Morison Room, Cambridge University Library, 5:00 pm (except where noted). Tea from 4:30 pm before the lectures.

Wednesday, 16 November

Dr Nick Hopwood, ‘Icons of evolution: from alleged forgeries to textbook illustrations’

Wednesday, 7 December

Dr Jennifer Rampling, ‘The phoenix in the library: using marginal illuminations to trace alchemical manuscripts in Tudor England’

Wednesday, 21 March

Dott. Laura Nuvoloni, ‘Witnesses of the past: the Incunabula Collection at Cambridge University Library’

Wednesday, 16 May

Dr Mark Curran, Munby Fellow, ‘Beyond the forbidden best-sellers of pre-Revolutionary France’

Thursday, 14 June, 4:30 pm, Cambridge University Library

Tea, followed by the Annual General Meeting and a private view of incunabula with Ed Potten and Dott. Laura Nuvoloni

Sandars Lectures

The Sandars Reader for 2012 is Professor Michael Reeve, who will lecture on ‘Printing the Latin Classics—some episodes’ (provisional title). The lectures will be given on Monday 27 February, Tuesday 28 February, and Thursday, 1 March, at 5:00 pm in the Morison Room, Cambridge University Library.

For more information on the Society, visit its website.

Saturday events and exhibition opening receptions are free of charge to Friends. Members attending weekday evening talks pay at a special rate of £2.50 per head, to help us recover costs. Non-members are welcome at talks; the admission charge is £3.50. All talks are free to junior members of the University of Cambridge.

English Faculty, St Cross Building, Oxford
Grade 8: £36,862 – £44,016 p.a. (pro rata)

There are two posts for part-time (0.5FTE) Departmental Lecturers in Bibliography and Textual Criticism (1550 – 1830) and (1830 – present day) which are offered for a period of three years from 1 October 2012.

They are intended to provide graduate teaching for the Faculty’s MSt ‘B course’ (Bibliography, Theories of Text, History of the Book, and Manuscript studies). The ‘B course’ is designed to be a broad-based introduction to bibliography and textual criticism in relation to literary texts. For most Masters’ students these are new disciplines, offering the challenge of new methods and ways of thinking about literary texts.

Individuals will be welcome to offer lectures on other English literature topics, once their B course obligations have been met, and may be asked to undertake assessing/supervision in areas relevant to their research and teaching.

Note: These are two separate posts and it is anticipated that different individuals will be appointed to each post; applications will be assessed within the field appropriate to each post. Whilst it is possible that the same individual could be appointed to both posts, it will not be possible to guarantee this and thereby guarantee a full-time appointment. Please make it clear in your application which post you are applying for, and/or if you are interested in applying for both posts.

Applications should be received by noon on 27 February 2012.

Contact Person : Katy Routh
Contact Phone : 01865 281262
Contact Email : administrator@ell.ox.ac.uk

TEXTS AND TEXTILES

a conference organised by the Centre for Material Texts
to be held 11-12 September 2012 at Jesus College, Cambridge

The shared origin of text and textile in the Latin texere, to weave, is a critical commonplace. Many of the terms we use to describe our interactions with words are derived from this common linguistic root, and numerous other expressions associated with reading and writing are drawn from the rich vocabulary of cloth. Textiles are one of the most ubiquitous components of material culture, and they are also integral to the material history of texts. Paper was originally made from cotton rags, and in many different cultural and historical settings texts come covered, wrapped, bound, or decorated with textiles. And across the domestic, public, religious, and political spheres, textiles are often the material forms in which texts are produced, consumed, and circulated.

In the light of the CMT’s current research theme on ‘the material text in material culture’, we invite papers which consider any of the many dimensions of the relationship between texts and textiles. There are no historical, geographical, or disciplinary limitations. Areas to be addressed could include:

the shared language of texts and textiles

construction and deconstruction: to weave, spin, stitch, knit, stitch, suture, tie up or together, piece, tailor, gather, fashion, fabricate, mesh, trim, stretch, wrap, unfold, unpic
challenges and problem-solving: knots, tangles, holes; to lose the thread, iron out creases, unravel, cut, keep on tenterhooks
pieces and fragments: rags, patches, patchwork, scraps, strands, threads, rhapsodies, patterns, seams, loose ends, layers

