ANZAMEMS member news – Marcus Harmes

Dear members, Dr Marcus Harmes (University of Southern Queensland) has shared the following news of his research with us. Marcus has recently has just published a monograph Bishops and Power in Early Modern England with Bloomsbury http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bishops-and-power-in-early-modern-england-9781472508355/

The book examines the recreation of the power structures of the Church of England after the Reformation and covers topics including the involvement of bishops in witchcraft trials, arguments over suitable dress, and the trial and execution of Archbishop Laud.

Congratulations Marcus!

Seventh International Conference of the Medieval Chronicle Society – Call For Papers

Seventh International Conference of the Medieval Chronicle Society
The University of Liverpool
7-10 July, 2014

Conference Website

Keynote speakers include: Professor Pauline Stafford (University of Liverpool), Professor Anne D. Hedeman (University of Kansas), Professor Marcus G. Bull (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Professor Christopher Young and Dr Mark Chinca (University of Cambridge).

The aim of the seventh conference is to follow the broad outline of the previous six conferences, allowing scholars who work on different aspects of the medieval chronicle (historical, literary, art-historical) to meet, announce new findings and projects, present new methodologies, and discuss the prospects for collaborative research.

The main themes of the conference are:

  • Chronicle: history or literature?

The chronicle as a historiographical and/or literary genre; genre identification; genre confusion and genre influence; typologies of chronicle; classification; conventions (historiographical, literary or otherwise) and topoi.

  • The function of the chronicle

The function of chronicles in society; contexts historical, literary and social; patronage; reception of the text(s); literacy; orality; performance.

  • The form of the chronicle

The language(s) of the chronicle; inter-relationships of chronicles in multiple languages; prose and/or verse chronicles; manuscript traditions and dissemination; the arrangement of the text.

  • The chronicle and the representation of the past

How chronicles record the past; the relationship with ‘time’; how the reality of the past is encapsulated in the literary form of the chronicle; how chronicles explain the past; motivations given to historical actors; the role of the Divine.

  • Art and Text in the chronicle

How art functions in manuscripts of chronicles; do manuscript illuminations illustrate the texts or do they provide a different discourse that amplifies, re-enforces or contradicts the verbal text; origin and production of illuminations; relationships between author(s), scribe(s) and illuminator(s).

Papers in English, French or German are invited on any aspect of Medieval Chronicle. Papers will be allocated to sections to give coherence and contrast; authors should identify the main theme to which their paper relates. Papers read at the conference will be strictly limited to twenty (20) minutes in length. The deadline for abstracts is Saturday 1 February 2014 (maximum length one (1) side A4 paper, including bibliography). Please email your abstract to medchron@liverpool.ac.uk.

John Rylands Research Institute: Visiting Fellowships for 2014 – Call For Applications

The John Rylands Research Institute brings together experts from The University of Manchester Library and the University’s Faculty of Humanities in a unique partnership to reveal and explore hidden ideas and knowledge contained within our world-leading Special Collections. We are creating an international community of scholars across many disciplines to support outstanding research and to bring this information to the wider public in exciting and innovative ways.

The Library’s Special Collections count among the foremost repositories of primary sources in the UK, with research potential across an exceptionally broad array of disciplines. Manuscript collections span 4,000 years and over fifty languages, from Gilgamesh to Gaskell. There are hundreds of archives, with particular strengths in modern literature, Protestant nonconformism, and British economic, social and political history. Our famous rare book collections range from the pioneering days of Gutenberg and Caxton via exceptionally fine collections of early Italian printing to examples of street literature and counter-cultures. Collections of art and visual culture abound, in particular photographic collections from the inception of photography to contemporary photography. Comprehensive collections of UK and world maps include specialist holdings of topographic and thematic mapping of the British North-West, in particular Manchester.

We now invite applications from postdoctoral researchers for Visiting Fellowships within the John Rylands Research Institute. Successful applicants will be reimbursed expenses of up to £1,500 per month for up to three months, to cover travel, accommodation and living expenses during the Fellowship.

Applicants must demonstrate a serious research interest that focuses on primary source material within our Special Collections. Fellows will be encouraged to work collaboratively with curators and other subject specialists to realize the collections’ research potential, and to adopt innovative research methodologies.

Applications should consist of a 500-word project outline and a short CV (up to two pages). To be sent by email to Ms Silke Schaeper, Administrator of the John Rylands Research Institute (silke.schaeper@manchester.ac.uk) by Thursday, 31 October 2013.

