Conference hashtag: #RenSA18
Proposals due June 7, 2017.
The Program Committee for the 64th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America invites submissions for individual papers or sessions on any aspect of Renaissance studies (1300–1700). At our conference we aim to foster an environment of inclusion, collaboration, and academic freedom. Because the RSA is a multidisciplinary society we especially welcome submissions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, as well as those that spotlight scholarship that is discipline specific.
Sessions sponsored by our Associate Organizations and Discipline Representatives will make up part of the program. The rest will consist of sessions and individual papers proposed by RSA members and other scholars and selected by our Program Committee. You do not need to be an RSA member to submit a proposal or be included in a proposal, but if your session is accepted you must become a member for the year 2018.
The RSA Annual Meeting in New Orleans will be a large conference with more than forty sessions meeting concurrently. Please note that the Program Committee will not be able to accept every submission. Therefore, proposing a session or a paper indicates your firm commitment to attend. To take a slot and then later withdraw is discourteous to colleagues who would have liked to present a paper.
Discipline Representatives are authorized to submit up to five sessions, which may be linked or not. Associate Organizations are allotted up to three sessions (linked or not). Any additional sessions proposed by Discipline Representatives or Associate Organizations will be vetted by the Program Committee. Other Organizers may also propose up to three sessions (linked or not). However, please note that sessions organized in honor or in memory of an individual scholar are limited to no more than two.
Proposals for roundtables are also welcome but these should be stand-alone sessions in terms of their content. Roundtables that involve recapping the content of other sessions are not likely to be accepted, because they take up valuable space in the program that could be used to present other research.
The Program Committee welcomes sessions that present the scholarship of members at various stages of their careers. Each session must include at least one speaker who has received the PhD or other terminal degree. Graduate student speakers must be in candidacy or the equivalent for their program; that is, they must be advanced students who have completed coursework, examinations, and much of their dissertation research, and expect to defend their dissertations in 2018 or 2019. They must speak on topics directly related to their dissertation research, rather than presenting term papers.
In order to avoid scheduling conflicts, participants may not give more than one paper, be a discussant in more than one roundtable, or be a respondent in more than one session. A participant may chair up to two sessions.
The submissions website will open in mid-May, and the deadline for submissions will be Wednesday, 7 June 2017, at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). Travel Grant applications for those coming from outside North America are also due on June 7. Acceptance decisions will be communicated to submitters in mid-August. For more information regarding submissions, see our Submission Guidelines page.