The provisional programme for the Land, Landscape and Environment conference at Reading (14-16 July) is now available.
Plenary speakers at the conference include Andrew McRae (Exeter, English), whose talk is entitled “‘On the Road: Networks and Nationhood in Early Modern England.”
Exeter early modernists Philip Schwyzer (English), Henry French (History), and Liz Griffiths (History) will also give papers.
Relics and Remains
A Past and Present Conference
University of Exeter
10-12 September 2008
This conference explores the relic as a religious and cultural phenomenon in a broad comparative perspective. The aim is to foster dialogue about the ways in which bodily remains and material objects have become the focus of worship or reverence in a series of different religious cultures and eras stretching from antiquity to the twenty-first century, from Western Europe to Africa, Latin America, Australasia and the Far East, and from Christianity to Islam, Buddhism and Judaism.
Speakers:
Robin Osborne (Cambridge); Ittai Gradel (Reading); Julia Smith (Glasgow); Amy Remensnyder (Brown); Yousef Meri (Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Amman); Miri Rubin (Queen Mary); John Strong (Bates College); Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge); Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge); Alex Walsham (Exeter); Howard Louthan (Florida); Katie Harris (California, Davis); Richard Clay (Birmingham); Paul Gillingham (North Carolina, Wilmington); Alan Knight (Oxford); Zoe Waxman (Royal Holloway); James Mark (Exeter); Daniel Branch (Exeter); Howard Morphy (Australian National University); Adam Chau (SOAS)
Booking forms, abstracts of the papers, and further information can be obtained at the following web address: http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/cems/conferences/relics.htm.
Please direct enquiries to Professor Alex Walsham, Department of History, University of Exeter.
Men’s Dilemma? Sources and Methodologies in the History of Masculinity
22-23 July 2008, University of Exeter
Plenary Speaker
Dr Hannah Barker, University of Manchester.
Call for Papers
Since its emergence in the 1980s, the history of masculinity has undergone rapid and exponential development. Born from the dynamism of women’s history and feminist history, scholars of men’s, masculinity and queer studies have sought to give the gendering of men a ‘visibility’ in history. The history of masculinity is, however, currently at somewhat of a crossroads. The pioneering studies in this field have, in recent years, undergone question and scrutiny and have been extended in scope and diversity, including both theoretical and empirical research. Histories of the family, community, body, medicine, sexualities, social order, empire and politics have all impacted on present understanding of men and masculinities. It is becoming increasingly evident that whilst existing works have provided a solid foundation on which future knowledge could be built, our awareness and understanding of the gendering, representation, perception and experiences of men in history is necessarily contingent on the sources analysed and methodologies adopted. It is the purpose of this colloquium to highlight and discuss the extent to which utilisation of sources, approaches and methodologies shapes or constructs our questions, findings and conclusions in the history of masculinity. Early career and postgraduate historians of any time period, whose research engages with the history of masculinity, are invited to present their ideas.
If you are interested in contributing to the discussion at this colloquium, or would like more details, please contact Dr Henry French.
Please submit your abstract proposal of no more than 300 words by Monday 9 June 2008.
This for the attention of postgrads in particular:
A one day workshop titled “Mental Landscapes in Early Modern England and Wales” will be held at Cardiff University on June 12 from (roughly) 11:00-3:30.
If you would like to attend, please email David Davis.
The final Exeter Early Modern Seminar of the season will take place on Wednesday 7 May, 4-6pm in 128 Amory.
Henry French (University of Exeter, History) will speak on ‘Practices of Politeness: Changing Norms of Masculinity in Landed Society, 1660-1800’.
Wine and juice will be served after the seminar.
Jane Taylor, Professor of Medieval French Literature at Durham University will address the Exeter Medieval Studies’ Research Seminar on Tuesday 20 May. Her talk will be of particular interest to Medievalists, Early Modernists and all those involved in translation studies. The title is:
“Hungrie Shadows”: What became of Chrétien de Troyes in the Renaissance?
Her focus will be the translator Pierre Sala, who translated Chretien de Troyes in the 1500s, and will encompass translation and Arthuriana in the Renaissance.
The event will take place Tuesday 20th May at 4-5.30pm in MR3 (room to be confirmed nearer the time). Wine will be served afterwards as is customary at the Medieval Seminar.
Elliot Kendall’s Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household is to be published this week by Oxford University Press.
A ground-breaking approach to the politics of late medieval texts, Lordship and Literature investigates the importance of the great household to late fourteenth-century English culture and society. A sustained new reading of John Gower’s major English poem, Confessio Amantis, shows how deeply the great household informed the way Gower and his contemporaries imagined their world. Exploring royal government and gentry ambitions, this thoroughly interdisciplinary book views the period’s politics and literature in terms of a household-based economy of power.
The great household rode immense political shockwaves in the late fourteenth century, when royal aggrandizement and economic crisis in the wake of the Black Death challenged dominant modes of aristocratic power. Lordship and Literature examines responses to these challenges, analysing texts including the Appeal of the Merciless Parliament, imagination of lordly power by Chaucer, Gower, and Clanvowe, and parliamentary controversy over livery and justice. The economics of power – described by thinkers such as Pierre Bourdieu and Marcel Mauss – spans Ricardian political and literary culture, informing elite politics and love allegory alike. Competing models of household politics, and their literary force, are revealed here in wide-ranging interpretations of exchange (of women, hospitality, livery, loyalty, retribution) in Gower’s complex and influential poem. Lordship and Literature locates Confessio Amantis firmly in its historical moment, arguing that the poem belongs to a powerful yet embattled aristocratic politics.
Elliot Kendall is Lecturer in Medieval Literature, University of Exeter
Proposals are invited for the eleventh Conference of the Durham Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies, which will focus on the general theme:
Public Spheres and Private Spaces
It is expected that this theme will be approached from a very wide range of disciplinary and methodological perspectives; contributions which span national and disciplinary boundaries are, as always, particularly welcome. Papers should be of 30 minutes’ reading time. Each session will have ample time for discussion. Offers to chair sessions are welcomed from participants who are not reading papers.
Proposals for papers should be of approx. 200 words, and should be sent to the Director, Prof. Richard Maber as soon as possible, but no later than 9 May 2008. The programme will be announced within the following fortnight.
The conference will take place in the magnificent setting of Durham Castle, on the two full days of Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 July 2008. Residential delegates will depart after breakfast on Friday 18 July; it will also be possible to book overnight accommodation for Tuesday 15 July if required.