Old and Middle English Studies: Texts and Sources – Call For Papers

Old and Middle English Studies: Texts and Sources
Senate House, University of London
3-5 September, 2014
 
 

The study of Old and Middle English sources is critical for an understanding of medieval language and literature in the British Isles. This joint conference aims to open up and explore new ways for intellectual exchange and collaboration between scholars working in any aspect of medieval English, in London and Japan especially. The theme for the 2014 conference is ‘Texts and Sources’. Papers will be selected for their ability to link various branches of learning that touch upon Old and Middle English studies, including such topics as history, language, literature, philology, to name just a few. The conference will be accompanied by a special exhibit of manuscripts from medieval and early modern times curated with a view to illustrating the central theme of the proceedings.

Conference organizers, Keio University (Tokyo) and the Institute of English Studies (London), invite scholars to submit abstracts of up to 250 words directly to ieskeio.conference@gmail.com, not later than 1st December 2013.

Papers on the following topics with special emphasis on Japanese and/or British research will be encouraged, although papers with wider scope will not be excluded:

  • Digital humanities and virtual libraries
  • Manuscript studies
  • Medievalism
  • Old and Middle English literature and literary culture
  • Old and Middle English philology: texts and contexts 

For further details and up-to-date information, please visit： http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/ies-conferences/IESKeio2014 and also our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ies.keio.international.conference

Winter School: Investigating the Middle Ages – Call For Papers

The Consolidated Research Group “Space, Power and Culture” of Lleida University and the Centre for Medieval Studies of Murcia University are pleased to announce that the Winter School “Investigating the Middle Ages”, will take place in Lleida on February 10th and 11th, 2014. The aim of this event is to contribute to the training of young medievalists. The workshops will include the presentations of ten PhD projects selected from among the proposals which have been received.

In order to maintain the quality of the event, we can accept only a limited number of participants, who may take part in all the sessions and discussions, together with the staff and those doctoral candidates who have already been selected. Those wishing to apply for a place should send a brief CV to medieval@historia.udl.cat before the 29th November, 2013. The results will be communicated shortly afterwards.

The matriculation fee is only €20 and includes materials and lunches during the days of the event. The fee should be paid when the participation is confirmed.

For more about the Winter School, including the full program, please visit: http://www.medieval.udl.cat/en/node/570

Authority and Knowledge: People, Policy, Politics – Call For Papers

Authority and Knowledge: People, Policy, Politics
The University of Melbourne
Thursday 13 – Friday 14 February, 2014

Conference Website

There is a fundamental relationship between authority and knowledge: the entitlement to know, to speak, and to act relies upon claims of expertise, power and experience. Forms of authority pervade our social relationships, from teachers and students, to parents and children, and the various public roles undertaken by politicians, journalists and researchers. Past and present, the relationship between authority and knowledge has placed ‘knowledge-making’ institutions at the centre of the struggle for social, cultural, and political authority. Like many other nation states, Australia’s concern to buttress and develop its ‘knowledge economy’ has brought the role of educational institutions into greater focus. The current reforms engulfing ‘knowledge-making’ institutions throw into sharp relief the premium placed on knowledge production, and the various claims to authority that follow. This includes, for example, the framing of the purpose of research as providing an ‘evidence-base’ for policy; the centralisation of knowledge claims through federal-level curricula stipulation at all levels of education; shifting relationships between students and teachers; and the centralisation of research funding and governance mechanisms. These changes have significant effects upon the ways in which authority is expressed, through and over knowledge, socially, culturally and politically, in the media and public discourse, through schools and universities, and within social life.

This conference aims to bring researchers together who are currently engaged in research concerning the nature, form and function of authority and knowledge historically, socially, culturally, politically and institutionally. We welcome papers that address the multifaceted ways in which claims to authority and knowledge permeate everyday social life, political understandings and practices, and policy reform (people, politics, policy).

