Two ‘brown bag lunches’ to look at & hear about grant applications currently in the pipeline.

1. Wednesday 1 June, 1-2 pm   Green Room, Gonville and Caius College

Dr Lauren Kassell (History and Philosophy of Science) on the Simon Forman Casebooks project.

2. Wednesday 8 June, 1-2pm   Senior Parlour, Gonville and Caius College

Dr Claire Preston (English) on the Thomas Browne edition.

Protest on the Page: Print Culture History in Opposition to Almost Anything*

(*you can think of)

Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, Madison, Wisconsin, September 28-29, 2012

Protest has a long and varied tradition in America. The conference will feature papers focusing on authors, publishers and readers of oppositional materials, in all arenas from politics to literature, from science to religion. Whether the dissent takes the form of a banned book by Henry Miller or documents from Wikileaks, conference presentations will help us to understand how dissent functions within print and digital cultures.

Proposals for individual twenty-minute papers or complete sessions (up to three papers) should include a 250-word abstract and a one-page c.v. for each presenter. Submissions should be made via email to printculture@slis.wisc.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2012. Notifications of acceptance will be made in early March 2012.

For information, contact:

Christine Pawley, Director, Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture cpawley@wisc.edu

The Cultures of the Digital Economy Institute (Anglia Ruskin University) and the Centre for Material Texts (University of Cambridge) present:

Seminar 1: Renaissance Texts and Publishing

Monday 23rd May 2011 5-6.45pm, Morison Room, Cambridge University Library

Professor Jane Taylor (Durham University) on matters of taste in sixteenth-century publishing

and

Professor Eugene Giddens (Anglia Ruskin University) on preparing digital editions of early modern literature

For more information please contact Dr Leah Tether: leah.tether@anglia.ac.uk

The National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk unexpectedly revealed some interesting material texts when I visited recently. Newmarket is famous as a horseracing town, but it is particularly important in the racing world not so much for its racecourse (a feature of over fifty towns and cities in the UK) but for its training ground, the Heath, a grass-covered chalk incline just outside the town which has remained unchanged since it was first used to train racehorses in the late seventeenth century.

Horseracing has taken place in Britain since Roman times. The breeding of fine horses has long been associated with royalty, but it was not until the later seventeenth century that horseracing as we know it today became central to the British sporting scene. I had (perhaps naively) expected the museum to explain more than it did about the social history of horseracing as an essential part of the life of Newmarket and many other racing towns.  Instead, the museum feels more like a shrine to the equine form, which is probably a better reflection of a sport concerned not just with the competitive racing of horses, but ultimately with the complex art of creating the finest possible equine physique. This obsession with the body of the horse is extended by association to the bodies of jockeys; among the many artefacts linked to jockeys that were afforded a relic-like status in the museum’s velvet-lined glass cases, the most macabre was the pistol with which the famous local jockey Frederick Archer fatally shot himself in 1886 at the age of 29.

While displays of stuffed horse heads, preserved horse feet, and equine enema equipment are all of limited appeal to the non-specialist, the museum is more interesting for the rich tradition of material texts associated with horseracing it reveals. There are some lovely examples of race cards, race tickets, and betting slips from the last few centuries, which provide a glimpse into the particular social and cultural context of this sport. The most significant material texts associated with horseracing, however, are the incredibly complicated graphs and diagrams of ‘sire lines’, essential reading material for any true connoisseur. These texts are the very foundation of this sport, enabling the precise genetic origins of individual horses to be traced back across hundreds of years. Sire lines have a revered status, informing the decisions of breeders, owners, trainers, bookmakers, and the many other people integral to this sport.

The pictures above show Derby silk scarves, which throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were produced annually in connection with the Epsom Derby, one of the most famous horse races. Printed with the name of the year’s winner, they also feature an elaborate collage of the names of all previous winners since the inauguration of the Derby in 1780, along with the details of each individual horse’s parentage.  These souvenirs exploit the iconic status of sire lines and the very poetic language of horse naming, turning intricate textual charts and diagrams into a highly aesthetic object.

Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities

DIGITAL EDITING AND DIGITAL EDITIONS

A half-day workshop on new developments in the field of digital editing in Music, History, Philosophy and Literature

Speakers: Andrew Webber (German and Dutch, Cambridge), John Rink (Music, Cambridge), Eleanor Robson (HPS, Cambridge), Jane Winters (Institute of Historical Research), Andrew Zurcher (English, Cambridge)

1-5 pm, Wednesday 25 May 2011

CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

Please email Anne Alexander (raa43@cam.ac.uk) to reserve a place.

