Gogan Keynote kicks off Spring Season for Ellis Speakers Series

Undergraduate English Majors, Submit Papers to the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Colloquium 2015!

The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Consortium announces its sixth annual colloquium, an academic conference for undergraduates from participating Michigan colleges and universities. The colloquium will be held on April 11, 2015.

Hosted by Kalamazoo College; Kalamazoo, MI

Contact: Amy L. Smith

Department of English

asmith@kzoo.edu

Proposals due January 30th. Undergraduate students at participating institutions are invited to submit proposals for individual papers and panels on any topic in medieval and Renaissance studies. The Consortium encourages submissions from across the academy.

Generally, a student submits an abstract based on a major research paper he or she is writing or has written for a college course. Individual abstracts should be limited to 200 words.

The student then revises the paper for presentation at the conference. The version of the paper presented should be no more than 15 minutes long (usually about 7-8 double-spaced manuscript pages) and should present original scholarship.

Proposals for panels should consist of two to three papers; panel proposals should contain the names of panel’s organizer, names of the presenters and individual abstracts for each paper.

  Proposals will be reviewed by a committee from the participating colleges, and students whose proposals are accepted will present their work at the conference in the spring.

Nagle essay on Sade published

Chris Nagle's most recent essay, co-authored with Indiana University colleague Courtney Wennerstrom, is the first chapter in a new collection entitled Sade's Sensibilities. Edited by Kate Parker and Norbert Sclippa, the book is part of Bucknell University Press's Aperçus: Histories Texts Cultures series, and its publication coincides with the bicentenary of Sade's death.

Sade’s Sensibilities tells a new story of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in European literature. Blending ideas about subjectivity, identity and natural philosophy with politics and pornography, D.A.F. de Sade has fascinated writers and readers for two hundred years, and his materialist account of the human condition has been widely influential in post-structuralism, nihilism, and feminism. This new collection of essays considers Sade’s Enlightenment legacy, both within and beyond the narratives of radicalism and aberration that have historically marked the study of his oeuvre. From different points of view, these essays argue that Sade engaged with and influenced traditional Enlightenment paradigms—particularly those related to sensibility, subjectivity, and philosophy—as much as he resisted them. They thus recover a Sade more relevant, even foundational to our twenty-first century understanding of modernity, selfhood, and community. In Sade’s Sensibilities Sade is no longer a solitary, peripheral radical, but an Enlightenment philosopher in his own right.

2015 Green Rose Prize

Comparative Drama Essay Wins Award

Comparative Drama is proud to congratulate Marvin Carlson for winning the Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize at the 2014 American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference. His winning essay was "The Arab Aristophanes" which was published in Comparative Drama, volume 47.2, our summer 2013 issue. The essay was edited by Eve Salisbury.

Traub Visit a Big Success

Dr. Adrienne Redding provides the introduction

Comparative Drama Distinguished Lecturer Valerie Traub addresses a standing-room-only crowd at the University Center for the Humanities

Dr. Traub and Dr. Susan Freeman (GWS) in discussion

http://westernherald.com/arts-and-entertainment/valerie-traub-talks-sex-at-western-michigan-university/

Traub to deliver Comparative Drama Distinguished Lecture, Thurs., 11/13 @ 7:00pm (Center for Humanities)

VALERIE TRAUB (University of Michigan)

Comparative Drama Distinguished Lecture: “TALKING SEX”

Thursday, 11/13 @ 7:00pm / Center for the Humanities (2500 Knauss)




Professor Traub is this year’s Comparative Drama Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, an invitation issued each year to an internationally renowned scholar whose work engages with dramatic literature and culture. She is the Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, and currently serving as the Interim Director of the Department of Women’s Studies. Prof. Traub is the author of a body of influential work in literary and cultural studies, including The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which won the Best Book of 2002 award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (Routledge, 1992; reissued as part of the Routledge Revivals series in 2014), and is co-editor of Gay Shame (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and twice received the MLA Crompton-Noll Award for Best Essay of the Year. Her most recent book, Making Sexual Knowledge: Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2015. She is currently at work on another project on discourses of gender, sexuality, race, and class in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century anatomical and cartographic illustrations, entitled Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern West: A Prehistory of Normality. She is the recipient of the University of Michigan’s John D’Arms Award for graduate mentoring and the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award.

