Self-Commentary in Early Modern European Literature

Self-Commentary in Early Modern European Literature
Palace Green Library, Learning Centre, Durham University
26-27 February, 2016

Writers the world over have often accompanied their texts with a variety of annotations, marginal glosses, rubrications, and explicatory or narrative prose in an effort to direct and control the reception of their own works. Such self-exegetical devices do not merely serve as an external apparatus but effectively interact with the primary text by introducing a distinctive meta-literary dimension which, in turn, reveals complex dynamics affecting the very notions of authorship and readership. In the Renaissance, self-commentaries enjoyed unprecedented diffusion and found expression in a multiplicity of forms, which appear to be closely linked to momentous processes such as the legitimation of vernacular languages across Europe, the construction of a literary canon, the making of the modern author as we know it, and the self-representation of modern individual identities.

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University will host an international conference on the topic of self-commentary and self-exegesis in early modern European literature, 26-27 February 2016 at Palace Green Library.

Registration is free. To reserve a place, please email: selfcommentary@gmail.com

Programme

Friday 26 February

10.30am Registration, coffee and tea

11:00-12:45pm Opening remarks: Francesco Venturi

  • Introduction and Chair: Carlo Caruso
  • Keynote: Martin McLaughlin (University of Oxford), Alberti’s ‘Commentarium’ to his First Literary Work: Self-Commentary as Self-Presentation
  • Jeroen De Keyser (KU Leuven), Elucidation and Self-Explanation in Filelfo’s Marginalia

12:45-2:15pm Catered lunch

2:15-4pm Chair: Patrick Gray

  • Ian Johnson (University of St Andrews), Self-Commentary during Medieval Early Modernity: Reginald Pecock and Gavin Douglas
  • Harriet Archer (Newcastle University), Framing Creative Practice: Fictive Narratives of Poetic Invention in Elizabethan Prose-Verse Hybrids
  • Gilles Bertheau (Université François Rabelais – Tours), George Chapman and the ‘Andromeda Liberata’ Affair (1614): can a Poet be ‘master of [his] own meaning’?

4:00-4:30pm Coffee and tea

4:30-6:00pm Chair: Dario Tessicini

  • Keynote: Federica Pich (University of Leeds), On the Threshold of Poems: Lyric as/vs Narrative in Italian Renaissance Poetry
  • Magdalena Ożarska (Jan Kochanowski – Kielce), The Uses of Authorial Side Glosses in Anna Stanisławska’s ‘Transaction’ (1685)

Saturday 27 February

9:30-10:30am Chair: Marc Schachter

  • Keynote: John O’Brien (Durham University), ‘All outward and on show’: Montaigne’s External Glosses

10:30-11:00am Coffee and tea

11:00-12:50pm Chair and concluding remarks: Richard Maber

  • Russel Ganim (University of Iowa), Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Annotation and Self-Exegesis in La Ceppède
  • Joseph Harris (Royal Holloway – London), Critical Failures: Corneille Observes his Spectators
  • Carlo Caruso (Durham University), Mock and Erudition: Alessandro Tassoni and Francesco Redi

For further information, please contact the event organiser: francesco.venturi@durham.ac.uk or visit: https://www.dur.ac.uk/imems/events/conferences/?eventno=25738

ETH Zürich Fellowships in History and Theory of Architecture – Call For Applications

The Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zürich is offering gta Fellowships in History and Theory of Architecture beginning in Fall 2016. The Institute aims to support researchers in their work and to allow them to fully profit from the resources of the Institute (Archive, Library Werner Oechslin). Senior researchers will have the possibility to stay for 4 to 6 months. Junior researchers can apply for a period of two years. The Institute offers:

  • 2 Postdoctoral Fellowships in History and Theory of Architecture (duration 24 months)
  • 1 Senior Researcher Fellowship in History and Theory of Architecture (duration up to 6 months)

Candidates for the Postdoctoral Fellowship must have obtained a PhD in architecture, history of art and architecture or related fields and propose a research project. Selections will be made on grounds of the quality of the project and the academic merits. Candidates for the Senior Researcher fellowship are expected to have several years of academic experience. Successful candidates should involve in the Doctoral Program in History and Theory of Architecture, for instance in teaching a seminar.

