Previous Conferences

2018 – Bern

Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England

13–14 September 2018, University of Bern

Convenors: Annette Kern-Stähler and Nicole Nyffenegger

At a time when government secrecy and surveillance has reached an unprecedented scale, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the history of the forms and cultural means of these operations. This conference explored medieval and early modern practices of secrecy and surveillance. Karma Lochrie has defined secrecy as the “intentional concealment that structures social and power relationships” and has focused on “operations rather than objects of secrecy”. Such operations may include practices of confession, of riddling and decoding, and of thinking with metaphors for the clandestine (secrets are hidden behind seals, veils, doors, in books or treasure chests). Covert operations also invite us to explore how the unspeakable can be transmitted and how secrets can be owned and administered. Foucault’s notion of panopticism points to an increasing need to control, monitor and discipline individual members of society. Surveillance in this sense goes hand in hand with the establishment of the norms and conventions of behaviour that secrecy and covertness seek to circumvent. What can be known and done is called into question as individuals transgress the cultural and behavioural norms imposed on them by society. At the same time, the powerful elite define the epistemological boundaries between themselves and those who become subjects of suspicion and surveillance.

Plenary speakers: Prof. Karma Lochrie (Indiana University), Prof. Paul Strohm (Prof. em., Columbia University), Prof. Sylvia Tomasch (Hunter College, University of New York), Prof. Richard Wilson (Kingston University, London).

2016 – Zürich

What is an Image in Medieval and Early Modern England?

9–11 September 2016, University of Zurich

Convenors: Antoinina Bevan-Zlatar and Olga Timofeeva

It has been argued that we live in a world saturated by visual images, that culture has undergone a ‘pictorial turn’. This premise has prompted researchers in the humanities and social sciences to theorize the visual image, documenting its function and status relative to other media, tracing the history of its power and the attempts to disempower it. We might think of the work of David Freedberg (The Power of Images, 1989), Bruno Latour (Iconoclash, 2002), W.J.T. Mitchell (What do pictures want? 2004), or James Elkins (What is an image? 2011). This conference aimed to extend this scholarship in two interrelated ways, firstly by focusing on the image in a particular period and location, namely in medieval and early modern England, and secondly by exploring the status of the visual image in relation to texts.

In the Latin West, it was in the late medieval and early modern periods that religious images would be subject to particular pressure, notably in the first half of the sixteenth century when reformers in Strasbourg, Zurich and Geneva would denounce them as idolatrous, and Catholics would reinstate them. But it was in England that the debate on images was particularly protracted, first expressed in Lollard resistance to depictions of the divine, and then in the iconomachy and full-blown iconoclasm of the Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a consequence, the relationship between the so-called sister arts of pictura and poesis, image and word, would be problematized.

Yet, the story of the inexorable demise of the religious image in late medieval and early modern England and the concomitant ‘iconophobia’ of its people is being revised. Evidence suggests that there was a far more variegated iconic landscape in post-Reformation England and that the status of the religious image was inflected by its medium, location, and subject matter. Moreover, such images formed and were in turn formed by images produced in new secular media across a range of disciplines.

Plenary speakers: Prof. Brian Cummings (University of York), Prof. Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center, New York), Prof. Alexandra Walsham (University of Cambridge), Prof. Nicolette Zeeman (University of Cambridge).

2014 – Fribourg

Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England

12–13 September 2014, University of Fribourg

Convenors: Elisabeth Dutton and Indira Ghose

In medieval England, when literacy was low and the liturgy in Latin, what did drama teach, and how? What were the implications for Middle English drama of its vernacularity, and how did it engage Latinity? The mystery plays teach scriptural material in the vernacular; the morality plays present subtle theological and philosophical teaching through allegory. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries drama is a way of disseminating theological and philosophical ideas: in the sixteenth century, with the rise of humanism, drama is one way the academic community debates those ideas. In early modern England, as the theatre came to rival the pulpit as a mass medium, leading many to attack the stage and many others to defend it, did drama teach or seduce, instruct or distract? As historical circumstances change, how does drama balance the requirements of doctrine and delight – and does it manifest any sense of contradiction between the two?

