Announce

25 October - 26 October 2018

New York University & Princeton University

Peter Mack (University of Warwick) Brian Ogilvie (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Joanna Picciotto (University of California, Berkeley)

The desire for method shaped the culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Method’s importance to early modernity can be felt in proportion to its variety, as there was not one method but several. While the subject has long been a focal point for historians of science, methods are found in many renaissance arts, including grammar, logic and rhetoric; poetry, history and philosophy; and theology, politics and ethics.

What were these methods, and why were they held in such high social and cultural esteem? Which methods—e.g., Lullist, Ramist, Jesuit—affected which areas of inquiry, and how? To what extent were the fundamental achievements of the period—such as humanist pedagogy, popular drama and vernacular devotion—results of methodization, or reactions against it? 

We ask participants to question the methods of early moderns at a time when scholars across the humanities are reconsidering their own, and we therefore seek to turn this questioning on scholarship itself. How has method altered the historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? What are the fates of various methods—e.g., philological, comparative, formalist, contextualist and Marxist—that have been important to the field? What problems in the field remain to be solved, and which methods may help us address them?

Possible topics:

Ramism and the transformation of rhetoric and dialectic;

Perspective in the visual arts and methods of representation;

Analytic geometry and the mathematization of nature;

Printing and its influence on literary and philosophical culture;

Reformation and debates over biblical hermeneutics; Spiritual exercises and literary genres of meditation;

Baconianism and the invention of experimental philosophy;

Pedagogy and its influence on politics and religion;

The emergence of historical scholarship;

Crypsis, secrecy, and insinuative methods;

Lullism and esoteric speculation;

Encyclopedias and the systematization of knowledge.

Key words: method, desire, logic, rhetoric, poetry, philosophy, theology, Reformation, biblical hermeneutics, pedagogy and perspective.

This conference is designed to promote engagement between graduate students and professors across disciplines, and it will commence with a workshop for all participants that will discuss the question of method in recent scholarship. Presenters are invited to the conference dinner, hosted by Princeton and NYU. A small number of graduate student bursaries will be available for students traveling long distances to attend the conference.

Please submit 350 word proposals for 15 min papers and a CV to desireformethod@gmail.com by September 1, 2018. All papers must be submitted in full by October 11 to allow time for faculty responses at the conference. This conference is convened by Ruby Lowe, Orlando Reade and Matthew Rickard. Please contact us with any questions: ruby.lowe@nyu.edu, osxr@princeton.edu and mrickard@princeton.edu.

Conference in Budapest, Hungary 30-31 May 2019

Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History

Call for papers deadline: 30 September 2018

 The stepfamily in its various forms across Asia, Europe and its colonies, the Ottoman Empire and across world faiths. • counting stepfamilies – historical demography • children of 1st, 2nd or 3rd marriages or concubines • step–parents • half-siblings, stepsiblings • divorce and widowhood • domestic arrangements & household types • laws and emotions • visual sources

Special issue of a journal (subject to peer review) Gabriella Erdélyi, HAS and Lyndan Warner, Saint Mary's University

conference url: https://stepfamilies1400to1800.blogspot.com

Twitter: @StepfamiliesW

Submit proposals to: worldstepfamilies@gmail.com

June 27–28, 2019 Université Paris-Est Créteil / Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3

Many early modern literary and artistic works were produced for specific social and political events which inflected their form and content. Attention to contexts of production and performance is essential for understanding these works, which, nevertheless, also arose out of formal and aesthetic decisions. Any courtly activity necessarily had political implications, right down to the most intimate actions — such as the public celebration of the wedding night for some royal couples. Courtiers and rulers indulged in a number of artistic pursuits to which they brought their own agendas. Examples include Louis XIV’s participation in French court ballets, lavish masques at the English courts of James I and Charles I, and Castiglione’s emphasis, in Il Cortegiano, on poetry, music and dance as indispensable skills for a gentleman.

The lives of courtier poets, musicians and dancers thus differed greatly from the images of bohemian artists, unrecognized geniuses and poètes maudits devised by the Romantics. Such images stress the artists’ genuineness and their defiance of bourgeois conventions. The criterion of sincerity — established by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who set the “language of the heart” in opposition to social hypocrisy — became a central tenet of artistic expression, relegating works produced for particular events to the rank of mediocrity. Thus we often associate poetry with the private rather than public sphere, and continue to use the criterion of sincerity to evaluate past works, particularly early modern productions, despite the risk of misunderstanding them.

