Events Archive

CEMS Research Seminar & Events Spring Programme

Weds 10th February 

Dr Valerio Zanetti (SRS Postdoctoral Fellow, St Johns, Cambridge) 
‘The Sportswoman’s Paradox: Medicalising the Athletic Female Body in Early Modern Europe’ 

Wed 17th February 

Prof Tracey Hill (Bath Spa), Civic London Project, 
"A playe in the hall": civic performance, c.1560-90'

Tuesday 23rd Feb 4 pm 

RIISS SEMINAR in collaboration with CEMS
Dr Ali Cathcart (Stirling), 
‘James VI and I and his empire of islands: the view from the periphery’ 

Wed 3rd March 

Dr Kirsty Rolfe (Leiden), 
'Itching ears: Desire for news in the 1620s'

Friday 12th March 

CEMS Research Symposium: 
Print and Prints in the Early Modern World
Organised by Dr Helen Pierce 
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/cems/events/16339/

Wed 17th March 

Dr Lauren Working (TIDE Project, Oxford):  
'Dispossession in Lace: Jacobean Ruffs and Early English Colonialism' 

Wed 24th March

Dr McKenna Rose (Georgia IT), 
‘The Salvage Imaginary: Gender and Objects in The Taming of the Shrew.’

Wed 31st March 

Dr Clare Egan (Lancaster)  ‘Upon that text dilate I coulde, durst I with betters to be boulde’: Performing Libel in Early Modern England

Expert and Forensic Witnesses in Genevan Trials, c. 1540-1640

In collaboration with the Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS)

Bill Naphy (University of Aberdeen)

9 December 2020, 1-2pm, via Teams

CEMS events Autumn 2019

Lunchtime seminars Wednesdays 1-2 pm

Wednesday 25 September  MacRobert 266 and live broadcast via Blackboard Collaborate
Dr Liz Oakley-Brown (Lancaster), ‘Shakespeare on the Surface’

Seminars in Collaboration with other Departments

Dr Aaron Thom (History of Art incooperation with CEMS), Casting Light on Cavarozzi: One of Caravaggio’s Finest Followers, September 4.15, CB009, 50-52 College Bounds

CEMS events Autumn 2018

19th September

Dr Jill Burke (Edinburgh), 'Pleasure, Drunkenness and Power in the Italian Renaissance Nude'
12-1 pm (Taylor A36)

10th October

Dr Erin McCarthy (NUI, Galway), 'By a Lady: Women’s Authorship and Attribution in Manuscript Miscellanies'
1-2 pm (Taylor A31)

7th November

Jane Pirie (Special Collections)  ‘From Italy to Aberdeen: The History of a Book. Our Aristophanes’ Comoediae’

14th November

Researching the Material Object/Researching the Material Text:
An open session, exploring research possibilities and pathways through the University's collections, with Lisa Collinson (Academic Engagement & Research Lead, University Museums) and Jane Pirie (Special Collections, University Library)

Reading the Ministry, 1520-1848

A three day, international conference exploring the history of archives, the material text and memory in the cultural life of the ministry. The full programme is available here

CEMS Research Seminar Spring 2018

Wednesday 24th January

Zohar Adromi-Hallouche (Divinity)

‘Images of the first woman: Eve in Islamic Fāl-nāma paintings’
1 pm, Taylor A36

Wednesday 14th February

Ruth Karras (Minnesota)

‘Masculinity, Dynastic Thinking, and the Messiah’
1 pm, Taylor A36

Wednesday 21st March

Craig Smith (Glasgow)

‘Adam Smith on the Natural History of Religion and the Moral Sentiments’
1 pm, Taylor A36

CEMS Events Autumn 2017

Wednesday 11th October

Alan Ross (Berlin)

‘The African mirror. Monkey theatre in ancien-régime Paris’
1 pm, Taylor A36

Wednesday 25th October

Barry Robertson (City Archives)

