Seminar Programmes for the Current Academic Year
Michaelmas 2024
Convenor(s): Jessica Goodman, Marina Perkins, Rachel Hindmarsh
Time: Thursdays. Weeks 1, 3, 4, 5, 7. 12.30-14.00 (UK time)
Venue: Maison Française d’Oxford.
Week 1: Thursday 17 Oct. 12.30 - 14.00.
'Le scepticisme rhétorique de Montaigne ou l'empreinte de la déclamation humaniste dans les Essais'
Speaker: Blandine Perona, Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France
Week 3: Thursday 31 Oct. 12.30–14.00.
'Poésie et arts visuels à la fin des Lumières: le réseau Delille'
Speaker: Hugues Marchal, University of Basel
Week 4: Thursday 7 Nov. 12.30 - 14.00.
Roundtable on La Boétie and Textual Mobility
In conjunction with the 'Colloquium on Textuality and Diversity' of the ERC Advanced Grant project 'TextDiveGlobal'.
Speakers: John O'Brien (Durham, Emeritus), Wes Williams (St. Edmund Hall, Oxford) and Sophie Nicholls (St. Anne's and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford).
Chair: Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary)
Week 5: Thursday 14 Nov. 12.30 - 14.00.
‘Medicine, Time, and Fiction in Rabelais’
Speaker: Rachel Hindmarsh (St. Catherine's College, Oxford)
Week 7: Thursday 28 Nov. 12:30 - 14:00.
Graduate Symposium
Convenor(s): Lorna Hutson, Joe Moshenska, Bart Van Es
Time: Tuesdays. Weeks 1, 5, and 7, 17.15 - 19.15; Week 3: 12.30-14.00
Venues: see each event
Week 1: 15 October. Merton College, T.S. Eliot Lecture Theatre, 5.15.
Professor Paulina Kewes, Professor Kathryn Murphy, Professor Lorna Hutson
'Meet the Faculty'
Abstract: We're kicking off the academic year with a chance for graduate students new and continuing and early modernists in general to hear three English Faculty members speak informally and briefly about their research. Discussion will open out to enable the graduate and research community to put questions to the speakers.
Week 3, 29 October. Merton College, Marquee on Fellows' Lawn, 12.30-2.00pm (Lunch Provided).
Reading Group: Valerie Traub, Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), Chapter 3, 'The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies', pp. 57-81; Chapter 8, 'Shakespeare's Sex', pp. 229-264.
Week 5, 12 November.
English Faculty
Professor Kathryn Schwarz (Vanderbilt)
Wells Shakespeare Lectures Lecture 1: ‘Chastity as Killed Vaccine’
Week 7, 26 November.
Merton College, TS Eliot Lecture Theatre, 17.15 - 19.15.
Professor Ted Tregear (Merton College, Oxford)
'What are Poetical Essays?'
Convenor(s): Ros Ballaster, Nicole Pohl, Tess Somervell, David Taylor, Carly Watson, Abigail Williams.
Time: Tuesdays. Weeks 2, 4, 6. Check individual events for times.
Venue: Seminar Room East, Mansfield College.
Week 2: Tuesday 22 Oct. 17.30-19.00
‘Talkee Amy and Robert Wedderburn: Verbal Abuse, Smuggling, Obeah and Enslaved Grandmothers in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica’
Speaker: Ryan Hanley (University of Exeter)
Week 4: Tuesday 5 Nov. 17.30-19.00.
‘Atomic and Agential Airs: Finch, Smollett, Barbauld’
Speaker: Rowan Boyson (Kings College London)
Week 6: Tuesday 19 Nov. 12.30-13.45. Sandwich lunch will be provided.
In-house Talk on Digital Eighteenth Century in Oxford
Speakers: Nicole Pohl and Jack Orchard (Electronic Enlightenment)
Convenor(s): Nicholas Cronk (St. Edmund Hall) and Avi Lifschitz (Magdalen College)
Time: Wednesday, Weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, 17.00.
