Hybrid Symposium: New Directions in the Materiality of Letter-Writing: From Antiquity to the Present Day

A hybrid symposium at University College Dublin, Ireland

29 and 30 May 2024
Organisers: Dr Helen Newsome-Chandler and Professor Danielle Clarke

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Dr Alison Wiggins, University of Glasgow

DRAFT PROGRAMME (2/4/24) All times are Irish Standard Time (GMT +1)

WEDNESDAY 29th MAY 2024

12-12.45pm LUNCH AND REGISTRATION

12.45-1pm – Welcome

1-2pm Opening Keynote: ‘What is a digitised letter?’ Dr Alison Wiggins, University of Glasgow

2-3pm: Panel 1: Epistolary Materiality: Transmission and Enclosures

‘Hiding the Materiality of Letters: The Carriage and Concealment of Secret Correspondence in Sixteenth-Century France’, Penny Roberts, University of Warwick (Online)

‘Katharine Basset: Letter-Writing and Gift-Giving’, Valerie Schutte, Independent (Online)

3-3.30pm COFFEE BREAK

3.30-5pm Panel 2: Gender and the Materiality of Letter-Writing

‘“ready folded vp” Locking the Queen’s Letters in the Royal Secretariat, 1581-90’, Clodagh Murphy, Leiden University

‘Attending and Reading Deliberate and Accidental Materiality in the Boyle Women’s Letters’, Ann-Maria Walsh, University College Dublin

‘A Gendered Material Feature? The Spiral Lock in Early Modern Scottish Women’s Letters’, Jade Scott, Independent

5-6pm – DRINKS RECEPTION

End of Day 1

THURSDAY 30^th MAY 2024

9.30-10am WELCOME COFFEE

10-11.30am Panel 3: Social Variation and Epistolary Materiality

‘Social Variation in Letterlocking Practices in 17^th-century England’, Samuli Kaislaniemi, University of Eastern Finland (Online)

‘Salvage, Ingenuity and Right: The Materiality of English and Welsh Pauper Letter Writing 1830 to 1900s’, Steve King, Nottingham Trent University, Natalie Carter, Surrey Library Service, and Paul Carter, The National Archives

‘Navigating the Materiality of Embossed Letters in the British blind Community, 1840-1890′, Tilly Guthrie, University of Sheffield

11.30am-12pm – COFFEE BREAK

12-1pm Roundtable – The Unique Materiality of Letters in the Prize Papers
Marina Casagrande (Conservator), Maria Cardamone (Photographer), and Lucas Haasis (Historian), University of Oldenburg and The National Archives

1-2pm LUNCH

2-3.30pm Panel 6: Preserving and Editing Epistolary Materiality

‘Materiality and Accidental Preservation of the Correspondence in Thomas Plume’s Manuscript Collection’, Helen Kemp, Thomas Plume’s Library and The University of Essex

‘The Materiality of Early Modern Business Letters’, Siobhan Talbott, Keele University

‘A Bit One-Sided: Piecing Together a Story from Letters Received’, Elaine Treharne, Stanford University (Online)

3.30-4pm COFFEE BREAK

4-5pm Practical Workshop – Unlocking the Materiality of Early Tudor Queens’ Correspondence
Helen Newsome-Chandler, University College Dublin

5-5.15pm – Closing Remarks

Funded PhD Studentship on the Macmorris project – Mapping actors and communities: A model of research in Renaissance Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries

The MACMORRIS Project seeks to map the full range of cultural activity in Ireland, across languages and ethnic groups, from roughly 1541 to 1691. It is a 4-year digital-humanities project funded by the Irish Research Council, and based in Maynooth University, Ireland.

The Project is currently seeking to recruit a well-qualified applicant interested in undertaking a research degree at PhD level. The successful candidate will have at least a 2.1 degree at BA and MA level, with a strong scholarly grounding in Renaissance literature and early modern Ireland.

The ideal candidate will have with a background in one or more of the following disciplines: Early Modern English, History, Gaeilge, Modern Languages, Classics, Comparative Literature, Post-/Colonial Studies, Women’s Writing, Archaeology, Environmental Humanities, Library Science, and Information Management.

See Maynooth University website here for details on the funding, possible topics, supervision, deadline etc..