‘Sources of Early Modern History in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives’
1 pm, Taylor A36

Monday 30th October

CEMS Public Lecture in association with Friends of the University Library

Jerzy Limon (Gdansk)

‘King James VI and the Beheading Game’
6 pm, Special Collections Centre, Duncan Rice Library

Wednesday 1st November

Sarah Carpenter (Edinburgh)

‘The Turk, the More and the Egyptien’: Exotic visitors in entertainments at the court of James VI’
1 pm, A36 Wednesday 8th November Adrian Streete (Glasgow)

‘Polemical Laughter in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess’
1 pm, Taylor A36

Thursday 9th November

Lyndal Roper (Oriel, Oxford)

‘Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet’
Meeting Room 1, Duncan Rice Library, 4.15 pm

Wednesday 22nd November

Ralph Moffat (Glasgow Museums)

‘Advance on us like mad Men!’: The Scottish Highland Warrior
1 pm, Taylor A36

CEMS Research Seminar Spring 2017

• Wed 22 March Harriet Archer (Newcastle), '"The earth shall eat us all": Exemplary History and Posthumanism in Elizabethan England'
• Wed 8 March (8) Jacqueline Murray (Guelph) 'Rethinking Medieval Masculinity in Light of the Male Body
• Wed 22 Feb (6) Frederik Pedersen (History) 'Women’s access to the law in fourteenth-century York’
• Wed 8 Feb (wk 4) Lena Liapi (History) 'Laughter and Crime'
• Wed 1 Feb (wk 3) Katherine Heavey (Glasgow), 'Are you talking to me? Myths and readers in early modern English literature'

Conference at the Grierson Centre, in association with the Centre for Early Modern Studies, and the Centre for Celtic & Anglo-Saxon Studies, 15-17 January 2016

The conference commemorates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Herbert Grierson (1866-1960), Inaugural Chalmers Professor of English Literature at the University of Aberdeen, who was also a Classicist. The objective is to provide new analyses of the ways in which Classical learning was changed, manipulated, re- and mis-interpreted, performed, and subverted (deliberately or otherwise) in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern world. The ‘Subversions of Classical Learning’ project as a whole comprises a series of events (in 2015 and 2016) to consider some of the most dynamic and exciting transformations and subversions of Classical themes. This international, interdisciplinary conference is the highlight of the series. A selection of papers will be published in a conference volume.

Speakers : Ralph M. Rosen (University of Pennsylvania), Anna Caughey, (Keble College, Oxford) and Cairns Craig (University of Aberdeen), organizer Dr Aideen O’Leary: a.oleary@abdn.ac.uk.

2015 Autumn Seminar Series

• 25 November -- Dr Daniel Derrin (Durham University): Melanchthon and comedy in humanist pedagogy
• 18 November --Professor Nicholas Hammond (Cambridge), French Literature and Culture: Bodies behaving badly in French seventeenth-century poetry and song
• 28 October -- Professor Mark Robson, Professor of English and Theatre Studies (University of Dundee): The nothing in between, or, Adapting with David Greig
• 21 October -- Dr Beth Lord (Aberdeen): The Free Man and the Free Market: Ethics and Economics in Spinoza’s Ethics IV

Making Unions

30 September, 2015. Launch of the book Making Unions: Political Union and Composite States in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. A Roundtable and Reception marking the publication of The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385-1569 by Robert Frost, published by Oxford University Press (2015) in the the Great Hall, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, chaired by Alvin Jackson, at 6 pm, link. Speakers: Sir John Elliott, Prof. Norman Davies, Professor Colin Kidd, Professor Robert Frost.

Public Lecture before the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

4 May 2015. The Constitution of The 3 May 1791 and Royal Prussia's Fate in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Public Lecture by Professor Karin Friedrich, Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw, see link

Reviving the Dead: Classical Imitation in Renaissance Literature

22-23 May 2015. An interdisciplinary symposium organised by Dr Aideen O’Day and Dr Syrithe Pugh in collaboration with the Grierson Centre bringing together early modernists and classicists to discuss aspects of imitation, allusion and intertextuality.