Venue: Magdalen College. See individual seminars for rooms.
Week 1: Wednesday 16 Oct. 17.00. Sophia Sheppard Room.
‘Reinhart Koselleck's Enlightenment Reconsidered’
Speaker: Hans Erich Bödeker (Göttingen)
Followed by launch drinks for The Process of Enlightenment (2024) with the editors, Jonas Gerlings (Göttingen) and Ere Nokkala (Jyväskylä)
Week 3: Wednesday 30 Oct. 17.00. Sophia Sheppard Room.
‘How Revolutionary was Equality in the 18th Century?’
Speaker: Darrin McMahon (Dartmouth College)
Week 5: Wednesday 13 Nov. 17.00. Summer Common Room.
Roundtable on The End of Enlightenment (2023) by Richard Whatmore.
Discussants: Sofia Sanabria de Felipe, Cameron Bowman, Joanna Innes.
Response: Richard Whatmore (St. Andrews)
Week 7: Wednesday 27 Nov. 17.00. Summer Common Room.
‘Colonialism, Cosmopolitanism and Kant's Justification of Territorial Rights’
Speaker: Lea Ypi (LSE)
Convenor(s): P. Gauci (Lincoln), H. Smith (St. Hilda's), B. Harris (Worcester)
Time: Tuesdays. Weeks 1-8. 16.15 (with tea and coffee available from 16.00)
Venue: Beckington Room, Lincoln College. For those away from Oxford, the talks will be available on Teams. Apply to perry.gauci@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for the link to join the meeting online.
Week 1: Tuesday 15 Oct. 16.15.
Introductory Party (in person event only)
Week 2: Tuesday 22 Oct. 16.15.
‘"Mansions of the Dead": Newcastle and Sheffield General Cemeteries in Urban and Social Context’
Speaker: James Richardson (Keble)
Week 3: Tuesday 29 Oct. 16.15.
‘In the Margins: Writing the Story of Non-Elite Readers in Eighteenth-Century England’
Speaker: Abigail Williams (St. Peter's)
Week 4: Tuesday 5 Nov. 16.15.
‘"We might even in time perhaps have a black President!!": The American Journal of Edward Stanley-Smith, the Future Prime Minister and Later 14th Early of Derby, 1824-25’
Speaker: Andrew O'Shaughnessy (University of Virginia)
Week 5: Tuesday 12 Nov. 16.15.
‘The Reception of Confucianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Deists, Dissenters, and the Dao’
Speaker: Ross Moncreiff (All Souls)
Week 6: Tuesday 19 Nov. 16.15.
‘Explaining Famine and Grinding Poverty: Agricultural Experimentation (and Failure) in Feeding Britain, 1770-1800’
Speaker: John Lidwell-Durnin (University of Exeter)
Week 7: Tuesday 26 Nov. 16.15.
‘Unbecoming the British Empire: Reconstituting Intergovernmental Relations in the American Revolutionary Era’
Speaker: Grace Mallon (Lady Margaret Hall)
Week 8: Tuesday 3 Dec. 16.15.
‘From Québec to India: Constitutional Pluralism in British Imperial Ideology, 1773-1793’
Speaker: Damien Bérubé (Lincoln)
For information about the seminar, and news of forthcoming events, visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-seminar-in-mainly-British-History-...
We would be happy to post notices of interest to our group – contact perry.gauci@lincoln.ox.ac.uk
* Termcard to be posted soon *
Convenor(s): Ross Moncrieff
Time: Tuesdays, 5pm. Weeks 1–4, 7 and 8.
Venue: All Souls College, see events for rooms.
Week 1: Tuesday Oct. 15, 17.00. Wharton Room.
‘Bringing Attention to Tobacco: Health and Novelties in Early Modern North India’
Speaker: Sonia Wigh (Cambridge)
Week 2: Tuesday Oct. 22, 17.00. Old Library.