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Exhibition: Readers & Reputations: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700

The exhibition “Readers & Reputations: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700” will be held in the foyer of the Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway. The exhibition runs from 16th January to 2nd April 2020.

This exhibition showcases the work of RECIRC and is funded by the Irish Research Council. RECIRC is a 5 year project that has produced a large-scale, quantitative analysis of the reception and circulation of women’s writing from 1550 to 1700, and is funded by the European Research Council. For more on the project, see the RECIRC website, follow the project on Twitter at @RECIRC_ or contact the project’s Principal Investigator Prof Marie-Louise Coolahan.

Writing Lives 1500-1700 – conference, UCD 6-8th September 2018

#writinglivesUCD

Thursday 6^th September 2018, Humanities Institute, UCD

9-9.30               Registration and coffee

9.30-11             Plenary I: Prof Andrew Hadfield (Sussex), Reading The Life Between the Lines: Nashe, Spenser and Others

11-11.30            Coffee

11.30-12.30                   Panel 1: The Religious Self

Richard Kirwan (UL) “Trouble Every Day: Experiences of Religious Exile in the Writings of Jacob Reihing”

John McCafferty (UCD)  ‘”O Felix Columba Caeli/ O Happy Dove of Heaven”: a manuscript life shredded by early modern print’

12.30-1.30         Lunch

1.30—2.30        Panel 2: Unmooring life-writing: method, memory, and genre

Chair: Prof Kate Chedgzoy (Newcastle)

Ramona Wray (QUB), “Reading Life-Writing in the Cary/Tanfield Record”

Kate Hodgkin (U of East London), “Memory, melancholy and the languages of loss in 17^th century life writing”

2.30-3               Break

3-4.15               Panel 3: – Life writing and religion

Ann-Maria Walsh (UCD) “Mary (née Boyle) Rich, Countess of Warwick (1624-1678): Writing and Experimenting – A Spiritual Life”

Mark Empey (NUIG) “Life writer and Life writing: the parallel worlds of Sir James Ware”

5pm                      Wine reception – Common Room, Newman Building, UCD

Friday 7^th September 2018, K114, Newman Building, UCD

9.30-11             Plenary II: Prof Kate Chedgzoy (Newcastle), Writing Children’s Lives

11-11.30            Coffee

11.30-1             Panel 4 – Women in the 17^th Century

Carol Baxter (independent scholar) “’Serving God rather than my father’: religious life writing as a rejection of the patriarchal family”

Naomi McAreavey (UCD) – The Countess of Ormonde’s Letters (title tbc)

Danielle Clarke (UCD) “Irish women’s recipe books as life writing: form, process, method”

1-2pm                   Lunch (exhibition and archive visit)

2-3pm                   Panel 5 – Travel and formation of the self

Maria Luis Dominguez-Guerrero (Seville) “Rhetoric of the Conquest: Narrations from Castilian Explorers”

Eva Holmberg (Helsinki)  “Visual Self-Description in Seventeenth-Century British Travel Accounts”

4-6pm                   Walking tour of Renaissance Dublin (AM Walsh), followed by pub visit and conference dinner, at Le Pichet, Trinity Street, Dublin 2* [* Dinner is €40 per head. ]

Saturday 8^th September 2018, K114, Newman Building

9.30-11             Plenary III: Prof Alan Stewart (Columbia), Writing Lives under Duress

11-11.15            Coffee

11.15-1 Panel 6 – Alternative Forms

Nelson Marques (Miami) “War and Self: Soldier’s Petitions in Seventeenth-Century Portugal”

Emma Claussen (Oxford)  “Forms of living in Descartes’s Les passions de l’âme”

Raluca Duna (Bucharest) “Writing the self with images, painting identity with texts”

1-1.30pm              Roundtable and close

Followed by optional lunch in Donnybrook, Dublin 4.

The conference is free to attend, but for catering purposes the organisers would appreciate it if you could sign up using this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-lives-1500-1700-tickets-48653964317

If you have any questions, please email the organisers at writinglives@ucd.ie.

This conference is supported by the College of Arts and Humanities and the Humanities Institute, UCD.