Nevertheless, there are many reasons to consider works produced for particular occasions within the social and ideological contexts in which they were created, and to approach aesthetic choices not only as the result of personal preferences but also as the expression of collective projects which may have been driven by political rivalries or alliances. Outside the court, literary pursuits were also connected with politics: pamphlets and various pieces of satirical verse come to mind, but so do emblems and even religious poetry — in Catholic Europe, the canonization process was an opportunity to demonstrate the power of a particular state, city or family; thus poets competed in their celebrations of Teresa of Avila.

This conference proposes to re-examine the relationship between the arts (broadly construed to include literature and the visual and performing arts) and politics, paying special attention to the original contexts in which works were produced or performed so that the political implications of aesthetic choices may become clearer. We shall focus, in particular, on the way forms (be they linguistic, generic, metrical, material, visual or musical) might carry complex political meanings — for even forms that are clearly designed to flatter the sovereign are able to suggest advice, criticism or subtle negotiation. This conference will also be an opportunity to interrogate the very notion of form across disciplines.

Proposals might focus on:

• official entertainments such as court ballets, royal entries, masques and civic ceremonies
• literary genres — whether they were clearly connected with politics (like pamphlets) or seemingly detached from them (like pastorals) — and the circles in which they were shared or debated
• metrical forms, which sometimes refer to other models (like classical ideals or the vernacular culture of a neighbouring country) and involve a network of influences, rivalries and imitations affecting the construction of national and group identities
• paratexts, which negotiate the reception of a particular text through dedications to important figures, letters “to the reader”, and poems in praise of the author written by colleagues and friends; these occasional pieces sometimes conveyed contradictory politics
• material culture and history of the book, to the extent that material objects and book formats were also forms that could carry political meaning independently of or concurrently with the stated content

The conference will gather specialists of Europe and its overseas territories from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are especially welcome.

Keynote Speaker Nigel Smith (Princeton University)

Scholarly Committee Papers will be selected by a scholarly committee composed of Mercedes Blanco (Sorbonne Université), Fernando Bouza (Universidad Complutense Madrid), Paloma Bravo (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3), Camilla Cavicchi (Centre d'Études Supérieures de la Renaissance), Charlotte Coffin (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Line Cottegnies (Sorbonne Université), Séverine Delahaye-Grélois (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Jean-Louis Fournel (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis / Institut Universitaire de France), Sagrario López Poza (Universidad de La Coruña), Karen Newman (Brown University), Bruno Petey-Girard (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Matteo Residori (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3), Elisabeth Rothmund (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Jessica Wolfe (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

Organization Committee Paloma Bravo (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, CRES-LECEMO), Charlotte Coffin (Université Paris-Est Créteil, TIES-IMAGER), Séverine Delahaye-Grélois (Université Paris-Est Créteil, CREER-IMAGER).

This conference is co-organized by IMAGER (Institut des Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman) and CRES-LECEMO (Centre de Recherche sur l’Espagne des XVIe et XVIIe Siècles - Les Cultures de l’Europe Méditerranéenne Occidentale).

Submissions Proposals comprising paper title, abstract (300 words max) and brief biography (150 words max) should be sent by September 15, 2018 to: lesensdesformes@gmail.com.

3^e colloque international

Université du Havre

12-14 juin 2019

co-organisation

Université du Havre

BnF-Cabinet des médailles

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

Comité d’organisation : Yvan Loskoutoff (Professeur, Université du Havre, Académie des jeux floraux), Inès Villela-Petit (Conservatrice, Cabinet des médailles-BnF).