‘Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century’
Speaker: José Lingna Nafafé (Bristol)
Week 3: Tuesday Oct. 29, 17.00. Wharton Room
‘Natural History and Imperial Portugal: Intellectual Frameworks’
Speaker: Jorge Flores (Lisbon)
Week 4: Tuesday Nov. 5, 17.00. Old Library.
‘Kings, Lords, and Housebuilders: Portuguese and Chinese Debates over the Status of Early Modern Macau’
Speaker: Jacob Fordham (LSE)
Week 7: Tuesday Nov. 26, 17.00. Wharton Room.
‘Productive Misunderstandings: Confraternities, Catholic Liturgy and the Reconfiguration of Andean Native Lordship in the Early Colonial Period'
Speaker: Isabel Yaya-Mckenzie (EHESS)
Week 8: Tuesday Dec. 3, 17.00. Old Library.
'Al-Damiri's Life of Animals in the European-Ottoman Republic of Letters'
Speaker: Simon Mills (Newcastle)
Convenors: Margaret Bent and Joseph W. Mason
Time: Thursdays of Weeks 3, 6 and 8. 17.00.
Venue: Online only via Zoom. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have any questions, please send an email to all.souls.music.seminars@gmail.com
Week 3: Thursday 31 October. 17.00-19.00
‘Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 — 9 June 1361)
Speakers: Anna Zayaruznaya (Yale University) and Andrew Wathey (The National Archives and Northumbria University). Discussion Moderated by Lawrence Earp (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Abstract: Philippe de Vitry, composer, poet, bishop, and correspondent of Petrarch, remains a pivotal but imperfectly understood figure in the cultural and musical history of the fourteenth century. No contemporary was praised so often nor from so many quarters: yet the terms in which we view him, his work, impact and reputation are shifting. Coinciding with his 733rd birthday, this seminar juxtaposes the perspectives and approaches adopted by two forthcoming books on Vitry, a figure whom it is hard to capture in a single study. Following brief presentations on each of these studies by Anna Zayaruznaya and Andrew Wathey, themes of common interest will be explored in discussion with Lawrence Earp, as will a number of conundra that continue to complicate and animate Vitry studies, including: historiography, biography, and his treatment in different disciplines; personal approaches to the subject; the span of Vitry’s intellectual universe; his role in fourteenth-century musical innovations; patronage and place; broad chronologies, and Vitry’s origins and early years.
Week 6: Thursday 21 November. 17.00-19.00
'The Long Life of the Trecento Repertory'
Speaker: Lucia Marchi (University of Trento)
Discussants: Blake Wilson (Dickinson College, PA) and Lachlan Hughes (Trinity College, Cambridge)
Abstract: In 1461, the manuscript Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Musée Condé, 564 was donated by Francesco d’Altobianco degli Alberti to the three daughters – aged 9 to 14 – of the Florentine banker Tommaso Spinelli. The gift of a seemingly outdated manuscript of complex polyphonic music to young girls (and not to a professional musician, as had happened with the Squarcialupi codex) seems surprising, and raises the question of how long the Trecento repertory could have survived into the next century.
A new source contains a long capitolo ternario about the seven joys of the Virgin Mary, written by the Dominican theology master Simone d’Angelo dei Bocci da Siena (1438-1509). The poem is dated 1486 and is dedicated to a lady of the Sienese aristocracy, Madonna Perna degli Ugurgieri, for her spiritual instruction.
