Monthly Archives: January 2018

University of Sydney – Concert, Shakespeare, AEMA, St Brigit, Latin

University of Sydney – Concert, Shakespeare, AEMA, St Brigit, Latin

1. Concert:

Medieval Soirée Concert, Medieval and Early Modern Centre, University of Sydney,
Sweet polyphonic songs from fifteenth century Burgundy and political monophonic songs on the life of Geoffrey of Brittany (son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Performers: Margaret Arnold (Alto), Richard Excell (Vielle, rebec, gemshorn) and Carol Williams (Reader, harp, rebec, voice)
http://acord-medieval-ensemble.com/about/
Woolley Common Room N480, Level 4, John Woolley Building A20, University of Sydney
Thursday, 15 February, 6pm–7pm, with optional dinner afterwards, probably at the Nag’s Head Hotel
For information about the content of the program, contact: Carol Williams 0425 702 700
To register attendance at the dinner, please email penelope.nash@sydney.edu.au by 12 February

Margaret, Richard and Carol will also be presenting at the Sydney Medieval and Renaissance Group (SMRG) meeting on 14 February with a different program. More details shortly.

2. St Brigit’s Day/Imbolc Event

Australian School of Celtic Learning
Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney
Saturday 3 Feb, 9.30–5.00/6.30
See attached forms for Information and Registration for St Brigit’s Day and Information about the new Australian School of Celtic Learning
Cost $95/$65
Enquiries Pamela O’Neill: pamaladh@gmail.com

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OUTSIDE SYDNEY

3. Conference:

Shakespeare at Play
Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA)
Arts West Building, Bldg No. 148, Professors Walk, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
8–10 February 2018
Cost: $320/$80/$60/$40
For Registration and more details:
http://conference.anzsa.org/
http://conference.anzsa.org/home/keynotes/
http://conference.anzsa.org/home/accommodation/
http://conference.anzsa.org/home/venue/

4. Conference:

The Australian Early Medieval Association (AEMA) Conference
aema13–Invasion, Migration, Communication and Trade
Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia
22–22 July 2018
Abstracts of 250-300 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted via email to conference@aema.net.au by 5 March 2018.
Further information:
http://www.aema.net.au/conference.html

5. Rusticatio Australiana 2018: Speak and Learn Latin

Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum (SALVI) – The North American Institute of Living Latin Studies is holding its first program in the Antipodes, Rusticatio Australiana.
Speak and learn Latin in a spectacular, secluded rustic location in Australia.”
Kangaroo Valley Bush Retreat, Kangaroo Valley, approximately two hours drive from Sydney or Canberra, “surrounded by natural scenery and with ample creature comforts”.
16 July, noon – 20 July, 1:00 pm, 2018
Registration will open shortly.
Further information
http://latin.org/wordpress/event/rusticatio-australiana-2018/
Enquiries: anthonygibbins@gmail.com

Shakespeare and European Geographies – Call for Papers

EUROPEAN SHAKESPEARE RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
SHAKESPEARE AND EUROPEAN GEOGRAPHIES:
CENTRALITIES AND ELSEWHERES
9-12 July 2019
Roma Tre University

Conference announcement
Convenors: Prof. Maria Del Sapio Garbero and Prof. Maddalena Pennacchia

ESRA 2019 will have a special focus on processes of remapping, with consequences for early modern discourses on borders, nations, territories, the world. It will prompt discussions of the place held by such processes in the culture of the period, but it will also foreground the various ways in which they are relevant for current preoccupations and concerns.

As we know, early modern European geography was shattered by a series of disruptive events which resulted not just in a remapping of borders, nations, and world, but had a bearing in problematizing the very notion of space and the place human beings held in a changing order of the universe. Discoveries of new lands and new perimeters, originating from a thirst for knowledge, political ambition, wars, not to mention wars of religion and the reshuffled and transversal geographies designed by faith in post-Reformation Europe, were such as to redefine the sense of belonging, physically as well as mentally, and spiritually.

Questions related to this topic are at the core of Shakespeare’s figurations of multifaceted physical and mental landscapes. And the geographical turn of the past few decades has made us aware of the wide range of thematic, ideological, and theoretical issues related to it.

Our European contemporary geography, constantly redefined by new walls as well as the trespassing movement of massive flows of migrant human beings, invites us to interrogate anew the heuristic and ethical potential of that turn; it also encourages us to bring to the fore and reassess the pervasiveness and problematics of the experience of exile, displacement and dispossession in Shakespearean drama. Thus the topic should be found engaging and compelling by the ESRA community, now that our geopolitics and sense of belonging are being challenged and readjusted, daily, by the crises of human mobility.

