CFP 31st SEDARI Conference: Spanish and Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies

31st SEDERI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Hells and Heavens of Early Modern England
La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), 6–8 May, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the 31st SEDERI (Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies) Conference will be held in La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), on 6-8 May 2020. The Conference theme—Hells and Heavens of Early Modern England—draws on the ambivalent connotations of our venue in Renaissance England: Tenerife, considered the most blessed of the Fortunate Islands, but also the one of the awesome, “heaven-daring” peak. Thus, we expect to re-examine all possible literal and figural representations of hells and heavens, from places to states, including conditions of supreme suffering or bliss. Moreover, the Conference also aims at scrutinising divides and liminal sites in which antithetical agents associated with decadence and innovation emerged, coexisted, collided, overlapped, blended and reshaped transformative factors in early modern English society, its language, literature and culture.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and round tables (in English) on the following and related topics:

  • Representations of sites, transitions and states of evil, expiation and bliss
  • Textual and graphic depictions of in/visible entities and worlds
  • De-/Regeneration and innovation of language, poetics, and culture
  •  New learning, theologies and alternative beliefs, mythographies, epistemologies, and political doctrines. Bacon’s Novum Organum fourth centenary
  • Shifting ethical values and moral dilemmas. Genesis of and resistance to ambition, disobedience, pride, crime, injustice, betrayal, and violence
  • Bodily adventures. Trans/gendered and transgressive bodies. Encountering otherness, deviancy, abjection, and monstrosity
  • Physical/spiritual medicines, remedies, consolations, and healings
  • Renaissance ecologies and pre-industrial environmental degradation
  • Lights and shadows of diplomacy (esp. Anglo-Iberian relationships)
  • Wheels of wealth and wreck. Economy, business, and trade
  • Un-/Fortunate travellers, displaced, exiles, pilgrims, and intercultural dialogues. The Mayflower fourth-centenary
  • Laughter, subversion and the grotesque
  • Damnation/redemption of words (censorship, lost texts, libraries, archives, dictionaries, anthologies, translations, data-bases, digital resources, intermediality and transmediality, transmission of texts, and editing)

Proposals must be sent as an e-mail attachment (preferably, doc or docx) to sederi31@ull.edu.es before 19 January 2020, and must contain the following information:

• The full title of your paper
• A 200-word abstract
• Any technical requirements for the presentation (Please, save your power point as doc, docx or Mac. If you are using a Mac, please indicate, and bring your own adapter cable)
• Your name and institutional affiliation
• Your postal and e-mail addresses
• Your SEDERI membership status (member, non-member, application submitted)
• A short biographical note (100 words)

Plenary Speakers

  • Louise H. Curth (University of Winchester
  • Nandini Das (University of Oxford)
  • Tanya Pollard (City University of New York, CUNY)

Conference website: http://eventos.ull.es/go/sederi31

SEDERI Website: http://www.sederi.org/