication. The post holder will be required to supervise and teach 200 hours per year and to contribute to the College’s teaching for the English Tripos. Such supervisions or tutorials are held on a weekly basis, for which essays are required, and typically comprise two students with the supervisor. Class or seminar teaching may also be used where appropriate. In addition the post holder will be required to direct studies in English. The stipend for this position would be £30,738 p.a., increasing annually by any cost of living increases agreed by the College. Additionally, the Bye-Fellow may apply for grants to assist with research expenditure including travel to conferences, purchasing computers or books up to a maximum of £1000 per annum.

The post holder will be appointed to a Bye-Fellowship at King’s College, which confers a number of benefits, including dining rights and membership of the Universities Superannuation Scheme. The College expects to be able to help the successful candidate find suitable rental accommodation in Cambridge, should this be required. The Bye-Fellow will be expected to be present in College throughout Full Term.

For full details and to apply, please visit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ANF129/teaching-officer-in-english-and-bye-fellow

Applications close: 12 April, 2016.