CfP: Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS
12th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference
16-17 August 2024 ♦ University of Galway
Website: http://www.tudorstuartireland.com ♦ Twitter: @tudorstuartire
Email: 2024@tudorstuartireland.com

Plenary Speakers:
Prof. Sarah McKibben (University of Notre Dame) &
Dr Hiram Morgan (University College Cork)

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Proposals for individual papers (20 minutes) and group panel submissions are now welcome on any aspect of Ireland or the Irish abroad during the Tudor and Stuart periods, including:
♦ Gaelic Ireland and the Irish language
♦ Gender and society
♦ Poetry, theatre, literature, and song
♦ Ireland in a comparative/European context
♦ Classical and medieval reception
♦ Political, military, and economic history
♦ The archaeology and architecture of the early modern period
♦ Religious/ecclesiastical history
♦ Writing (and rewriting) the past
♦ Environmental literature and history
♦ Archives and records – new directions
♦ Print and manuscript culture
♦ Parliaments, parliamentarians and law-making
♦ Mobility, migration, and the Irish abroad
♦ Digital humanities and methodologies

Postgraduates, postdoctoral scholars, early-career researchers, independent researchers, and scholars from the disciplines of English, Irish, history, archaeology, art history, theology, philosophy, music, digital humanities, and Irish studies are particularly welcome to submit proposals for consideration. Proposals for panels in Irish are strongly encouraged.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words can be submitted through the conference email:
2024@tudorstuartireland.com The call for papers will close on 3 May 2024

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The 12th Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference is generously supported by the Department of English, University of Galway & Marsh’s Library, Dublin.

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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Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference at Queen’s University Belfast

The 8th Annual Tudor & Stuart Ireland Interdisciplinary Conference will take place at Queen’s University, Belfast on 24 – 25 August 2018

The programme for this year’s conference is available to download here.

Plenary addresses will be delivered by Dr David Edwards (University College Cork) and Dr Deana Rankin (Royal Holloway, University of London).

Registration for this year’s conference is now open.

• Registration Only (Student/Unwaged): £15
• Registration Only (Full Fee): £25
• Registration and Conference Dinner (Student/Unwaged): £42.50
• Registration and Conference Dinner (Full Fee): £52.50

Online registration is available via the QUB online portal. Please see the TSI conference webpage for details on how to register.

Contact: If you have any queries relating to this year’s conference, please email the organisers at: 2018@tudorstuartireland.com

Info from TSI website.

Concert: Elizabethan Songs – Dublin, Cork, Waterford

[Press release]

Come hear a concert of Elizabethan songs, including works by John Dowland, as performed by Sarah Groser (viol) & Patrick Goyvaerts (lute) with Nicholas McMurry (countertenor).

This is a series of fundraising concerts in support of Cork Quaker Meeting’s project to renovate and extend its Meeting House. Requested donation is €20. Concert details as follows:

8.00pm, Friday, January 27, 2017
Churchtown Quaker Meeting House,
82 Lower Churchtown Road, Dublin 14

7.30pm, Saturday, January 28, 2017
Cork Quaker Meeting House
Summerhill South, Cork

8.00pm, Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Waterford Quaker Meeting House
Newtown, Waterford

Report – Irish Renaissance Seminar at the University of Limerick, 5th November 2016

 

Guest report by Dr Carrie Griffin

The Centre for Early Modern Studies, Limerick, was delighted to welcome delegates and speakers to the autumn meeting of the Irish Renaissance Seminar, held for the first time at the University of Limerick. We gathered on a beautiful, crisp Saturday in UL’s Kemmy Business School for an afternoon of papers on the theme “Early Modern Otherness: Outlaws, Exiles, Outsiders”.

Our three-paper panel session opened at 1pm with Dr Clodagh Tait, a lecturer in the History Department at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick and a member of the executive committee of the Limerick Centre for Early Modern Studies. Clodagh’s paper, entitled “Outlawed Emotions: Lordly Rage and its Consequences in Early Modern Ireland”, was concerned with what the State Papers can tell us about the language around reports of emotional outbursts, cursing, oaths, and verbal violence, in particular focusing on Turlough Luineach, seemingly renowned for overawing others through rage and violent language. She argued that our sense of an idealised Irish lord, an impression formed from the honour values associated with that community and the praise-poetry composed for them, might in fact be challenged by this evidence, which seems to have more to do with emotional responses in a predominantly “face-to-face society”.

Dr Clodagh Tait

 

The Gaelic lords and the peculiar nuances of Bardic poetry were the subject of the second paper in this panel. Dr Gordon Ó Riain’s paper “A Fifteenth-Century Ulster Poet in Exile”, traced the fortunes of Conchubar, a poet exiled by his patron ÉinrÍ (one of the O’Neill of TÍr Eoghain). From his uncertain position as an outcast in Connacht, the poet composed a poem that includes a warning of an impending full satire; this warning found formal expression in the poem in a tréfocal, and its inclusion augments the kind of praise offered by the poet in this context.

