Schedule
SPRING 2024
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
28 February, work-in-progress papers by, jointly, Emily Smith (UNIGE) & Anne-Elisabeth Donzé (UNIGE), and Juliette Vuille (UNIL)
13 March, Prof. Isabel Karremann, Ann-Sophie Bosshard, Timothy Holden, and Jifeng Huang (UNIZH), DramaSCAPEs: The Material Affordances of Early Modern Drama
DramaSCAPEs is a collaborative project that aims at developing an innovative conceptual framework for understanding early modern drama and its spatial, cognitive, affective and perceptual ecologies. The acronym not only indicates the dimensions of embodied experience in and of drama that the project explores; ‘scape’ also provides a key concept through which the category of space (as a topographical location) can be rethought as an environment with specific affordances, enabling certain uses and modes of engagement. This concept allows us to redescribe the early modern theatre and the plays it staged as ‘dramascapes’ that relate activities, actors and audiences in a dense web of practices best understood as ecologies. The workshop will introduce three case studies from DramaSCAPEs – on scape/sound, emplacement/mobility and embodiment/disability – and we will together test the critical vocabulary by working on a scene from Romeo & Juliet.
27 March, Prof. Frank Brandsma (Utrecht University), Working with (Represented) Emotions in Medieval Texts
For medieval audiences, part of the attractiveness of romances seems to have been the emotional engagement these stories make possible. As the protagonist undergoes one adventure after another, falls in and out of love and encounters mysterious objects like the Grail, much attention is given to how this affects the character emotionally. And this is done in such a way that these emotions may have been shared by the audience. But how does this work? By looking at examples from several literary texts (in Old French, Middle Dutch, et cetera) we will discuss how to analyse the emotional setup. What role do spectators within the text play, for instance? How much emotion is labelled as such by the narrator, and how much is revealed by means of the character's body and behaviour? The analysis will be informed by the appraisal theory and neurological evidence on recognising and sharing emotions. Participants are encouraged to bring a passage involving an emotional situation from a text they are working on.
17 April, Dr Andy Reilly (UNIGE) and Prof. Emma Depledge (UNINE), Shakespeare and the Material Text: Quartos and Duodecimos
8 May, Prof. Erin A. McCarthy (University of Galway), Modelling Manuscript Verse Circulation: Introducing the STEMMA Project
This event will begin with a lecture by Professor McCarthy introducing the new European Research Council-funded project ‘STEMMA: Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse, 1475–1700’. Whereas scholars have tended to address individual manuscripts as case studies, STEMMA revolutionizes the study of manuscript poetry by taking a data-driven approach to identify patterns and trends at scale. After an extended Q&A, we will segue to an interactive workshop that asks participants to think about the challenges and opportunities presented by literary and/or historical data. We will pay particular attention to thorny issues, such as rendering uncertain dates computationally tractable and dealing with old spelling. Participants are encouraged to bring along examples and material from their own works-in-progress.
22 May, Work-in-progress papers by Céline Magada (UNIL) and Honor Jackson (UNIFR)
autumn 2023
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
20 September: Prof. em. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (UNINE), ‘Shakespeare and messianic time: the opening scene of Hamlet’
I will first present an analysis of the opening scene of Hamlet within the framework of my current research on Shakespeare and messianic time. My focus is the lyrical evocation by the sentinel Marcellus of the received popular belief that the cock sings all night in the ‘season’ of celebration of ‘our Saviour’s birth’ which, I argue, is above all significant for its representation of the temporal economy of the messianic event. In a second ‘hands on’ part I want us to test one of the more interesting hypotheses about this passage, namely that it summons as an antithetical intertext the scene of the shepherds in one of the mystery cycles Shakespeare may have seen as a child. After reading the two scenes we will discuss not only this (possible) intertextual relation but also how it complicates the question of temporalities.
