renaissance

This panel seeks papers that explore the early modern relationship between loss and melancholy for the Sixteenth Century Society Conference to be held in Chicago, 29-31 October 2026. In his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton writes, “Now go and brag of thy present happiness… thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayst be dejected… by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent.” Bereavement permeates the early modern landscape, appearing in paintings, prints, poems, plays, ego documents, and legal testimony, among many other sources. It may involve the loss of love, friends, honor, possessions, homeland, freedom, political stability, or even religious conviction.

International Conference

VASSALS AND LORDS. CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS, AND JEWS

IN THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN (13TH-15TH CENTURIES)

October 26-28, 2026

Faculty of Geography and History, UNED

Madrid (Spain)

The nature of free speech has been a flashpoint in the past decade of contemporary Anglo-American and Western politics. Depending on who you ask, free speech is imperiled by politically correct language and the silencing of right-leaning voices among the elite, or by political administrations, corporations, and other institutions that remove books from libraries and syllabi from classrooms. As these principles collide, the dialectic between freedom of expression and institutional censorship reaches a crucible—a volatile tension that distills our understanding of these core principles.  

The Milton Society of America invites proposals for 15-minute papers for one or more sessions at the 2027 MLA Convention in Los Angeles. Papers on any aspect of Milton’s works, historical milieu, sources, and reception and comparative approaches are welcome. Send 150-word abstracts and 50-word biographical statements to Marissa Greenberg, MSA Secretary, at MiltonSocietySec@gmail.com  by Monday, 16 March 2026.

Description: The session is currently accepting submissions for papers on all topics related to Shakespeare. Submissions from Ph.D. candidates and early career scholars are especially encouraged.

NOTE: This call is for papers to be presented at the conference.

Please direct your brief abstract (less than 250 words) and/or any questions to Jennifer Topale at rmmla2026proposals@gmail.com. Abstracts are due by 1 April 2026.

Boccaccio Beyond Boccaccio: Reception, Adaptation, and Afterlives from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century

Panel Co-Sponsored by the Forum on 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-Century Italian Studies and the American Boccaccio Association

Call for Chapters

Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies: Language, Sense, and Proof in the Early Modern World

Editors: Dr Mary Katherine Newman and Dr Rana Banna

What counted as evidence in the early modern world? 

How did language itself – spoken, written, translated, or performed – shape conceptions of proof? 

And how did sensory experience lend authority, or uncertainty, to what language claimed as true?

The Faerie Queene confronts its characters and readers alike with perceptual, cognitive, and physical struggles, and the reader’s passage through Spenser’s monumental work is as arduous and seemingly unending as the journeys and quests of its knights. The parallels between the characters’ trials and the readers’ embodied experience of the poem become more pronounced when The Faerie Queene is read out loud in its entirety. In 2019, the English department at Tampere University organised its first marathon reading of Spenser’s epic romance. The 2026 iteration will be the sixth marathon reading overall, and the second to be attached to an international symposium.

2026 Wenshan x TSA International Conference Call for Papers

Hosted by: NCCU Department of English, Taiwan Shakespeare Association

Date: November 29, 2026

Venue: National Chengchi University

Shakespeare Across Centuries:

Reception, Resonance, and Reinvention

Shakespeare’s works continue to inhabit what Stephen Greenblatt calls a “circulating

“Global Early Modern Environmental Crises: Modes of Extraction, Settler Colonialism, and Empire” 

The Forum on Seventeenth-Century English Studies (LLC 17th-Century English) is putting together a guaranteed MLA panel for the 2027 Annual Convention in Los Angeles, CA, USA (7-10 January) on global early modern environmental crises with a focus on human interactions with the earth tied to imperial pursuits, settler colonialism, conflicts in worldviews, and methods of extraction. We hope to feature scholars with expertise in different linguistic traditions to foster cross-cultural discussions. 

Possible topics include but are not limited to: 

We are pleased to announce that the theme for Volume 13 of Ceræ is Fame and Fortune. We invite submissions to both the conference and the journal on this theme.

ESSE 2026 conference, Santiago de Compostela (SPAIN)

31st August - 4st September 2026

Seminar 61.- Violence in Early Modern English Drama: From Stage to Screen

From the brutality of Titus Andronicus to the psychological torment of The Duchess of Malfi, early modern English drama is saturated with violence—performed or described, symbolic or spectacular. This seminar will explore how violence has functioned as a dramatic, cultural, and ideological force in early modern English theatre, and how its representations have evolved across time, including contemporary screen adaptations and TV series that borrow early modern tropes of violence, such as House of Cards or Game of Thrones.

Call for Papers 2026

Deadline: February 28th 2026

Theme: Gender and Supernatural

“You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.” Macbeth 1.3.46-47

DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL THE 29TH, JANUARY 2026

“Violence in the Medieval and Early Modern North”

Aberdeen Medieval and Early Modern North Conference

University of Aberdeen, Scotland