From Space to Place: the Spatial Dimension in History of Western Europe 16 and 17 April 2010

Centre for Research in History and Theory

German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ.

A two-day international and interdisciplinary conference, organised by the Centre for Research in History and Theory, Roehampton University

This conference will explore the so-called ‘spatial turn in history’ discussed among historians for the last decade or so and inspired by earlier anthropological ideas and the interdisciplinary approach by sociologists, especially geographers. It challenges the idea of place or space in history as an unreflected essentialist category linked to tradition and immutability. Instead, space as place is shown to be socially and culturally constructed, mediated and contested. Organised into three separate but interlinking topics (social space, workplace and intimate space) papers will investigate how specific spaces in the past not only evoked but conveyed political, social, cultural and symbolic meaning and conversely how particular spaces/places influenced this meaning.

The conference is interdisciplinary; historians and geographers with an interest in politics, society, culture and gender as well as anthropologists, archaeologists, and literary scholars will explore the meaning of space in the past by situating it in its precise historical

context. There will be broader reflections on historiography and theory as well as case studies from a wide chronological span (from the medieval, early modern to the modern period) but geographically restricted to Western Europe.

Friday

10.00am   Registration

10.30am   Welcome by Andreas Gestrich, Director, German Historical Institute, and Cornelie Usborne, Roehampton University

10.45am – 1pm General reflections

1. Beat Kümin (History, Warwick), ‘The “spatial turn” from a historical perspective’

2.   Linda McDowell (Human Geography, St John’s College, Oxford), ‘Space and place in geographical theory: from spatial differentiation to social relations’

3.   Eliza Darling, (Anthropology, Goldsmith College, London), ‘The spatial turn that wasn’t: class, anthropology, and the triumph of place over space’

1 – 2pm Lunch at the GHI

2 – 5pm Social Space

1. Matthew Johnson (Archaeology, Southampton), ‘Late Medieval Spaces, Early Modern Practices’
2. Gerd Schwerhoff (History, Technical University Dresden), ‘Public places in early modern towns’.

3. – 3.30 Tea break

1. Leif Jerram (Urban History, Manchester), ‘Space: A Useless Category of Historical Analysis?’ (with case studies from turn of the 20^th-century Munich)

Conference Dinner

Saturday

10 – 10.30am coffee

10.30 – 12.45pm Workplace

1. Jeremy Goldberg (History, York), ‘“I have mor to doo then I doo may”: Problematising Labour, Space and Gender in later medieval England’

2.  Amanda Flather (History, Essex), ‘Space, place and gender: the sexual and spatial division of labour in the early modern household’

3. Steven King (History, Oxford Brookes), ‘Work places and places of work: Labour market architecture and issues of space in Europe 1750-1870’

12.45-1.45pm Lunch at the GHI

1.45- 4pm  Intimate Places

1.  Felicity Riddy (English, York), ‘Space, intimacy and values in the late medieval English “bourgeois” home’

2. Sandra Cavallo (History, Royal Holloway), ‘Spaces for body-care and body services in the early modern Italian home’

3. Willem de Blėcourt (Historical Anthropology, Huizinga Institute, Amsterdam), ‘Over the Threshold: liminality, proximity & intimacy in twentieth-century witchcraft discourse’ 

4-4.30pm Tea

4.30 – 5.30pm Roundtable

Organising committee:  Prof. Cornelie Usborne, Prof. John Tosh, Dr Charlotte Behr, Dr Sara Pennell, Dr John Seed, Dr. Sabine Wieber, Prof. Trevor Dean.

Participation Fee: £ 80 (including lunch and refreshments on both days)

£ 40 Students/Associate Tutors

For more information and registration see:

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/researchcentres/chat/conferences/index.html

Engendering Gender: Production, Transmission and Change 1450-1950 University of Exeter 20-22 July 2010

CFP just issued for the above conference.

The deadline for proposals, which is Friday 30 October 2009. Abstracts of 300-500 words should be sent either to me at J.Jordan@exeter.ac.uk or to Henry French at H.French@exeter.ac.uk.