11 October: work-in-progress papers by Jana Constantin (UNINE) and Manon Turban (Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, Chambéry)
25 October: Prof. Brian Cummings (University of York), ‘Reading Erasmus Reading’
15 November: Prof. Elisabeth Dutton (University of Fribourg), ‘Searching in the Sidebar: the medieval “stage direction” revisited’
Playscripts can be received in two material forms: in performance, and on the page. Significant to both, though in different ways, are the paratexts which sit, historically, in the side margins of the playscript page and were known – perhaps inappropriately – as ‘stage directions’. The bulk of attention has been paid to early modern stage directions; in this workshop we will interrogate medieval texts, particularly the Chester Mystery Plays, which have unusually rich paratexts. In studying these, we will work with the prompt-books of modern theatre company Isango, whose South African adaptation of Chester won numerous awards in the first decade of this century. Can the evolution of Isango’s prompt-books illuminate the practices of Chester’s medieval scribes and performers?
29 November: work-in-progress papers by Sophie Battell (University of Zurich) and Juliette Vuille (UNIL)
13 December: work-in-progress papers by William Brockbank (UNIBE) and Charlotte Potter (UNIGE)
SPRING 2023
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
1 March, bring a text / present a problem
Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes (including questions / feedback).
15 March, work-in-progress papers by Chen Cui (UNIL) and Elizabeth Kukorelly (UNIGE)
29 March, SNSF-project presentation, Denis Renevey (principal investigator), Christiania Whitehead (senior researcher), Olena Danylovych (doctoral researcher)
In this Workshop, the University of Lausanne team will present their current SNSF research project, ‘Re-configuring the Apophatic Tradition in Late Medieval England’.
19 April, Professor Indira Ghose (UNIFR), Wit, Humour, and Civility
In current criticism, civility is out of fashion, as is humour. Both are castigated as a ‘suave form of violence’ (Eagleton) and for their implication in the oppression of parts of society. A survey of early modern debates about wit and humour reveals affinities with the discourse on civility. In rhetoric and courtesy literature wit is advocated as a means to gain prestige and a reputation for urbanity. Humour, the theorists note, can serve the function of a social lubricant and promote group cohesion. At the same time, the manuals point to the element of gamesmanship in aggressive jousts of jesting. A number of texts draw analogies between wit and duelling, another staple of conduct theory. Classical and early modern theorists of humour also draw links between humour, lies and fictions. Reading the literature of courtesy in conjunction with a number of early modern plays allows us to explore thethemes of antagonism and mutual respect and probe the question what role fictions play in civil interaction.
3 May, Professor Pascale Aebischer et al. (University of Exeter), Gerex 2: Types of Titus
Geneva-Exeter Renaissance Exchange presentations, subsidized by the Joint Seed Money Funding Scheme promoting cooperation between the University of Geneva and the University of Exeter.
17 May, Professor Adam Smyth (Balliol College, Oxford University), The History of Books: Bibliographical and Literary Perspectives
This CUSO event consists of a one-hour lecture by Professor Smyth, followed by a lengthy question time (10.15 a.m.-noon; venue tba), and an interactive workshop, led by Professor Smyth (from 4.15 p.m.). What relationship exists between the physical form of a book and its literary contents? How can we approach this question? This event will explore a number of perspectives, particularly in relation to early modern books. Among other topics, consideration will be given to cultures of printed waste: that is, the use of fragments of older books and manuscripts in the physical make-up of new books. This practice, both pragmatic and richly suggestive, provides one route into the question of material and literary form. The primary focus, here, will be on books from the 16th and 17th centuries, but these are questions with a wider resonance, and anyone interested in thinking how the physical form of a book relates to its content, from any period, will be welcome, and will be able to have their work-in-progress discussed.
AUTUMN 2022
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
28 September: Mary Flannery, Amy Brown, and Kristen Haas Curtis (UNIBE), ‘“For the Love of Modesty”: Looking at Chaucerian Obscenity After the Middle Ages’
In this Workshop, the COMMode research team will provide an overview of their ongoing investigation of ‘Canonicity, Obscenity, and the Making of Modern Chaucer, 1700-2020’. Taking a selection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts as their examples, Mary Flannery, Amy Brown, and Kristen Haas Curtis will examine some of the paradoxes involved in reading and studying Chaucerian obscenity.
