A conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers, hosted by the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton

Chawton House Library, Hampshire, 16-17 February 2010

Keynote speaker: Dr Peter Beal FBA (Institute of English Studies, University of London)

This two-day conference will bring together postgraduate and early career researchers working on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English manuscript sources. Many of the sources from this period are multi-authored and contain strikingly disparate materials, posing a serious challenge to scholars working within traditionally defined disciplinary boundaries.

The primary aim of the conference is to address this challenge: to provide an opportunity for genuine interdisciplinary discussion, and to create new networks between researchers which will enable them to share both theoretical perspectives and practical approaches to working with early modern manuscript materials.

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers that address any aspect of the conference theme but, in particular, those focused in the following areas:

· Studies of individual manuscripts that contain a range of diverse materials

· Manuscripts as emblems of social bonds (e.g. family, friendship, or patronage-based networks)

· Manuscripts as spaces for private reflection

· Manuscripts as objects for public display

· Manuscripts as commodities in a gift economy

· The relationships between manuscript and print culture

· The role of new technologies in manuscript studies, including:

- Project reports and/or practical demonstrations of existing electronic resources

- Conceptual and theoretical models – how can emerging technologies shape the future of manuscript studies?

- Representing non-textual material in electronic editions

A conference webpage will appear shortly on the Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture website: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/cmrc

Abstracts (300 words max.) for proposed papers should be sent by email to both conference organisers by October 16th 2009:

Michael Gale ( mdg@soton.ac.uk ) and Louise Rayment ( L.Rayment@soton.ac.uk )

Please include contact details and indicate your institutional affiliation and professional status (i.e. doctoral candidate, post-doctoral researcher etc.) in your submission.