Two upcoming events!

Hello everyone,

There are two events coming up in early February for your delectation.

[1] Professor Valerie Traub will be visiting UBC on February 9, 2012. She will deliver a lively talk, “Making Sexual Knowledge,” at 4PM in Henry Angus 254 on that afternoon. In it, she plans to share the general contours of her latest project (Making Sexual Knowledge: Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns), focusing especially on obscurity in sexual knowledge and sexual pedagogy, and on the relations among historicism, psychoanalysis, feminism and queer theory. Please join us for this hour-long event!

Professor Valerie Traub is Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also the former Chair of the Women’s Studies Department at Michigan.

Her research concerns gender and sexuality in early modern England. She is the author of The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England, which won the best book of 2002 award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Other books include Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992) and two co-edited collections: Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects (1996) and Gay Shame (2009). Her current projects are entitled Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern West: A Prehistory of Normality, which analyzes the emergence of new discourses of gender, sexuality, race, and class in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century anatomical and cartographic illustrations; and Making Sexual Knowledge: Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns. She sits on the advisory boards of PMLA, GLQ, and Studies in English Literature. She is the recipient of the John D’Arms Award for graduate mentoring and the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award.

Funding for Professor’s Traub’s visit has been generously provided by CSIS, the Department of English, CWAGS, WAGS, Medieval Studies, and the Dean’s Office in the Faculty of Arts.

(Vin Nardizzi)

and


[2] On Monday 13th February, Professor Courtney Booker (History, UBC) will be talking on the topic of:

'History, Identity, and the First French Text: Nithard's Historiae and the Politics of Value"

This talk is part of the FHIS Early Romance Cluster, and will be held from 1.00 - 2.00 pm, in Buchanan Tower 799 (FHIS Lounge).  All welcome.

For more information see:

http://earlyromance.wordpress.com/

Welcome back, and summer news

Dear Medieval and Renaissance Studies colleagues,

Welcome back to another year in the Department of English at beautiful UBC.

Despite being on leave, I'll be continuing to use this blog to keep us all updated and aware of scholarly events of interest to medieval and renaissance researchers at UBC and the across the wider Vancouver region.  As usual, feel free to send any notices of events to me (robert.rouse[at]ubc.ca).

Upcoming Events


The new academic year kicks off with the annual Department of English Research Gala, Wednesday 7th September (4.30pm - 6.30 pm, in MASS, Buchanan D140). Please come along and chat to / meet medieval and renaissance faculty and grad students new and old.

That same evening, at 7pm in the Rare Books and Special Collections in the Irving K. Barber Centre, there is the opening lecture, inauguration and reception of the

An Exhibition of Rare Books Illustrating the Story of the King James Bible, Saturday September 7th to Monday October 29th: Mon -- Fri. 9 am - 5 pm and Sat. 12-5 pm.

The evening will feature an opening lecture

"An Eighty-Year Journey: The Making of the King James Bible"

          R. Gerald Hobbs, Professor Emeritus of Church History and Church Music, VST 

On the 19th September, please consider attending the following talk in the English Department

          Prof. Dr. Peter Siemund (U of Hamburg)
          4 p.m, BuTo 599 (location to be confirmed)

          "From lexical to referential gender: an analysis of gender change in
           medieval English based on two historical documents"


 Summer News


Over the summer our medieval and renaissance faculty and graduate students made their annual summer trips to research libraries, conferences and workshops, flying the UBC Early Literature Flag around the world.  While the list of these appearances is too long to enumerate in full, the Department was represented at conferences in many locales, exotic and otherwise, including - amongst others - the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Albania.

Welcome back to everyone, and may I wish you a most productive and enjoyable year in the Department.

Robert Rouse (on leave til Sept 2012)

Vin Nardizzi, Friday, March 25th, "'My olde rotten stump and I': Wooden Bodies on Shakespeare's Stage."

Today, Friday, Friday, March 25th, for the next in our series of faculty research presentations.  Our presenter will be Vin Nardizzi, whose talk is entitled "'My olde rotten stump and I': Wooden Bodies on Shakespeare's Stage."

The presentation will be held in BuTo 599 at 4:00; please come a bit early for cookies, coffee, and tea.

