Witchcraft in 17th Century England
A cauldron, swan feathers, dead birds, human hair and fingernails are among the finds made by archaeologists excavating a 17th-18th century site near Truro, Cornwall. Jacqui Woods, leading the excavation, will present a paper on the finds from the ‘feather pits’ at the World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, 29th June-4 July 2008…
March 14, 2008
University of California, Santa Barbara
This one-day interdisciplinary conference will be a forum to explore
the interrelated fields of science and technology in the early modern
period. We conceive of science and technology as a broad range of
social and cultural practices, cultural and historical formations, and
epistemological perspectives. How and why were systems of knowledge
created and proliferated? What particular scientific developments
participated in the exploration of the body, the mind, time, and
space? How were individuals, communities, and nations impacted by new
systems of knowledge, particular objects or hardware, or advanced
procedures to accomplish tasks?
Britain’s Wars of Religion, 2008
In a lecture delivered to the Royal Historical Society in December 1983, John Morrill concluded with the observation that ‘The English civil war was not the first European revolution: it was the last of the wars of religion’. …
This symposium aims to recognise the importance of Morrill’s interpretation, and to move it forward with reference to scholarship on political and religious thought that has emerged since 1983. While it will be partly concerned with the period of the 1640s, it also aims to draw out elements of the links and tensions between politics and religion that define the long seventeenth century. Central to the symposium will be a critical engagement with Morrill’s original argument: in what ways is it still persuasive, and in what areas might it be revised?
Historical films and TV series set in the early modern period abound, yet historians have only recently begun to trouble themselves with these popular representations of the past. Even in film and TV studies, discussion is more about form, technique and aesthetic context than content and message. What is lacking is a critical dialogue appraising these films and what their choice of subject matter and the way in which it is presented says about contemporary society and its relationship with the past.
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together scholars from the fields of early modern history and literature, media and cultural studies and modern cultural history to discuss the representation of a particular period of history (c.1500-c.1800) on screen (whether in the cinema or on television). Participants are invited to offer papers on the heritage-film debate, historical film and collective memory, the role of historical productions in making history and its debates accessible, adaptations of early modern texts, the use of historical documentaries, or any other aspect of early modern history on screen.
Deadline for abstracts: 7 December 2007
Reconceptualising Politics: Power, Resources and Space
A one-day conference
17 March 2008
University of East Anglia
Organiser: Fiona WilliamsonIn the past decade historical thinking about politics in the early
modern Britain has built on the foundations of post revisionism and
incorporated new methodologies to uncover the past. The work of
anthropologists, for example, James C Scott, influenced writers such as
Michael Braddick, John Walter and Steve Hindle who reassessed the extent
of politicisation amongst the commons. Recent history has realised the
importance of ordinary people in political life and the public sphere
and their role in legitimating central and local government. It has
widened our understanding of the early modern state and conception of
what it meant to be ‘politicised’ . However, the latest studies on space
and power have added a new dimension to arguments regarding the level of
the politicisation of the people. Despite the auspicious start, recent
theory has begun reconsider ‘agency’ by analysing new dimensions of
space and power, away from Scott’s dualistic transcripts of commons v.
elite.This conference aims to bring together some of the latest developments
in the field, to create a multi disciplinary analysis of popular power,
participation, the negotiation of authority and the extent of the
hegemonic state. Papers are welcomed on all aspects of recent political
theory, to examine the diversity of early modern political society and
better to understand the dynamics of power in the period.Papers are to be no more than twenty minutes in length and abstracts to
be
submitted to f.williamson@uea.ac.uk by 12th December 2007.
(Postgrad students are particularly welcomed.)