Papers may cover such issues as:

  • The diverse ways in which authority and knowledge shapes understandings, and practices of, citizenship
  • Historical, cultural and social practices of authority and knowledge production
  • The relationship between power and authority, including contestations over practices of authority
  • The institutional claim to authority over knowledge in public discourse
  • The effects of ‘evidence-based’ policy agendas on the form and function of research knowledge   Analysis of past and present reform agendas surrounding knowledge-making institutions
  • Gender, race and class and constructions of knowledge and authority
  • Modernity, neoliberalism and changing forms of knowledge/authority
  • Authority, legitimation and social order, and limits of authoritative knowledge
  • Knowledge, empowerment and social justice
  • Inter-relational, inter-generational and pedagogic authority and power
  • Knowledge societies, knowledge economies and ‘knowledge work’

We invite proposals for:

  • Standard papers
  • Panels/symposia, having 3 papers and a chair
  • Short sharp papers, which distil a key idea or provocation in a 5 minute, 1 slide, presentation

Please submit abstracts and proposals for symposia by 30 November 2013 using the online form found here.

The conference is being convened by researchers from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. For more information, please contact one of the convenors: Dr Jessica Gerrard (jessica.gerrard@unimelb.edu.au), Dr Peter Woelert (pwoelert@unimelb.edu.au) or Dr Katie Wright (kwright@unimelb.edu.au).

Shakespearean Perceptions – Call For Papers

“Shakespearean Perceptions”
The 12th Biennial International Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA)
The University of Southern Queensland
October 2-4, 2014

Confirmed keynotes include:

  • Professor Peter Holbrook (University of Queensland)
  • Emeritus Professor Helen Ostovich (McMaster)
  • Professor Garrett Sullivan (Pennsylvania)

Shakespeare’s career coincided with a period during which the nature of perception was being radically reimagined. While the rise of the Elizabethan theatre brought with it new configurations of audiences, Elizabethans were learning to view plays—and indeed their world—with fresh eyes but also with fresh noses, fresh ears, fresh skin, etc. This rethinking of sensory perception also resulted in a new understanding of the roles of reason and the imagination in shaping lived experience. Rather than being a phenomenon limited to the work of Shakespeare alone, the reinvention of perception mapped itself out across the whole of the Elizabethan and Jacobean worlds, and is worth tracing in the work of Shakespeare’s coevals (Jonson, Marlowe, Middleton, and many others). By the same token, modern audiences and readers of Shakespearean drama refashion this work according to visual and sensory economies made possible by new technologies and new modes of representation.

Topics that may cover this notion of “Shakespearean Perceptions” may include, but need not be limited to:

  • Shakespearean drama and modes of perception: the senses, passions, embodiment, and medicine
  • Audiences of Shakespeare in the past and present
  • Cultural histories of perception and performance
  • Art and the iconic or emblematic nature of Shakespearean plays
  • Reinterpretations of Shakespearean drama for the modern stage
  • Editors and readers of Shakespeare
  • Modes of cognition and experience in the early modern theatre
  • Perceptions in Shakespearean drama of classical, medieval, or “New World” ideas and sources
  • New media and film and adaptations of Shakespeare’s work and that of his contemporaries
  • Shakespearean drama in translation to non-English-speaking languages
  • Perceptions of the natural and supernatural worlds
  • Ways of seeing Shakespeare in political and social contexts.

The conference venue is situated in the picturesque garden city of Toowoomba, located at the edge of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, Australia. ANZSA 2014 will be held in conjunction with the 11th annual Shakespeare-in-the-Park Festival. Conference registration will include attendance at the opening show of the main stage performance of Much Ado about Nothing, and for participation in selected other events at the Festival.

The conference will include lectures, papers, workshops, seminars, and performances. We invite proposals for papers or presentations (20 minutes), panels (90 minutes), and workshops (90 minutes) on any aspect of the conference theme, broadly interpreted. Proposals (250 words or less) should be sent by 29 April, 2014 to Associate Professor Laurie Johnson or Dr Darryl Chalk by email: Shakespeare.Symposiums@usq.edu.au

More information at the conference website: http://conference.anzsa.org

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions – Collaboratory: Arts and Rhetorics of Emotions in Early Modern Europe

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 
Collaboratory: Arts and Rhetorics of Emotions in Early Modern Europe
University of Queensland, Brisbane, and Toowong Rowing Club (on the UQ campus)
25-27 November, 2013

Keynote Speakers:

Rhetorical theory since the Ancients assumed writers and artists aimed to excite and manipulate the emotions of their audiences. The period in Europe from Renaissance to Enlightenment was one of astonishing inventiveness in literature, art, sculpture, music, and numerous other art forms (design, architecture, the masque). Radically new styles, genres, and expressive practices emerge (opera, the novel). How did these new techniques work to elicit, produce, or condition emotional responses in their audiences? What types of emotional experience did these innovative aesthetic modes make possible? What was the relation of new affective realities to Judeo Christian or classical values?