12 October: work-in-progress papers by Georgia Fulton (UNIGE) and Lancelot Stücklin (UNIGE)
26 October: Indira Ghose (UNIFR), ‘Shakespeare and the Ethics of Humour’ (CANCELLED)
In today’s world, humour has become the target of the culture wars. Humour is increasingly under attack for causing offence to certain groups in society. Curiously, what seems to be a feature of our times actually replays disputes about comedy in Shakespeare’s age, in particular an insistence on a one-to-one correlation between fictions and reality. How does Shakespeare respond to attacks on comedy in his time? A brief survey of comic moments in the plays, both tragedies and comedies, reveals a consistent engagement with the nature of fictive artefacts. Humour, Shakespeare seems to suggest, is a form of fiction too: as in a foreign country, they do things differently there. More importantly, in a post-truth world in which the distinction between fiction and reality is increasingly under pressure, Shakespeare’s humour sheds a light on our own paradoxical relation to reality and the self-created fictions we insist are truths.
16 November: Professor Sif Rikhardsdottir (University of Iceland), ‘Comparative Literary Histories’
This doctoral workshop explores a trans-continental or global approach to literary history. In the workshop we will discuss the framing of literary histories and deliberate how tracing patterns of interactions, networks and movements of peoples, objects, and ideas across a global terrain in the Middle Ages can reshape how we understand local literary productivity in the medieval period. We will be drawing on a chapter from the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature in a Trans-European Context as a case study in how we can reconsider language-based literary histories in a comparative global context.
30 November: Kevin Curran, Céline Magada, and Patrick Durdel (UNIL), ‘Theater and Judgment in Early Modern England’
Based at the University of Lausanne, ‘Theater and Judgment in Early Modern England’ is a four-year, collaborative project funded by the FNS. In this workshop, the research team will present the project through three frames of inquiry: ‘Text’, ‘Dramaturgy’, and ‘Ethics’.
14 December: Professor Raphael Lyne (University of Cambridge), ‘Predictive Processing, Narrative, Poetry’
Cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind have become very interested in the role of prediction in our cognitive processes. Works such as Andy Clark's Surfing Uncertainty (2015) and Anil Seth's Being You (2021) have elaborated on aspects of a ‘predictive mind’, which generates a version of anticipated reality, constantly modified and updated by input from the outside world. This is proving highly suggestive and productive as a prompt for literary-critical thinking: in all kinds of writing expectations, rewarded and confounded, are crucial. Karin Kukkonen's book Probability Designs (2020) brings these ideas into the history of the novel: her Introduction, and her third Chapter (‘The Height of Drop’) are the key reading for the workshop, leading to a discussion of how predictive processing can help us think about poetry, and in particular the idiosyncratic work of John Skelton.
SPRING 2022
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
2 March, Devani Singh (UNIGE), ‘Chaucer’s Imperfect Books’
At least since Aristotle, the idea of textual perfection has been deeply intertwined with that of completeness. The Latin imperfectus, a word used specifically to describe unfinished books, is an emblem of the close association between the two ideas, but their exact relationship remains undertheorised. This workshop consists of two parts. First, it will explore and attempt to define what it meant in early modern culture for a book to have been perfected. Next, using examples drawn from the afterlives of medieval Chaucer manuscripts, it will discuss where material practices of reading—repairing missing leaves or filling textual gaps, for instance—might fit within that historical and bibliographical conception of perfecting.
16 March,Work-in-progress papers by Ana-Rita Parreiras Reis (UNIL) and Gemma Allred (UNINE)
30 March, Mary Flannery, Amy Brown, and Kristen Haas Curtis (UNIBE), ‘“For the Love of Modesty”: Looking at Chaucerian Obscenity After the Middle Ages’
In this Workshop, the COMMode research team will provide an overview of their ongoing investigation of ‘Canonicity, Obscenity, and the Making of Modern Chaucer, 1700-2020’. Taking a selection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts as their examples, Mary Flannery, Amy Brown, and Kristen Haas Curtis will examine some of the paradoxes involved in reading and studying Chaucerian obscenity.
13 April, Prof. Michael Schoenfeldt (John R. Knott, Jr. Collegiate Professor of English, University of Michigan), ‘Poetry and Politics’
This event centres on the relationship between poetry and politics. It will consist of a one-hour lecture by Prof. Schoenfeldt, followed by a lengthy question time, in the course of which the PhD students will be asked to engage with issues addressed during the lecture (2 hours); and an interactive workshop, led by Prof. Schoenfeldt (3 hours).