All in all the chosen topic should provide ample scope for epistemological approaches as well as for discovering new proximities with the Souths of the world and between Northern and Mediterranean seas, daily crossed and redesigned by thousands of stories of outcasts and shipwrecks.

The topic should also be useful for discovering new contiguities between past and present. Ancient Rome, with its expanded geography, looms large on Shakespeare’s imagination. Rome was a world-wide stage on which to projectthe performances of the Elizabethans’ growing imperial ambitions, in a logic oftranslatio imperii, or of “cultural mobility” in the terms it is being re-conceptualized nowadays.But Rome was also a global stage on which to address issues as crucial as centre, periphery, edges, borders, landmarks, elsewheres, otherness, hybridity, cross-cultural encounters and dynamics.

Thus the topic suits productively the variety of Shakespeare’s geographies as well as the chosen Roman venue.

Potential topics to be addressed may include (but are not limited to):
1. Geographies of exclusion: centre and peripheries;
2. Narratives of migration and exile;
3. Cartographies of gender and race;
4. Vagrancy and hospitality;
5. Walls and border-crossings;
6. Europe and global Souths;
7. Wilderness, exoticism and liminal places;
8. Translation as geography;
9. Translating and re-translating Shakespeare;
10. Shakespearean migrations across media;
11. Displacing performance;
12. Conflicting geographies of the soul;
13. Geographies of the sacred;
14. Explorations and geographies of the self;
15. Wars of religions and reconfigured geographies;
16. Digital remappings of Shakespeare;
17. Mobile Shakespeare across genres;
18. Circulating books and translation;
19. Universal libraries and local libraries;
20. Translatio Imperii and Cultural Mobility;
21. World and National Shakespeares;
22. Sea-routes and cultural encounters;
23. Shipwrecked identities;
24. Local Shakespeare in performance in the digital space

Members of ESRA are invited to propose a panel and/or a seminar that they would be interested in convening. Proposals of 350-400 words (stating topic, relevance and approach) should be submitted by a panel convenor with the names of the participants (no more than four speakers); as for the seminars, we expect proposals of 250-300 words by 2 or 3 potential convenors from different countries for each seminar.

Please submit proposals by 31 May 2018 via the dedicated platform on the website of the Conference. Address available from the first week of February.

The conference organisers and the Board of ESRA will confirm their final choice of panels and seminars by the first week of July 2018. All convenors will be personally informed of the choices made and the list of seminars will be made available on the ESRA and the Conference websites.

Organising and advisory committee, ESRA 2019:
Prof. Maria Del Sapio Garbero (convenor) (Roma Tre University)
Prof. Maddalena Pennacchia (convenor) (Roma Tre University)
Prof. Maurizio Calbi (University of Palermo)
Dr. Lisanna Calvi (conference secretary) (University of Verona)

Senior Historian – Job Opportunity

Senior Historian 2018/06

Wellington

 

Have you got a passion for connecting New Zealanders with our history?

Then we want to hear from you

 

Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is seeking a motivated and creative permanent Senior Historian to join its Research and Publishing team.

 

New Zealand’s leading public history team, we publish our most popular history and reference websites, Te Ara (including the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography) and NZHistory. Our other projects include Te Tai Treaty Settlement Stories, 28th Māori Battalion histories, and content to support national commemorations such as WW100, Women’s Suffrage 125 and Tuia – Encounters 250.

 

Our preferred candidate will

  • possess excellent skills in researching, writing and curating authoritative and accessible historical content for publication across a range of formats
  • be able to contribute to the planning, editorial oversight and quality assurance processes of our content
  • be able to provide timely, high-quality historical advice to government, sector agencies and the public
  • have excellent relationship management skills to maintain effective relationships with key stakeholders and partners
  • be able to support and mentor less experienced staff
     

We are looking for a team player with a proven track record of delivering.

 

You should also have

  • an understanding of diverse historical perspectives and audiences
  • an interest in digital and multi-media content
  • an awareness of the opportunities offered by collaborative and community-based projects
     

We are looking for an adaptable historian with broad research experience, but an interest in the history of early encounters between Māori and Pākehā, commemorations and remembrance, or the history of state activity may be advantageous.

 

This a permanent position based in Wellington and is intended to be fulltime, although significant part-time hours will be considered.

