Early Modern Studies Journal (EMSJ) formerly Early English Studies (EES) is an online journal under the auspices of the University of Texas, Arlington English Department and is devoted to literary and cultural topics of study in early modern period. EES is published annually, peer-reviewed, and open to general submission.

The 2012 issue will focus on Shakespeare and Performance. We are interested in articles that consider any aspect of performance in historical or contemporary productions of Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights. The following list is of possible topics, but should not be considered exhaustive:

Comparative performance in England
Comparative performances in England and other countries
Street performance
Provincial performance
Performance of Guilds
Women and Performance
Boy’s companies
Current Productions of early modern plays
Shakespeare Festivals
Playing spaces
Actors and the text
Theatrical Gesture
Court Performances and Masques

Please submit double-spaced manuscripts in Times New Roman, 12 pt font that do not exceed thirty pages in length, including notes (9,000 words total); electronic submission in Word format is required. Please use endnotes rather than a bibliography, formatting to Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Ed. The author’s name, affiliation, and academic history should be included on the first page of the document. Thereafter, the author’s name should not appear in the document. Submissions are due January 31, 2012. The issue will appear in Fall 2012. Please contact Dr. Amy Tigner for any queries.

Objects of all sorts have a long history of serving as bridges to the preternatural world, whether that be in terms of some intrinsic power, or as things possessed or haunted. The shaman’s beads, the saint’s bones, the astrologer’s charts, the conjurer’s circle, the scryer’s stone, the spiritualists’ crystal ball, tarot cards, Ouija boards and even holy books, all might be used in particular contexts as instruments to experience or investigate the world beyond the natural either directly or vicariously. By the same token, these objects might also be imbued with uncanny power in their own right. For those who employed them, such objects helped communicate with ethereal beings or harness their power to worldly ends. But it is also clear from the narratives constructed around them that this was a double-edged sword, for haunted or possessed objects could prove difficult to control, even dangerous, coming eventually to wield power over the user.

This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore the relationship between objects, users and the preternatural world. How were objects construed? In what social, political and cultural contexts were they deployed, and how did the ways they were used help construct experience? How were these instruments related to crucial issues of proof and persuasion?

Contributions should usually be 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus and submitted via the website at http://preternature.org. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing footnotes).

Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English.

Final papers will be due 15 November 2011.

Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editors: Kirsten C. Uszkalo and Peter Dendle

Preternature is a rigorously peer-reviewed interdisciplinary forum for original research that touches on the appearance of magic, prophecy, demonology, monstrophy, the occult, and related topics that stand in the liminal space between the natural world and the preternatural.

This one-day academic conference aims to bring together scholars working on all aspects of performance in the early modern period (taken broadly to include the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries). The conference is intended to interrogate what performance and its related terminologies and practices might have meant to early modern readers, playgoers, and congregations; how performance shaped and/or undermined distinctions between private/public bodies and selves. Although drama is an essential point of reference for this discussion, ‘historicizing performance’ should be taken as broadly as possible. Topics might include (but are not limited to):
- Plays and play-going

- Music and singing
- Public spectacles, ceremonies and architecture
- Ritual, devotional expression, spirituality / the sermon as performance
- Autobiography and Performative Texts
- Performing gender/ sexuality/ the domestic
- Performance and the performative in theory

Please email abstracts (400 words max.) for a 20 minute paper to Michael Durrant and Naya Tsentourou
Deadline for abstracts: 23 September 2011.
Notifications of acceptance to be sent out by 14 October 2011

Download (PDF, 455.21KB)

Run by members of the postgraduate community, the group aims to provide an informal and friendly opportunity for interdisciplinary discussion between people from all levels of study and research.

Postgraduates and staff from History, English and Archaeology meet every month around a central theme or topic. They are always looking for new topics of discussion, so if you have a tricky problem, or an untried idea you want to test out, please get in touch.

Papers generally last 20 minutes and there are two papers per session with plenty of time for discussion.
Tea, coffee and cakes provided!

Contact James Mawdesley if you would like to present a paper. You can visit the Early Modern Group’s new blog at http://earlymodern.group.shef.ac.uk/ (where you can also use an online form to get in touch).

Dates for Autumn and Spring Semesters 2011-2

Oct 12 : 13.15
Nov 9th : 13.15
Dec 7th : 13.15
Feb 1 : 13.15
Mar 7th : 14.30
Apr 25th : 14.30
May 16th : 13.15
Jun 13th : 13.15

Submission deadline: March 2012. Expected date of publication October 2012

This special issue of JNR will seek to explore the slippery notion of the ‘will’ and its various semantic permutations in the context of such issues as subjectivity, power, logic, desire, freedom, volition, wit, wisdom, theology and metaphysics. One of its main purposes is to investigate what power and signifying force ‘the will’ possesses, as well as its limitations, and to locate this concept within the aesthetic, political, theological, philosophical and ideological traditions that informed early modern literature and culture.

