ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions Masterclass: Weird Reading

The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) presents:
“Weird Reading”, a masterclass run by Eileen Joy

Date: Tuesday 24 June 2014
Time: 2:00-4:00pm
Venue: Linkway Room, 4th floor, John Medley Building, The University of Melbourne
Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cRd32hOxh8ad8r5ZxwccJvI9WhivJnYsxgWYavuA2BA/viewform
Reading packs will be distributed after close of registration on 14 June 2014
For more information: contact Jessica Scott at: Tel: +61 3 8344 5152 or jessica.scott@unimelb.edu.au

This workshop will explore descriptive reading modes as forms of attention (which would also be a type of care) to texts in order to try to capture the traces of the strange voluptuosity and singular (and unique) tendencies of textual objects. What might happens when we start looking for things in texts that don’t typically get observed because they don’t easily correspond or answer to traditionally humanist questions and concerns. The idea might then be, not to necessarily “make sense” of a literary text and its figures (human and otherwise) — to humanistically re-boot the narrative by always referring it to the Real (context, historical or otherwise, for example, or human psychology) — but to better render the chatter and noise, the gestures and movements, the appearances and disappearances of the weird worlds that are compressed in books, and to see better how these teeming pseudo-worlds are part of our brains already, hard-wired into the black box of a kind of co-implicate, enworlded subjectivity in which it is difficult and challenging to trace the edges between “self” and “Other.” This would be a reading practice that would multiply and thicken a text’s sentient reality and might be described as a commentary that seeks to open and not close a text’s possible “signatures.” In her late essay, “The Weather in Proust,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wrote,

For Proust, the ultimate guarantee of the vitality of art is the ability to surprise — that is, to manifest an agency distinct from either its creator or consumer. “It pre-exists us” is one of the ways he describes the autonomy of the work, and only for that reason is it able to offer “celestial nourishment” to our true self.

For Sedgwick, Proust’s work offered access to a psychology of “surprise and refreshment,” one which emphasizes the “transformative powers of the faculties of attention and perception.” Aesthetics may constitute a domain of illusions, but these illusions posses their own material reality and are co-sentient with us. As Timothy Morton has written, the existence of an object is irreducibly a matter of coexistence. How to better reckon this state of affairs in our encounters with texts, which are also events that “pre-exist” us in the way Proust believed?

2014 AFIRC Research Fellowship – Call For Applications

The AFIRC in partnership with the Screen Cultures Lab at RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication is pleased to announce the 2014 AFIRC Research Fellowship.

The AFI Research Collection (AFIRC) is a specialist film and television industry research library open to the public. The Collection houses unique materials not available for film scholarship elsewhere and a range of books, journals, scripts, directories, reports, and festival catalogues. It is particularly strong in screen history, theory and Australian cinema.

The AFIRC invites proposals from scholars wishing to undertake research that utilises the Collection’s resources and promotes the AFIRC through a published outcome. This research may take the form of a book, a journal article, a film or a digital project. The Fellowship is designed to showcase the unique holdings of the AFIRC, which include special collections from Henry Mayer, Wayne Levy and Crawford Productions, as well as film stills, newspaper clippings and other significant artefacts from the Australian film and television industry.

The Fellow will have access to the Collection under the guidance of the AFIRC Library staff. The Fellowship will provide a stipend of up to $5000 (AUD). The Fellow will be required to make a presentation of their work in progress to the School of Media and Communication towards the conclusion of their Fellowship.

Application forms can be found at here: http://afiresearch.rmit.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014_AFIRC-Research-Fellowship-Application-Form.doc
For general information on the fellowship look here: http://afiresearch.rmit.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/AFIRC-Fellowship-General-Info.rtf

For further information about the Fellowship, contact Dr Stephen Gaunson, School of Media and Communication, stephen.gaunson@rmit.edu.au.

Closing date for applications is Friday 25 July 2014.

Help Preserve the National Library of Australia’s Medieval Manuscripts

The National Library has chosen to focus this year’s donation appeal on preserving and digitising key medieval manuscripts from some of their most significant collections. Digitisation would enable the Library to discover more about their provenance and make a major contribution to research in this field.

With your support, the Library will undertake essential preservation and commence digitising the manuscripts to enable their access by a worldwide audience. By providing online access to these rare and fragile documents, they can create a lasting legacy, making the medieval past available to scholars throughout the world.

For more information on the Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts, and how to donate, please visit: http://www.nla.gov.au/support-us/medieval-manuscripts

USydney MEMC/AHSN Seminar: Accessing English Humour in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Texts

Accessing English Humour in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Texts: Sources, Contexts, Intentions, Reception
MEMC and Australasian Humour Studies Network Joint Seminar

Date: 17 September 2014
Time: 4:00pm – 6:30pm
Venue: Common Room, John Woolley Building (N480 – 4th floor), University of Sydney, Camperdown (main) campus

Programme (to be followed by refreshments):

      1. April Bertels-Garnsey: Looking at the One-Eyed Garlic Seller: Riddle 86 in Anglo-Saxon England and Beyond.
      2. Anna Wallace: Classroom Insults and Humour in Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion
      3. Chenoa Hunter: ‘They lawghed all as they were wylde’: Mockery and Masculinity in The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones
      4. Sabina Rahman: Humour in the Early Robin Hood Ballad.