This interdisciplinary conference will explore concepts of gendered identities across the period 1450-1950. Breaking free of the traditional constraints of periodization, this conference will promote discussion that transcends period boundaries (i.e. medieval, early modern, long-eighteenth century, modern) and considers how far gender identities are modified by religious, political, medical, social and cultural shifts, or are punctuated only by sudden, limited, periods of change. In particular ‘Engendering Gender’ aims to explore key sites of gender construction and the transmission of gendered norms, both public and private.

THEMES:

SITES & RELATIONS: The roles of home, family, schooling, workplace, institutions, voluntary associations, sociability, travel, empire and encounters in shaping gender identities.

SPHERES: Decisive locations for the formation, realisation, projection, modification and subversion of gender identities, particularly international, national, local or familial levels, and the interaction between them.

VALUES: The relationship between the formation of gender identity and religion and religious vocations, political ideology, social status and class, educational precepts (‘humanism’), military and institutional codes, racial or scientific discourses, and more informal concepts of virtue, honour, civility, propriety, or shame.

IMAGES & IDENTITIES: What was the role, power and significance of the idealisation of gender roles? How were gender stereotypes formed and perpetuated through time?

TIME: What was the nature of change over time in gender identities and the processes of change? In what ways did gender identities change over time, how fundamental were these shifts in relation to more enduring concepts such as patriarchy or motherhood, and over what time scales?

Royalist Religion programme 11 September

Programme below for this workshop featuring yours truly:

Royalist Religion Provisional programme, 11 September

Royalist Religion

Provisional programme

Workshop, September 11 2009, JRUL Deansgate

Arrival, coffee from 9.30

10-11

Anthony Milton (Sheffield), ‘Royalist divines and the king’s conscience in the 1640s’

Coffee

11.30-1

Ted Vallance (Liverpool), ‘Robert Sanderson’s use of amended prayer book services’

Marie-Louise Coolahan (Galway), ‘Royalism and the 1641 Depositions’

Jason McElligott (TCD), ‘Massacre, Infanticide and Psalm 137 in Early-Modern England’

1-2 Lunch

2-3

Lloyd Bowen (Cardiff), ‘Royalist Ministers and the Royalist Message, 1642-9′

Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck), ‘Vaughan and cat baptism’

Coffee

4-5

Molly Murray (Columbia),

Iain McClure (Birkbeck), ‘The development of interiority in Eikon Basilike’

Call for Papers: The Perils of Print Culture

A conference to be held at Trinity College Dublin, 10-12 September 2010

Organised by Dr Jason McElligott and Dr Eve Patten

Over the past twenty years the study of print culture has become prominent in the disciplines of history, literary studies and languages. The study of print culture has many advantages, but there is a growing sense among advanced practitioners that scholars need to fine-tune or calibrate their understanding of this burgeoning field of enquiry.

Papers presented at this conference will encourage scholars to think more systematically about the conceptual, methodological and technological problems associated with the study of print culture. They will encompass a wide range of chronological periods, geographical locations and genres of print.

For more details of the themes of the conference go to: www.tcd.ie/longroomhub/news/initiative-funding/print-culture.php

Proposals (max. 300 words) for papers of 30 to 40 minutes duration should be sent to the conference organisers at perilsofprintculture@gmail.com by Friday 11 December 2009.

This conference has been funded by the Trinity Long Room Hub under PRTLI IV

Conceptualising Men: Collective Identities and the ‘Self’ in the History of Masculinity 27-28 July 2009, University of Exeter

Plenary Speakers: Joanne Bailey (Oxford Brookes) & Karen Harvey (Sheffield)