Applicants should include a letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, 2 letters of recommendation (except when applying for the Senior Researcher Fellowship), and an outline of their future research project, including a time plan. Please apply online, using the link provided on: https://apply.refline.ch/845721/4237/pub/1/index.html. Applications via email cannot be considered. Please address your application to: ETH Zurich, Mr. Matthias Steiger, Human Resources, 8092 Zurich. The application deadline is February 15, 2016.

For further information about the Institute please visit our website: http://www.gta.arch.ethz.ch. For questions concerning the position you may also contact Prof. Dr. Laurent Stalder (laurent.stalder@gta.arch.ethz.ch) or Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung (philip.ursprung@gta.arch.ethz.ch) by email (no applications please).

The Institute gta is an equal opportunity and family friendly employer. All candidates will be evaluated on their merits and qualifications.

Jenny Wormald Obituary

Thanks to Sybil Jack for writing this short obituary of Jenny Wormald, who was the keynote speaker at the 1990 ANZAMRS (Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Renaissance Studies) Conference in Otago. As many of you are aware of, ANZAMRS and AHMEME (Australian Historians of Medieval and Early Modern Europe) merged in 1996 to form ANZAMEMS.

Jenny Wormald, born Jenny Brown in 1942, read history at Glasgow university and taught there until she was appointed Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at St Hilda’s College in 1985 where she stayed until she ‘retired’ in 2005. Thereafter she returned to Edinburgh to be an Honorary Fellow at the University. From the start of her career she was both brilliant and provocative — she subjected the accepted ideas and explanations of the medieval and early modern period to devastating criticism that forced her colleagues in Scottish history to re-examine and reconstruct their understanding of the period. In the last fifty years she may well have been the most influential historian of medieval and early modern Scotland and her contribution to the re-writing of its history both in her own work and in her editing of volumes of collected studies. She was an incisive speaker as ANZAMRS discovered when she came to the Otago conference in early 1990 as the keynote speaker — an appropriate one for a city established by Scots. She spoke on Mary Queen of Scots, whom she could not abide and attempted to demolish her romantic image. This unpopular approach, which led to considerable argument, saw her later modify her assumptions as she always held everyone should do.

Her students remembered her as a stimulating teacher who drew out reticent students and encouraged them to debate. Her friends and colleagues found her both supportive and helpful in matters of research and teaching. In her retirement she continued to work and to give lectures and papers at conferences — perhaps the last in August this year at the Scottish Legal History Group Annual Conference when she spoke on James VI and I — another person about whom she changed her mind.

She married Patrick Wormald, a distinguish historian of early English law, when he moved from Oxford to Glasgow in 1974 and they assisted one another to develop penetrating new ideas. She had two sons but domesticity did not impede her research and writing.

Literature and Technology – Call For Papers

Literature and Technology
2016 Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Literature
Western Sydney University
11-13 July, 2016

Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Nicholas Daly (University College Dublin), Dr. Rachel Franks (State Library of NSW), Prof. Ken Gelder (University of Melbourne), and Prof. Kerry Mallan (QUT).

In the face of continual technological innovation, the ‘end of books’ has been a recurring prophecy voiced by authors and literary critics, from Théophile Gautier in the 1830s to Robert Coover in the 1990s. The expansion of new technologies over the last two centuries has often elicited a certain amount of alarm, but also an equal measure of fascination, both of which have had a significant impact on literature’s thematic preoccupations and formal developments. Technology has also crucially shaped the medium through which we read, teach, and research literature.

Literature today remains at the interface of understanding and giving representational form to new and emerging technologies and the ways in which they pervade and mould our world, as well as make possible literary production, dissemination, and conservation. This conference seeks to explore the complex interrelations between literature and technology through a wide range of literary texts and contexts, as well as across historical and contemporary periods.

