Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Renaissance Reckonings presents, "Shakespeare & the Order of Books"

Please mark your calendars for the next University of Maryland event in the
Medieval and Renaissance Lecture Series, Renaissance Reckonings:

"Shakespeare and the Order of Books"

By Professor Jean-Christophe Mayer, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier,
France

When? October 29, 12:30pm

Where? Tawes Hall, room 3132


Jean-Christophe Mayer is a senior research fellow employed by the French
National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is also a member of the
Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-classical Age and the
Enlightenment (IRCL) at Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier. He is the
author of Shakespeare’s Hybrid Faith—History, Religion and the Stage
(Palgrave, 2006). He has edited Breaking the Silence on the Succession: A
Sourcebook of Manuscripts and Rare Texts (Montpellier UP, 2003) and has
published an edition and translation of Henry Porter’s Two Angry Women of
Abington (Pléiade, Gallimard, 2010). He has also edited several collections
of essays, including most recently Representing France and the French in
Early Modern English Drama (U of Delaware Press, 2008) and has just
completed a monograph entitled Shakespeare et la postmodernité: Essais sur
l’Auteur, le Religieux, l’Histoire et le Lecteur. He is co-general editor of
the journal Cahiers élisabéthains and is currently Andrew W. Mellon
long-term fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C.
During his stay at the Folger, he will be working on a research project
entitled “Reading Shakespeare’s Early Modern Readers,” from which his talk
will be drawn. He is particularly interested in studying the marginalia left
by readers in early editions of Shakespeare and in examining manuscript
commonplace books, miscellanies and notes books. He hopes to be able to
produce a cultural history of reading Shakespeare from the late sixteenth
century to the middle of the eighteenth century.


Refreshments will be served. The talk is sponsored by the University of
Maryland Department of English. For further particulars, please contact the
Medieval and Renaissance Area Group Coordinator, Elizabeth Bearden:
ebearden@umd.edu

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

GW MEMSI to Host TemFest

George Washington University MEMSI (Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute) is proud to sponsor TemFest, an event that focuses upon Shakespeare's The Tempest and its legacies this FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, at 2:00 PM in Rome Hall (801 22nd St NW) room 771. A panel of GW faculty and graduate students will speak about the play in its context, as a site for contemporary research, criticism, and theory.

 The event will feature the following GW faculty members:

*   Jonathan Gil Harris
 *   Christopher Sten
 *   Jennifer Wood
 *   Robert McRuer
 *   Antonio López
 *   Holly Dugan


Event is FREE and welcome to all who wish to attend!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

U Penn's Toni Bowers to speak at UMD!

 

We hope to see everyone at Professor Toni Bowers lecture (University of Pennsylvania) on Friday afternoon, hosted by Renaissance Reckonings!

What? "Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760,"

By Professor Toni Bowers, University of Pennsylvania


When? September 24, 12:30pm

Where? Tawes Hall, room 3132

Be there!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Call for Papers & Proposals 2010

Call for Papers and Proposals

Sponsor: Medieval and Early Modern Field Committee, University of Maryland

University of Maryland, College Park

The Medieval and Early Modern Field Committee at the University of Maryland, College Park invites paper, workshop, and session proposals for the 2010-2011 academic year on the theme of “Racial Consciousness in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds.” The committee desires to support inquiry into the complex, stratified, and still unsatisfactorily articulated constructions of racial “difference” that existed in the medieval and early-modern periods.
Among the questions presenters may want to consider: In what ways and to what extent do medieval and early-modern perceptions of racial difference continue to inform the assumptions, perceptions and consciousness of modern societies? In what form and to what extent did the heritage of ancient Greek and Roman ideas about race survive or change in these periods? How is the construction of racial categories reflected in the literary and artistic products of the Middle Ages and early modernity? How were the first encounters of pre-modern Europeans with Asians, Africans, or indigenous American peoples shaped by prior assumptions and constructions of race and in what ways did these encounters affect the development of subsequent racial ideas and ideologies? And how did notions of race relate to notions of ethnic difference among the Caucasian populations of the European continent and the Mediterranean littoral?

As a university initiative designed to foster exchange and contact among scholars of the medieval and early-modern periods on the College Park campus, and to publicize the wealth of scholarship in these fields, the committee is especially interested in supporting interdisciplinary proposals
that foster graduate student and faculty dialogue across disciplines. Further preference will also be given to proposals that have the potential to engage active participation from scholars from the broader Washington, DC region. Consideration will be given not only to traditional conference sessions and key-note lectures but also to less conventional symposia, workshops, and “teach-ins.”

 Prospective presenters and conveners should submit a short outline and description of the event for consideration by October 15, 2010 to the committee at cconnoll@umd.edu.