Announce

Edited volume.

At RSA 2019 we presented a successful pair of panels on the networks of non-elite women in early modern societies. We are now developing an edited collection on this topic with a broad scope in space (global) and time (ca. 1400-1750). We are interested in the wide variety of networks which non-elite women built and used, especially but not only those with other women. Our aim is to elaborate understandings of the lives of working, poor, and marginalized women in early modern societies and to compare cross-culturally. Themes might include: relationships between peers or across social categories, such as mistress and servant; meanings of friendship among plebeian women; the role of gender in female same-sex relationships; emotions, especially empathy and compassion; instrumentality and collaboration; and coping strategies, including the illegal. Representations drawn from archival sources, visual imagery, and literary texts are welcome.

If you are interested in contributing, please send a title, 150-word abstract, and one-page CV to Marlee Couling at marleej@yorku.ca by October 31st, 2019.

Londres (5-6 mars 2019), avant le 30 novembre 2019

Venue: Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Closing date for submissions: 30 November 2019

This two-day conference aims to recover and put across the voices of women in France, Italy and across Europe who defied the existing order and the rules of society. It intends to recover the forgotten voices and experiences of these women, who might not have had a prominent role in their world during their lifetimes, but, nevertheless, contributed to shape our present.

For centuries, concepts such as infirmitas, imbecillitas and levitas were considered key characteristics of women. Therefore, the construction of the identities of both women and men was framed by the dichotomy between the private and the public sphere, and by the opposition between obedience, a woman’s virtue, and command, the prerogative of men.

Beyond the conceptualisation and idealisation of the female sex, however, a close investigation of everyday realities questions this long-standing, stereotyped notion of women, uncovering a different scenario, including women who did not passively accept their status. In a static, hierarchical, male-dominated society, some of these women reacted against the constraints imposed upon them and challenged their family, their society, their worlds. Theirs were small, but powerful acts of resistance against and disruption of the status quo.

Confirmed keynote speakers include: Professor Helena Sanson (University of Cambridge) and Professor Alberto Mario Banti (University of Pisa).

Proposals: Proposals for 20-minute papers should be submitted to Dr Sara Delmedico (sd683@cam.ac.uk) by 30 November 2019, and should contain the following information: name, email, title of the paper and abstract (max 300 words) and a short bio.

Conference fee: The attendance fee (£35) will cover the costs for lunch and other refreshments.

Organisers: Dr Katia Pizzi (University of London) and Dr Sara Delmedico (University of Cambridge).

The organisers are grateful to the Cassal Trust, University of London, and Il Circolo for their sponsorship of this event.

The 27th Annual Conference of the Society for Reformation Studies

31 March–2 April 2020

Westminster College, Cambridge

Themes of migration and exile are written deep into the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Pentateuch tells the story of the migration of the Patriarchs to the Promised Land of Canaan, of the exodus and wilderness wanderings. The Babylonian Exile of the sixth century BC and the promise of return shapes the later literature of the Old Testament, while the New Testament describes Christians as ‘strangers and pilgrims’ here on earth. 2020 marks 400 years since the Pilgrim Fathers set sail on The Mayflower, heading to the New World in search of religious liberty. The Puritan settlers who travelled westwards in the Great Migration of the early and middle decades of the seventeenth century did so in search of religious liberty which would free them to establish ideal Christian community.

Inspired by this anniversary, this conference will explore themes of migration and exile across the Reformation. Papers might consider the people or communities that moved in response to religious change, persecution or conflict, exploring the experience of displacement and exile, and the ways in which that experience shaped belief, practice and identity. Equally, they might explore the theme more conceptually. Alex Walsham has discussed religious change across the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries in terms of ‘migrations of the holy’. Papers might, therefore, discuss how beliefs and practices migrated from one theological framework to another, or the ways in which texts and ideas moved across geographical, chronological or confessional boundaries. Consideration might be given to how biblical narratives and themes of migration and exile were treated in the scholarship, commentary, preaching and devotion of the various churches of the Reformation.

Leading us in our consideration of these themes will be: Liesbeth Corens (Queen Mary University London), Crawford Gribben (Queen's University Belfast), Polly Ha (University of East Anglia) and Graeme Murdock (Trinity College Dublin). As always, papers which reflect the current work of participants, regardless of their relevance to the theme, are welcome. The conference is always particularly keen to hear communications from postgraduate and early career scholars.

Proposed paper titles together with an abstract (100–150 words) should be submitted by 10 January 2020 to Professor Charlotte Methuen (charlotte.methuen@glasgow.ac.uk).

Registrations must be received by 10 February 2020, either by the booking form (available from Charlotte Methuen or via reformationstudies.org) or via Eventbrite (https://srs2020.eventbrite.com).

A limited number of bursaries will be available for postgraduate students or early career scholars. For further information, contact Professor Charlotte Methuen (charlotte.methuen@glasgow.ac.uk).

"Engaging the World: The Jesuits and Their Presence in Global History"

Lisbon, Portugal | 17–19 June 2020

Co-organized by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College and Brotéria in Lisbon, in partnership with the Catholic University Portugal.

