The results of our 2019 funding competition are in!
Back in November, we invited researchers to apply for a share of up to £1500 provided by CEMS to support research events in Oxford. Proposals were judged on their capacity to contribute to the CEMS mission: furthering interdisciplinarity in early modern studies. This year, we are supporting three one-day conferences in June, each with a distinct theme. From the sensory, to the material, to the socio-political, each of these conferences take interdisciplinary approaches that we hope will provoke stimulating conversations across the field of early modern studies.
In calendar order, here are the winners of our funding competition for 2019:
‘Pilgrimage and the Senses’
Friday 7 June, University of Oxford
Organised by History of Art DPhil students, Helena Guzik and Sylvia Alvares-Correa, and featuring a keynote address from Professor Kathryn Rudy (University of St. Andrews), this conference explores the sensory experience of pilgrimage throughout history and across cultures. ‘Pilgrimage and the Senses’ is informed by the recent turn within the humanities and social sciences toward ‘sensory studies’, and encourages participants to examine the sensory experience of spiritual phenomena, as manifested in accounts and representations of pilgrimages from a variety of early modern cultures.
‘Histories, Theories and Uses of Waste Paper in Early Modern England’
Saturday 15 June, Balliol College
This conference is a collaboration between Megan Heffernan (DePaul University), Anna Reynolds (University of York), and Adam Smyth (University of Oxford) that seeks to “explore the manifold afterlives of waste paper in early modern England”. Building on current interest in pre-modern texts as material objects with their own cycles of use and re-use, speakers will explore “the shifting fate of books across time and within distinct institutional settings, exposing a partially hidden record of the past”. The conference will feature plenary papers from Kate Bennett (University of Oxford) and Whitney Trettien (University of Pennsylvania).
‘Civility and Incivility in Early Modern Britain, 1500-1700’
Friday 28 June, Oriel College
Engaging with numerous aspects of political, social, religious, and intellectual history, this conference aims to dissect the contested notions of ‘Civility’ and ‘Incivility’. Organisers, William White and Chloë Ingersent (both History DPhil students), note that civility offered a possible solution to the socio-political divisions of post-Reformation Britain, but that it could operate variously as “a form of tolerance or a tool of exclusion”. Building on this uneasy dichotomy, delegates are asked to “interrogate the different ways that historians might think about the dynamic relationship between civility and incivility”. The conference will feature a keynote from Dr Teresa Bejan (University of Oxford).
