Daily Archives: 19 September 2016

New Book Series: Ludic Cultures, 1100–1700 – Call For Proposals

General Editors: Bret Rothstein (Chair), Indiana University; Alessandro Arcangeli, University of Verona; and Christina Normore, Northwestern University.

Ludic Cultures treats medieval and early modern play in all its innumerable eccentricities, from toys and games to dramatic performances, courtly intrigues, and the like. Inspired by the broad definition first advanced by Johan Huizinga, but mindful of the constraints later proposed by Roger Caillois and Bernard Suits, this series publishes monographs and essay collections that address play as a complex phenomenon governed by a distinctly lusory attitude, but potentially expressing in virtually any facet of life. In this respect, the series promotes the documentation of cultural practices that have thus far eluded traditional disciplinary models. Our goal is to make visible modes of thought and action that until recently seemed impossible to trace, while contributing to a growing interest in playfulness both past and present.

For questions or to submit a proposal, please contact the Acquisitions Editor, Erika Gaffney (Erika.Gaffney@arc-humanities.org). Links to series information can be found at: www.mip-archumanitiespress.org/series/mip/ludic-cultures or http://gameculturessociety.org/new-book-series-ludic-cultures-1100-1700.

Dr Stephanie Tarbin, Institute of Advanced Studies @ UWA Free Public Lecture

“Histories of gender, families and children: what do we still want to know?”, Dr Stephanie Tarbin (School of Humanities and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence of the History of Emotions, UWA)

Date: 11 October, 2016
Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm
Venue: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia
RSVP: This is a free events, but RSVPs are requested: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/tarbin

The lives of medieval people are far in the past and were often unrecorded. Nonetheless, in recent decades, gender and social historians have made enormous contributions to our understanding of the quotidian experiences and mentalities of the children, women and men of the pre-modern period. Reading conventional sources ‘against the grain’ has enabled feminist scholars to explore women’s agency and self-perception, while combining legal records with personal accounts allows us to better understand how children acted in and viewed their social worlds. The recent ‘emotional turn’ in history has re-posed long debated questions about affective relations within families and households, offering fresh frameworks for assessing the emotional lives of ordinary people.


Stephanie Tarbin has research interests in the gender and social history of late-medieval and early modern England. She has published essays on moral regulation, masculinity, women’s friendships and children’s experiences, which is the focus of her most recent research. With Susan Broomhall, she is co-editor of Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2008).