Topics addressed might include:

  • Rhetoric, oratory, performance, and theatre as emotional technologies
  • Music, dance, and other non-verbal artistic and cultural media and the emotions
  • The passions in Renaissance discourses
  • Affective possibilities of new literary and artistic genres: lyric poetry, the novel, the essay, diaries, scholarly history, lifewriting.
  • Emotional inflections of early modern art movements: Renaissance, neo-classicism, sentimentalism, mannerism.
  • The arts of religion and the emotional styles of everyday life: liturgy, worship, prayer, sermon.
  • Emotional character of Protestantism and the Counter- Reformation
  • Art and rhetoric of sacred and profane passions: enthusiasm, empiricism.
  • Philosophical perspectives on emotion and the emotional colouring of early modern philosophical movements: neostoicism, neo-Platonism, Spinozism, scepticism, Cartesianism, the scientific revolution.
  • The affective dimensions of political discourse and public life.

Collaboratory will include a performance of Johann Christoph Pepusch’s Venus and Adonis, a 1715 masque with a libretto by Colley Cibber on Tuesday 26 November at the UQ Arts Museum.

Register on-line here by 31 October 2013

Enquiries to uqche@uq.edu.au or call (07) 3365-4913.

University of Oxford, Magdalen College: Postdoctoral Research Associate – Call For Applications

University of Oxford, Magdalen College
Calleva Centre
3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate, “Adults at Play(s)”

Magdalen College proposes to appoint two postdoctoral research associates in connection with a collaborative project entitled Adults at Play(s). Both posts are for three years from 1 October 2014. Candidates must have a doctorate in hand by that date. They will already have demonstrated outstanding promise either in the study of dramatic literature or in experimental psychology, and will have an aptitude and enthusiasm for interdisciplinary work across these areas. The postholders will collaborate with three Fellows of the College (Felix Budelmann, Robin Dunbar and Laurie Maguire) in developing experimental and text-based research on the psychology of the audience, with particular reference to classical Greek and early modern English drama.

Informal enquiries should be directed to felix.budelmann@magd.ox.ac.uk, robin.dunbar@magd.ox.ac.uk or laurie.maguire@magd.ox.ac.uk.

Both appointments will be made at points 29-31 on the University Salary Scale 7, currently £29,541-£31,331 p.a.; plus benefits.

Application forms and further particulars, which include information on how to apply, are available at http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/vacancies/.

The deadline for applications is UK time 12 noon on 1 November 2013.

See full position details here.

Dr Giovanni Tarantino, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions lecture

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions lecture
“Mapping Religion (and Emotions) in the Protestant Valleys of Piedmont, 1655-1689”, Dr Giovanni Tarantino (University of Melbourne)

Date: Friday 25 October 2013.
Time: 1.00pm-2.00pm.
Venue: Ira Raymond Room, Barr Smith Library, The University of Adelaide.
Enquiries: Tel. 08 8313 2421  janet.hart@adelaide.edu.au

All welcome!

The Alpine territory inhabited by the Piedmontese Waldensians is variously represented in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century cartography. These variations reflect the religious and political leanings of those who made and used them, depicting, for instance, the efforts made by the Capuchins to re-Catholicize the area, or the House of Savoy’s subjection of the territory. But even more significant is the cartography produced by the Waldensians, in that it charts a process of appropriation and a transformation of the ghetto within which the repressive Sabaudian legislation had set out to confine them into a small country to be proud of, whose religious and cultural identity they were (and are) determined to preserve. Purely territorial definitions thus turned into distinctive banners of a religious and ecclesial minority community, an ‘emotional community’ made more aware and prouder of its own cultural identity by the shared experience of persecution, marginalization and derision. The adventurous and dramatic story of a small valley world became emblematic of the many European episodes of diversity, dispersal and rejection. And the ‘affective cartography’ of the Waldensians is a reminder to practitioners in the history of emotions of the importance of this particular source – the geographic map – which contains an abundance of information but has, to date, received little consideration in the historic investigation of emotions.

—-

Giovanni Tarantino is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (1100-1800) at the University of Melbourne, working on the early modern English representations of the persecution of Waldensians. He is co-Editor of the online peer-reviewed history journal CROMOHS (www.cromohs.unifi.it). His main research interest is in the history of tolerance (and intolerance) towards religious minorities in the early modern era.