Humanities Institute :: College of Arts and Sciences, University at Buffalo

Early Modern Research Workshop

Faculty Coordinators: Carla Mazzio (English) and Ruth Mack (English)

The Early Modern Research Workshop unites scholars and graduate students with research and teaching interests in the period between 1450 and 1800. It exists to establish an interdisciplinary network of scholars at UB, facilitate the exchange between early modernists and invited scholars, raise awareness of contemporary debates across fields, encourage harmonization of curricular development, furnish a forum for faculty to present works-in-progress, and coordinate graduate student mentorship.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Fall 2012

Friday, September 21, 12PM

318 Clemens Hall (Silverman Room)

Jane Newman -- UC-Irvine, Professor of Comparative Literature

"Auerbach's Dante: Poetical Theology and the Question of World Literature"

Friday, September 28, 12PM-3PM

420 Capen Hall (The Poetry Collection)

History of the Book Symposium: "Gathering and Scattering in Early Print Culture"

Peter Stallybrass -- University of Pennsylvania, Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Randall McLeod -- University of Toronto, Emeritus Professor, Department of English

"Ghostlier Demarcations"

Friday, October 26, 12PM-1:30PM

306 Clemens Hall

Faculty Works-in-Progress

David R. Castillo -- UB Romance Languages and Literatures

"Baroque Horror"

Friday, December 7, 12PM-1:30PM

306 Clemens Hall

James Bono -- UB, Chair and Associate Professor, Department of History

"How to Read the Book of Nature Literally: Boyle, the Bible, and the Book of Nature"

Friday, February 8, 3:30PM

306 Clemens Hall

Kathleen Biddick -- Temple University, Professor of History

"Deciding on the Tree of Life: The Biopolitics of Political Theology"

Friday, February 15, 12PM

310 Clemens Hall (Oscar Silverman Room)

Liana Vardi -- UB History

"Who was a counter-revolutionary?"

Thursday, March 7, 3:30PM

306 Clemens Hall

Janet Sorensen -- UC Berkeley

About the Workshop

The Early Modern Research Workshop offers a wide range of expertise and a variety of courses in the literature and culture of the Western world from 1500-1830, including intellectual history, historical studies of genres and authors, detailed readings of canonical and popular texts, and various topics in cultural studies. It is comprised of UB faculty in English, Comparative Literature, History, and Modern Languages, and supplemented by course offerings available through our membership in the Folger Shakespeare Library Institute.

Meeting Schedule

UPCOMING 2011-2012 EVENTS

Thursday, September 22 | Jane Tylus (Department of Italian Studies, NYU)

"Gaspara Stampa, Louise Labe, and the return of Sappho" (904 Clemens Hall, 3:00PM)

Event sponsored by Romance Languages

Monday, October 10 | Jonathan Goldberg (Department of English, Emory University)

"Carnival in The Merchant of Venice" (306 Clemens Hall, 4:00PM)

Event sponsored by Medieval-Early Modern Student Association

Friday, November 4 | Andy Stott (Department of English, UB)

Title TBA (306 Clemens Hall, 12:00PM)

Faculty works-in-progress series

Thursday, November 17 | Helen Thompson (Department of English, Northwestern University)

"'It was impossible to know these people': Secondary Qualities and the Form of Character in A Journal of the Plague Year" (319 Clemens Hall, 4:00PM)

Wednesday, December 7 | Jean Baumgarten (Directeur de Recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre des Hautes Etudes Juives, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

"Old Yiddish literature and the popularization of Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Society, 17th to 18th century" (306 Clemen Hall, 4PM)

Friday, February 10 | Erik Seeman (Department of History, UB)

"Speaking with the Dead in the American Enlightenment" (location 306 Clemens Hall, 12:00PM)

Respondent: Ruth Mack

Faculty works-in-progress series

pre-circulated paper available via UB Online Reserves under HIS000

Friday, February 24

Roundtable: Early Modern Masculinities (12-5PM, 532 Park Hall)