The issue builds on a symposium held at the University of Strathclyde, and will be guest-edited by Alison Thorne; however, for this issue JNR also welcomes further submissions around this theme.

The semantic slipperiness of will fascinated the Renaissance: in all manner of texts of the period we find ‘Will too boote, and Will in over-plus’. The structural conceit of the opening lines of John Donne’s poem, ‘The Will’, exemplifies a key thematic construct to be found in much early modern literature and a prevalent intellectual thread in the culture from which this literature emerges: ‘Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breath / Great Love, some legacies’. This poem – this willed enactment of the speaker’s last will and testament to the world he will shortly leave behind – encapsulates the polyvocal qualities of the human ‘will’ and all that it signifies. The rich intellectual legacy of the European Renaissance that we, as critics and researchers, struggle to understand is constructed from the physical and literary legacies that writers such as Donne, Erasmus, Calvin, Elizabeth I, Marlowe, Middleton and others have bequeathed us. It is from these legacies of authorial ‘will’ that our very idea of what represents or constitutes the early modern period is shaped

We would welcome papers of up to 8,000 words on the ‘will’ in the northern Renaissance. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

*Will as desire or volition: willfulness; will as voluntas; will as membrum pudendum, male or female; possession of one’s will; excessive willing, transgressive will.

*Theological and philosophical wills: freedom of the will; the negation or undoing of the will; will as futurity; theological debates on the relationship between ‘will’ and ‘fate’.

*Literary and legal wills: the exercise or abdication of authorial will or intentionality; will as testament; framing legal wills; the interplay between ‘wit’ and ‘will’; Will as a proper name and authoritative mark.

Preliminary enquiries are welcome, and should be addressed to northernrenaissance@gmail.com

In the ‘memory boom’ that has emerged in the humanities and social sciences since 1990, five major themes have captured most attention: (a) the relationship between politics and memory, (b) trauma and memories of violence, (c) the ‘mediatization’ of memory (d) the transmission of memory and identity formation (e) the relationship between memory, history and other concepts of the past. Yet most case studies relating to these themes have been concerned with events and evidence post-1800; indeed, many theorists of memory allege that there is something intrinsically ‘modern’ about them. The aim of this conference is to put this assumption to the test.

First, we want to ask to what extent, and in what ways, these five themes also played themselves out in the early modern period. Secondly, we want to analyze more closely how early modern cultural, social, political and religious frameworks affected cultures of memory. Who ‘managed’ early modern memories? What mechanisms were at work? What patterns can we establish? How distinctively ‘early modern’ are these?

The organisers invite late medievalists and early modernists to offer proposals for 20 minute papers on one of the following five themes. Details on the panels can be found below

Panel 1. Memory wars before the nation state
Panel 2. Coping with distressing memories
Panel 3. Memory landscapes as multimedial experiences
Panel 4. Memory transmission and identity formation
Panel 5. Sensations of change

The themes will be introduced in five keynote lectures. Confirmed keynote speakers include Philip Benedict, Susan Broomhall and Benjamin Schmidt. The conference will end with a round table in which experts on modern memory will comment on the findings of the conference.

We will be able to cover the expenses of economy travel and accommodation in Leiden for all speakers selected. Papers should be submitted two weeks before the conference and will be made available to all participants beforehand. Proposals can be submitted until 1 November 2011 by email

This conference is organised by the NWO VICI Research Team Tales of the Revolt. Memory, Oblivion and Identity in the Low Countries, 1566-1700, that is directed by Professor Judith Pollmann. Further information on the team and the project at www.earlymodernmemory.org

The 5th Biennial conference of the Society for Renaissance Studies will be held at the University of Manchester.

Accompanying events are being planned in the Whitworth Gallery, Chetham’s Library, the John Rylands Library, the People’s History Museum, the Royal Northern College of Music, and other cultural institutions in the city.

In addition to scholarly papers, the conference will offer workshops on publishing, funding applications, teaching, and public engagement, as well as tours of libraries.

