Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Events This Week

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IN CAMBRIDGE

Renaissance Graduate Seminar

Tuesday, 01/11/16, 5.15pm in G-R06-07
Andy Kesson (Roehampton)
‘Peculiar houses: building public theatres in Elizabethan London’

 

Early Modern Interdisciplinary Seminar

Wednesday, November 2, 12-1:15pm
English Faculty, Room GR03

Professor Naomi Standen (University of Birmingham)
Options and Experiments: Defining the ‘Global Middle Ages’

 

Early Modern British and Irish History Seminar

Wednesday, 2 November, 5.15pm
Graham Storey Room, Trinity Hall

Sarah Ward (Oxford)
‘“This rebellion against heaven”: the north-east Welsh gentry, royalism, and the Church of England’

 

Early Modern European History

Thursday, November 3, 1-2pm, Green Room, Gonville and Caius College

Tom Hamilton (Cambridge)
Sharing Beds: Intimacy and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern France

 

Writing Women in History

11am-12pm, 1 November, RFB 142

‘Women entering convent life’

Texts available on the website

 

IN LONDON

 

Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy Seminar (IHR)

Thursday, November 3, 5:15 PM
Room SH246, 2nd floor, South block, Senate House

Niccolò Fattori (Royal Holloway)
With a little help from my friends – Networks of mutual support in the Greek community of Ancona during the sixteenth century

 

British History in the 17th Century Seminar (IHR)

Thursday, November 3, 5:15 PM

Pollard Room N301, 3rd floor, IHR, North block, Senate House

Bethany Marsh (Nottingham)
The experience of charitable aid in the British and Irish Civil Wars: the reception of Irish Refugees in the English localities, 1641 to 1651

 

 

Events This Week

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Things are getting busy! Here are some events taking place this coming week in Cambridge and London.

IN CAMBRIDGE:

Renaissance Graduate Seminar

Tuesday, October 18 at 5.15pm in G-R06-07

Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck)
‘Wheatcroft’s Written World’

History of Material Texts

Wednesday 19th October, 12:30-2, Board Room, Faculty of English

Matthew Symonds (University College London/CELL) will introduce the Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe Project and the new Digital Bookwheel (http://www.bookwheel.org/viewer/)

Early Modern Interdisciplinary Seminar

Wednesday, 19th October, 12-1:15pm
English Faculty, Room GR03

Dr Jonathan Willis (University of Birmingham)
‘Towards a Cultural History of Theology: The Ten Commandments and Popular Belief in Reformation England’

Early Modern British and Irish History Seminar

Wednesday, 19 October, 5.15pm,
Graham Storey Room, Trinity Hall
Kate Peters (Murray Edwards)
‘Friction in the archives: contested record-keeping in the English Revolution’

Early Modern European History Seminar

Thursday, 20 October 2016, 1-2pm in the Green Room, Gonville and Caius College

Attendees are welcome to bring lunch to this brown-bag seminar. Tea and coffee will be served. All welcome.

Daniel Jütte (Harvard / CRASSH EURIAS Junior Fellow)
Defenestration as Ritual Punishment: Windows, Power, and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe

Writing Women in History Reading Group

Tuesday, October 18, Room 142 (Media Centre) of the Raised Faculty Building, Sidgwick Site from 11.00-12.00.

This term our theme is ‘Women and Religious Communities’, where we will be tracing the experiences of nuns and female missionaries across the Early Modern world, ranging from Florence to Moscow and beyond. Towards the end of term we will also be welcoming a graduate speaker from the University of Warwick who will speak to us about a female convent community in Medieval France.
In our first session, on Tuesday 18th October, we will be looking at convent regulation and the issue of enclosure comparatively in 16th-century Italy and Muscovy (Early Modern Russia). We will be reading an article by Silvia Evangelisti entitled “We do not have it, and we do not want it: Women, Power and Convent Reform in Florence”, in conjunction with some contemporary convent rules, focussing predominantly on a source from a nunnery in Moscow (provided in translation). Email writingwomeninhistory@gmail.com to receive texts in advance of the session, and to be added to the mailing list.

 

IN LONDON:

London Shakespeare Centre (KCL)

Still Shakespeare

Nash Lecture Theatre (K2.31)

20/10/2016 (19:00-20:30)

Part of the Arts and Humanities Festival 2016.

Presented by the London Shakespeare Centre as part of Shakespeare400

This event is open to all and free to attend, but booking is required via eventbrite.

Please direct enquiries to ahri@kcl.ac.uk.