Renaissance Society of America Annual Conferences in Berlin

26–28 March 2015, Participation of members of staff and students from English and History

Re-Staging the Renaissance

20 March 2015 - A one-day research colloquium on early modern drama involving invited external speakers and members of staff from Aberdeen.

Between Metaphysics, Theology, Text and Aesthetics: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Early Modern Thought and Religion, 20 February 2015

This one-day workshop involved speakers from Warsaw, Glasgow and Aberdeen/Budapest. Speakers: Dr Giovanni Gellera, Dr Simon Burton, Dr hab. Endre Szécsényi.

Postgraduate Study Week-End at The Burn, Edzell

in cooperation with the Centre for Reformation Studies, University of St Andrews 8-9 November 2014. Information here

The Fifteenth-Century Conference, 4-6 September 2014, University of Aberdeen

hosted among other institutions by the Centre for Early Modern Studies and the University of Aberdeen

Cultures of Union: the British and Polish-Lithuanian union in comparison

The second conference in the Comparing Unions series, a cooperation between CEMS, RIISS and the Newberry Library’s Centre for Renaissance Studies, Chicago, organised by Professor Robert Frost and Professor Michael Brown, following the first conference that was organised and partly financed by the Newberry in September 2013 and the University of Chicago. The Burn Edzell, 5-6 September 2014, as a cooperation between CEMS and RIISS and in cooperation with Durham and Glasgow’s HERA project on ’Cultural Encounters in Political Unions’. This conference was also timed to precede the Referendum on Scottish Independence.

Ars effectiva et methodus: the Body in early modern science and thought

Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel, 30 June – 1 July 2014. Follow link to programme

Society for French Studies Annual Conference

Organised from 30 June - 2 July 2014 at the University of Aberdeen, with support by the Centre for Early Modern Studies

Renaissance Society of America, 27-29 March 2014 in New York City

Participation by members of staff and postgraduate students from English, History, Divinity and History of Art.

Stacks Alive: The Hunter Caldwell Awards, 15 May 2014.

A research workshop to present interim findings of CEMS manuscript research projects, involving representatives from the following research projects: Sir Robert Beale Correspondence Project (Andrew Gordon); Bannatyne Manuscript Project (Elizabeth Elliott); Spalding’s Practicks Project (Adelyn Wilson) and the Duncan Liddell project (Karin Friedrich). The event provided an opportunity to share research methodologies, and to discuss ways of facilitating next-stage, and collaborative, funding applications.

Popular Culture at the Crossroads: A one day interdisciplinary colloquium

This event brings together scholars from English, History and Visual Culture to debate approaches to early modern popular culture, Friday 14th March 2014 at Sir Duncan-Rice Library

Between religious conflict and reform: New approaches to late medieval and early modern confessional culture in Central European towns, c. 1400-1700

CEMS Workshop in co-operation with the Palacky-University of Olomouc, Czech Republic, 3-4 October 2013, Seminar Room One, Craig Suite 7th floor Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen

Comparing Political Unions in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World, 1350-1801

A conference organised at the Centre for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library Chicago, in cooperation with CEMS, organised by Prof. Robert Frost, 19-21 September 2013.

International Conference Medical Knowledge between Polymathy and Disciplinarity: Duncan Liddel (1561-1613) in Context

8-10 May 2013, Sir Duncan Rice Library Conference Room 1, Floor 7, with Key note speaker Prof. Mordechai Feingold fom CalTech. 

