The Old College, Edinburgh
Hosted by The Hume Society and The Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities

Keynote speakers:
* David Fergusson (University of Edinburgh)
* Don Garrett (New York University)
* J. G. A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins University (Emeritus))
* Amartya Sen (Harvard University)
* Catherine Wilson (University of Aberdeen)

Papers are invited on any aspect of Hume’s work. Papers should be no more than thirty minutes reading length with self-references deleted for blind reviewing; the author’s name should appear only on a front cover sheet. Papers may be submitted in French, Spanish, German, or English, but must include an English-language or French-language abstract. Authors are requested to submit cover sheets, abstracts, and papers in one file in either MS Word or rich text format (RTF). Cover sheets should include the author’s contact information. Papers are to be submitted as an email attachment addressed to, and sent to Submissions at Hume Society.org.

Deadline: 1 November 2010

There will be a limited amount of financial support available for graduate students presenting papers at the conference. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for such support.

For more information see http://www.hume2011.org/.

The position involves
- coordinating and providing teaching in the above-mentioned field within the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in History and, depending on the professor’s profile, within the Research Master in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies or the Research Master in Modern History and International Relations
- coordinating and conducting research in the field of the chair mandate
- acquiring external resources for research and internationalizing the teaching programme
- performing administrative tasks within the Faculty and where necessary outside it
- further cultivating and developing national and international contacts to benefit the teaching and research.

The full details and an application form are available here: http://www.academictransfer.com/employer/RUG/vacancy/5901/lang/en/.

Found thanks to The Williamite Universe.

Recent decades have seen a host of different attempts to use imagination to facilitate public engagement with the past. New teaching methods, especially in primary schools, have aimed at encouraging children to empathise with the past as a way of understanding people and events. This has also been the case in historical fiction, both in literature and film/television, where imagination is invoked to present the audience with a ‘believable’ or ‘realistic’ portrayal of the past, often accompanied by a cast of sympathetic characters to whom the audience can relate. Those taking a more documentary, academic approach may have reservations about using imagination in this way, yet equally would be horrified to have their work labelled ‘unimaginative’. In these cases imagination’s role is claimed to be one of shaping the past into a convincing narrative, making it presentable through a particular medium or an institutional form such as a museum. Likewise it may be used as an archaeological tool to re-create a complete sense of former times, filling in the gaps between scarce or incomplete sources, or between material and sensory experience. Re-enacting the past lays claim to its own forms of imagination, reconnecting people with a tangible sense of the past through the physical recreation of items, buildings, or even entire ways of life.

This conference aims to create an interdisciplinary forum to discuss the motives, opportunities and methods of using imagination to re-create the past. It is by no means limited to recent practises, and papers examining past cultures’ uses of imaginative interpretations/depictions of their own pasts (for example through historical plays or paintings, ceremony and customs) would also be welcome.

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

* The Portrayal of the Past in Literature/Art/Film/Drama/Academia etc.
* Appealing to the imagination of different audiences.
* Historical fiction and drama.
* Re-creating and re-enacting the Past.
* The Role of Imagination in museum/heritage work.
* The creation of local and national stories, myths and legends about the past.
* Creative projects and storytelling in teaching history.
* The importance of evoking imagination to stimulate public interest in the past.
* Real/imagined links between present and past, and grafting the present onto the past and visa versa.
* The purpose or motives of alternative histories.
* The role of empathy in studying/teaching the past.
* Nostalgia.
* Biography.

Proposals of 300-400 words should be sent to Oliver Betts at Imagination & the Past [at] events.york.ac.uk no later than 26th October 2010.

The Twentieth British Legal History Conference will be held in Cambridge from Wednesday 13 July 2011 to Saturday 16 July 2011. The conference theme will be:

Law and Legal Process

The conference addresses the intersection between law and legal process, the ways in which the processes of courts and other tribunals, the practices of judges and lawyers, and the needs of litigants, influence each other and shape the development of the law; and the influences in turn of legal doctrine upon the practices of those coming into contact with the law.

The conference organisers welcome papers concerning all jurisdictions, branches of the law and historical periods. Ideally, papers should reflect the conference theme. Papers reflecting the results of innovative legal history research are most welcome. Submissions from doctoral students are encouraged.

Proposals for papers (up to 500 words) are invited, to reach the organisers – preferably by email attachment (in Word or pdf format) sent to the address below – by 31 August 2010. If potential contributors are unsure whether their proposals suitably reflect the theme, the organisers are very happy to be contacted informally by email (again to the address below).

A draft programme and details of registration and accommodation will be circulated early in 2011.

Conference email.