We invite papers that engage with any aspect of literature and technology; explore the significance of digital technologies for teaching, reading, and research practice; analyze the relationship between literature and technology; and consider literature as a type of technology. We also invite papers that investigate literature which takes technology as its primary subject, either in terms of form and/or theme.

We welcome proposals of 250 words for individual papers or panels. Please include a 100 word biography with your abstract.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

  • representations of technology in literature;
  • literature as technological process, including the transformation of genres;
  • the technological history of the book, including print-technologies and ebooks;
  • the relationship between technological change and the rise in literary modernism/postmodernism;
  • the evolution of narrative forms from print to digital media;
  • hypertext fiction;
  • the digitization of literary texts and archives;
  • the impact of digital technologies on reading, teaching, and research practice;
  • online authorship, gender, and power;
  • technological utopias and dystopias in literature;
  • the influence of past and present technologies (cinema, radio, print, hypertext, multimedia, etc.) on formal and thematic literary innovations;
  • the role of the internet in the reception and transmission of new literary texts, including issues of accessibility and digital censorship;
  • theoretical and philosophical approaches to literature’s relationship with technology.

Please send your proposals to: aal2016@westernsydney.edu.au.

Deadline for submissions 31 January, 2016.

Please direct any queries to conference organisers Dr Anne Jamison (a.jamison@westernsydney.edu.au) or Dr Matt McGuire (m.mcguire@westernsydney.edu.au)

Old Time Accomplices: Mentors & Mentees – Call For Papers

Old Time Accomplices: Mentors & Mentees
The University of Melbourne
25-27 August, 2016

In his essay De auditu (On Listening to Lectures), Plutarch warned that “the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting – no more – and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth”. Once sparked, this fire requires feeding and care, a task often fulfilled by mentors. Mentors are fundamental figures in the history of thought and we know of their existence since antiquity. Already appearing in the Odyssey, the idea of mentoring owes much to the figure of Socrates.

Paradoxically, despite living in societies increasingly marked by individualism and selfishness, in the modern world we see an increase in mentoring programs. Mentoring is grounded on a mutual commitment towards professional and intellectual development and forges a bond between mentor and mentee. This pattern exists in the academic, professional and private sectors, where coaches of all kinds multiply. In this 3-day conference we wish to explore the mentor-mentee relationship in an interdisciplinary context. We invite papers which explore the theme and the practice of mentoring in literature, history, art, performing arts, social sciences and in the professional world. Papers can – but do not have to – address the following themes:

  • Famous mentors & mentees
  • Fictional mentors & mentees and/or the theme of mentoring in literature, music and performing arts
  • The evolution of the mentor-mentee relationship
  • Differences and similarities in the relationships between mentor-mentee, master-disciple, sponsor-sponsored, and master-apprentice
  • Gender and mentoring
  • Power and mentoring
  • Mentoring and/for children
  • Mentoring, creative ownership and intellectual property
  • Rituals and ceremonies
  • Access or elitism?
  • Mentoring in context: differences across disciplines/workplace environments.

Mentoring Network for Postgraduate Students

The conference will host a special workshop and mentoring session for postgraduate students. One of the aims of the conference is that of providing a forum to establish a mentoring network. Interested postgraduate students are encouraged to submit a description of their PhD thesis and a written statement explaining what they expect from a mentor. A maximum of 10 statements will be selected and postgraduate students paired with the most appropriate mentor, selecting from the list of participants to this conference who wish to join this initiative. If interested, please submit the following documents:

  1. Name, affiliation, contact details
  2. Thesis (provisional) title
  3. Discipline and specific field (if applicable)
  4. 5 keywords
  5. Description of PhD topic (250-300 words)
  6. Stage of candidature
  7. Your statement (70-100 words)

Information to be Included in Proposals

Submission of proposals for individual papers:

  1. Length of proposals: 250-300 words (list of references excluded)
  2. Include your name and affiliation, contact details (including preferred e-mail address), title and a 50-75 words bio-note
  3. Indicate whether you will be requiring A/V equipment
  4. Indicate whether you wish to be considered as a potential mentor for a mentoring session with a postgraduate student (session to take place during the conference)

For submission of proposals for panels, besides the above information, please also include the title of the panel and the details of the panel chair.

