Devotional Writing in Print and Manuscript in Early Modern England, 1558-1700
Ramphal Building, University of Warwick
Monday 26 June, 2017

Plenary Speakers:

• Prof Bernard Capp (Emeritus, Warwick)
• Dr Johanna Harris (Exeter)

Devotions in early modern England, public or private, were central to the everyday lives of clergy and laity alike. Yet such practises were routinely transformed by men and women who did not just record but reconfigured their piety through writing. From accounts of fasts, feasts, and thanksgiving days; prayers and sacred songs; covenants and confessing of sins; narratives of conversion, baptism or burial; biblical graffiti; repetition of sermons; conferencing and conventicles. English citizens, individually and communally, and on either side of the confessional divide had a regimen of acts that were to be performed and perfected during their lifetimes. This one day conference aims to investigate how print and manuscript cultures coalesced and collided in their re-presentation of post-Reformation devoutness.

‘Devotional Writing in Print and Manuscript’ is a major one day multi-disciplinary conference, hosted by the University of Warwick’s English Department in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance and the Early Modern Forum. Contributions are invited from established scholars and postgraduate students alike. Publication of a selection of papers is envisioned. Themes for papers may include (but are not limited to): literary, visual. political, theological, historical, material, musical, polemical or any other treatments of the topics of devotional writing in print or manuscript in the context of reformation-era England.

These may include:

• Piety of the Household/Neighbourhood
• Schools, Education and Memory
• Temptation/Possession/Conversion Narratives
• Fasts/Feasts/Thanksgiving Days
• Prayer Books/Church Books/Book of Sports
• Psalmody versus Hymnody
• Playhouses, the Pulpit, and the Theatre of the Word
• Sick-bed/Death-bed Accounts (ars moriendi)
• Godly Missives and Communal Correspondences
• Martyrology/Hagiography
• Religious Iconography/Graffiti/Objects
• Biblicism versus Fanaticism
• Spiritual Manuals and/or Cases of Conscience

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words for 20-minute papers by 30 April, 2017 to Prof Elizabeth Clarke (E.R.Clarke@warwick.ac.uk); or Robert W. Daniel (Robert.Daniel@warwick.ac.uk).

Literary Environments: Place, Planet and Translation
2017 Australasian Association for Literature (AAL) Conference
Griffith University (Gold Coast campus)
17-19 July, 2017

This year’s conference organisers, Peter Denney and Stuart Cooke, have assembled a stellar line-up of keynotes for the conference:

• Ursula Heise (UCLA)
• Alan Bewell (University of Toronto)
• Stephen Muecke (UNSW)
• Jerome Rothenberg (UC San Diego)

Literary Environments is concerned with the different environments in which literature can occur, and our methods of translating between them. At this critical juncture in the Anthropocene, planetary responsibility and situated knowledges need to be entwined in propositions for social and environmental justice. Bodies, texts and artworks are converging in old and new forms of politics and earthly accountabilities. The task of translation between these increasingly interconnected modes of existence is a crucial one: life in all of its manifestations – from DNA to forests – has textual qualities. What does it mean to ‘read’ such a staggering variety of data?

We welcome proposals for individual papers and panels addressing any aspect of literature and the environment, including:

• Zoopoetics, animal art and critical animal studies
• Indigenous literatures from around the world and their transcultural relation
• Literature of the Anthropocene, including cli-fi and other responses to climate change
• Local, urban, and global ecological imaginaries
• Indigenous ecologies and knowledges
• Ecological ethics and law
• Environmental attitudes in pre-Romantic writing
• Romantic and anti-Romantic environmental sensibilities
• Literary translation
• Posthumanism, new materialism and dark ecologies
• Intersections of aesthetic, political and scientific treatments of environmental issues

While this conference is primarily concerned with literature, we envisage it as a multi-disciplinary event. We invite papers on any aspect of the environmental humanities, from environmental history to environmental philosophy. We also welcome papers addressing literary environments that are not ecological in orientation, such as studies of literary spaces, communities, and so on.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and panels comprising 3 x papers. Please submit an abstract of 200 words (maximum) and a brief bio as PDF documents to the following email address by 15 March, 2017:

aalconference@griffith.edu.au

Accepted papers will be announced by 1 April 2017.

Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

For inquiries about the conference, please email one of the conference convenors:

• Dr Stuart Cooke: stuart.cooke@griffith.edu.au
• Dr Peter Denney: p.denney@griffith.edu.au

Collaborative Book Production – A Book History Research Network Study Day
Radcliffe Humanities Building, University of Oxford
21 April, 2017

This one-day workshop aims to explore collaborative book production from the Middle Ages to the present day. It is the aim of the workshop to shed light on the practicalities, purposes and thought processes behind collaborative working methods. We invite speakers to consider bibliographical, palaeographical, codicological, art historical and historical approaches to the topic.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Collaboration between authors and book producers (scribes, publishers, book sellers, stationers, printers)
• Collaboration between book producers (scribes, illuminators, publishers, illustrators and printers)
• Collaboration between print industry and other media (digital texts, film, audio)
• How was collaboration planned and carried out?
• Later interventions by consumers and readers of the book (for example marginalia), leading to “collaboration” over time
• Case studies of “faulty” books which are the results of conflict in collaboration

Please send proposals of up to 250 words (20 minute paper) to s.l.laseke@umail.leidenuniv.nl and r.emmett@qmul.ac.uk no later than 31 March, 2017.

European Academy of Religion 2017
Ex Nihilo: A “Zero Conference” on Research in the Religious Fields
Bologna
June 18–21, 2017

The purpose of the conference—which will precede the first Convention to be held in March 2018—is to test the initiative of a European Academy of Religion as a research platform and as a network of networks. Fscire will host the conference and be in charge of all its organizational aspects.