Call for Papers

Current understanding of the history of masculinity is restricted by two major factors: periodisation and conceptualisation, both of which further complicate one another. Phrases, such as ‘manhood’, ‘manliness’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘masculine identity’, have been utilised differently according to the period of study. Medieval and early modern scholars have been reluctant to adopt the term ‘masculinity’, seeing it as an anachronistic expression, which is alien to pre-industrial periods of history, whereas the term ‘manliness’ appears to hold very different connotations in post-1900 studies than those of earlier periods. The conceptual language adopted by those researching within the traditional parameters of periodisation has the potential to hinder otherwise necessary considerations of long-spanning chronologies in the history of masculinity. In order to achieve a fuller understanding of the concepts, theories, practices and experiences of men in the past, the history of masculinity would benefit from crossing the boundaries of periodisation. Moreover, the nuances of conceptual, terminological categorisation need to be scrutinised more carefully before being imposed on individual and groups of men in the past. This colloquium aims to promote interdisciplinary and cross-chronological discussion of these issues. In particular, it will explore the relationship between conceptual categories of ‘manhood’, ‘manliness’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘masculine identity’. Furthermore, it will consider the extent to which men in the past engaged with culturally constructed collective identities or created their own sense of a masculine ‘self’. Early career and postgraduate historians of any time period, whose research engages with the history of masculinity, are invited to present their ideas.

For further details please contact Dr Henry French (H.French@exeter.ac.uk).

See also here

Please submit your abstract proposal of no more than 300 words by Monday 8^th June 2009. Participants will be asked to submit a short synopsis (3-pages maximum) of how these issues relate to their research, by Monday 20^th July 2009, which will be pre-circulated. The colloquium will involve round-table and small-group discussions, rather than the presentation of formal papers.

The Plantation of Ulster, 1609-2009: A Laboratory for Empire

25-26 June (Goldsmiths, University of London); 3-5 July 2009 (University of Ulster, Magee) and 23-25 October 2009 (Trinity College Dublin). Between 25-26 June, 3-5 July and 23-25 October 2009, Goldsmiths, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Ulster will convene a series of three major academic conferences to mark the 400th anniversary of the Ulster Plantation. This importance of this event to the shared histories of Ireland, Britain and the British imperial world would be difficult to overstate. It copper-fastened the English and British conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland’s physical, demographic, socio-economic, political, military and cultural landscape. In effect, the plantation became England, Britain’s and the City of London’s first successful attempt at plantation and the latter’s vigorous attempts to protect this investment would have enormous implication for the collapse of the Tripartite Stuart monarchy in the 1640s. Furthermore, it provided a successful template for British conquest, plantation and imperialism in the Americas, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent. Finally, its historical, political, cultural, environmental and visual effects have impact on the two cities and islands until the present day.

Scholars from Ireland, Britain, Europe and the American will re-assess the plantation and its disputed histories and heritages in its various local, national, international and global contexts. This conference will commence in London (25-26June 2009), proceed to the Plantation Citadel of Derry/Londonderry (3-5 July), a fitting location given its subsequent importance as a blueprint for plantation in the first British Empire. Finally, it will conclude in Trinity College Dublin – a major economic beneficiary of the plantation and archival receptacle for its cartographic, historical and literary records, on 23-25 October 2009 with a conference on the 1641 Rebellion.

Dr. Ariel Hessayon (Goldmiths) Dr. Éamonn Ó Ciardha (Ulster) Dr. Micheál Ó Siochrú (TCD)

Further details here

1649 and the Execution of King Charles

I’ll be doing a little post on the above in a few days – in the meantime, the programme for the London Socialist Historians Group conference on the regicide is now up (see below). If anyone else has any interesting regicide related links, please post below.

1649 and the Execution of King Charles

30 January 1649 is the day when King Charles 1st was beheaded and the
Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, the foundation of modern
Parliamentary democracy, came into effective being. It was a
revolutionary moment and it brought onto the historical stage people,
ideas and movements that went well beyond anything that Cromwell and
the senior leadership of the New Model Army had in mind. Brian Manning
in his seminal book on 1649 notes that this was a year when popular
mobilisations did not happen. There was no popular uprising to mark
the Commonwealth, and no popular protest at the execution of the King.
There was however an Army revolt at Burford, also celebrating its
anniversary this year, which was brutally put down by Cromwell. 1649
was also the year when Cromwell landed in Dublin to initiate brutal
episodes in Ireland.

This conference will look at the liberties and democratic practices
ushered in by 1649 and at those who wanted to take them further.

1649 and the execution of King Charles

Saturday 7 February 2009
Venue: Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London.