Towards the end of the poem, the description of the Assumption into heaven is particularly musical, mirroring the classic late-medieval iconography of angels playing instruments and singing around the Virgin. In the tradition of the quodlibet or incatenatura, the verses are built around a series of quotations of musical incipits. In this paper, I propose an identification of many of them (hoping also to gather suggestions from my audience!). The results provide a view on the repertory known to the Sienese upper classes at the end of the 15th century. The presence of many Trecento pieces testifies that – similarly to the Spinelli a few years before – an aristocratic lady such as Madonna Perna was ready to catch the musical references to a dated, but still familiar repertory among the theological subtleties of the poem
Week 8: Thursday 5 December. 17.00-19.00
'A.I., Similarity, and Search in Medieval Music: New Methodologies and Source Identifications'
Speaker: Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (Independent Scholar)
Discussants: Theodor Dumitrescu (Independent Scholar), Margaret Bent (University of Oxford) and others, including David Fallows, Paweł Gancarczyk, Richard Dudas
Abstract: In a series of pre-pandemic talks I introduced a new database and computational tools for identifying concordances in late medieval music: EMMSAP, the Electronic Medieval Music Score Archive Project. When I last spoke at Oxford in 2015 I had discovered 13 concordances through EMMSAP; by the last presentations before Covid there were 34.
After a brief recap of previous findings (especially those not yet published), I will present 22 new connections made using digital tools, including the first identifications of pieces on slate and of new quotations within the Turin/Cyprus codex. The talk will also expand on the various computational methods and encodings that have been successful in making new identifications (quick encodings, brute force, human directed, and “old-style” A.I.) and those that have not (detailed “musicological” encodings, indexed and automated search, and newer A.I. such as deep learning and GPTs). To get the most from digital tools, the talk will also advocate for a new role in musicological publication: the encoding-discoverer far outside her or his realm of expertise.
Convenors: Niklas Groschinski (Merton) and Dr. Niko Munz (Christ Church)
Time: Thursdays of Weeks 1, 3, 5, 7. 5.15pm.
Venue: Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre, Christ Church.
Week 1: Thursday 17 Oct. 17.15.
‘Dante and the Art of Divine Light
Speaker: Martin Kemp (Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Oxford University)
Week 3: Thursday 31 Oct. 17.15.
'Iconography and Investment: Private Art Collections in Seventeenth-Century Holland' [+ Introduction to the Warburg's Photographic Collection and Iconographic Database]
Speaker: Paul Taylor (Curator of the Photographic Collection, The Warburg Institute, London)
Week 5: Thursday 14 Nov. 17.15.
'From Cologne to Lisbon: Translating the Cult of St. Ursula'
Speaker: Sylvia Alvares-Correa (Junior Research Fellow, Christ Church)
Week 7: Thursday 28th Nov. 17.15.
'Looting, Confiscation, and Concealed Treasure in Dutch Guardroom Scenes of the 1640s'
Speaker: Allison Stielau (Lecturer in the History of Art, UCL)
Convenor(s): Ian Archer, Alexandra Gajda, Steven Gunn, Lucy Wooding
Time: Thursdays 5pm, Weeks 1-8
Venue: Lincoln Collegge, Oakeshott Room. Via Teams: please email ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk for link.
Week 1: Thursday Oct. 17, 17.00.
‘Inside London’s Bridewell: Setting the Poor to Work, 1550-1700’
Speaker: Dr Ian Archer (Keble College)
Recommended reading: Joanna Innes, ‘Prisons for the poor: English bridewells, 1555-1800’ in F. Snyder and D. Hay (eds), Labour, law and crime: a historical perspective (1987), 42-122; Paul Griffiths, Information, Institutions and Local Government in England, 1500-1700: Turning Inside (Oxford, 2024), ch. 4.
Week 2: Thursday Oct. 24, 17.00.
‘Forging the Royal Signature in Early Modern England’
Speaker: Dr Arnold Hunt (University of Durham)
Week 3: Thursday Oct. 31, 17.00.
Paper 1:
‘The Tower of London as Torture Site and Tourist Attraction’
Speaker: Dr Catherine Jenkinson (Pembroke College)
Recommended reading: John Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime (1977/2006); Elizabeth Hanson, ‘Torture and Truth in Renaissance England’, Representations, 34 (1991), 53-84
Paper 2:
‘Uncovering History in the Drafts of William
Camden's Annals’
Speaker: Helena Rutkowksa (St Hugh’s College)
Recommended reading: Patrick Collinson, This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth in the Sixteenth Century (Manchester, 2011), 270-286; Daniel R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology, and the 'light of Truth' from the Accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto, 1990), 116-125.