The Scientific Program

All the academies and associations, departments and research centers, scientific journals and publishers working in the vast area of EU and Mena Countries as well as the Balkans, Caucasus, and Russia who are willing to participate in this conference are kindly asked to submit proposals for panels and disputationes by March 31, 2017.

Scholars and groups of scholars are invited to present individual papers or panels. Societies or groups who want to hold their own meetings and conferences during the “Zero Conference” are also welcome.

Proposal templates are available in the Download Area at www.europeanacademyofreligion.org and should be sent to eu_are2017@fscire.it.

The Marketplace

Publishers may be given a space to display their publications, meet with scholars, and receive proposals from the participants.

Institutional and private donors who want to launch calls and research projects will have the opportunity to meet with scholars and research groups.

Lectiones et Disputationes

Three lectures and three disputationes will be arranged by the hosting institution: while contacts are underway, suggestions and speakers’ CVs are welcome.

Registration and Fees

Registration will open on January 16, 2017 and will close on May 30, 2017.

Fees have been set as follows: senior scholars and professors €60; students, PhD students,

PostDoc, and early-career scholars €30. Travel grants of €200 may be available for scholars who do not have access to their own travel funds.

Special agreements for discounted rates will be concluded with hotels and restaurants. Fscire will organize complimentary artistic events and guided tours for the registered participants, and partially fund the gala dinner.

The CEMS Postgraduate Conference 2017: Living Well and Dying Well in the Early Modern World
Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Exeter
15-16 June, 2017

Keynote Speakers: Dr Lucy Munro (KCL); Dr Amy Erickson (Cambridge)

Following the success of our inaugural conference last year, the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Exeter is pleased to announce our second annual postgraduate conference. This two-day conference will explore the varied aspects of life and death and their representations in art, literature, and culture between 1500 and 1800, and we welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers from postgraduate students in any humanities discipline.

Suggested topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

• Ideas of a good life in the early modern period
• The economic lives of early modern families
• Concepts of happiness, satisfaction, or enjoyment
• Advice on how to ensure a good life or death
• Class and society
• Celebrations and memorials (in society, art, music, and drama)
• Medical, scientific, and other advances which contributed to the quality of life
• Work and labour
• Valued relationships, beliefs, or objects
• Gendered virtue, sociability, or affection
• Stage representations of living, the life cycle, death, and dying

Proposals should comprise a 200-word abstract and a brief biography. Please email proposals to cemsconference@exeter.ac.uk with the heading ‘2017 conference proposal’ by 31 March, 2017. Any queries can also be emailed to the same address. Some travel grants will be available and will be announced closer to the conference.

Arts Two Building, Mile End Campus, Queen Mary University of London
19–20 June 2017

According to the wheel of emotions created by the psychologist Robert Plutchik in 1980, angry and fearful emotions are diametrically opposed to each other, as approach and avoidance responses respectively to harmful stimuli.

Plutchik’s is one of many different models suggesting the existence of certain ‘basic’ or ‘primary’ emotions. Such lists almost always include both fear and anger. Historically, fearful and angry emotions have been related to each other in different ways – sometimes opposed, sometimes complementary, and sometimes in another way. For Thomas Aquinas, for instance, ira is alone among the passions in having no contrary.

Although basic emotion theorists tend to treat ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ as singular emotions, even Plutchik’s wheel includes three different intensities for each emotion – from annoyance to rage and from apprehension to terror. Historians tend to be more attuned to cultural specificities of emotional language, concepts and expression, hence the emphasis in this conference on ‘fears’ and ‘angers’ in the plural to encourage a wide range of papers on all sorts of fear-like and anger-like feelings and behaviours in different cultures and periods.

The conference aims to bring humanities scholars of all periods into conversation with each other and with experts in the contemporary study of emotions, including neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and linguists.

Call for Papers

Papers can address either a single emotion in the fearful or angry categories, or examine the relationship between the two. Possible topics could include:

• The varieties of fear – from anxiety and angst to mortal fear and terror. What were the objects and causes of fearful emotions in different times and places?
• The varieties of anger – from annoyance and irritation to ire, vengeance, fury and rage. The different objects and causes of angry emotions.
• The history of terms and concepts for different fearful or angry emotions.
• Visual and literary representations.
• Material culture and emotions.
• Theories of fearful and angry emotions in the histories of science, medicine, philosophy, theology, and other learned discourses.
• The relationships between fearful and angry emotions. Does one cause the other? Are they complementary or opposite?
• What historical and contemporary approaches to fear or anger can learn from each other.
• Historical and contemporary debates about the number and identity of the so-called basic or primary emotions.
• Terror and rage as political emotions (past and present).

‘Fears and Angers: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’ will extend over two days, including plenary sessions by distinguished invited speakers, Round Table discussion groups, and numerous panels consisting of three 20 minute papers with discussion. One or more refereed publications of essays based on proceedings are expected.

Paper Proposals

• For individual paper proposals (20 minutes), individuals should submit a paper title, abstract (c. 250 words), name, brief biography (no more than 100 words), institutional affiliation and status, and contact details.
• For panel proposals, the organiser of the panel should submit the same information for each of the three speakers, and the name of the person to chair the panel.

Please send the proposals to emotions@qmul.ac.uk and Ms Pam Bond (pam.bond@uwa.edu.au) (CHE) by 17 March, 2017.

ConferenceCommittee

• Dr Elena Carrera (Queen Mary, University of London)
• Professor Thomas Dixon (Queen Mary, University of London)
• Evelien Lemmens (Queen Mary, University of London)
• Professor Andrew Lynch (The University of Western Australia)
• Dr Helen Stark (Queen Mary, University of London)
• Dr Giovanni Tarantino (The University of Western Australia)