Discussants: Em. Prof. Conal Condren, Prof. Daniel Anlezark

All AHSN members and guests are welcome, but please contact for catering purposes and further directions: Dr Jessica Milner Davis, AHSN Co-ordinator jessica.davis@sydney.edu.au

Two Online Resources of Interest – ROLLCO / Digital Library of Spain

ROLLCO, is a site providing records of Apprentices and Freemen in the City of London Livery Companies between 1400 and 1900.

Currently the database includes information about apprenticeship bindings and freedom admissions for seven of London’s Livery Companies, with the records of further Companies to follow.

ROLLCO is a not-for-profit project, and access is free to all.

http://www.londonroll.org

The Digital Library of Spain is the digital library of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. It aims to give free access to thousands of digitized documents: books from the 15th to the 19th century, manuscripts, drawings, engravings, pamphlets, posters, photographs, maps, atlases, music scores, historic newspapers and magazines and audio recordings.

Today it comprises more than 134,000 works on all topics in all documentary forms, freely accessible from anywhere in the world.

http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/AdvancedSearch.do?showAdvanced=true

Sherry L. Reames Graduate Student Travel Award for Hagiographical Studies – Call For Applications

The Hagiography Society is pleased to announce the creation of the Sherry L. Reames Graduate Student Travel Award for Hagiographical Studies. Named in honor of the beloved founder and long-time leader of the Society, the award provides $300 to be used toward travel to present at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, held annually at the University of Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, MI.

Eligibility
Students enrolled in a graduate program (anywhere in the world) whose paper has been accepted for inclusion in the program of the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, are eligible to apply.

Application
Please submit the following documents, combined as a single .pdf file, by November 1 to the Secretary / Treasurer of the Hagiography Society:

  1. a current curriculum vitæ
  2. the abstract for the accepted paper, identifying the panel on which it will be presented
  3. a cover letter, addressing the following questions:
  4. How does this paper fit into your scholarly trajectory?
  5. Have you presented at a scholarly conference before?
  6. Have you received other funding for travel (this paper or others)?

Successful applicants will be informed of the results by December 15.

Adaptations and the Metropolis – Call For Papers

Adaptations and the Metropolis
Senate House, London
24-25 September, 2015

The Association of Adaptation Studies invites proposals for papers at the 10th Annual Conference in London 24-25 September 2015, organised with the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

In the past century the expansion of industrialised cities has seen a significant increase in urbanisation and non-rural lifestyles. Whilst literature quickly sought to document these changes, substantial technological advancements in cinema also enabled the metropolis to be presented through a variety of visual spectacles. Visions of urban sprawl are present in a variety of media, but it is through their adaptations and remediations that we can trace society’s ongoing relationship with the city, modernisation and globalisation.

Through the presentation of the metropolis in past, present and speculative adaptations we are able to understand aspects of our changing lifestyles, the effects of urbanisation on literary and visual art, national identity, social inequalities, territorial displacement, environmental destruction, utopias and dystopias, and our social and psychological relationship with architecture and city development.

Papers are welcome on these themes or any others related to the metropolis and the city in all forms of remediated adaptation, including literature, theatre, film, television, digital media and other visual and literary arts.

200-word abstracts of suggested papers of should be submitted by 31st May 2015 to AdaptationAssociation@gmail.com.

Sydney Society for Scottish History – 700th Anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn Celebrations

Sydney Society for Scottish History events to mark the 700th Anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn

“After Bannockburn: Anglo-Scottish relations and the “Scot-Angle” Stewarts”, Professor Michael Bennett BA Liv., PhD Lanc., FRHistS, FAHA (Professor of History University of Tasmania)

Educated at the University of Liverpool and the University of Lancaster, Michael was a lecturer at the University of Sydney prior to moving to Tasmania in 1977,. He is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.

Date: Monday 23 June
Time: 7:00-&;30pm
Venue: Carmichael Room, Sydney Mechanics School of Arts 280 Pitt Street Sydney
Cost: $20 pp. All proceeds to University of Sydney Chair of Celtic Studies Gaidhlig Tutor Fund
RSVP: 1 June. Order form found here

“Bannockburn- the battle, the legend”, Dr Matthew Glozier B.A. (Hons) M.Phil USyd, PhD UWS

Matthew Glozier is widely published as a military historian. He explores the rise of nationalism, and religion as a chief motivation for many soldiers.

