Events 2011

The Winter’s Tale symposium

University of Liverpool, 12 November 2011

This one-day Symposium is a part of the larger month-long Liverpool Winter’s Tale Festival celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. It aims to enhance our understanding of this complex play, and papers presented at the symposium may focus on the text at the moment of production, its relationship with its predecessors and contemporaries, both within Shakespeare’s own writing and beyond, its transmission through editorial processes, as well as its interpretation through contemporary performances and re-readings. Confirmed speakers include Helen Cooper (Cambridge), Subha Mukherji (Cambridge) and Lori Humphrey Newcomb (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

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The Price of Peace

Cultures of War and Conflict Resolution Network
In conjunction with the Northern Renaissance Seminar

10 June 2011

* Image: Bartholomeus van der Helst, Celebration of the Peace of Münster, 1648, at the Crossbowmen’s Headquarters

The discourse of peacemaking in the early modern period emphasised the benefits or commodities of peace. In peacetime the arts flourished, trade expanded, camaraderie and tranquillity reigned. Nevertheless, peace always came with a price, and not everyone in every occasion was willing to pay it. What was the price of peace in early modern Europe? What did peace require? What did parties entering into peace have to sacrifice in order to arrive at it? What was lost when peace was gained, and why were so many people on so many occasions unable to lose it? Answers from the records of art, music, history and literature are all encouraged.

Our one day seminar will feature a Keynote Address by Richard Dutton, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University, on ‘Henry V, January 7 1605’.  It will also include talks on topics as varied as ‘The Price of Peace During the French Wars of Religion’ (Gregory Champeaud, University of Bordeaux 3) and ‘The Pleasures of Vengeance in Early Modern Naples’ (Stephen Cummins, Christ’s College, Cambridge).

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Re-reading William Shakespeare Twenty-five Years On

A Colloquium with Terry Eagleton 

Saturday 7 May 2011

How do we re-read Shakespeare now? What value do the terms set out by Eagleton: language, nature, desire, law, money, the body, and the work of theorists and philosophers continue to hold for us?

Call for papers Re-reading William Shakespeare