Traub will be giving a public talk on Thursday night entitled “Talking Sex.” This lecture will interrogate questions such as: How do early modern words materialize sexual acts? How effective are they in doing so? And what do their linguistic strategies tell us about what sex is, or was thought to be, in the early modern period? Scrutinizing the conceptual work of erotic puns and double entendres, this presentation puts early modern “sex talk” under pressure. By treating the concept of “bawdy language” as an object of inquiry, Traub will analyze how sex is operationalized through the linguistic resources that more often than not fail to indexically denote specific sex acts. Her presentation, in short, aims to reveal the epistemology, competencies, and pedagogies involved in “talking sex,” both in the early modern period and in contemporary scholarship. The talk, which draws on material from her forthcoming book, will be followed by a question and answer session with the audience, and a light reception in the WMU Center for the Humanities.

Fellowship Opportunities at the John Carter Brown Library, 2015-16

The John Carter Brown Library (JCB), an independently funded institution for advanced research in the history and culture of the Americas on the campus of Brown University, will award approximately forty residential fellowships for the year July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. The Library contains one of the world’s premier collections of primary materials related to the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World, from Greenland to Patagonia, to 1825, including books, maps, newspapers, and other printed objects. JCB Fellowships are open to scholars working on all aspects of the Americas in the early modern period, broadly conceived.

Short-term Fellowships are for two to four months with a monthly stipend of $2,100. Open to U.S. and foreign citizens who are engaged in pre- or post-doctoral, or independent, research. Graduate students must have passed their preliminary or general examinations at the time of application.

Long-Term Fellowships are for five to ten months with a monthly stipend of $4,200. These include NEH Fellowships, for which an applicant must be a U.S. citizen or have lived in the U.S. for the three years preceding the application deadline. For other long-term fellowships, all nationalities are eligible. Graduate students may not hold JCB Long-Term Fellowships. PhD candidates are welcome to apply for long-term fellowships if all degree requirements, including the successful defense of their dissertation, have been met by the December 1 deadline.

THEMATIC AND CLUSTER FELLOWSHIPS

Alongside our regular fellowship program, this year we will be encouraging applications in three special areas, as part of a set of pilot initiatives the Library is sponsoring. These emphases enhance our regular fellowship program. That is, given equally strong applications, the fellowship committee may give preference to applications in one of the following areas:

Environmental Studies: The JCB is keen to welcome applications whose projects have thematic resonance with the study of the environment and its history, lato sensu. In coming years, as part of a multi-year project on “The Four Elements in the History of the Americas,” the Library will explore the cultural significance of earth, air, fire, and water to the diverse populations of the Americas, from the continents’ earliest indigenous inhabitants to the last waves of European scientific explorers at the end of the colonial period. This project will begin in 2014-15 with an exhibit and related programming on “Subterranean Worlds” and will continue in 2015-16 with a focus on air and climate.

Indigenous Studies: This 2-4 month fellowship is designed for a junior or senior scholar working on the history and/or anthropology of native peoples of the Americas who could benefit from an extended stay and privileged access to the JCB’s collection in this field. Tribal historians with non-traditional academic backgrounds are also eligible to apply. The inaugural John M. Monteiro Memorial Fellow in Indigenous Studies may also help to develop symposia and/or lectures and will be able to access additional funds to bring in speakers and activities to the Library.

Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellows (ICFs): As part of an effort to expand the disciplinary scope of research at the Library, and to emphasize the role of the JCB as a laboratory for new research methods, the fellowship committee encourages applications from small interdisciplinary groups of between 2-4 scholars who would be in simultaneous residence for periods of up to one month to work in collaboration on a particular theme, object, or scholarly project. Each scholar would receive a one-month fellowship and priority access to stay at the Fiering House Fellows’ residence. ICF applications are collective applications – one per cluster – and will be due to the Library on January 15, 2015.

Recipients of all fellowships must relocate to Providence and be in continuous residence at the JCB for the full term of the award. Rooms are available for rent at Fiering House, the JCB Fellows’ residence, a beautifully restored 1869 house just four blocks from the Library.

The deadline for short- and long-term fellowships is December 1, 2014, including the special environmental and indigenous fellowships. Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship applications are due on January 15, 2015.