The Hand in the Text: Renaissance Acts of Writing and Printerventions

A one-day conference examining material textuality in print and mansucript organised by Andrew Gordon in collaboration with Early Modern Studies in Scotland Seminar, Saturday 25th May, 2013 Sir Duncan Rice Library Seminar Room

2012

Friday 16th March, 2012

Tradition and Cultural Memory: Representations, Reflections, and the Relationship to the Past in Early Modern Europe

A CEMS Postgraduate conference at Humanities Manse 12-5.15 pm.

2011

20 May, 2011

Liminal Communities: Living at the Margins in Early Modern Europe

A Postgraduate Symposium featuring speakers from the disciplines of Art History, English and History. Humanities Manse 1-6 pm.

14-16 April, 2011

Cultures of correspondence in early modern Britain 1550-1640

A Joint Conference to be held at the University of Plymouth in collaboration between by the Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts (Plymouth) and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, Aberdeen. A full programme is now available via the above link.

1-3 March, 2011

Musical, Cultural and Religious Networks in Early Modern Europe

A three day international conference organised in celebration of Peter Philips's 450th Anniversary. This conference centres on the many and varied networks of cultural practitioners in early modern Europe: musicians, writers, and other artists whose work and lives can be traced through surviving manuscripts, early prints, correspondence and other artefacts.

2010

24 July, 2010

Cultures of Correspondence Colloquium

A One Day Colloquium exploring the meaning and practice of letter writing in the early modern period. Organised by Andrew Gordon in coloration with the Early Modern Studies in Scotland Seminar. This event will be followed by a joint conference held at the University of Plymouth. 

14 June, 2010

Transnational allegiances and Cultural Transfer: Relations between early modern Poland and France in the European Context, 1570-1770

A workshop held by CEMS in co-operation with the Aberdeen Centre for Russian and East European History.

8-10 April, 2010 The Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Venice

At this year’s meeting CEMS sponsored the following panels of postgraduates and staff members

• Crown, Public, and Publicity in Scotland, 1603-1649

• Purgatory and Its Early Modern Displacements

• Liminal Spaces: Marginality, Locality and Plurality in Early Modern English Literature

21-23 March, 2010

Thomas Reid: From His Time To Ours

The Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy 2010 held at Aberdeen in conjunction with RIISS.

2009

26-29 August, 2009

Opening spaces: Constructions, visions and depictions of spaces and boundaries in the Baroque

An International Conference at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuettel, organised by Karin Friedrich, with the participation of members of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen.

15-16 June, 2009

Slavery, Ransom and Liberation in Russia and the Steppe Area, 1500-1850

Two-day Conference in cooperation with the Aberdeen Centre for Russian and East European History, Linklater rooms.

2008

5 December, 2008

Competing for Souls: Education and Religion in East Central Europe, 1550-1750

A One-Day Symposium organised by the Centre for Early Modern Studies and the Aberdeen Centre for Russian and East European History. 

2007

3 July, 2007

Scottish Catholicism and The Visual Arts, 1560-1807

A Colloquium in the Downside-Aberdeen Series Speakers: Prof. Michael Bath (Strathclyde), Dr John Morrison (Aberdeen), Dr Mary Pryor (Aberdeen), Professor Peter Davidson (Aberdeen), Respondents: Rt Rev Aidan Bellenger, OSB (Downside Abbey), Dr Anne Dillon (Cambridge)

Linklater Rooms, King's College, 1.15 – 4.00 pm

1-2 May, 2007

Tercentenary Conference on the Anglo-Scottish Union 1707: European Perspectives

Organisers: Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú and Dr Andrew Mackillop – Venue: Aberdeen Townhouse (Union Street)

12-13 April, 2007

Conference: Emigrants and exiles from the Three Kingdoms in Europe, 1603-1688

The aim of this conference (and ensuing publication) will be to provide an opportunity for participants to analyse expatriate groups from the three Stuart kingdoms together as an identifiable unit (or even a community) within the continental and/or Scandinavian settings.

2006

20 July - 22 July, 2006

Conference: Icons and Iconoclasts: The Long Seventeenth Century, 1603 to 1714