Scattered around the globe for nearly five centuries of evangelization, Jesuit missionaries adopted different strategies to communicate with local communities. They were pivotal cultural mediators, serving as cartographers, astronomers, ethnographers, and anthropologists. They were also artists who adapted to local styles, translators and grammarians of native languages, and correspondents who conveyed images of societies previously unknown to European audiences. They fostered commerce and accompanied scientific voyages. They published journals, treatises, biographies, travel logs, and maps, and they participated in worldwide networks circulating literature and art. This symposium is hosted in Portugal, from which thousands of Jesuits departed to engage with people and environments on a global scale. This scholarly event will investigate how such a global engagement developed over time, how it varied from place to place, and how it was similar in different settings.

Proposals are welcomed from across thematic, chronological, and disciplinary boundaries that address methods or instruments the Jesuits used to engage the world and its natural or societal environs. Presentations might address such questions as these:

What strategies did Jesuits employ when, as articulated by their Constitutions, “dispersed throughout Christ’s vineyard to labor”?

How did the internal structure of the Society of Jesus (and the personalities of the Jesuits themselves) facilitate or hinder missionary labors?

How were those labors impacted by external forces, either local or global, cultural or political? For example, how did the Jesuits’ relations with different European powers spark, facilitate, limit, or curtail evangelization efforts within competing global empires?

How did Jesuit missionaries and their superiors determine where to labor (“consideration should also be given to where greater fruit is likely to be reaped”) and whom to evangelize (“the spiritual aid which is given to important and public persons ought to be regarded as more important, since it is a more universal good”)? What are revealing examples of successful determinations and unsuccessful ones?

What were the benefits, hindrances, and consequences of Jesuit accommodation to local customs and virtues? How can Jesuit accommodation be seen in art, theological treatises, scientific work, and pedagogical approaches?

How can we recapture the motives of these Jesuit missionaries, and how those motivations changed from one location to another or over time? And what might these motivations reveal about the Society of Jesus and its many places in the world?

How can indigenous people be seen in the books, maps, correspondence, and other materiality produced by Jesuits? And in what ways do those sources obscure those communities? What new sources should be consulted to better understand the indigenous people’s experiences with Jesuit evangelization?

Is there (or has there been at any point) evidence of a distinctively Portuguese trait to the roots of the Jesuits’ worldwide mission?

The 2020 Symposium will be the sixth annual scholarly conference organized by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. The Institute is pleased to collaborate with Brotéria, the new cultural center of the Jesuits in Lisbon, in organizing this event on the Jesuits’ global engagements. Previous symposia have taken place in Boston (in collaboration with Boston College), Nairobi (with the Jesuit Historical Institute of Africa), and Seville (with the Universidad Loyola Andalucía).

Proposals and a narrative CV (together no more than 500 words) are due before the end of Monday, October 28, 2019. Proposals for individual papers or panels are accepted. Contact the Institute with questions (iajs@bc.edu). Selected papers may be peer-reviewed and published in open access following the event.

More details are available at The Portal to Jesuit Studies: https://jesuitportal.bc.edu/news/june-2019-call-for-papers-for-the-2020-international-symposium-on-jesuit-studies-engaging-the-world/

University of Padova 29–30 June 2020

Traditionally attributed to King Solomon and defined by Rabbi Akiva as the “Holy of Holies” among the sacred scriptures (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5), the Song of Songs is one of the most fascinating and controversial Biblical books. Fervently read and carefully explained, celebrated as a key to the supreme mystery of the union between God and men, the Song of Songs, the primary source for the Christian pervasive metaphor of the sacred marriage and eros, was a text crucial not only to the Middle Ages, but also to the Renaissance period.

This ambivalent book, which combined a sensual celebration of love with a well-established tradition of allegorical interpretation, held a particular appeal for poets. While its scriptural nature and exegetical reading allowed the text to function as a source of symbolically and allegorically charged images, the Song of Solomon stood up as one of the few Christian alternatives to classical love poetry, and was therefore destined to play a significant role in the shaping of European poetry from its very beginning.

Part of an ongoing project conducted by Camilla Caporicci at the University of Padova, funded through the MSCA (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) Seal of Excellence@UNIPD Initiative, this conference aims at exploring the complex and multifaceted processes through

which the Song of Songs entered, influenced and interacted with late medieval and Renaissance European poetry (13th–17th centuries). We welcome 20-minute paper proposals on (but not limited to) the following topics:

verse translations and paraphrases of the Song of Songs

the employment of the Song of Songs in the tradition of mystic writings

the use of the Song of Songs in religious poetry

the role of the Song of Songs in the development of European lyric poetry, particularly the sonnet tradition, with special attention to the ambivalent relationship the text establishes with courtly and Petrarchan codes

the influence exercised by the Song of Songs on pastoral poetry

the persistence and evolution of specific Song-related topoi (e.g. the black but beautiful beloved; the woman as flower, fountain and garden enclosed; the syntactic topos of the descending description...)

the gender-related dynamics characterizing the poetic appropriation of the Song of Songs by female poets, or in homo-erotic texts

the philosophical and religious implications of the poetic use of the Song of Songs, examined in relation to coeval paradigms of thought

the politico-religious poetic employment of the text, with particular reference to the Catholic-Protestant debate

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and biographies of no more than 150 words to camilla.caporicci@unipd.it and alessandra.petrina@unipd.it by 31 January 2020.