Stuart Successions

An Interdisciplinary Colloquium to be held at Jesus College, Oxford, 27-28 September 2013

Moments of royal and protectoral succession in the early-modern period generated huge quantities of writing across a range of forms: from panegyric to polemic, sermon to satire, history to drama. This two-day colloquium, organised as part of the AHRC-funded ‘Stuart Successions Project’, will bring together speakers from Europe and the US to investigate how this body of succession literature reflected on unpredictable transitions of power, discussed the political values of the nation, and shaped contending perceptions of key political personalities in 17th-century Britain.

For further information and registration please visit:http://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/events/stuart-successions/

Erudition and Confessionalisation in Early Modern Europe

Friday 20 September, Old Combination Room, Trinity College, Cambridge.

This one-day colloquium brings together an international group of leading historians of scholarship and historians of religion to examine how historical erudition was shaped by, and in turn shaped, confessional identity and broader patterns of religious change in early modern Europe. The last decade has witnessed some revolutionary historiographical interventions in this field: the purpose of the colloquium is to build on that work, and to continue the dialogue between the history of scholarship, intellectual history, and the history of religion that is producing such fruitful results.

Participants include: Simon Ditchfield, Aurélien Girard, Anthony Grafton, Jan Loop, Scott Mandelbrote, Jean-Louis Quantin, John Robertson, Arnoud Visser, Alexandra Walsham.

The full programme is available at: http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/research/conferences/erudition

Registration is FREE but numbers are limited: please email criticasacra@gmail.com to register.





CALL FOR PAPERS: Healthy Living in Pre-Modern Europe: the Theory and Practice of the Six Non-Naturals (c.1400-1700)

Conference Venue: Institute of Historical Research, Bloomsbury, London.
Conference Dates: 13-14 September 2013

This conference seeks to bring together scholars working on topics related to the role played by the six Non-Naturals in health maintenance in the late-medieval and early modern period. It is well-known that health was thought to depend on the regulation of the six key factors affecting body functions: the air one breathes, sleep, food and drink, evacuations, movement and emotions. In pre-modern medicine careful management of these spheres of life was regarded as crucial if one wished to prevent disease. Yet the study of the Non Naturals has been neglected, as scholars have focused on the development of the concept in medical thought rather than on the advice regarding the individual non-naturals. The only exception concerns the recommendations related to food and diet while the other Non-Naturals have been the object only of general surveys. Even less attention has been paid to the relationship between preventive advice and practice. This conference intends to address these gaps. Moreover we hope to stimulate discussions which will enable us to compare different regions and countries and to explore changing approachs to the Non-Naturals (and to the underpinning humoural principles) over the period under consideration.

More specifically the conference aims to:
  • Compare the contents of medical advice about the Non-Naturals (how these activities should ideally be performed) and the actual practices associated with keeping healthy. What relationship did practices bear to prescription? In order to address these questions scholars might use a range of ‘extra-medical’ sources, such as letters, diaries, literature and imagery.
  • Explore change within the body of medical theory on the Non-Naturals. Were definitions of what was regarded as harmful or beneficial to health modified over the period? And is the idea of the body and its vulnerabilities that underpins these views subject to any transformations? It has widely been assumed that humoural theory was essentially static and unchanging during the early modern period. Is this view in need of revision?
  • Explore the extent to which both recommendations about healthy living and the preventive measures adopted in everyday life changed over time. And were these transformations medically or socially driven? In other words were they a consequence of shifting ideas about the working of the body or of changing lifestyles?
  • Stimulate comparisons between different regions and countries. For example, did the medical traditions in different countries place different emphases on the six Non-Naturals? Did they all conceptualise the humours in similar ways? Were there different lay approaches to keeping healthy in different national contexts? Did people focus on any particular Non-Naturals –giving more weight to diet, for example, or to taking exercise- in order to maintain their health?

Papers will be 30 minutes long with discussants for groups of papers. Papers must be submitted at least two weeks before the conference to facilitate the work of the discussants.

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words by 24th March 2013 to the conference secretary, Tessa. Storey@rhul.ac.uk We are currently in the process of seeking funding for this conference. If successful we hope to pay speakers for their travel, conference dinner, and accommodation: More details will be available in the near future.

Please e-mail the Organisers with any questions:

S.Cavallo@rhul.ac.uk and Tessa.storey@rhul.ac.uk

Professor Sandra Cavallo, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Dr. Tessa Storey, Royal Holloway, University of London.

The HISTORY OF EMOTIONS email list is run by the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions http://www.qmul.ac.uk/emotions

The Centre also hosts the History of Emotions Blog http://emotionsblog.history.qmul.ac.uk/

Theatrum Mundi: Latin Drama in Renaissance Europe

12-14 September 2013, Magdalen College, University of Oxford

Organized by the Society for Neo-Latin Studies in tandem with the Centre for Early Modern Studies, Oxford, the conference will bring together scholars working on early modern Latin drama. The conference will include a staged reading of an Oxford college play translated into English by Elizabeth Sandis (Oxford) and directed by Elisabeth Dutton (Fribourg), both researchers on the Early Modern Drama at Oxford (EDOX) project. An exhibition of institutional drama manuscripts and early printed books will be on display in St John’s; participants will also have the chance to visit the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama and to participate in a pedagogical forum, ‘Teaching Classical Drama’, in the Classics Faculty. The keynote speakers are: Thomas Earle (Oxford), Alison Shell (UCL), and Stefan Tilg (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck).

The programme and registration details can be found at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/snls/events/theatrummundi/

Some postgraduate bursaries are available. The conference has been generously funded by the MHRA, CEMS, Society for Renaissance Studies, and the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections. Please contact Sarah Knight (Leicester) with any questions (sk218@le.ac.uk)

Place and Preaching

6-7th September 2013, Place and Preaching
The Wren Suite, St Paul's Cathedral London

Sponsored by the AHRC in its support of The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, this is a conference which will reassess the 'place' of preaching in Early Modern Europe in all its aspects.

Plenary Lecture: Brian Cummings (York)

Confirmed Speakers: Hugh Adlington (Birmingham); David Colclough (Queen Mary); Joshua Eckhardt (Virginia Commonwealth); Katrin Ettenhuber (Cambridge); Lori Anne Ferrell (Claremont); Kenneth Fincham (Kent); Erica Longfellow (Oxford); Mary Ann Lund (Leicester); Peter McCullough (Oxford); Charlotte Methuen (Glasgow); Mary Morrissey (Reading); Jean-Louis Quantin (Sorbonne); Emma Rhatigan (Sheffield); Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes); Sebastiaan Verweij (Oxford); Philip West (Oxford)

All further conference details – including graduate bursaries to attend the conference - and information on booking will be posted on this site later: http://www.cems-oxford.org/donne

Call for Papers

The organisers welcome proposals (250-500 word abstracts) for further papers on any of the following aspects of sermon culture in Early Modern Europe: Roman Catholic preaching; architectural settings and auditories of preaching; sermons in manuscript and print; performance and delivery; sermon hearing, note taking, and commonplacing; production and reception of patristic and other theological works; rhetoric; and more.

Please send your proposals to Professor Peter McCullough and Dr Sebastiaan Verweij: peter.mccullough@lincoln.ox.ac.uk / sebastiaan.verweij@ell.ox.ac.uk

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 1 MAY 2013

Dr Sebastiaan Verweij || Fulford JRF, Somerville College, Oxford
Research Associate, The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne
a: English Faculty, St Cross Building, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UL
t: 0044 (0)1865 271931 || skype: seb.macv