Further information at www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1638

The English Department in the School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis seeks to fill a research associate position in Shakespeare Studies, beginning in August 2011 (with a one-year contract, renewable up to four years). The research associate will join a team working on a new multi-platform edition (print and digital) of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, to be published by Oxford University Press (general edited by Terri Bourus, John Jowett, and Gary Taylor).

Preference for Ph.D. in hand, but ABD candidates will also be considered. Candidates must have training in, and enthusiasm about, early modern bibliography and/or textual studies, performance or book history. We will begin considering applications immediately and continue until the positions are filled.

Applications, including a cover letter, c.v., and three letters of recommendation, should be submitted online as Word or pdf files, addressed to Dr. Terri Bourus at tbourus@iupui.edu. We hope to conduct Skype interviews of select applicants before June 30, 2011. IUPUI is an EEO/AA Employer, M/F/D.

Book Encounters, 1500-1750

Friday 1 July 2011, Corsham Court Centre, Bath Spa University

Bath Spa University’s newly formed Book, Text and Place (1500-1750) Research Centre is pleased to announce its inaugural conference, ‘Book Encounters, 1500-1750’. In keeping with the Centre’s focus on early modern literary culture, place, and the history of the book broadly defined, this conference explores a wide variety of encounters with the book: from different cultural and geographical sites of production, circulation and reception to various disciplines and periods within early modernity.

Conference fees: £30; £20 students (note: a conference subvention covering fees for students has been generously provided by The Bibliographical Society; students interested in attending the conference should contact Chris Ivic c.ivic@bathspa.ac.uk)

Information on the Book, Text and Place (1500-1750) Research Centre is available at http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/schools/humanities-and-cultural-industries/researc h/book-text-and-place/

PhD funding: School of English, University of Leicester, UK

A PhD fee-waiver scholarship in the School of English at the University of Leicester is available for a research student. PhD proposals should be in the area Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Literature, or The History of the Book in the Early Modern Period.

The award is for a student registering in October 2011 and covers fees up to £3,732 (the equivalent of Home/EU fees) for 3 years. Only new PhD students are eligible. The financial package covers full-time Home/EU fees only, but international and part-time students are encouraged to apply. Successful international students would themselves pay the difference between the Home/EU fee award and the international fee. Details can be found at
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/postgraduate/funding

As discussions and debates about the virtues and shortcomings of the increasingly popular digital book and e-reader rumble on, it has seemed inevitable that sooner rather than later, someone would write a book about a world in which people no longer know what a book is. The latest offering from the American children’s author and illustrator Lane Smith, It’s a Book (currently featured in the window of Heffers), is the first I’ve seen, and is a lovely, tongue-in-cheek contribution. Monkey sits absorbed in a book, while Donkey asks ‘What do you have there?’, and bombards him with more questions: does it scroll, blog, tweet, text, need a password, or do wifi? Where’s the mouse, and surely it must have to be charged?

‘No heavy message, I’m only in it for the laffs’, writes Smith in his explanation of how he came to write this book.  What I really enjoyed about It’s a Book is its clever simplicity. It is not a judgemental defence of the book as opposed to the computer screen, and it does not sentimentalise the materiality of the book, which one might expect it to do. Monkey’s repeated response to Donkey’s persistent questioning – ‘No. It’s a book’ – leaves enough space for the reader, child or adult, to consider for themselves the many virtues of the object they are holding.

22nd July, University of Warwick

Keynote: Professor Margaret Ezell, Sara and John Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts, University of Texas A&M

Speakers: Helen Hackett, Gillian Wright, Elizabeth Clarke, Sarah Ross, Jayne Archer, Rebecca Bullard, Johanna Harris, Sajed Chowdhury, Elizabeth Scott Baumann

This interdisciplinary one day symposium will explore meanings and dynamics of the structures of early modern female miscellanies and commonplace books, the histories of reading they reveal, notions arising of authorship and miscellaneity, the role of women as ‘vouchers’ or adjudicators of literary materials, and the transmission of knowledge in these female compilations.

For registration & programme see website: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/femalemiscellanies

For more information contact Dr Femke Molekamp (Warwick): f.s.molekamp@warwick.ac.uk