, for the next in the Department of English series of faculty research presentations.  The presenter will be Vin Nardizzi, whose talk is entitled "'My olde rotten stump and I': Wooden Bodies on Shakespeare's Stage."

The presentation will be held in BuTo 599 at 4:00; please come a bit early for cookies, coffee, and tea.

Monday 21st March, Helen Ostovich (McMaster), "The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602: not a bad quarto, really"

Monday 21st March:

Helen Ostovich (Professor of English, McMaster University), "The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602: not a bad quarto, really"

When:  Monday, March 21, 2011 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM; Where: Buchanan Tower 599.

Helen Ostovich is Professor of English at McMaster University. She is currently editing Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well with co-editor Karen Bamford (Mount Allison University) and Andrew Griffin (University of California Santa Barbara) for Internet Shakespeare Editions. She has produced several editions of Ben Jonson, including Ben Jonson : Four Comedies (London: Longman, 1997); an edition of Every Man Out of His Humour for Revels Plays (Manchester UP, 2001); and an edition of The Magnetic Lady for the Cambridge UP's complete works of Jonson (forthcoming). She has also published articles on Shakespeare and on Jonson, most recently on issues of gender and Jonson's reputation for misogyny, on Jonson’s interests in the new science, and on his connections with the Cavendish family.

Friday 18th March: Sian Echard, "Translating Colour: The Middle Ages in Black and White"

A part of the Department of English Faculty Speakers Series

Please join us on Friday, March 18th, for the next in our series of faculty research presentations.  Our presenter will be Siân Echard, whose talk is entitled "Translating Colour: The Middle Ages in Black and White."

The presentation will be held in BuTo 599 at 4:00; please come a bit early for cookies, coffee, and tea.

 

 

Medieval Legal History Lectures, March 16th and 18th

Professor Paul Brand,Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University, and Member of the British Academy, one of the premier English legal historians of the Middle Ages, will be on the UBC campus this week presenting two talks on topics in medieval English Legal History.

Please join us at:

A lecture  

"The Beginnings of Legal Education in England"

March 16 at 10-10:50 am

Buchanan D 21

and a seminar

"Edward I and the Law"

March 18 at 12:30-1:30pm

University Centre Lower Level  174 in the Law and Society Speakers Series

Co-sponsored by the UBC Faculty of Law and the Department of History

Abstract: King Edward I, the king of England from 1272 until his death in 1307, was being described by the seventeenth century as the ‘English Justinian’ and was still so being described in the early twentieth century. This might have been because later generations believed the assertion of the compiler of the contemporary English law book, Britton, that his treatise represented an official summary of English law specifically authorised by the king and was thus an English parallel to the Corpus Iuris Civilis. It might also have been, as Edward Coke suggested, because Edward I‘s reign was particularly fertile in major legislation and much of that legislation emphasised the king’s involvement in its enactment.  In this paper Brand shows why no such official authority can be ascribed to Britton and the evidence suggesting that Edward had at most a minor part in the framing of the legislation enacted during his reign. Edward has also sometimes been thought to have played a significant role in the working of the court held coram rege (‘in the presence of the king’), the court of King’s Bench, but Brand's presentation provides  reasons for thinking that this too was not the case.
  

Selected  publications:

•  Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, vol. VI (2005)
• Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England (2003)
• The Earliest English Law Reports, vols. I-IV (Selden Society, vols. 111, 112, 122, 123, 1995-6, 2005-7)
• The Making of the Common Law (1992)
• The Origins of the English Legal Profession (1992)

Shakespeareans in the Pacific (April 11 and 12)

Monday, April 11:  UBC English's Annual Sedgewick Lecture:  Jonathan Gil Harris

“Marvelous Repossessions: Taking Paradise from the Rear in The Tempest”

3:30 pm

Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
University Centre

6331 Crescent Road

Light refreshments to follow

RSVP by March 15 


Tuesday, April 12: Our afternoon of talks / workshops at the Green College Coach House (tentative schedule)

1-3 PM: Madhavi Menon

3-3:30 PM: Coffee Break

3:30-5:30 PM: Shankar Raman

5:30 PM: Reception and then dinner at UBC's Green College (http://www.greencollege.ubc.ca/)