Programme

9.30 – Registration (Wolfson Room)

10.00-11.15 Welcome and Keynote addresses (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett, LSHG
Geoffrey Robertson, author of The Tyrannicide Brief
John Rees, author of A Rebel’s Guide to Milton, forthcoming

11.15-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.30 PANEL ONE: Cromwell’s coalition and its critics (Wolfson Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Martyn Everett, ‘The Agitators – between Rebellion and Reaction’
Dr. Ariel Hessayon, Goldsmiths College, ‘Early modern Communism: the
Diggers and community of goods’

11.30-12.30 PANEL TWO: 1649 in contemporary eyes (Pollard Room)
Chair: Tobas Abse, LSHG
Claudia Guli, University of Melbourne, ‘Historical Precedent in
Contemporary Justifications of the Trial of Charles I’
Ángel Alloza, CSIC (Spain), ‘”An Outrageous Incident”: the execution
of Kings Charles seen from Abroad’

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.30 PANEL THREE: The regicide, terror and Restoration (Pollard Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester, ‘”Original Villany”:
Foundational Terrorism’
Alan Marshall, Bath Spa University, ‘The Trials of Thomas Harrison, regicide’

1.30-2.30 PANEL FOUR: The Republic and something more (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Paul Burnham, LSHG
Alejandro Doering De Rio, Queen’s College Cambridge, ‘James Harrington
as a theorist of political of equality’
Dr John Seed, Roehampton University, ‘The politics of remembering: the
execution of Charles I in C18th England’

2.30-2.45 Coffee

2.45-4.00 Closing Plenary (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett
Norah Carlin, author of The Causes of the English Civil War
Geoff Kennedy, author of Diggers, Levellers and Agrarian Capitalism

£10 waged / £5 unwaged. Order from Keith Flett
keith1917@btinternet.com

CFP: Representing the British Civil Wars

Call for Papers

Representing the British Civil Wars 1660-2009: Adaptation, Reflection, Transmission, Debate

University of Manchester, 4-6 December, 2009

This conference considers the ways in which the conflict period of the 1640s and 1650s have been manifest in culture, political thought, historiography and popular imagination, from Southey’s Life of Oliver Cromwell to Clarendon, from To Kill a King to the imminent film of Paradise Lost. The conference looks at cultural appropriation and the ways in which particular representational tropes have been developed and perpetuated.

Sessions and panels might consider immediate post-Restoration versions of the conflict, or consider how radical theories of liberty and rights influenced political philosophy during the eighteenth century. Why is the notion of civil dispute still so potent in British culture, and why is the Cavalier/ Roundhead binary so difficult to get rid of? How have the complexities of the conflict been represented? What of the complex and continuing historiography? Which cultural clichés have become associated with the wars of this period? How have writers, dramatists, novelists, poets and filmmakers adapted texts from the time and how have they imagined the period?

Papers might consider the versions of the war found in popular novels, in drama, in film and in poetry, portraiture and song. Of particular interest might be the following: Iain Pears, David Kinloch, Cromwell, Witchfinder General, Great Britons, Tristram Hunt, popular historical writing, The Devil’s Whore, Scott’s Woodstock, Antonia Fraser, documentary series, docudrama, By the Sword Divided, historiographical paradigms (conflict/ contention, civil war/ revolution/ war of three kingdoms), wargames, boardgames, adaptation, bespoke computer game hacks, museums and exhibits.

Please send abstracts (300 words) or panel proposals by April 30 to Jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk.

Authority and Authorities Conference, Reading 2009

Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading

Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies 2009

Authority and Authorities

The next annual meeting of the Reading conference on early modern studies will be held on 6-8 July 2009. The Reading conferences are as broadly based as possible, reflecting the most interesting developments in current research. Accordingly we welcome proposals for either complete sessions or individual papers from scholars in any discipline or any area of early modern studies, including Atlantic, European and imperial perspectives.