Register at https://stillshakespearescreening.eventbrite.co.uk

‘Still Shakespeare’ – animated shorts screening

Still Shakespeare is a slate of five artists’ short animated films including new works by Shaun Clark, Sharon Liu, Kim Noce and Farouq Suleiman and Jonathan Bairstow. The film aredeveloped in partnership with the London Shakespeare Centre at King’s College London, animation company Film Club at Th1ng and animation company Sherbet.

The aim of the project was to create contemporary artworks that take iconic Shakespearean imagery as their starting point and respond in a variety of irreverent and original ways, making Shakespeare current and engaging to wide audiences and adding a contemporary element to the Shakespeare400 worldwide celebrations in 2016. The artist filmmakers were given access to the research and expertise of the London Shakespeare Centre.

The key research feeding into the project was the PhD by Sally Barnden, in the Department of English Language & Literature. Sally’s research on the intersection of Shakespeare’s plays, performance and photography is concerned with the way that certain well-known iconic images have been absorbed into a shared cultural memory.

The films will be screened, followed by a discussion of the work with some of the artists and members of the London Shakespeare Centre.

 

London Renaissance Seminar

The London Renaissance Seminar meets at Birkbeck regularly to discuss the literature, culture and history of the English Renaissance. It is free and welcomes all students, academics and people with an interest in the Renaissance or early modern period.

Buried Things in Early Modern Culture: Poetics, Epistemology and Practice

12 – 5 pm, Saturday 22 October 2016

Room 114, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square

What role did the practice and figuration of burial play in producing knowledge in Renaissance England? Drawing connections between literature, natural philosophy, urban history and material culture, speakers explore the significance, uses and problems of the lost and buried in early modern culture.

Featuring Elizabeth Swann (Cambridge): The Consolation of (natural) philosophy: knowing death in early modern England (1:10-1:50)

 

Courtauld Institute of Art

A Graphic Imperative: The impact of print and printed images upon Michelangelo’s design for the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Wednesday 19 October 2016
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Research Forum Seminar Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN

Free, open to all.

Dr Charles Robertson: Oxford Brookes University

The Sistine Ceiling stands at a cusp of a development in artistic production. While it preceded the moment when printmaking became a fully integrated, and often determining, part of artistic production, through the interaction of Raphael and his followers with Marcantonio Raimondi and other printmakers, the Ceiling was already created when the visual senses of both the artist and his public were already profoundly affected by printmaking and printed illustrated books.  Michelangelo’s earliest work was a painted version of the Temptation of Saint Anthony by Martin Schöngauer, marking only the beginning of an ingrained fascination with prints apparent in his adaptation of printed images by artists ranging from Andrea Mantegna to Albrecht Dürer.  Michelangelo was also particularly drawn to illustrated books. This went well beyond the illustrated vernacular Bibles, that he certainly used, and  provided both specific instances for the Ceilings ichnographic invention together with formal and design solutions. Furthermore it may be suggested that the viability of the stylistic revolution that the Ceiling represented within the broad context of the High Renaissance depended, in part, on an audience which itself avidly consumed a wide range of printed images.

Charles Robertson is Senior Lecturer in History of Art, Department of History, Philosophy and Religion, Oxford Brookes University.  His research interests and publications include studies of Milanese art and architecture, particularly the work of Bramantino, the relationship of painting and architecture in the Renaissance, the impact of printmaking, and Michelangelo.   He is currently completing a study of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement as a highly contingent work.

 

Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy Seminar (IHR)

Wolfson Room NB01, Basement, IHR, North block, Senate House unless otherwise stated

Thursday, 20 October, 17.15

New: Research clinic.  Bring a research problem, big or small, for the seminar to discuss (and solve?)

 

British History in the 17th Century Seminar (IHR)

Pollard Room N301, 3rd floor, IHR, North block, Senate House

Thursday, 20 October, 17:15

DeAnn DeLuna (UCL)
The Monmouth plot of 1675

 

 

Measure for Measure on Trial

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Shakespeare & the Law: Measure for Measure on Trial
Tuesday 15 March 18.00 – 20.00, Inner Temple Hall

Students from The Dickson Poon School of Law and King’s Department of English will perform a Shakespearean trial based on Measure for Measure at Inner Temple. The distinguished arbitrators will be Lord Judge, Lady Justice Arden and Executive Dean Professor David D Caron. The event, which is open to the public as well as King’s staff and students, concludes the Shakespeare & the Law module jointly taught by The Dickson Poon School of Law and the Department of English.