4 May, Dr Oliver Morgan (University of Cambridge), Early Modern Drama and the Material Plot
This workshop will explore the relationship between two kinds of plot. The first is the early modern theatrical document now known as a ‘plot-scenario’. A plot-scenario was the plan of an unwritten play–a scene-by-scene summary of the projected action and a list of the characters involved. The second is ‘plot’ in the more familiar sense of that word–plot as a literary critical abstraction that enables us to talk about narrative structure. Existing work on the plot-scenario is overwhelmingly archival and historicist (in the broader sense of that word). It does not engage with theoretical questions about the nature of ‘plot’. Theoretical accounts of plot, on the other hand, tend to be abstract and trans-historical, ignoring its material embodiment in documents such as the plot-scenario. By bringing these two different conceptions of plot together, the workshop will attempt to shed new light on each of them.
18 May, Lukas Erne, Florence Hazrat, Kareen Seidler, Maria Shmygol, and Devani Singh, ‘Editing Early Modern German Shakespeare’ and ‘Bel-vedére and Its Literary Contexts’: SNSF Projects Closing Event and Book Launches (more information to follow)
AUTUMN 2021
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., in Room Phil 204
22 September: work-in-progress papers by Hannah Piercy (UNIBE) and Kilian Schindler (UNIFR)
6 October: Prof. Christiania Whitehead (Universities of Warwick, Lausanne and Geneva), New Directions in Late Medieval English Lyric Studies
This workshop will offer an overview of the current state of medieval lyric scholarship, and suggest some possible directions of critical travel, focused on literary and biblical intertextuality, and attention to devotional, institutional and manuscript contexts.
20 October: Issues of Professionalization: the PhD student / supervisor relationship; online presence; funding applications; Swiss postdoc positions; professional service work. With contributions by Sarah Brazil (UNIGE), Emma Depledge (UNINE), Lukas Erne (UNIGE), and Devani Singh (UNIGE)
10 November: Prof. Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University), CUSO half-day event on ‘Animating Books: Rethinking Book History’, workshop at 4.15 p.m., preceded by a lecture at 2.15 p.m. (room to be announced)
The lecture and the workshop will be devoted to exploring a novel approach to the study of book history—one which considers how voice might animate the material book, even for silent readers.
24 November: work-in-progress papers by Vanessa Lim (Institute of English Studies, University of London / UNIFR) and Emily Smith (UNIGE)
8 December: Dr Oliver Morgan (University of Cambridge), Early Modern Drama and the Material Plot (POSTPONED)
This workshop will explore the relationship between two kinds of plot. The first is the early modern theatrical document now known as a ‘plot-scenario’. A plot-scenario was the plan of an unwritten play–a scene-by-scene summary of the projected action and a list of the characters involved. The second is ‘plot’ in the more familiar sense of that word–plot as a literary critical abstraction that enables us to talk about narrative structure. Existing work on the plot-scenario is overwhelmingly archival and historicist (in the broader sense of that word). It does not engage with theoretical questions about the nature of ‘plot’. Theoretical accounts of plot, on the other hand, tend to be abstract and trans-historical, ignoring its material embodiment in documents such as the plot-scenario. By bringing these two different conceptions of plot together, the workshop will attempt to shed new light on each of them.
spring 2021
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., on Zoom (until further notice) or in Room Phil 204
3 March, work-in-progress papers: Ana Rita Parreiras Reis (UNIL), Beatrice Montedoro (University of Zurich)
17 March, CUSO half-day event, Prof. Katell Lavéant (University of Utrecht), ‘Joyful culture in texts and objects: new perspectives on carnival’. The workshop will be preceded by lecture at 2.15 p.m.
This half-day event will examine the impact of Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque on scholarship, and will re-evaluate its impact on our understanding of joyful festivities in late medieval and early modern society. The examples, which will be taken from urban communities in France and in the Low Countries, will open up the wider European and comparative dimensions of the questions at hand. The event will offer new methods to combine the analysis of literary and archival texts with material objects, and will give a special attention to the latest developments in book history.