Submission Deadline

Proposals should be received by Friday 18 December 2015 (deadline extended).
All proposals should be sent to the following email address: manzing@unimelb.edu.au
Notification of acceptance will be sent bye-mail before the end of the year.

Contacts

For more information, please contact Veronique Duche-Gavet, Veronique.duche@unimelb.edu.au or Gregoria Manzin, manzing@unimelb.edu.au

Conference Convenors

  • Prof. Veronique Duche-Gavet
  • Dr Gregoria Manzin
  • Ass. Prof. Lesley Stirling

Communication, Correspondence and Transmission in the Early Modern World – Call For Papers

Northern Renaissance Seminar: Communication, Correspondence and Transmission in the Early Modern World
University of Leeds
12-13 May, 2016

Conference Website

It is a commonplace that the advent of printing in Europe revolutionised communication and the transmission of ideas. This Northern Renaissance Seminar event seeks to complicate and move beyond the “printing revolution” narrative to consider the messy and multiplicitous facets of communication, correspondence and transmission in the early modern world. How was it conceptualised, theorised or deployed as metaphor? What were its geographical, temporal or linguistic limits? How might it be transgressive or disruptive, and who might try to circumscribe it? We welcome contributions from a range of disciplines, including history, literature, art history, archaeology, languages, and drama.

We are delighted to announce Dr Sara Barker (University of Leeds) as the event’s keynote speaker.

Proposals are now being invited for 20-minute papers. Topics to consider may include, but are not limited to:

  • Guides to written or spoken communication
  • Reading and interpreting private correspondence
  • Transmission of knowledge and circulation of news
  • Swift and delayed communications
  • Visual and other non-verbal communication
  • Transmission of ideas and physical texts across geographical boundaries
  • Transmission of narratives between texts
  • The dedicatory epistle
  • The body as communicative
  • Secret communication and manuscript coteries
  • Transmission of disease and infection, real and metaphorical
  • Poetry as correspondence
  • Geographical and cultural isolation from communication
  • Disordered, dysfluent or unclear communication
  • Accents and languages
  • Miscommunication and mistranslation

Please email proposals of no more than 300 words to nrsleeds2016@gmail.com by Friday 15 January, 2016. All queries should also be directed to this address. Please also include biographical information detailing your name, research area, institution and level of study (if applicable). Sessions will be held on the afternoon of Thursday 12th May and during the day on Friday 13th May 2016. The conference will also include opportunities to visit the Royal Armouries and see the early modern treasures of Special Collections at the Brotherton Library.

Studies in Medievalism, Issue XXIV (2016): Ecotheory & Medievalism(s) – Call For Papers

Studies in Medievalism, a peer-reviewed print and on-line publication, seeks 3,000-word essays on the application of ecotheory to medievalism and neomedievalism.

To what degree do ecocriticism and ecomaterialism inform these fields? How are constructed environments deployed in response to the Middle Ages? How, if at all, are these settings legitimized? How are they applied to postmedieval circumstances and concerns? How is human agency defined in relationship to them? What, if anything, do they tell us about the larger scope of medievalism and neomedievalism, particularly the relationship between those fields? Potential contributors are welcome to discuss particular examples of pertinent neo/medievalism, but they should do so in the course of directly addressing one or more of these questions.