Measure for Measure, one of Shakespeare most performed plays, ends with a trial in which Angelo is the accused. The Judge, Duke Vincentio, is the ruler of Vienna. He has resumed his authority after an absence during which Angelo was in charge and committed the crimes he is accused of. At the end of the trial the Duke pardons Angelo.

This mock trial questions the legality of the Duke’s pardon of Angelo. Here the Prosecutors seek a reversal of the pardon granted Angelo and argue that the law should be strictly applied with Angelo found guilty of blackmail and corruption. The second part of the trial questions the Duke’s legal and moral responsibility for maladministration and for relinquishing his obligations as a ruler. Here the Prosecutors seek that the Court find the Duke guilty of dereliction of duty and that the Court declare void the Duke’s later trial at the end of Measure for Measure.

A scene from Measure to Measure will be also performed during the evening – II.iv. Isabella will be played by Remmie Milner, and Angelo will be played by Mike Evans.

For information contact Hannah Crawforth: hannah.crawforth@kcl.ac.uk

 

Shakespeare in the Context of his Time

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‘What legacy shall I bequeath to thee?’ – Shakespeare in the Context of his Time

 An Interdisciplinary Graduate and Early Career Symposium Call for Papers

 Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen

22nd October 2016

Both universal and a product of his time Shakespeare remains an enigmatic writer. The celebration of the 400th anniversary of his death demonstrates his continued impact on scholarly thought and popular culture. Investigating Shakespeare among his contemporaries in a period of transformations will help to understand his enduring popularity. The symposium ‘Shakespeare in the Context of his Time’ invites proposals which consider the cultural transfer and translation of Shakespearean ideas on his time, but also the influence of the cultural context of the intellectual and cultural world of the sixteenth century on Shakespeare himself. This includes the intellectual exchange between Shakespeare and his contemporaries examined through all aspects of cultural, literary and theatrical influence. Papers are invited from early career scholars and graduate students in all disciplines which touch on Shakespeare’s work. ‘Shakespeare in the Context of his Time’ is organised by the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

Please email 250-word abstracts by Sunday the 15th of May to Alison Passe and Julia Kotzur at shakespeareincontext@gmail.com. Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length. Please include a brief biography (no more than 150 words). Possible topics could include:

– Shakespeare and Europe

– Contemporaneous intellectual sources of Shakespeare’s ideas

– The transfer of ideas between playwrights

– Shakespearean linguistics

– English History Plays

– Influences across multiple genres

– Performance history including Shakespearean theatre and use of his stage

Events This Week

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Tuesday 1 March

Renaissance Graduate Seminar, GR06/7, 5.15pm

Hester Lees-Jeffries (Cambridge)

Shakespeare’s Tailors

Wednesday 2 March

CRASSH (Re)Constructing the Material World, 12.30pm AR SG1

Religion

Dr Joanne Sear (History,Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge)
Professor Deborah Howard (Architecture & History of Art, University of Cambridge)

Thursday 3 March

Early Modern European History seminar, 1pm, Gonville and Caius Green Room

Irene Cooper (Cambridge)

‘Cose di casa’: The Materiality of Devotion in the Sixteenth-Century Neapolitan Home

 
Please email ab2126 with any events for advertisement.

Conference on Shakespeare’s Musical Brain

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Shakespeare’s Musical Brain
Great Hall, King’s Building, Strand, 16th April 2016, 10am-6pm

Student rate: £35                                                                                                            Full price: £95

Unsurprisingly, reflecting the immense influence and inspiration that Shakespeare’s work has brought to all the various art-forms over the centuries, 2016’s commemorative activities will include many operas, ballets, orchestral and choral works, chamber music recitals and exhibitions, that draw upon his plays and poetry. This conference, however, aims to turn the subject through 180° so as to explore the vital importance of music to Shakespeare himself and the role it played in his and his company’s creative processes as well as in the experience of audiences then and now.

The conference will consider the relationship between words and music in aesthetic and scientific terms. Expert speakers in the relevant fields of literature, music and cultural history will be joined by peers concerned with the sciences. The conference will look at how music effects the relationship between actor and audience then as now. Bill Barclay, Director of Music at the Globe Theatre, will explore the Music of the Spheres, both as this relates to Shakespeare and its meaning from ancient times through to modern physics. Prof Michael Trimble, behavioural neurologist, will examine the similarities and differences in the conception and reception of words and music, understanding their distinct and mutual importance better through the medium of Shakespeare himself. Actors and musicians will take a leading part, illustrating and responding creatively to the lectures, joining in discussion and ending the event with a performance of music and readings that reflect the themes of the day.