Date: Tuesday 24 June
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: ‘Ionic Room’ Masonic Centre, 66 Goulburn Street, Sydney
Cost: $60 pp. All proceeds to University of Sydney Chair of Celtic Studies Gaidhlig Tutor Fund
RSVP: 1 June. Order form found here

For further information contact Valerie Smith:
Telephone: +61 2 9654 2494
Mobile: 0407 965424
Email: vspcc@pip.com.au

CHE Postdoc Opportunities at UMelbourne – Call For Applications

The University of Melbourne is seeking to appoint two three year postdoctoral research fellows. The closing date for both positions is 5pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) 7 July, 2014

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the School of Culture and Communications

In collaboration with the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, the Centre seeks to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow to contribute to research projects in the history of emotions (Europe,1100-1800). Working together with Professor Stephanie Trigg the successful candidate will develop a project exploring the representation and expression of emotion on the human face, in literature, drama, art, or sculpture, or in early scientific discourses, between 1100 and 1800. Preference may be given to projects that range over several centuries, across different media, or across different languages. There would also be scope for projects that drew connections between pre-modern Europe (pre-1800) and later forms, especially in a colonial setting.

In addition to publishing his or her own research in this area, the Fellow will collaborate in publications and be involved fully in the life of the Centre. The Fellow will also assist with the co-ordination of relevant symposia and engage in public outreach. There is an expectation that the postdoctoral fellow will be involved in some Honours/ postgraduate supervision or teaching, but this is primarily a research-only position.

Applicants must provide a detailed application that addresses the position description and selection criteria; a curriculum vitae and a list of publications; and a 2-3 page description of the research project. The research project description should outline a program of research that would explore historical changes or continuities in the visual, textual, or theatrical expression of emotion on the human face between 1100-1800. If the project will also be considering material post-1800, it should indicate how it would also make connections with this earlier period.

http://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/882355/postdoctoral-fellow-arc-centre-of-excellence-for-the-history-of-emotions

 

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies

In collaboration with the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, the Centre seeks to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow to contribute to research projects in the history of emotions (Europe,1100-1800). Working together with Professor Charles Zika the successful candidate will develop a project exploring the field of emotions and visual culture, c.1450–1750. The project might focus on such topics as: the impact of religious and political change on the emotional deployment of visual objects in the devotional, ceremonial and festive life of European communities; the passions of iconoclasm as a motor of religious, social or political change; the emotional rhetoric of visual media in advancing propaganda and polemic, legitimating religious and political authority, or stereotyping religious, ethnic or social groups; the emotional use and power of the visual in the missionizing and colonizing of societies, within Europe or abroad.

In addition to publishing his or her own research in this area, the Fellow will collaborate in publications and be involved fully in the life of the Centre. The Fellow will also assist with the co-ordination of relevant symposia and engage in public outreach. There will the opportunity to be involved in research and activities related to an exhibition on art and emotion to be held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2017. There is an expectation that the postdoctoral fellow will be involved in some Honours/ postgraduate supervision or teaching, but this is primarily a research-only position.

http://jobs.unimelb.edu.au/caw/en/job/882357/postdoctoral-fellow-arc-centre-of-excellence-for-the-history-of-emotions

University of Melbourne: Early Modern Circle – Additional Seminar: University of Melbourne: Early Modern Circle: Dr Lizanne Henderson (University of Glasgow)

Details of an additional Early Modern Circle Seminar are found below. Details about the rest of the 2014 seminar series can be found HERE.

Lizanne Henderson (School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Glasgow), “Fairies, Angels and the Land of the Dead: Robert Kirk’s Lychnobious People”

Date: Wednesday 4 June, 2014
Time: 5:15pm
Venue: Graduate Seminar Room 1, Old Arts Room Building Level 1, University of Melbourne,

The relationship between fairies and the dead is long-standing and complex. While at times the resemblances between them can be so close as to be almost indistinguishable, it will not be the intention of this paper to suggest they are one and the same but simply to be aware of, and take into consideration, the interconnectedness of fairy lore with traditions surrounding death and the dead.

Rev Robert Kirk (1644-1692), author of The Secret Common-Wealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691), produced an invaluable corpus of information, and a rare insight into various aspects of seventeenth-century Scottish folk belief, drawn from a range of oral informants, eye-witness accounts, local history and personal experience, supported by biblical and classical sources. It was Kirk’s intention to record ‘evidence’ of fairy belief (and related phenomena such as second sight) in part to uphold and strengthen belief in the existence of angels, the Devil, and the Holy Spirit. His underlying argument was that to disbelieve in fairies is to doubt the very existence of God. Kirk did not perceive a dichotomous relationship between Christian doctrine and folk belief, a polarization that had been so rigorously asserted by the reformed church. He maintained that fairy belief was not inconsistent with Christianity.

This paper will examine Robert Kirk’s ideas about the soul, supernatural communication, second sight, angels, and the relationship between fairies and the dead.

Dr Lizanne Henderson’s main research interests are the European and African witch-hunts, critical animal studies, slavery and abolition, and the Scottish diaspora in North America, Australasia, Africa and the Caribbean. She is currently working on a project about cultural interactions with and interpretations of Polar Bears and on 18th and 19th century polar explorers and their observations of animals. Her books include (with Edward J. Cowan) Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (2001; (ed.) Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture; (ed.) A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland 1000 to 1600 (2011). She is currently writing Witchcraft and Folk Belief in Enlightenment Scotland (forthcoming Palgrave 2015).