Please send all submissions in English and Word to Karl Fugelso (kfugelso@towson.edu) by August 1, 2016. For a style sheet, please visit the website: http://www.medievalism.net/sim.html

The Pre-Modern Book in a Global Context: Materiality and Visuality – Call For Papers

The Pre-Modern Book in a Global Context: Materiality and Visuality
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY
October 21-22, 2016

The twenty-first century has witnessed the transformation of the study of the history of the book. Technology has given us new methods for the study of papyri, manuscripts, and early printed books: everything from x-rays to DNA analysis now provides data regarding the production and use of the book in the pre-modern era. In addition, digital humanities now allows for the precise capture and reproduction of texts in all their visual specificity as well as the compilation of vast databases for “distant reading.” Yet, as any scholar of the book recognizes, these artifacts retain an aura that technology cannot duplicate or fully explain: an encounter with a pre-modern book is an encounter with a textual presence in all its ineffable alterity.

The year 2016 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University; in celebration of fifty years of research in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, CEMERS will host a conference on the materiality and visuality of the pre-modern book (from late antiquity until 1600). Papers are invited on all aspects of the book as artifact. The conference aims to bring together the sub-disciplines currently involved in the history of the book in order to facilitate inter-disciplinary dialogue.

Papers should be twenty minutes in length. Send abstracts (with a brief cv) to cemers@binghamton.edu (with subject line History of the Book). For further information, contact Marilynn Desmond, Director, CEMERS, mdesmon@binghamton.edu. Deadline: April 15, 2016.

Exhibition of Interest @ National Library of Australia: Celestial Empire: Life in China 1644-1911

Celestial Empire: Life in China 1644-1911
National Library of Australia
2 Jan-22 May 2016

Cost: Free
More info: https://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/celestial-empire

Celestial Empire – 300 years of Chinese culture and tradition from two of the world’s great libraries. From life at court to in the villages and fields, glimpse the world of China’s last imperial dynasty.

See exquisite and precious objects from the National Library of China. Marvel at drawings and plans for Beijing’s iconic palaces from the Yangshi Lei Archives, never seen in Australia. Beautiful maps, books and prints come alive in ornate detail.

Discover the National Library of Australia’s acclaimed Chinese Collection, including rare items from the London Missionary Society; a unique view of early western impressions of China.

Journal of Art Historiography: Thematic Issue On History of Architectural Historiography – Call For Papers

Journal of Art Historiography
CFP: Thematic issue dedicated to the history of architectural historiography

In the beginning was Vasari and in the beginning was Palladio. In his Vite Vasari described the lives of painters, sculptors and architects—the context of architectural creation, one may be tempted to say in our modern idiom. In the fourth book of his I quattro libri Palladio presented extensive comprehensive surveys of Roman temples—his was the first systematic publication of architectural works themselves. Since the Renaissance, the discipline of architectural history has been a combination of both approaches. Some architectural historians have been originally trained as art historians, other as architects, and this dual background has decisive for the development of architectural historiography.

Journal of Art Historiography announces a call for paper for the thematic issue dedicated to the history of architectural historiography: the history of scholarly approaches, their implications and developments through history—but also historical perspectives on where it is going, including, for instance, the changes in scholarship effected by digital technologies or the positioning of the discipline in the rapidly changing academic world. Compared to the histories of painting or sculpture, architectural history is more institutionalized, with a wide range of established societies and specialist publications—but what is the history of that institutionalisation and how did its goals change through history? Many historians of painting or sculpture work in museums, while architectural museums are rare; many architectural historians are directly involved in the preservation of architectural heritage, while few historians of painting or sculpture work in the conservation of their objects of study. What is then the history of architectural historians’ involvement with architectural heritage and how did their approaches change through history? And more specifically, pertaining to architectural history itself, how did the interest in our discipline develop and how did it develop discipline-specific methodological tools and devices?

The thematic issue of the Journal of Art Historiography dedicated to the history of architectural historiography is planned for June 2016. The deadline for the submission of papers is 7 January 2016; proposals for the papers (including 300 words abstracts, no specific deadline) and subsequently the papers should be sent to the editor of the special issue at branko.mitrovic@ntnu.no. The submissions should conform to the Journal’s submission guidelines (see https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/journal-submission-guidelines/ ) and will be peer-reviewed according to the Journal’s standard process (see https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/peer-review-process/ ).