CFP: (Collection) The Church Fathers in Early Modern England

Resurrecting the “First Five Hundred”: The Church Fathers in Early Modern England

In his “Challenge Sermon” delivered at St. Paul’s Cross on November 26, 1559, Bishop John Jewel argued that the Church Fathers were the true architects of the Christian religion and that the English people would no longer be subjected to the sort of medieval tampering that had led the one true Church astray. “The first five hundred years of the church,” he would argue, “are worth more than the whole thousand that followed afterward.” For this collection, we are seeking essays that address the topic of the Church Fathers in early modern English culture. Topics addressed may include (but will not be limited to) the rhetorical, political, ethical, and material uses of the Church Fathers and the influence of the Fathers on education, rhetoric, science, philosophy, philology, the stage, book production, devotional and polemical writing, women and
writing, the body, colonialist discourse, and the rise of capitalism.

Please address queries to the collection’s editors, Mitchell Harris (mharris_at_gustavus.edu) and Steven Matthews (smatthew_at_d.umn.edu). Essay proposals should be between 500 and 800 words. Completed essays should be between 4,000 and 9,000 words in text, approximately 16-36 double-spaced pages, and should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed.  (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). Please use endnotes. Proposals and completed essays should be sent electronically as a Microsoft Word document or PDF file.

CFP: 30th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum: Dreams, Imagination and Fantasy (1/15/09; 4/24-25/09)

Plymouth State University
30th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Friday and Saturday 24-25 April 2009

Call for Papers and Sessions

“Dreams, Imagination, Fantasy”
What was the role of the imagination in Medieval and Early Modern culture? Was “fantasy” distinguishable from “reality”? How did people talk about and experience dreams?

Papers need not be confined to the theme, but may cover many aspects of Medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history and music.

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Carole Levin, Willa Cather Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Dr. Levin is the author of numerous books and articles on Early Modern English culture, notably “The Heart of Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power” and her most recent book “Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture,” to be released October 2008 from Palgrave Macmillan

Ensemble Chaconne will be performing the music of Shakespeare’s plays. To learn more about Ensemble Chaconne and their Music of Shakespeare’s Plays, visit: http://cdbaby.com/cd/ensemblechaconne

Please submit abstracts and audio-visual requests through our website:
www.plymouth.edu/medieval

Or via US mail:
Dr. Karolyn Kinane, Director
Medieval Studies

Dept. of English MSC 40
Plymouth State University
Plymouth, NH 03264

Abstract deadline: 15 January 2009
Presenters and early registration: 15 March 2009

Please send any further inquiries to:
Dr. Karolyn Kinane

603-535-2402 or kkinane_at_plymouth.edu

CFP: Backward Premodern, Queer Negativities (9/15/08; 2/26-3/1/09)

40th Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
Feb. 26-March 1, 2009
Boston, Massachusetts

Session: “Rescue Me Not: Backward Premodern, Queer Negativities”

In her recent book, Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History, Heather Love reacts against the need of one dominant strand of queer studies “to turn the difficulties of gay, lesbian, and transgender history to good political use in the present” (104). Love contends that the faith in the power of Foucauldian reverse discourse, best exemplified in the ideology of gay pride that transforms sexual shame into social
affirmation, has resulted in a critical blind spot; too many critics have promised “to rescue the past when in fact they dream of being rescued themselves” (33). Resisting the idealization of cross-historical intimacies, Love postulates a queer critical practice rooted in a “backward future” that both insists on a rigorous embrace of the past and cleaves to negative affects that seem especially “bad” for political agency.

This session takes up the challenge of how far Love’s historiographic practice of backward feeling may be extended beyond High Modernism to the “premodern” past. How do premodern subjects construct their negative affectivity, backwardness, and/or futurity? What are the forms of their resistance to (post)modern rescues? And how does one engage with premodern subjects, both real and fictive, who have refused to behave themselves as redeemable (queer) subjects for (queer) critics? 300-word abstracts by 15
Sept; Wan-Chuan Kao (wkao_at_gc.cuny.edu).

Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation,
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number

CFP: Drinking and Gender (6/16/08; GEMCS 2008)

Papers are invited for a panel on drinking and gender in early modern culture for GEMCS 2008 (to be held 11/20-11/23 in Philadelphia). Papers from any discipline and focusing on any time period between 1450 and 1850 are welcome.

Please send an abstract of 250 words to gbloom_at_ucdavis.edu. Deadline June 16.