#writinglivesUCD

Image credit: ‘The Librarian’, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, c.1566 (Skokloster Castle)

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Irish Renaissance Seminar at UCD – “Conflict and Contestation in the Early Modern World “

The first meeting of the Irish Renaissance Seminar for 2017 will be held on Saturday 22nd April in the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin.

The theme for this meeting is Conflict and Contestation in the Early Modern World. The meeting will convene in Room J207-8, John Henry Newman Building, UCD, and the schedule is as follows:

1-1:30pm: Welcome

1:30-3:00pm: Panel
Chair: Dr Jane Grogan

Dr Marc Caball (UCD): ‘Hugh O’Neill and his Gaelic and Renaissance Cultural Context’

Professor Andrew Hadfield (Sussex): ‘James Shirley’s The Politician: Anglo-Irish Literature and Politics in the 1630s’

Dr Ann-Maria Walsh (UCD): ‘The Boyle Sisters and the Familial Correspondence Network: A Life-Line in Times of Civil Strife and Beyond’

3:00-3:30pm: Refreshments

3:30-4:30: Keynote
Chair: Dr Colin Lahive

Professor Nicholas McDowell (Exeter): ‘The Poetics of Civil War: Shakespeare to Marvell (to W.B.Yeats)’

4:30-5:00: Roundtable
Convener: Dr Naomi McAreavey

Early Modern Studies in Ireland: Current Locations, Future Directions

6:30: Dinner

The event is generously supported by the School of English, Drama and Film, UCD, and the Society for Renaissance Studies.

For further details on this meeting of the IRS, contact Dr Colin Lahive (colin.lahive@ucd.ie)

 

            

Irish Renaissance Seminar at University of Limerick on 5th November

The Centre for Early Modern Studies Limerick is pleased to announce that it will host the Irish Renaissance Seminar in November. This will be the first time that the IRS, held biannually in universities around the island of Ireland, will take place in Limerick. The CEMS Limerick, launched last week, is a joint initiative between scholars at UL and MICL.

Irish Renaissance Seminar

5th November 2016

Kemmy Business School, G15, University of Limerick

 

Theme: “Early Modern Otherness: Outlaws, Exiles, and Outsiders”

Light lunch available from 12pm

1pm Opening remarks

1.10pm: Panel

• Dr Clodagh Tait (Department of History, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick)
  “Outlawed Emotions: Lordly Rage and its Consequences in Early Modern Ireland”.
• Dr Gordon Ó Riain (School of Culture & Communication, University of Limerick)
  “A Fifteenth-­Century Ulster Poet in Exile”.
• Evan Bourke (RECIRC Project, NUI Galway)
  “The ‘Burden[some] Sister’: The Reception and Representation of Jean Appelius (nee Dury) in the Hartlib Circle, 1641-­1661″.

2.40-3.15pm: Coffee break

3.15-4.15pm: Keynote

• Dr Ruth Ahnert (Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary University of London, and Co-Director of the Centre for Early Modern Mapping News & Networks)
  “Conspiracy and Surveillance in Tudor England”

4.30pm Close

[Optional: Dinner in local restaurant from c.6.30pm]

This event is generously supported by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UL, the School of Culture and Communication, UL, and by the Society for Renaissance Studies.

For further details on this event, please email Dr Carrie Griffin (Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature, School of Culture & Communication, University Limerick).

        

                     

 

Job: Early Modern Postdoctoral Researcher at the National University of Ireland Galway

The National University of Ireland, Galway is seeking to fill one full-time, fixed-term Postdoctoral Researcher position for the project “The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700‟ (RECIRC), led by Prof. Marie-Louise Coolahan, Principal Investigator (School of Humanities).

The position is a 13-month contract, funded by the European Research Council, under the Consolidator Grant Scheme, 2013. The position is allocated to Work Package 1: Transnational Religious Networks. This work package maps the transmission and translation of female-authored texts among Catholic religious orders across Europe.

The successful candidate will be expected to start by October 2016.

Informal enquiries concerning the post may be made to Professor Marie-Louise Coolahan: marielouise.coolahan@nuigalway.ie.

Closing date for applications: 17th June 2016.

For further details on the RECIRC project, see the RECIRC website.

CFP: Reception, Reputation and Circulation in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800 (NUIG)

RECIRC_CFP_2017