Week 4: Thursday Nov. 7, 17.00.
‘“The Case of Thomas Coo Truly Stated”: Legal Practice, Petitioning and Prisons in Jacobean England’
Speaker: Dr Felicity Heal (Jesus College)
Recommended reading: Chris Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the Lower Branch of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), 19-27, 139-43; Molly Murray, ‘Measured Sentences: Forming Literature in the early modern Prison’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 7:2 (2009), 147-67
Week 5: Thursday Nov. 14, 17.00.
‘The Fragility and Friability of “legality” in Early Modern England: a Practice-based Approach to Law-mindedness’
Speaker: Dr Lucy Clarke (University of Sheffield)
Recommended reading: Jonathan Healey, ‘The Fray on the Meadow: Violence and a Moment of Government in Early Tudor England’, History Workshop Journal 85 (2018), 5-25; Paul Griffiths, ‘Punishing Words: Insults and Injuries, 1525-1700’, in McShane, Angela, and Walker, Garthine, eds, The extraordinary and the everyday in early modern England: essays in celebration of the work of Bernard Capp (2010)
Week 6: Thursday Nov. 21, 17.00.
‘Francis Bacon and Stuart Foreign Policy, 1621-1626’
Speaker: Dr Samuel Zeitlin (University College London)
Recommended reading: Stephen Alford, All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil (2024); Noah Millstone, ‘Seeing Like a Statesman in Early Stuart England’, Past and Present, 223:1 (2014), 77-127; Conrad Russell, ‘The Foreign Policy Debate in the House of Commons in 1621’, Historical Journal, 20:2 (1977), 289-309; S.G. Zeitlin, ‘Francis Bacon on peace and the 1604 Treaty of London’, History of Political Thought, 41:3 (2020), 487-504.
Week 7: Thursday Nov. 28, 17.00.
‘“An oare in every paper boat”: Thomas Lodge, Professional Writing and Rivalries in Elizabethan London’
Speaker: Prof. Cathy Shrank (University of Sheffield
Recommended reading: Arthur F. Kinney, ‘O vita! misero longa, foelici brevis: Thomas Lodge’s Struggle for Felicity’, in his Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric and Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England (1986), 363-424.
Week 8: Thursday Dec. 5, 17.00.
‘Writing An Accidental History of Tudor England’
Speaker: Prof. Steven Gunn (Merton College)
Recommended reading:
Steven Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, ‘Sport and Recreation in sixteenth-century England: the evidence of accidental deaths’, in A. Schattner and R. von Mallinckrodt (eds), Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture (Farnham, 2016), 49-64; idem, ‘Coroners’ Inquest Juries in Sixteenth-Century England’, Continuity and Change, 37 (2022), 365-88; ‘Firearms Accidents in Sixteenth-Century
England’, Arms and Armour, 20(2) (2023), 149-59
Convenor(s): Filippo de Vivo, Leah Clark, Zoe Farrell, Federica Gigante, Giuseppe Marcocci, Jane Stevens Crawshaw, Emanuela Vai
Time: Tuesdays. Weeks 3, 5, and 7, 16.30 - 18.00
Venues: Old Dining Hall, St. Edmund Hall.
Week 3, 29 October, 16.30.
'An Environmental History of the "Timber Frontier": Sources, Methods, Problems'
Speaker: Katia Occhi (FBI, Trento)
Week 5, 12 November, 16:30.
Comparative Reflections on Early Modern Italian Republics: Title TBC.
Speakers: Gloria Moorman (Manchester), Enrico Zucchi (Padua), Alessandro Metlica (Padua)
Week 7, 26 November, 16.30.
'On Controversial Heritage: Making Sense of Transnational Biographies through Archives and Mythmaking'
Speakers: Emanuela Patti (Edinburgh), Carlotta Paltrinieri (Royal Holloway)