As well as pedagogy of drama, conference papers might consider pedagogy in drama – scenes in which instruction is portrayed, whether seriously or satirically. How do the Cycle plays engage with Christ as a teacher, or the Morality plays portray the pedagogical methods of Virtue and Vice figures? Humanist influence on the Tudor interlude ensures an interest in education, and examples of dramatized instruction abound in the plays of the early modern professional stage. Hamlet clearly thinks drama itself can teach and reveal – is his view typical, and is it right? Academic drama is a particularly pregnant locus for the exploration of drama and pedagogy: universities and the Inns of Court trained some of the leading playwrights of the early theatre, and, because productions were privately funded by colleges and performed in privately owned halls, the commercial constraints of the professional playhouses did not apply to university drama. In addition to exploring the role of academic drama in socio-political history and theatre history, the conference will examine the reasons for the strong connections between drama and education. Why was drama given a central role in pedagogical practice?

Keynote speakers: Prof. Lynn Enterline (Vanderbilt); Prof. John McGavin (Southampton); Prof. Alan Nelson (UC Berkeley); Prof. Michelle O’Callaghan (Reading); Perry Mills (Director of Edward’s Boys).

2012 – Lausanne

Literature, Science and Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern England

27–29 June 2012, University of Lausanne

Convenors: Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey

Literature, science and medicine as an interdisciplinary interface has come to the forefront of medieval and early modern English studies in recent years. The objective of this conference was to take stock of as many parameters as possible on this interface, looking for instance at the ways in which the discourses of medicine, science and literature impact on one another, or how the construction of authority is shaped in medicine and literature; an other aspect will consider literary treatments of scientific figures. In short, we would like to circumscribe the social, legal, institutional and cultural parameters that shaped the ways in which agents in these fields interacted and benefited from one another.

Plenary speakers: Heinrich von Staden (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton University); Eric Masserey (Medecin cantonal, Service de la santé publique, Lausanne); Vincent Barras (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois and University of Lausanne); Margaret Healy (University of Sussex); Jennifer Richards (University of Newcastle); Anthony Hunt (St Peter’s College, University of Oxford).

2010 – Geneva

Medieval and Early Modern Authorship

30 June – 2 July 2010, University of Geneva

Convenors: Guillemette Bolens and Lukas Erne

Authorship has come to the forefront of medieval and early modern English studies in recent years, as is shown by the wealth of important publications in this area. This conference took stock of a duly socialized form of authorship, which recognizes that while authors have agency, that agency is circumscribed by the multi-faceted social, legal, institutional, and intertextual pressures within which authorship takes place.

Plenary speakers: Colin Burrow (Oxford); Patrick Cheney (Penn State); Helen Cooper (Cambridge); Rita Copeland (Pennsylvania); Robert Edwards (Penn State); Alastair Minnis (Yale).

2008 – Bern

Pretexts, Intertextualities, and the Construction of Textual Identity

Convenors: Margaret Bridges and Nicole Nyffenegger

3–4 October 2008, University of Bern

The first SAMEMES conference focused on some of the numerous critical and theoretical interests common to our institutionally divided disciplines, whether they relate to modes of textual production and reception (the advent of print culture does not spell out the demise of manuscript production, nor do these two forms of textuality reflect the wide range of literary transmission and reception, which is further affected by intermediality), to formal or thematic continuities and discontinuities (processses of cultural memory and/or amnesia), or whether they concern the effects of social and political change in (gendered and transgendered) construction of textual identities. Current theoretical approaches to literary history require that the study of diachronic and synchronic relationships between texts – pretexts and intertexts – take into account mechanisms of cultural transmission, as well as of gender and identity construction.

Plenary speakers: Stephen Orgel (Stanford University), Ad Putter (University of Bristol), David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania), Helen Wilcox (University Of Bangor)