31 March, work-in-progress papers: Amy Brown (UNIBE), Emma Rayner (UNIFR)
21 April, work-in-progress papers: Honor Grace Jackson (UNINE), Danielle Thien (UNIGE)
5 May, Prof. Isabel Karreman (University of Zurich), ‘Danses macabres on the Early Modern Stage’
This workshop will explore the ways in which the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death was staged in early modern plays. The visual genre of the danse macabre was usually executed in murals, woodcuts, engravings and paintings, and often accompanied by explanatory and exhortatory verse. The imagery and its accompanying verses bear an inherent relationship with dramatic performances, however, which facilitated its transposition onto the stage, first in morality plays, then mainly in revenge tragedies. Drawing on a range of visual and textual material, we will discuss how these plays structure the experience of the viewers, and are in turn structured by them, as a set of topoi, representational structures and meanings made possible by cultural conventions across the divide of the Reformation. A key text will be Hamlet: as we will see, Hamlet’s meditative habits, his dramaturgic function as a mors figure, and his faith in providence link him more to the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death than the critical narrative of secularization and modernity allows for.
19 May, work-in-progress papers: Aurélie Blanc (UNIFR), Mark Darcy (UNIGE)
AUTUMN 2020
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room Phil 204 or online via Zoom (tba)
23 September: Prof. Greg Walker (University of Edinburgh), ‘Almost in all things good lessons they teach’: The Epigrams and Proverbs of John Heywood and Robert Crowley
Greg Walker will introduce his recently published biography of the sixteenth century Catholic playwright, musician, and publisher of epigrams, John Heywood (John Heywood: Politics and Survival in Tudor England, Oxford University Press, 2020). In particular he will discuss Heywood’s popular collections of Proverbs and Epigrams Upon Proverbs, published in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, suggesting how they provided opportunities for comedy, social satire, and political and religious commentary for a poet seeking to rehabilitate himself after a conviction for treason. The first volume appeared in 1550, the same year in which the Protestant reformer Robert Crowley also published a Proverb collection of his own. The workshop will ponder the attractions of proverb collection for two writers of very different religious convictions in the turbulent years of ‘the mid-Tudor crisis’.
7 October: work-in-progress papers: Dr Nadine Weiss (UNIGE), Mr Andy Reilly (UNIL)
21 October: Prof. Colin Burrow (All Souls College, Oxford), CUSO half-day event on ‘Imitating Authors’, a lecture at 2.15 p.m. followed by a workshop at 4.15 p.m.
The lecture and the workshop will explore the theory and practice of imitatio (the imitation of one author by another) in authors from Plato to Milton and beyond.
11 November: work-in-progress papers: Dr Matthias Berger (UNIBE), Dr Erzsi Kukorelly (UNIGE)
25 November: work-in-progress papers: Dr Sarah Brazil (UNIGE) and Dr James Misson (UNIGE)
CANCELLED:
9 December: Dr Oliver Morgan (University of Cambridge), Early Modern Drama and the Material Plot
This workshop will explore the relationship between two kinds of plot. The first is the early modern theatrical document now known as a ‘plot-scenario’. A plot-scenario was the plan of an unwritten play–a scene-by-scene summary of the projected action and a list of the characters involved. The second is ‘plot’ in the more familiar sense of that word–plot as a literary critical abstraction that enables us to talk about narrative structure. Existing work on the plot-scenario is overwhelmingly archival and historicist (in the broader sense of that word). It does not engage with theoretical questions about the nature of ‘plot’. Theoretical accounts of plot, on the other hand, tend to be abstract and trans-historical, ignoring its material embodiment in documents such as the plot-scenario. By bringing these two different conceptions of plot together, the workshop will attempt to shed new light on each of them.
SPRING 2020
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room Phil 204
26 February, jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop
Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
11 March, Prof. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchâtel), ‘The Invention of the English Climate’
This workshop examines the emergence of the myth of a specifically English climate and the ideological uses made of it during the seventeenth century when it is appropriated to bolster an idea of the ‘constitution’ of the English and of the form of government most ‘natural’ to it.
CANCELLED:
25 March, CUSO half-day event, Prof. Katell Lavéant (University of Utrecht), ‘Joyful culture in texts and objects: new perspectives on carnival’. The workshop will be preceded by lecture at 2.15 p.m.