Comité scientifique : Reynald Abad (Professeur, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne), Jean-Pierre Babelon (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), Yves-Marie Bercé (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), Peter Burke (Professeur, Université de Cambridge), Marie-Claude Canova-Green (Professeur, Université de Londres), Olivier Chaline (Professeur, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne), Frédérique Duyrat (Directrice, Cabinet des médailles-BnF), Torsten Fried (Professor Doctor, Münzkabinett, Schwerin, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universität, Greifswald), Mark Hengerer (Professor Doctor, Université de Munich), Sir Mark Jones (Master émérite de Saint Cross College, Université d’Oxford, ancien directeur du Victoria & Albert Museum), Yvan Loskoutoff (Professeur, Université du Havre, Académie des Jeux floraux), Alexandre Maral (Conservateur général, Château de Versailles), James Mosley (Professeur, Université de Reading), François Ploton-Nicollet (Professeur, École des chartes), Hélène Rabaey (Maître de conférences, Université du Havre), Orest Ranum (Professeur émérite, Université Johns-Hopkins), Gérard Sabatier (Professeur émérite, Université de Grenoble), Andrea Saccocci (Professeur, Université d’Udine), Eric Saunier (Maître de conférences, Université du Havre), Marie-Christine Skuncke (Professeur, Université d’Uppsala), Laurent Stéfanini (Ambassadeur près l’UNESCO, Académie des sciences morales et politiques, Académie des Jeux floraux, Société française de numismatique), Inès Villela-Petit (Conservatrice, Cabinet des médailles-BnF).

Argument :Un premier colloque international Les médailles de Louis XIV et leur livre s’est déroulé sur le site Richelieu de la Bibliothèque nationale de France en avril 2015. Les actes ont été publiés en 2016 aux Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre puis réédités en 2018. Un deuxième colloque international de même intitulé s’est tenu au Château de Versailles en mai 2018. Les actes sont en cours de préparation. Un troisième colloque international Les médailles de Louis XIV et leur livre auralieu à l’Université du Havre du mercredi 12 juin au vendredi 14 juin 2019.

On se propose à nouveau d’étudier l’histoire métallique du roi sous tous les angles possibles. Ses médailles furent les plus nombreuses créées pour un seul monarque. L’importance que celui-ci et son gouvernement accordaient à cette entreprise destinée à franchir les siècles ne doit pas être sous-estimée. Son influence sur la production postérieure est évidente. C’est une erreur d’appréciation moderne que de le reléguer dans les bornes d’une étroite spécialité. Le livre en lui-même suscite l’analyse, par ses débats académiques préparatoires, dont les protagonistes méritent d’être mieux connus, comme par leurs résultats. Il aura aussi une postérité, depuis les Médailles du règne de Louis XV de Nicolas Godonnesche (1748) jusqu’aux Médailles sur les principaux événements de l’Empire de Russie de P. Ricaud de Tiregale (1772). L’histoire, l’histoire littéraire, l’histoire de l’art, l’histoire du livre sont invitées à apporter leur éclairage sur ce monument du Grand Siècle.

Propositions de communications : à adresser pour le 30 septembre 2018 avec CV et liste de publications à

yvan.loskoutoff@univ-lehavre.fr

NeMLA’s 50th Anniversary Convention, Washington, DC, March 21-24, 2019.

Abstracts may submitted by September 30, 2018 in English or French via the links provided. Please disseminate this invitation and send any questions to the organizers (erin.a.myers@gmail.com and bastink@eckerd.edu). Thank you for your consideration! Kate Bastin & Erin Myers

Motherhood remains a sensitive subject for women in academia of all ranks. Recent books such as Staging Women’s Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces (2017), Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (2008), Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family (2012), and articles on The Chronicle of Higher Education have raised this issue in seeking to establish new footing for women in academia. The time is ripe for discussion about how changing the culture of the academy can help it grow to accommodate women as mothers and creators of culture, present and future. While it often seems that male academics are lauded for having children, the opposite rings true for women. Female academics encounter warnings in their graduate student days of avoiding children if they seek success, or face judgment that having more than one child relegates a female scholar to the “Mommy Track.” How can we overcome these stereotypes so deeply rooted in the academy, for the sake of our students as well as our own? How do we end the “cycle of unequal academic motherhood,” as Amy Kittelstrom called it in the “The Academic-Mother Handicap” (The Chronicle, Feb. 12, 2010)? This roundtable seeks to draw upon the collective wisdom of women who are experiencing, or have experienced, motherhood in the professoriate at all career stages, and from diverse orientations. We invite participants to join us in discussing the curious and fraught relationship between parenting and professing as we move towards a positive reframing of motherhood and the academy.

https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17324