the stuff of books

bookbindings and covers
incunabula – ‘swaddling clothes’
medieval girdle books, book chemises
paper and paper-making
cutting, sewing, and stitching in and on books
scrapbooks, albums, collages
book ribbons and bookmarks
carpet pages
textiles in illustrations, frontispieces, title pages

textile texts

needlework and words: tapestry, embroidery, samplers, quilts, hangings, carpets, banners
the needle and the pen
printed textiles
sacred/religious texts and textiles
love-tokens, keepsakes, charms, and relics
cushions, badges, handkerchiefs, flags, scarves, uniforms, livery and other textual/textile ephemera
professional and amateur work
relationships and networks of gifts, patronage, exchange
pattern books, sample books, costume books

Proposals of up to 250 words for 20-minute papers should be sent to Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk) and Lucy Razzall (lmfr2@cam.ac.uk) by 30 April 2012

CoDE: Cultures of the Digital Economy 2012

1st Annual Conference

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK, 27-28 March 2012

Call For Abstracts

The 1st Annual Conference of CoDE: Cultures of the Digital Economy will be held at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK on 27-28 March 2012. Participants from a range of scholarly disciplines are invited to present research related to digital culture and the digital economy.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Dr Jussi Parikka and Dr Astrid Ensslin, whose biographies are included below. Paper abstracts of up to 300 words can be submitted to code@anglia.ac.uk until 31st January 2012. In particular, abstracts related to the following conference themes are sought, though abstracts addressing other aspects of digital culture are also welcome:

Theme 1. Materiality and Materialism
It is straightforward enough to understand computation as a relationship between material objects (hard drives, screens, keyboards and other input devices, scanners, printers, modems and routers) and nominally immaterial ones (software, programming languages, code). This approach to the „stuff‟ of the digital risks ignoring a set of crucial questions around the relationships digital technologies construct with a range of material objects: from the „analogue‟ world modelled in weather systems and battlefield simulations to the body of the information worker interacting with spreadsheets and databases; from the range of artefacts that form the subject of the digital humanities to the materials, bodies, spaces and places of art practice and performance.

Theme 2. Performance, Production and Play
Innovative aspects of our interaction with performances and the production of artefacts for continuous engagement have evolved exponentially through the digital age, particularly with the development of ideas related to play and serious gaming, which brings novel opportunities for creative expression, not to mention innovative approaches related to parallel disciplines in science, education, healthcare and business. The collaboration between performance, production and play and adjacent academic fields is of particular interest given the cross-disciplinary requirements of the Digital Economy Act.

Theme 3. Digital Humanities – Archives, Interfaces and Tools

Digital Humanities works at the intersections of traditional research and technological innovation. Its techniques have helped to prove that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, for instance, and have even been used by the FBI to determine the authorship of sensitive documents. Today scholars in the digital humanities are primarily concerned to offer a gateway to previously hidden records of culture and heritage. A high-resolution digital photograph of a Chaucer manuscript, for instance, reveals its delicate pen strokes, and when placed on the internet, can pave the way for school children, university students, and those interested in culture generally, to learn about medieval literature from primary resources.
See www.anglia.ac.uk/code for more details–or click here.

Call for Papers

The 7th Annual Conference of The Association of Adaptation Studies

‘Visible and Invisible Authorships’

27th-28th September 2012

The University of York’s Film and Literature programme, in association with the Centre for Modern Studies and the Humanities Research Centre, is delighted to be hosting the 7th annual international conference of the AAS. The conference provides a lively forum for current thinking on adaptation issues and this year specifically invites reflection on the relationship of acts of authoring to the ongoing lives of adapted texts.

• How have different authorial voices and authorial inscriptions (screen writers, directors, designers, editors, studios, composers, writers, illustrators etc) of inherited tales been present in, and/or effaced by the processes of transmission?

• How might we reflect on these processes of authorial visibility and invisibility in the cultural circulation of adapted texts across media and moment?

• What is it to ‘author’ a contemporary telling of a tale that is already authored, or even that is received from history as, in effect, implicitly but eloquently authorless? And what happens in the process of visiting a revised or renewed authorial inscription upon a work?

• Why do some adapted works slough off almost all authorial designations (or cling to unlikely or peripheral ones) in their cultural reputations while others are emphatically branded in terms of an identifiable authorial voice? In line with the broad interests of the Association of Adaptation Studies, proposals on any aspect of adaptation will be considered.

