renaissance

DISBELIEF

From the Renaissance to Romanticism25-7/May/2017 // Email: disbelief2017@gmail.com Website: http://disbelief2017.wixsite.com/emerg // Keynote speakers: Péter Dávidházi (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary), Tim Fulford ( De Montfort University), Nicholas Halmi (The University of Oxford, UK), Ágnes Péter (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary),Tzachi Zamir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel).

CALL FOR PAPERS: MCLLM

Conference Date: April 7-8, 2017

Deadline for Proposals: January 27, 2017

Theme: “Altered States, Times, Perspectives”

Papers on any aspect of British seventeenth-century literature (including Restoration), for the annual meeting of the 2017 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Spokane, Washington on October 12-14, 2017. Email 200-300 word proposals, by March 1, to clayldaniel@live.com or clay.daniel@utrgv.edu All proposals are acknowledged. You do not have to be a member of RMMLA to propose a paper, but you should become a member by April 1 to be listed in the program.

Since Ovid’s first-century Metamorphoses, transformative experiences and transformed selves have been fundamental sites of interest in European literature. At times bewildering, marvelous, and horrid, these physical transformations can invite readers to reconsider their bodies and, because of Ovid’s moral ambiguity, to reconsider their morality and thus to reconsider themselves. The powerful idea of transformation has shaped medieval and early modern thinking, a specter heralding what is yet to come, whether feared or longed for. Transformations can be violent, often involving aggressive bodily catalysts, or even death. But other transformations are rapturous, holy epiphanies. Transformations can be sly and illusory, indiscernible yet suspected.

Shakespeare scholars regularly encounter social justice issues in the material that we study and teach. Most often in the classroom our engagement with such issues takes the form of thematic identification and critical parsing. Yet we struggle to form more direct, material connections between coursework and social justice work. This book is for professors of early modern literature who want to heighten the intellectual impact of their courses by thoughtfully using their classrooms as laboratories for social formation and action.