Daily Archives: 1 August 2016

English Law, Culture, Governance and Society, 1680s—1760s – Call For Papers

English Law, Culture, Governance and Society, 1680s—1760s
University of Adelaide
15-16 September, 2016

This workshop will explore some key themes to be addressed in the ‘New History of Law in Post-Revolutionary England’, an ARC-supported project (DP160100265), which seeks to recover and reassess the history of English law, broadly conceived, over the seven decades following the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. During that period limited monarchy, parliamentary government and the rule of law became new constitutional norms for an emergent imperial British state – and, eventually, for Australia.

Our project aims to chart the modes of law and governance variously experienced, created and used by laymen and women, husbands, wives and children, as well as by judges, lawyers, legislators and ministers. The results of this major conceptual advance, reintepreting the history of English law and government in the broadest possible way, will appear as Volume IX in the Oxford History of the Laws of England, co-authored by David Lemmings and Wilfrid Prest (University of Adelaide) and Mike Macnair (University of Oxford).

Besides an introductory panel on the project’s aims, themes and structure, the workshop is to include a session devoted to Julia Rudolph’s recent revisionist monograph Common Law and Enlightenment in England, 1689-1750 (Woodbridge, 2013). In addition to papers by Macnair (‘The Development of Uses and Trusts’) and Prest (‘Blackstone’s View of the Common Law’), there will be opportunities for other presentations, particularly by postgraduates and early career researchers, on legal-historical or law-related aspects of culture, governance, and society in later seventeenth and eighteenth-century England.

Proposals for either shorter (20 minute) or longer (45-50 minute) papers are warmly invited. Please forward a title and brief outline (no more than 250 words), plus a biographical note, to Helen.Payne@adelaide.edu.au by 12 August if possible.

Dr Valentina Zovko, Institute of Advanced Studies @ UWA Free Public Lecture

“The use of the term ‘freedom’ in diplomatic discourse of the Renaissance Dubrovnik”, by Dr Valentina Zovko (University of Zadar, Croatia)

Date: 23 August, 2016
Time: 6:00-7:00pm
Venue: Fox Lecture Theatre (G.59, ground floor, Arts building), University of Western Australia
RSVP: This is a free events, but RSVPs are requested: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/zovko

This lecture analyses the appearance and usage of the term “freedom” in speeches given by the Dubrovnik’s Renaissance ambassadors. Its meaning can be analysed over a longer period of time, depending on the person it addressed, the purpose it had to serve, and situations in which it appeared. Freedom speeches represent a permanent feature of the period. They were used to send messages of the community’s self-perception from the town leaders’ point of view. The government created an image of the city and used it for political purposes, always adapting it to specific social and cultural contexts. Written documents that witness Dubrovnik’s history confirm that the term “freedom” in its diplomatic discourse represented far more than a mere figure of speech. The chapters of this great city`s history began and ended with freedom.

Valentina Zovko completed a PhD in 2012 at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, with a thesis entitled ‘The role of the ambassadors of the Republic of Dubrovnik in expansion the borders onto the hinterland (at the turn of 14th in the 15th century)’, work which signalled the start of her main scientific interest in the political and socio-cultural issues visible throw the sphere of Dubrovnik`s late medieval diplomacy. She is currently an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department for Medieval History, University of Zadar. Her research focuses on issues of medieval and early modern diplomacy, medieval centres of power, identity, prosopography, emotions and perceptions in the Middle Ages. She has been guest professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and Institute of History in Warsaw, Poland.