The informal theme of the conference in this year of particular significance for the history of monarchy (1509, 1649, 1689) will be Authority and Authorities. Plenary lectures will be arranged around this theme and papers or entire sessions on authority and authorities are particularly welcome. Participants might think of addressing the following themes:

• Literary and visual representations of authority
• The rituals of authority including coronations, progresses, civic entries and civic ceremonial, the punishment of malefactors
• The exercise of authority by monarchy, landlords, urban, rural and colonial governors
• Challenges to authority and authorities: rebellion, resistance, subversion
• Patriarchialism and authority within the household
• Authoritative texts (Classical, scriptural, Patristic, authorised service books and government proclamations): their uses and their circulation, in manuscript and print
• the emergence of new sites of authority in cities, in print, medicine and other spheres
• The basis of authority in the Reformation and post-Reformation churches
• Reformations of manners and the exercise of authority over marginal groups

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers. Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts of the papers.

A proposal for an individual paper should consist simply of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chairman of the Conference Committee, Professor Richard Hoyle, by 31 January 2009, r.w.hoyle@reading.ac.uk.

Proposals are especially welcome from postgraduates. The conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a sine qua non for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.

Some conference announcements

A One-Day Conference on “Romantic Animals”
Monday, 7 July 2008
Devon and Exeter Institute, Exeter
Organised by the University of Exeter, Dept. of English
There is no fee for this conference.

Speakers are:
*Prof. Nick Groom (Exeter): “Jug Jug”
*Dr. Christine Kenyon Jones (King’s College London): “Animals and Romanticism”
*Prof. Donna Landry (Kent): “English Brutes, Eastern Enlightenment”
*Prof. David Punter (Bristol): “Imagining Animals: Romanticism from Pliny to Deleuze”
*Dr. Sharon Ruston (Keele): “‘How grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes!’: Women and Domesticated Animals in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication”
*Prof. Jane Spencer (Exeter): “Animal Experience in Narrative”

This conference has no registration fee, but please complete a booking form to reserve your place. Coffee, lunch, and tea will be provided. More details will be available online.
http://www.sall.ex.ac.uk/conferences/romantic-animals.html

The Devon and Exeter Institute is located in the heart of Exeter’s city centre. You may find it on Google maps:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=EX1+1EZ&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr

If you have any questions, please email the conference organisers at:  c18narrative@ex.ac.uk

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‘The Representation of the Islamic World on the British and American Stage’

Prof. David Worrall, Nottingham Trent University.

Wednesday 4 June 2008, 3.30-5.

Venue:  John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, Manchester

(map: http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/media/media,9539,en.pdf)

Time:      3.30 start (tea from 3 in the library cafe), 5pm finish, followed by drinks and dinner, ending in time for a return to most parts of England from London to Carlisle.  All welcome.

The interdisciplinary NW Long 18th Century Seminar season finishes in style on 4 June. David Worrall is a leading scholar of the romantic period and a pioneer of genuinely interdisciplinary work on theatre and society. His Radical Culture (1992) is well-known, and the years of archival work that followed have resulted in four well-reviewed recent books: Theatric revolution : drama, censorship and Romantic period subcultures, 1773-1832 (2006); Harlequin Empire: race, ethnicity and the drama of the popular Enlightenment (2007);  The Politics of Romantic Theatricality 1787-1832 (2007); and an edited book of essays, Blake, Nation and Empire (2006). His visit to Manchester is thus timely and of wide interest, especially as his paper deals with a topic with contemporary resonance, related to the subjects explored in Linda Colley’s recent Captives.

Synopsis. This paper will examine theatrical representations of the north African Islamic states on the British and North American stage,  c, 1794-1830. White Americans in Barbary captivity provided a contradictory moment in American history; not only an experience of the limits of naval power but also an exposure of contradictory ideologies of the New Republic’s natural rights and black enslavement.  Susanna Haswell Rowson’s Philadelphia Slaves in Algiers (1794), like David Everett’s Slaves in Barbary (Boston, 1817), contained fantasies of ‘regime change;’ in Newport, Rhode Island, benefit nights were performed to help ransom American slaves; in New York, Barbary pirates were exhibited in the theatre boxes; Lord Exmouth’s bombardment of Algiers in 1816 stimulated a further flurry of British dramas about Barbary.

Suggestions of papers for next year’s season are welcome.

Contact:

hannah.barker@manchester.ac.uk

robert.poole@cumbria.ac.uk

jeremy.gregory@manchester.ac.uk

peter.nockles@manchester.ac.uk