The Musical Brain is a registered charity founded in 2010. Its objectives are to encourage, foster, assist and promote the advancement of public understanding of the effects of music and other art forms upon the human mind, brain and body, including the scientific, historical and cultural context of music and its potential therapeutic value.

Register here. Please direct enquiries to shakespeare@kcl.ac.uk.

Graduate Lecture Series

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Friday 12th February, 1-2pm, GR06/07                                                              Discovering Richard III in Early Modern Legal Writing                                                    Jitka Štollová

The hasty burial of Richard III in Leicester in 1485 gave rise to one of the most fascinating literary-historical afterlives in English history. In the next two centuries, historians, poets, and playwrights examined and re-examined this controversial figure. Shakespeare’s mesmerising king-villain ultimately became the most iconic and influential portrayal: partly thanks to the intrinsic qualities of his play, partly to the rising popularity of Shakespeare, especially from the eighteenth century onwards. As a consequence, Shakespeare’s Richard III became our Richard III. Yet the seventeenth century has much more to say on this character.

My talk will focus on the representation of Richard III in seventeenth-century legal writing. This century witnessed vivid debates about the limits of royal and parliamentary powers under the Stuart kings, culminating in the conflict of both parties in the Civil Wars. The figure of Richard III became a field of theoretical study about the definition of tyranny and usurpation. But rather than simply confirming these labels, seventeenth-century legal scholarship found new perspectives for assessing this monarch and his rule. My talk will trace the influence of this revision in seventeenth-century authors, and will locate the position of Shakespeare’s Richard III in these debates.

This lecture is particularly relevant for the following papers: Part I, Paper 4 (English Literature and its Contexts, 1500-1700); Part I, Paper 5 (Shakespeare); Part II, Paper 7 (Early Modern Drama 1588-1642).

Welcome, Suparna Roychoudhury!

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In this post, new CRASSH Conversions Fellow Suparna Roychoudhury writes about her project ‘Phantasmatic Shakespeare: Imagination in the Age of Early Modern Science’:

My book project, “Phantasmatic Shakespeare: Imagination in the Age of Early Modern Science,” investigates Shakespeare’s representation of mental images. Shakespeare was clearly familiar with the principles of faculty psychology handed down to the Renaissance from antiquity, according to which “imagination” is the part of the soul responsible for creating “phantasms” or mental images. The project looks at the ways in which Shakespeare’s portrayal of imagination relates to the scientific revolution—to developments in anatomy, medicine, natural philosophy, and natural history. It examines Shakespearean texts alongside the work of such figures as Andreas Vesalius, Francis Bacon, and Robert Burton. Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, speak to the difficulty of determining imagination’s anatomical nature; similarly, Macbeth is a comment on the ever-increasing pathologization of imagination. Overall, I am interested in the connections between Shakespeare’s imagination and the proto-scientific thinking of his time, and how his work translates epistemic problems into aesthetic representations. While in Cambridge, I will be exploring the relation between imagination and early modern mathematics, and how this relation figures in Shakespeare’s plays.

Suparna Roychoudhury, Mount Holyoke College, United States of America.

More information on Suparna’s work is here, and you can contact her here: sr765@cam.ac.uk.

 

Johnson and Shakespeare

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Johnson and Shakespeare                                                                                                  7–9 August 2015                                                                                                     Pembroke College Oxford

A Conference to Mark the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of Samuel Johnson’s The Plays of William Shakespeare

The publication of Samuel Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare on 10 October 1765 was an important event in his own life and in the history of the editing of Shakespeare. This conference, held at Johnson’s college, Pembroke College, Oxford, will invite perspectives from Shakespearians and Johnsonians, and explore the interplay of sameness and difference, restoration and innovation, in Johnson’s work. It will reassess Johnson’s achievement as a critic and textual editor by revisiting established contexts and developing new ones.

The plenary speakers will be:

Jenny Davidson (Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University)  Joseph Roach (Sterling Professor of Theater at Yale University)                               Henry Woudhuysen (Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare)

Lectures and panels will be supported by exhibitions in the Bodleian (including cancelled leave from Johnson’s edition) and Pembroke College (including Johnson’s copy of Warburton’s edition of Shakespeare on loan from Aberystwyth), an informal reading performance of Johnson’s play Irene, and a concert of eighteenth-century music.

For more information, and to book places please visit https://johnsonandshakespeare2015.wordpress.com