Papers that speak to the conference theme will be particularly welcome. The deadline for receipt of proposals for papers and panels has been extended to 10 February 2012. Please send abstracts (within the body of your email) of not more than 250 words to film-and- literature@events.york.ac.uk and include a biog-sketch of not more than 100 words.

Grade 7, £27,428 – £35,788 pa

Limit of tenure: 1.5 years from date of appointment.

Cambridge University Library is seeking to appoint a suitably qualified candidate with an interest and relevant experience in digital libraries or digital humanities to work within its digital library team from early 2012. The Foundations Project is a strategic initiative of the Library, which aims to establish a state-of-the-art infrastructure for the production, preservation and online delivery of digitised content from its world-class collections. The first iteration of the digital library is online at http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/.

The appointee will work within a core team of six, including another metadata specialist, with whom they will share a portfolio. Reporting to the Library’s Digitisation and Digital Preservation Manager, they will concentrate on metadata and transcription aspects of the project, supporting the broad requirements of the Foundations Project and the particular needs of several associated projects, particularly a JISC-funded mass digitisation project based on the fascinating archive of the Board of Longitude. This role will provide an opportunity for the appointee to work at the forefront of digital library and digital humanities initiatives.

For further details on the post and how to apply, please see: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Vacancies/index.htm

Queen Mary Principal’s Studentships cover tuition fees and a maintenance allowance of around £15,000 per year. Applicants from the UK, European Union and overseas are eligible to apply. We are pleased to announce that we will offer one Principal’s Studentship shared between English and French in the field of early modern textual cultures of Western Europe. This studentship will be awarded for study commencing in autumn 2012.

The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by Prof Adrian Armstrong (French) and Dr Warren Boutcher (English). S/he will undertake research in the area of western European textual cultures, in the period 1450-1600, engaging with cultural products in at least two vernacular languages (English, French, Dutch, Italian). Appropriate topics might include, for instance: polyglot emblem books; translations of particular literary genres; the transmission of particular authors or books across countries; or the multilingual output of a single publisher.

For more information click here.

*Research Associate Digital Humanities and Transferable Skills Training*

Six-month post attached to the Digital Humanities Network at CRASSH

Full-time, starting 1 February 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter Salary: £27,428 pa pro rata (Grade 7), fixed term contract, no possibility of renewal.

*Deadline for applications: 9 January 2012*

CRASSH is seeking a postdoctoral Research Associate to lead a six-month project on the digital humanities and Transferable Skills Training. The project focuses specifically on the transferability of digital skills, and aims to increase awareness among early-career researchers of how the digital skills they have learnt in one context (social, academic or professional) can be applied in another.

Apply online here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/page/1082/ra-digital-humanities.htm

A conference organized jointly by ‘Print Networks’ and the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester

University of Leicester, 10-12 July 2012

Guest speakers: Adam Fox, University of Edinburgh Author of Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 Sheila O’Connell, British Museum Author of The Popular Print in England

CALL FOR PAPERS & CONFERENCE FELLOWSHIP
Offers are invited for conference papers of 30 minutes’ duration. The theme of STREET LITERATURE: CHEAP PRINT, POPULAR CULTURE AND THE BOOK TRADE is broadly defined. Papers may relate to aspects of the production, distribution and reception of ‘street literature’ (chapbooks, ballads, broadsides, newspapers, popular prints and other cheap printed matter) in the British Isles, or in other English-speaking parts of the world, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, inclusive.

An abstract (up to 650 words) of the offered paper and a biographical statement (up to 100 words) should be submitted, preferably as an email attachment, by 31st January 2012 to: jh241@le.ac.uk

A Conference Fellowship is offered to one or two postgraduate students (or independent scholars of equivalent status) whose research falls within the conference theme, who wish to present a paper. The fellowship covers the cost of attending the conference and assistance towards costs of travel. A summary of the research being undertaken, accompanied by a letter of recommendation from a tutor or supervisor, should be sent to jh241@le.ac.uk or posted to the address below by 31st January 2012.

The papers presented may be considered for publication and must therefore comprise original work not presented or published elsewhere.

Dr John Hinks Centre for Urban History University of Leicester Leicester LE1 7RH
Email: jh241@le.ac.uk