 

Salary Range
The range for this position is $80,320 (85%) to $108,668 (115%)

Please note: Appointments are generally made up to the midpoint (100%) of the range on the basis of assessed competence and experience relative to those stated in the job description. The Ministry has some flexibility in special circumstances, e.g. where knowledge and skills are greater than the job requires.

 

About us

Our purpose is to promote a confident and connected culture.  Our work is diverse – we support many of the art, media, heritage and sports organisations of Aotearoa; we also advise government on cultural matters and provide historical and heritage resources for everyone to access. The organisations we fund deliver a range of cultural experiences for all of us to learn from, appreciate and enjoy. With approximately 115 people based in central Wellington Manatū Taonga is a relatively small Ministry with a broad mandate, wide reach and big heart.

 

How to apply

If you have any questions or need more information please contact:

Neill Atkinson, Chief Historian/Manager, Heritage Content – neill.atkinson@mch.govt.nz

 

To apply for this position, please send your CV, covering letter and complete the application form by clicking Apply Now.

 

Applications close 5.00pm on Tuesday 06 February 2018.

 

 

 

New Directions in Medieval Religious history – Call for Papers

New Directions in Medieval Religious history – Call for Papers

We invite applications for participation in the second annual Dartmouth Summer History Institute (Tuesday May 29-Saturday June 2). The theme for 2018 is New Directions in Medieval Religious History. The aim of the Summer Institute is to bring together the most promising young scholars working on medieval religious history from across our field, to read and workshop pieces of their historical writing as they embark on the transition from dissertation to book, in order to take stock of emerging considerations and approaches. We are interested in all aspects of religious history, including its links to political, social, cultural, and intellectual history. Applicants should be in the process of completing their Ph.D. dissertations or in the early stages of revising the Ph.D. as a book manuscript. (Students finishing Ph.D.s in Spring or Summer of 2018 are encouraged to apply.) Participants will each furnish a draft article or working dissertation/book chapter central to or exemplary of their larger historical intervention to be workshopped. In addition to workshopping individual pieces of writing, the Institute will include a variety of fora (receptions, dinners, and lectures) to discuss theoretical and methodological issues in the company of invited senior scholars. For information about the inaugural Institute (on the theme of modern European Intellectual History) held in 2017, please visit http://sites.dartmouth.edu/historyinstitute2017/

Participation in the Institute includes travel, room, and board. To apply send a CV and letter of application with 1-2 paragraphs describing the project and the piece you would intend to workshop by March 1, 2018 to Professors Cecilia Gaposchkin and Walter Simons, Dept. of History. All inquiries, correspondence, and applications can be sent to Dartmouth.History.Institute@dartmouth.edu

Winckelmann’s Victims: The Classics: Norms, Exclusions and Prejudices – Call for Papers

Winckelmann’s Victims.

The Classics: Norms, Exclusions and Prejudices.

Call for Papers

GHENT UNIVERSITY (BELGIUM), 20-22 SEPTEMBER 2018

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: MICHELLE WARREN (UNIVERSITY OF DARTMOUTH) – MARK VESSEY (UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA) – IRENE ZWIEP (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)

“Der einzige Weg für uns, groß, ja, wenn es möglich ist, unnachahmlich zu werden, is die Nachahmung der Alten.” Johannes Winckelmann

Classics played a major and fundamental role in the cultural history of Western Europe. Few would call this into question. Since the Carolingian period, notably ‘classical’ literature has served as a constant source and model of creativity and inspiration, by which the literary identity of Europe has been negotiated and (re-)defined. The tendency to return to the classics and resuscitate them remains sensible until today, as classical themes and stories are central to multiple contemporary literary works, both in ‘popular’ and ‘high’ culture. Think for instance of Rick Riordan’s fantastic tales about Percy Jackson or Colm Tóibín’s refined novels retelling the Oresteia.

At the same time, this orientation and fascination towards the classics throughout literary history has often —implicitly or explicitly— gone hand in hand with the cultivation of a certain normativity, regarding aesthetics, content, decency, theory, … Classical works, and the ideals that were projected on them, have frequently been considered as the standard against which the quality of a literary work should be measured. Whether a text was evaluated as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depended on the extent to which it could meet the ‘classical’ requirements. Probably the most famous example of someone advocating such a classical norm was the German art critic Johannes Winckelmann (1717-1768), whose death will be commemorated in 2018. His Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums may be considered as the embodiment of the idea that the classics should be the norm for aesthetic or even any evaluation, such as, in Western Europe, it has recurrently cropped up, to a greater or lesser degree, from the Early Middle Ages until modern times.