For more information and application instructions: www.jcbl.org or jcb-fellowships@brown.edu

Acclaimed Frankenstein Production Exclusively at Kzoo10, 10/27 & 10/29

Frankenstein
by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley

National Theatre Live’s thrilling broadcast of Frankenstein returns to cinemas for a limited time, due to unprecedented audience demand.

Directed by Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony), Frankenstein features Benedict Cumberbatch (12 Years A Slave, Star Trek: Into Darkness) and Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting, Mansfield Park) alternating roles as Victor Frankenstein and his creation.

The production was a sell-out hit at the National Theatre in 2011, and the broadcast has since become an international sensation, experienced by almost half a million people in cinemas around the world.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered Creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.

Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.

For more info on tickets: http://www.goodrichqualitytheaters.com/movies/

More info on the original production: http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/16546-frankenstein

Rare Book School Fellowship

Rare Book School (RBS) at the University of Virginia welcomes applications from early Americanists to the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography.  The aim of this Mellon Foundation-funded fellowship program is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities by introducing doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty to specialized skills, methods, and professional networks for conducting advanced research with material texts. RBS selected forty Mellon Fellows in 2013 and 2014, and will admit an additional twenty fellows to the program in the spring of 2015.

Fellows will receive funding for RBS course attendance, as well as generous stipends, and support for research-related travel to special collections, over the course of three years. Weeklong intensive courses offered at RBS include: "The History of the Book in America, c.1700-1830," taught by James N. Green of the Library Company of Philadelphia; "The History of European & American Papermaking," co-taught by 2009 MacArthur Fellow Timothy Barrett of the University of Iowa, and John Bidwell of the Morgan Library & Museum; and “Using Publishers’ Archives for the Study of the American Book,” taught by Michael Winship of the University of Texas at Austin.

The deadline for application to the program is MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2014. Applicants must be doctoral candidates (post-qualifying exams or other requirements), postdoctoral fellows, or junior (untenured) faculty in the humanities at a U.S. institution at time of application. For more details, please visit:
http://www.rarebookschool.org/fellowships/mellon

Donna A. C. Sy
Mellon Fellowship Program Director
Rare Book School
at the University of Virginia
rbs-mellon@virginia.edu
(434) 243-4296

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RARE BOOK SCHOOL RECEIVES MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT TO SUPPORT FELLOWSHIPS IN CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fellowship program seeks to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities

Charlottesville, VA, October 1, 2014 – Rare Book School (RBS) at the University of Virginia has been awarded a $757,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to extend and augment its three-year fellowship program, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography, established in 2012 through funding from the Foundation. The aim of the program is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities. Forty fellows currently participate in the program; RBS will name an additional twenty fellows in the spring of 2015.

The Mellon Fellowships at Rare Book School enable a select group of doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty in the humanities to receive advanced, intensive training in the analysis of textual artifacts. Led by a distinguished faculty drawn from the bibliographical community and professionals in allied fields, fellows will attend annual research-oriented seminars at Rare Book School and at major special collections libraries nationwide. Fellows will also receive stipends to support research-related travel to special collections, and additional funds to host academic symposia at their home institutions.

“Rare Book School's Mellon Fellows work on a remarkable variety of materials, including ancient graffiti buried at Herculaneum, medieval Italian song manuscripts, Japanese textbooks from the Age of Discovery, and ‘viral’ news clips from 19th-century America. Over the past two years, they have shared fresh perspectives with their colleagues in the program, and with the greater bibliographical and academic communities,” said RBS Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. “We are profoundly grateful for all that the Foundation's support has made possible through this program, and we trust that the fellows’ achievements and collaborations will continue to enrich humanities scholarship.”

The deadline for application to join the program’s third cohort of fellows is December 1, 2014. More information about the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography is available at:
http://www.rarebookschool.org/fellowships/mellon

About Rare Book School (RBS)
Rare Book School provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and levels to study the history of written, printed, and born-digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the fields of bibliography, librarianship, book history, manuscript studies, and the digital humanities. Founded in 1983, RBS moved to its present home at the University of Virginia in 1992. RBS is a not-for-profit educational organization affiliated with the University of Virginia. More information about RBS is available on its website: http://www.rarebookschool.org

For more information, contact:
Jeremy Dibbell, Director of Communications & Outreach
Rare Book School
jeremy.dibbell@virginia.edu
(434) 243-7077