Scrutinizing Surfaces in Early Modern Thought

Scrutinizing Surfaces in Early Modern Thought


The Second Northern Renaissance Roses Seminar


8-9 May 2015


Keynote Speakers


Dr Helen Smith (University of York)


Professor Richard Wistreich (Royal College of Music,
London)



Run jointly by the universities of Lancaster and York, this interdisciplinary
seminar takes up and develops Joseph Amato’s trans-historical investigation of
how ‘humans, ourselves a body of surfaces, meet and interact with a world
dressed in surfaces’ (2013: xv) in the early modern period. We will consider the
topic broadly, addressing such questions as:

• What kinds of surfaces are prevalent in early modern thought?


• How might surfaces be viewed as a threshold between actor and spectator,
  writer and reader, teacher and student?


• What is the relationship between animate and inanimate surfaces?


• How are surfaces theorized in the early modern period?


• Is sound a surface?


• What kinds of interplay exist between early-modern photology and
  surfaces?


• How do twenty-first century theoretical perspectives engage with early
  modern surfaces?

The seminar will take place in the Storey, Lancaster City Centre and the
Regimental Chapel, Lancaster Priory, and will feature a recital of early-modern
music by Lancaster Priory’s Choir.



Funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Lancaster, ‘Scrutinizing
Surfaces in Early Modern Thought’ particularly encourages early career scholars
and post-graduates working in any Renaissance discipline.


 


Please send abstracts (c. 250 words) and a brief CV to Kevin Killeen
(kevin.killeen@york.ac.uk)
and Liz Oakley-Brown (e.oakley-brown@lancaster.ac.uk):
deadline 30 November 2014


 


Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (University of York):
http://www.york.ac.uk/crems/


The Northern Renaissance Seminar:
http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/northern-renaissance-seminar/events/