Tuesday, March 27 | Jacques Lezra (Comparative Literature, NYU)

"Mediation more ferarum: For Bestiality" (120 Clemens Hall, 4:30-6:30PM)

Lecture and seminar

Wednesday, March 28 | Jacques Lezra (Comparative Literature, NYU)

"'Puta Vieja': On Contingency in Translation" (306 Clemens, 1:30-3:00PM)

2010-2011 EVENTS

Thursday, September 30-Friday, October 1, 2010| Fall Conference

"Knowledge in the Making, 1400-1700: Science, Art, and Epistemology." This conference aims to bring together an exciting group of scholars working on art, science and epistemology in the early modern period from a range of disciplinary perspectives. With attention to art-science relations in early modern England, France, Italy, Iberia, and the Americas, the conference aims to spark cross-cultural as well as cross-disciplinary conversations. Speakers include: Mary Baine Campbell (English, Brandeis); Tom Conley (Romance Languages, Harvard); Jorge Canizarez Esguerra (History, University of Texas); Pamela O. Long (History, Independent Scholar); Gerard Passannante (English, University of Maryland); Pamela H. Smith (History, Columbia); Elizabeth Spiller (English, Florida State University); Scott Manning Stevens (Director of the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library); Valerie Traub (English and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). See link above for conference website with program details and registration form. Conference is free and open to the public, advance registration required.

*Thursday, October 7, 2010 | Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Department of English, George Washington Univ.)

"The Sex Life of Stone: Dreaming the Lithic in the Middle Ages." (306 Clemens Hall, 3:30PM) * Event sponsored by the Medieval-Early Modern Student Association

Thursday, November 11, 2010 | Christopher Pye (Department of English, Williams)

"The Storm at Sea: Political Aesthetics from Shakespeare to Hobbes." (306 Clemens Hall, 4PM)

Thursday, December 2, 2010 | Faculty works-in-progress series

Ruth Mack (Department of English, UB)

Title TBA (306 Clemens Hall, 12PM)

*Friday, December 10, 2010 | Randy Schiff (English, University at Buffalo)

"Arthurian Sovereignty and Animalized Violence: Terror and Territory in Ywain and Gawain"

Presentation for "Scholars at Muse" (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Muse Restaurant, 4PM)

Friday, February 18, 2010 | Faculty works-in-progress series

Amy Graves (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, UB)

"Bitter Fruits: Satire and the Anxieties of Social Criticism in Early Modern France" (306 Clemens Hall, 12PM)

Friday, February 25, 2010 | Sandra Macpherson (Ohio State University)

Sponsored by Juxtapositions (Place TBA, 4 PM)

Thursday, March 3, 2011 | Jacob Soll (Department of History, Rutgers)

“[TBA]" (306 Clemens Hall, 4PM)

Friday, April 1, 2011 | Faculty works-in-progress series

Claire Schen (Department of History, UB)

"Learning from the Seas: Temporal and Spiritual Traffique in Early Seventeenth-Century England" (306 Clemens Hall, 12 PM)

Monday, April 18, 2011 | Lorraine Daston (Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Professor, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)

Event sponsored by the Early Modern Research Workshop and the Humanities Institute

"Epistemic Images in Early Modern Botany" (120 Clemens Hall, 4 PM)

2009-2010 EVENTS

March 19, 2010 | Michel Fisher (Department of History, Oberlin)

“Images of Asians in Early Imperial Britain"

October 9, 2009 | Ken Mills (Department of Spanish, University of Toronto)

"The Eyes of Faith will See: Sacred Journeying the Early Modern Spanish World"

February 20, 2009 | Ben Schmidt (Department of History, University of Washington)

"The Idea of Europe and its Expansion: Global Exoticism at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century"

October 16, 2008 | Nabil Matar (Department of English, University of Minnesota)

"The Priest, the Sufi and the Chaplain: Three Travelers to the Holy Land"