Land, Landscape and Environment, 1500-1750
Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading
14 – 16 July, 2008
Current debates over the environment – and in particular over the exploitation or management of natural resources – find their origin in early modern discourses of mastery and stewardship. Whilst a pervasive argument saw it as man’s responsibility to exploit the Earth, to what extent were those who made their living from the countryside, and those who wrote about it, ambivalent about landscape change in the name of progress and improvement, both in England, Scotland and Ireland and in the American colonies? To what extent was land, landscape and environment the subject of struggles between those who were the subjects of agrarian capitalism and those who lived off its profits at first or secondhand? How did representations of land and environment develop in this period? Landscapes are lived environments that find expression through buildings and patterns of behaviour, and bring into focus questions of belonging and the relationship between nature and civilisation. What connection can we draw between literary and visual depictions of land and environment – whether as map, image, or text – and these ideas of mastery and control? And what does the recent turn towards ‘green politics’ in early modern literary studies suggest about the usefulness of twenty-first century political imperatives for an interrogation of the early modern past?
Papers are invited on the following areas:
plantation and colonisation as civilising process; agrarian capitalism and sustainable agriculture in theory and practice; topography and poetry, pastoral and georgic, the chorographical and country-house poem; enclosure, disafforestation and drainage: their advocates, opponents, practice and consequences; law, property rights and tenure; husbandry and husbandry manuals; the country house and its landscapes; horticulture and gardens; rivers; writing the land; artistic representations of landscape; cartography, maps and signs; the country and the city; parks; urban pastoral; travel, travel-writing, walking tours and sight-seeing.
Proposals (max. 300 words) for 30 minute papers and a brief CV should be sent via email attachment by 1 February 2008 to:
Dr. Adam Smyth, School of English and American Literature, University of Reading,
a.smyth@reading.ac.uk
Science & Technology, 1500-1800
14 March 2008
University of California, Santa Barbara
A one-day interdisciplinary conference held by the Early Modern Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara: “a forum to explore the interrelated fields of science and technology in the early modern period. We conceive of science and technology as a broad range of social and cultural practices, cultural and historical formations, and epistemological perspectives”.
Deadline for proposals: 16 November 2007
Law and Governance in Britain, 1350-1850
16-17 November 2007
Department of History,
University of Western Ontario,
London, Ontario, Canada
Concepts of creativity in 17th-century England
6-7 September 2008
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK
The early modern period witnessed the flowering of what, today, we would call the creative arts in England, and in recent years the social and cultural significance of such activities has come to be appreciated increasingly by scholars across a broad range of disciplines. But what exactly did it mean to form something, ‘as it were, out of nothing’ in the seventeenth century? While our modern understanding of creativity is firmly based around ideas of imagination and originality, it is far from clear that such concepts were always relevant to the production of visual art, music, plays, poetry and literature in the seventeenth century; moreover, basic tenets that we tend to take for granted – such as the primacy of the author – have been shown to be inappropriate in a number of significant studies. The aim of this interdisciplinary symposium is to explore ways in which we can seek to understand what it meant to be creative in the early modern period. Suggested themes include the following:
* Ideas of authorship and intellectual property
* Imitatio and originality
* Literacy and the function of memory
* Performance and text in music and drama; issues of improvisation
* Print and manuscript cultures; the impact of printing on creativity
* Contemporary terminology for ‘creative’ activities; ‘art’ and ’science’
* Evidence for creative processes
* Women and creativity
* The professional and the amateur…
Proposals are invited for:
1. Individual papers of 20 minutes’ duration (10 minutes to be allowed for discussion after each paper).
2. Sessions involving three or four papers on a specified area commensurate with the theme of the conference, given by different individuals and lasting not more than one-and-a-half hours, including discussion.
Deadline: 31 January 2008
The British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies 2008 Conference
January 2008, Oxford
Call for Papers: deadline 27 September 2007
We invite proposals for individual papers, for full panels of three papers, and for roundtable sessions of five speakers, on any aspect of the long eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe and the wider world.
Permanence and the Built Environment of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Huntington Library, California, October 2008. Deadline for proposals: 1 June 2007.
Anti-Popery: The Transatlantic Experience, c. 1530–1850
Philadelphia, September 2008
ANZSA Conference: Embodying Shakespeare
University of Otago, New Zealand – 7-10 February 2008
London in Text and History, 1400-1700
13-15 September 2007, Oxford, UK.
Crossing the Divide: Continuity and Change in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Warfare, 1350-1750
University of Reading, UK – 11 – 12 September 2007