Almost inevitably, this normativity has implied, shaped and fed prejudices and thoughts of exclusion towards literary features and aesthetic characteristics that seemed to deviate from classical ideals. Throughout literary history, examples occur of literary works, styles and genres that were generally appreciated within their time or context of origin, yet whose quality was retrospectively called into question because they were said not to be in accordance with the classical norm as it prevailed at the moment of judgement. Sometimes, this has even applied to whole periods. The persistence of similar assessments up until today is telling for the impact classical normativity still exercises. Besides, literary texts, though clearly not created to conform to the ‘classical’ standard, have been ‘classicized’ during judgement, being forced by a critic to fit into a classical framework and celebrated for its so-called imitation of antiquity. Even the Classics themselves often had and have to obey to this process of ‘classicization’. Therefore, with a sense for drama, one could say that all these works, literary forms, periods, etc. have seriously ‘suffered’ from the prejudices born from classics-based normativity, being the ‘victims’ of Winckelmann-like ideas concerning ‘classical’ standards.

This conference aims to consider classical normativity with its including prejudices and exclusions as a case-study for cultural self-fashioning by way of European literature. It seeks to explore how the normative status ascribed to the classics and the ensuing prejudices have, from the Early Middle Ages to modern times, influenced and shaped thoughts and views of the literary identity of Western Europe. Therefore, we propose the following questions:

Ø What are the processes behind this normativity of the Classics? Is it possible to discern a conceptual continuum behind the time and again revival of the Classics as the norm for ‘good’ literature? Or, rather, are there clear conceptual and concrete divergences between succeeding periods of such ‘classical’ normativity?

Ø What are the links (conceptual, historical, aesthetic, political, …) between the normativity of the Classics and the excluded ones, both in synchronic and diachronic terms? How does literary normativity of the Classics imply literary prejudices and exclusions?

Ø How has normativity of the Classics with its prejudices and exclusions imposed an identity on European literature (and literary culture)?

Ø What does this normativity of the Classics with its prejudices and exclusions mean for the conceptualization of European literary history?

Besides these conceptual questions, we also welcome case studies that may illustrate both the concrete impact of classical normativity and concrete examples of prejudice and exclusion as resulting from this normativity. We think of topics such as

Ø  the Classics themselves as victims of retrospective ‘classical’ normativity
Ø  the exclusion of literary periods that are considered non- or even contra-classical (baroque,

medieval, …) and the clash with non-European literature
Ø  literary ‘renaissances’ and their implications
Ø  classical normativity and its impact on literatures obedient to political aims (fascism, populism,…)
Ø  literary appeal to the classics as a way of structuring and (re-)formulating society (‘higher’ liberal arts vs. ‘lower’ crafts and proficiencies, literary attitudes towards slavery, …)

We accept papers in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Please send an abstract of ca. 300 words and a five line biography to relics@ugent.be by 15 April 2018.

ORGANISATION: WIM VERBAAL, PAOLO FELICE SACCHI and TIM NOENS are members of the research group RELICS (Researchers of European Literary Identities, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools). This research group studies historical literatures and the dynamics that shape a common, European literary identity. It sees this literary identity as particularly negotiated through languages that reached a cosmopolitan status due to fixed schooling systems (Latin, Greek and Arabic), and in their interaction with vernacular literatures. From a diachronic perspective, we aim to seek unity within the ever more diverse, literary Europe, from the first to the eighteenth century, i.e. from the beginning of (institutionally organized) education in the cosmopolitan language to the rise of more national oriented education.

North American Journal of Celtic Studies – Call for Papers

North American Journal of Celtic Studies 

Call for Papers

Vol. 2 no. 1 of the North American journal of Celtic studies (NAJCS) is now at the press and will appear on schedule on 1 May 2018. I’d like to invite the Celtic community to submit articles to our double-blind peer-reviewed journal, which appears in May and November. Though the journal is sponsored by the Celtic Studies Association of North America (CSANA), individuals need not be members to publish in NAJCS. NAJCS publishes work in all areas pertinent to Celtic studies and across all time periods. Manuscripts submitted by the end of March could very well appear in the November 2018 issue. Guidelines for authors are available at https://ohiostatepress.org/NAJCS.html.