Finally in this session Evan Bourke, a PhD researcher with the RECIRC Project, NUIG, presented a paper entitled “The ‘Burden[some] Sister’: The Reception and Representation of Jean Appelius (nee Dury) in the Hartlib Circle, 1641-1661”, showcasing research on letters that evidence the social exclusion suffered by Jean Appellius, sister to John Dury, that can be found in letters written by Dorothy Moore, her sister-in-law. Though no letters written by Jean are extant, Moore’s letters to members of the circle show that Jean was a problematic figure in the Dury circle: she was considered to be less than pious, and described in very strong terms in correspondence. Bourke’s contention was that the letters evidence a project of ‘othering’ within a close network, containing very great detail about Jean but also a very strong dismissal of her.

Evan Bourke

After tea we were treated to a plenary lecture by Dr Ruth Ahnert. Ruth, a senior lecturer in Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London and a co-director (with Prof Joad Raymond) of the Centre for Early Modern Mapping News and Networks, is currently conducting research on Tudor Networks of Power, in which she combines digital methods from the field of Complex Networks to study Tudor letters from the State Papers. Ruth’s fascinating lecture, entitled “Conspiracy and Surveillance in Tudor England”, demonstrated how Complex Network analysis can be incredibly revealing for Tudor letters, exploiting and studying similar aspects such as nodes, hubs and edges to reveal similar underlying patters and real-world networks. Ruth showed us in great detail how this kind of collaboration (undertaken with her husband Sebastian Ahnert) can uncover all sorts of activity and connections between suspected spies, conspirators and double-agents that would not ordinarily be discernible in traditional approaches to this sort of archive. One of the case-studies used here were the letters of Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon and the great-grandson of Edward VI, who was a prisoner in London and was exiled to Venice in the 1550s. Ruth’s evidence uncovered an anomaly (an unusual burst of activity) around him. All but one of his letters preserved in the State Papers was sent from exile, and a high proportion of them were intercepted. Courtenay knew he was under surveillance, but he persists in writing to dubious individuals.

Dr Ruth Ahnert

After a day of wonderful papers we adjourned to the nearby Castletroy Park Hotel for an early dinner and a very jolly time. We heartily recommend the fish and chips!

This meeting of the Irish Renaissance Seminar was sponsored by the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, UL; The School of Culture and Communication, UL; and the Society for Renaissance Studies. A sincere thanks to delegates who travelled to be with us on the day, and in particular huge gratitude to our four splendid speakers. We look forward to reconvening in the springtime at UCD for the first Irish Renaissance Seminar meeting of 2017!

Guest post by Dr Carrie Griffin, Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature in the School of Culture & Communication at University Limerick.

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).

        

                     

 

Lecture: Dr Margaret Connolly (St Andrews), Trinity Long Room Hub, 21 January

Reading Continuities in an Age of Change: Some 15th Century Manuscripts and their Tudor Owners

Thursday, 21 January 2016 | 18:15 | Trinity Long Room Hub

A public lecture by Dr Margaret Connolly (University of St Andrews) during her term as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub in collaboration with the School of English.

Bio: Dr Margaret Connolly is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. Dr Connolly’s field of study is medieval English literature, with a particular emphasis on the manuscript contexts in which Middle English texts survive. She has worked on both scribal production and reader reception, and has edited and catalogued medieval texts.

Abstract: This lecture will consider ways in which early modern readers continued to use old medieval books, taking as its focus a group of eight fifteenth-century manuscripts owned by a single English gentry family in the sixteenth century. Although these volumes were used in various ways (as a repository for family records; as a safe place to preserve important material; as a source of practical household information; and as a professional lawyer’s manual), primarily, Dr Connolly will argue, they were used quite simply as books, that is, that they were read. Many of the original texts in these manuscripts are of a devotional nature, and a special point of interest is the disjunction between these textual products of a wholly Catholic age and the reformist religious environment that their Tudor readers inhabited, especially after the 1530s. The lecture will consider evidence of annotations, comments, and other markings (and also places left unmarked), in order to try to interpret the nature of these later readers’ engagement with their old medieval books.

 

Conference: Tudor & Stuart Ireland

The 4th Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference will convene on 29 & 30 August 2014 at the Iontas Building, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Building upon the tremendous success of past conferences, this year’s programme boasts papers on a wide-range of topics, and has drawn speakers from not only Ireland and the United Kingdom, but also from Europe and across the Atlantic.  Conference highlights include two plenary lectures and a tour of Maynooth Castle, with ample opportunity for more informal discussion throughout the two days.

Plenary lectures will be given by Prof. Alan Ford, University of Nottingham, and Dr John McCafferty, University College Dublin.

Provisional Programme: http://tudorstuartireland.com/conference-programme-2014/

For more information: http://tudorstuartireland.com/conference-information-2014/, or follow @TudorStuartIre