Plenary Speakers

Roger Chartier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris/ Collège de France/ University of Pennsylvania)
Alan Stewart (Columbia University)
Bette Talvacchia (Connecticut University)

Call For Papers
We invite proposals for panels on any aspect of Renaissance history, art, literature or culture, and for individual papers on one of the following themes:

* Materiality, book history and textual culture
* Premodern gender and histories of sexuality
* Emotion and the senses
* Translation and/ or intercultural exchange
* Cities, topographies, urbanisation and visualising the urban
* Athleticism, competition, and the body
* Science and enquiry
* In addition there is an open strand

The ‘Renaissance’ will be broadly defined from the mid-1300s to the early 1700s (and globally understood), but papers that engage with questions of periodisation, disciplinarity and the later representation of this period are also welcomed (see http://www.rensoc.org.uk/SRSAboutUsPage.html).

Proposals (paper: 400 words, panel: 1000 words) are welcome from postgraduates as well as established scholars and they should be sent by Friday 16 September 2011 to the conference organizer (decisions on papers to be made by the end of October).

The institution of Monarchy was absolutely central to the political developments and events of the medieval and Early Modern world. This conference aims to celebrate monarchy in all of its various aspects, from examining the institution itself to assessing the impact of particular monarchs in their own realms and beyond. Historic Corsham Court, located just outside of Bath, is a beautiful and appropriate setting for this conference, with its origins as a summer palace for the Kings of Wessex. The organisers welcome papers and/or panels on any theme which connects to monarchs or monarchy in any way including (but not limited to):

• • • • • •
Kingship/queenship/rulership
The relationship between monarchs and consorts
The relationship between monarchs and their subjects
The involvement of monarchs in politics, religion and war
The patronage and representation of monarchs
The monarch and their court

The organisers encourage a multi-disciplinary approach including papers which draw on gender studies, art, military, political and/or cultural history. Graduate students and early career researchers are particularly invited to submit a proposal. The organisers hope to produce a published volume of the papers generated by the conference.

Please submit a proposal of approximately 250 words for a paper OR a panel of three papers to the organisers by 31 October 2011.

The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years, proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on research in any aspect of early modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world. This year, the plenary speakers are Professor Paul Yachnin (McGill), director of the ‘Making Publics’ project, and Professor John Morrill (Cambridge).

The Conference would welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on any aspect of early modern literature, history, art, music and culture. Panels have been proposed on the following themes and further panels or individual papers are also invited on these topics or any other aspect of early modern studies:

• Making publics
• Gathered texts: print and manuscript
• Politics and Biblical Interpretation
• Negotiating early modern women’s writing
• Passionate bodies, passionate minds
• Prince Henry: role, rite, and rhetoric

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the Conference Committee, Dr. Chloë Houston, by 9 January 2012.

Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.

Prospectus and call for papers
Louis XIV has always been a great figure of European history, and considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to his own policies, and his influence over his realm. There has also been some excellent work on his impact outside France. However, there has been no systematic attempt to examine reactions to the king across a range of countries, and so to gain a more holistic view of what Louis XIV meant outside his own immediate sphere. This conference will attempt to fill this gap. It will map the variety of ways reactions to Louis shaped discussion and action across Europe and the globe; and will provide a forum for stimulating comparative history.

Major themes of discussion are likely to include the perception of Louis as a threat to the balance of Europe as it played out different countries; the various ways in which France’s absolutist state was used elsewhere in debates about political, administrative, financial and military structures; perceptions of – and reactions to – Louis’ religious policies; imitations or rejections of French court culture; accommodations with France as a commercial rival; and varying constructions of Louis’ rhetorical or pictorial image in the non-French press. Proposals for twenty-minute panel papers are welcomed on any of these themes, or on any other aspect of foreign response to Louis. ‘Foreign’ may include territories such as Orange or Alsace incorporated into France during the reign. Reactions to the French monarch in north-west Europe (including Britain and Ireland), and in the Habsburg realms, are likely to be prominent in the conference, but the organisers would particularly welcome papers considering the rest of Europe, the colonial Americas, or the extra-European world.

The working language of the conference will be English. However, the organisers will attempt to make contributions in French comprehensible to the whole audience by asking for pre-delivery of papers in that language (so the text can be circulated, and an English abstract provided); and by attempting rapid translation of oral interventions at the event itself.

Interspersed with the panel sessions, there will be four plenary talks:
Professor Tim Harris (Brown), ‘Francophobia in late Stuart England’
Professor David Hayton (Queens, Belfast), ‘Louis XIV, James II, and the conflict in Ireland’.
Professor Henk van Nierop (Amsterdam), ‘Romeyn de Hooghe’s Louis XIV’
Professor Hendrik Ziegler (Hamburg), ‘Image battles under Louis XIV’

If you have a suggestion for a panel paper, or further questions about the conference – please contact Tony Claydon or Charles-Edouard Levillain.