 

Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library – Job Opportunity

Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library
Early Career Post-Doctoral Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts

Thanks to external funding, we are pleased to announce a new 3 year fixed-term position in the Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern section at the British Library, for a Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts. The successful candidate will have recently completed a doctoral degree in medieval art history, history, literature or another closely-related discipline, or its equivalent, and have the specialist knowledge and strong research experience appropriate for an early career researcher. The new curator will assist the Lead Curator, Illuminated Manuscripts, in all aspects of curatorial work. The principal duties will include cataloguing, describing and publicising medieval and illuminated manuscripts.

A key aspect of the job will be presenting manuscripts in writing and orally to a variety of audiences, including blog posts, exhibition labels and presentations to students and visitors. Therefore, the ability to describe and present a broad range of material clearly and accurately is essential. The interview may include questions about the date and origin of a manuscript to be shown on the day..

The post holder will assist in the digitisation programme, including the selection of manuscripts to be digitised and the checking and describing of images, so information technology skills, including web-based skills, are also required.  

A strong knowledge of medieval Latin is also essential, as well as palaeographical and codicological skills. Because the post-holder will be working both independently and as part of a team, the successful candidate will possess a high level of time-management skills and the ability to liaise effectively with colleagues in Western Heritage Collections and other departments at the Library.

Full details of the position and how to apply are available here. The reference is 01795.

The closing date is 18 February. Interviews will be held on 8 March.

The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe – Exhibition available on interactive website

The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe

Exhibition available on interactive website

The exhibition The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe is now available on an interactive website.

The physical exhibition curated by Dr Stefan Bauer and Bethany Hume (York) was on display at the Old Palace, York Minster 15 November – 15th December 2016 and showcased the collections of the York Minster library, examining the role of religious polemic in the early modern period.  

Beyond Words: The Unknowable and the Unutterable in Early Modernity Conference

Beyond Words: The Unknowable and the Unutterable in Early Modernity

Friday 1 June 2018, 9.00am to 18:00

Speaker: William Franke (Vanderbildt). Author of ‘On What Cannot be Said’ and ‘A Philosophy of the Unsayable’ (among others).

This conference will explore the parameters of the Unknowable and the Unutterable in early modernity. It will range across the theological, the literary and the scientific, to attend to what early modern thinkers deemed beyond what they could find words for. If this apophatic inheritance – the language of what can’t be said – was a theological-mystical mode of thinking, what happened to it in the post-reformation climate of thought? Did natural philosophy understand the knowable limits of nature in the manner of the apophatic? How did emergent science negotiate the edges of what could be thought? What uses did early modern writers find for the apophatic traditions, Dionysius, Cusa, or John Scotus Eriugena? How did early modern poetry attend to the ineffable and that which was beyond words? The conference invites papers on the unknowable, the unutterable, the unthinkable and the unsayable, all broadly considered, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, whether English or European.

This symposium is part of the lax and diffuse Thomas Browne Seminar series.

Programme:

Natural philosophy and the unspeakable

Allegra Baggio Corradi (Warburg), The leksikon fantastikon of Niccolò Leonico Tomeo: The notion of halitus between natural science and divination

Yvonne Kiddle (University of Western Australia), Encountering the Deity through His Works: Bacon, the Apophatic and the Emergent Science.

Kevin Tracey (Science Museum), Point not only in respect of the Heavens above us, but of that (…) Celestial Part within us’: Negotiating Early Modern Cosmography through Books and Instruments

English Religious untterables

David Manning (Leicester), Some Remnants of Pseudo-Dionysius? Rethinking Henry Hammond’s Practical Divinity

Mathilde Zeeman (York), Lancelot Andrewes and the apophatic  

Kevin Killeen (York), The Jobean Apophatic and the symphonic unknowability of the world

English poetic silences

Chance Woods (Vanderbilt University), The Apophatic Baroque: Poetry as Negative Theology in Angelus Silesius and Richard Crashaw 

Travis Williams (University of Rhode Island), Unspeakable Creation: Writing in Paradise Lost and Early Modern Mathematics

Rosie Paice (Portsmouth), ‘Lik’ning spiritual to corporal forms’: translation as theme and event in Paradise Lost

Music, Allegory

Julie R. Klein (Villanova), How to Move beyond Language

Jelle Kalsbeek (Warburg), Isaac Beeckman and musical apophatic

Nika Kochekovskaya (Higher School of Economics, Moscow), Allegory as an expression of the unutterable in early modern literature: case of M.K. Sarbiewski (1594-1645)

Keynote speaker: William Franke (Vanderbildt), Paths Beyond Words: The Ways of Unsaying in Early Modernity

Location: The Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building, University of York

Admission: Registration details to follow soon.

Email: crems-enquiries@york.ac.uk