Conference Organisers: Professor Sir John Baker, Professor David Ibbetson, Dr Neil Jones, Dr Isabella Alexander, Dr Matt Dyson

University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law, 10 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DZ, UK

Readers of Napoleonic history may be interested that HMV Oxford Street have a mini-sale, while stocks last:

Philip Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power, 1769-1799 (hbk, London, 2007), £3 (RRP £20).

Stephen Coote, Napoleon and the Hundred Days (pbk, London, 2004), £5 (RRP £8.99).

Aka Robin Rowles

Provisional Programme 2010

9.00 a.m. Registration and coffee

9.30 a.m. Opening address

9.45 a.m. Alex Langlands: ‘Travel communication and the landscape of early medieval Wessex’

10.45 a.m. Refreshments

11.00 a.m. Dr David Pelteret: ‘Anglo-Saxon Travel – The Evidence of the Migrating Manuscripts’

12.00 noon Dr David Harrison: ‘Medieval Roads and Bridges’

13.00 p.m. Lunch

14.00 p.m. Robert Peberdy: ‘Early history of watermills and mill-dams on the Thames’

15.00 p.m. Dr Winifred Harwood: ‘Overland Trade of Southampton 1430-1540’

16.00 p.m. Refreshments

16.15 p.m. Dr John Hare: ‘Late Medieval Inns’

17.15 p.m. Closing address

The cost is £25 for the day (£10 for registered students) and you can download a registration form here: Medieval Conference Booking Form

For more information contact
The Rye Partnership
25 Cinque Ports Street
Rye
East Sussex
TN31 7AD
Tel: 01797 229600
Email

Enjoy the art and music of the Renaissance at a private view of the reunited Raphael Cartoons and Tapestries at the V&A and/or a concert in the dramatic setting of the Brompton Oratory. The vivid, passionate music of Palestrina, Victoria, Frescobaldi and Allegri will be performed by the renowned Choir of the London Oratory.

In collaboration with The London Oratory

£15 (Concert ), £18 (Concert and Private View )
To book call +44 (0)20 7492 2211, or click on the links above to book online

JOURNAL OF THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE 3.1 – CALL FOR PAPERS

The Journal of the Northern Renaissance is currently inviting submissions for its third issue, on any aspect of the cultural practice of Northern Europe in the period 1450-1650, including literature, visual culture, philosophy, theology, politics and scientific technologies.

We are particularly interested in studies exploring alternative cultural geographies, challenging existing conceptualizations and periodizations of the Renaissance in the North, and/or continuities and ruptures with earlier and later epochs. Part of our intention, however, in having an open, unthemed issue, is to gauge where the most interesting work is being done and what questions are being asked by scholars working on Northern Renaissance culture across a wide range of disciplines.

Submissions should be sent to the journal by 31st August 2010. Potential contributors are advised to consult the submissions page of our website for details of the submissions procedure and style guidelines. Enquiries regarding submissions can also be sent to Northern Renaissance.

–
Journal of the Northern Renaissance (ISSN: 1759-3085)
http://northernrenaissance.org
Editors: Patrick Hart and Sebastiaan Verweij
Reviews Editor: Gillian Sargent
c/o
University of Strathclyde
Dept. of English Studies, Livingstone Tower
26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH

You can hear the broadcast: here.

7–10 July 2011
University of Aberdeen
Hosted by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies

In 2011 ECSSS will hold its first conference in Aberdeen since 1995. The conference theme, The Arts and Sciences of Progress, is meant to focus attention on the notion of “progress”—and its limitations—in society, literature, science, and the arts. Proposals are welcome on all aspects of this theme, as well as on 18th-century Aberdeen and northeastern Scotland, Scottish Episcopalianism, Jacobitism, Highland culture, relations between Ireland and Scotland, and all other aspects of 18th-century Scottish thought and culture. In addition, this conference will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of James Macpherson’s Ossianic poetry in the early 1760s. David Hume’s 300th birthday will be duly noted, although we will leave the main celebration of that event to the Hume Society/IASH conference in Edinburgh one week afterwards.

Plenary lectures will be presented by Prof. Colin Kidd of Glasgow University: “Hypocrisy and Dissimulation in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Case of the Rev. Alexander Fergusson of Kilwinning” and Prof. Fiona Stafford of Oxford University: “Everything Unreconciled? The Place of Macpherson’s Ossian”.

Please e-mail or fax a title and one-page description of your proposed panel or proposed 20-minute paper, along with a one-page cv, by 15 November 2010 to:

Professor Cairns Craig
Director, Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds
Aberdeen AB24 3UG
Scotland, UK

Fax: 44(0)1224 273677