This half-day event will examine the impact of Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque on scholarship, and will re-evaluate its impact on our understanding of joyful festivities in late medieval and early modern society. The examples, which will be taken from urban communities in France and in the Low Countries, will open up the wider European and comparative dimensions of the questions at hand. The event will offer new methods to combine the analysis of literary and archival texts with material objects, and will give a special attention to the latest developments in book history.
CANCELLED:
8 April, work-in-progress papers: Ms Ana Rita Parreiras Reis (UNIL), Dr Nadine Weiss (UNIGE), Mr Andy Reilly (UNIL)
CANCELLED:
6 May, Prof. Isabel Karreman (University of Zurich), ‘Site-Responsive Performances in Early Modern London’
This workshop focuses on early modern performance sites as material and cognitive environments, and explores possible methodologies for determining ways in which plays, actors as well as audiences responded to those sites. What kind of knowledge of London spaces did audiences bring with them to the theatre? How did this spatial knowledge shape their perception of the play performed? And how can we grasp the knowledge that was generated through experiencing a performance in the physical environment of a playhouse in early modern London? We will consider theoretical texts from the fields of theatre history and historical phenomenology alongside early modern playtexts and archival material (some newly available through online databases) to test the concept of ‘site-responsive performance’.
CANCELLED:
20 May, work-in-progress papers: Mr Matthias Berger (UNIBE), Dr Erzsi Kukorelly (UNIGE), Dr Faith Acker (Signum University)
AUTUMN 2019
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room Phil 204
25 September: work-in-progress papers: Azamat Rakhimov (University of Geneva), Samuel Röösli (University of Bern), and Dr Devani Singh (University of Geneva)
9 October: Prof. Margaret Bridges (University of Bern), ‘Lost in the Mists of Fifteenth-Century Scotland? A Practice-Oriented Reflection on the Modern English Translator as Trouble-Shooter’
23 October: Prof. Sonia Massai (King’s College London), CUSO half-day event on ‘Accents on the Shakespearean Stage’, a lecture at 2.15 p.m. (in Phil 206), followed by workshop at 4.15 p.m.
The lecture will consider what is a stake in the use of normative and non-normative accents on the Shakespearean stage from a historical perspective, from the early modern period to date, while the workshop will explore the importance of accents in contemporary performances of Shakespeare.
13 November: Dr Timothy Chesters (University of Cambridge), ‘Shifting Attention with Marguerite de Navarre’
This paper and workshop will explore the cognitive problem of attention -- lending it, sustaining it, deflecting or diverting it in others -- as it surfaces in the work of Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549). We will examine Marguerite’s devotional attitude towards attention (especially in prayer), but also the mechanics of distraction, interruption and non-sequitur across her poetic, theatrical and narrative work (especially the work for which she is best known, the Heptameron).
27 November: work-in-progress papers: Dr Alex Shinn (University of Fribourg); Liz Skuthorpe (University of Geneva)
11 December: Open Access: an information and discussion session (in French and English), with Jean-Blaise Claivaz (Open Access and Research Data Coordinator, UNIGE Library) and Christopher Kaiser (Open Access Librarian, UNIGE Library, Uni Bastions)
SPRING 2019
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room Phil 204
27 February, Lukas Erne (UNIGE), Christopher Marlowe and the Reevaluation of Authorial Canons
A lecture, ‘Disintegrating Marlowe’, followed by a short workshop devoted to revisionary thinking about authorial canons
13 March, jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop
Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
27 March, work-in-progress papers, Lucie Kaempfer (Oxford/UNIL) and Rahel Orgis (UNINE/UNIGE)
10 April, work-in-progress papers, Gemma Allred (UNINE), Florence Hazrat (Sheffield/UNIGE) and Ricarda Wagner (UNIBE)
8 May, Prof. Nigel Smith (Princeton University)
A lecture about ‘Polyglot Poetics: Transnational Early Modern Literature’, followed by a workshop on ‘John Milton: European Poet of the English Republic’
22 May, Prof. Sif Rikardsdottir (University of Iceland), ‘Old Norse Romance in Context: Gender, Genre and Revisionist Literary Histories’
This workshop will follow from a lecture (details to be announced) in Prof. Rikhardsdottir’s other pole of expertise, emotion, on which she has recently published the monograph, Emotion in Old Norse Literature: Translations, Voices, Contexts (D. S. Brewer, 2017).
AUTUMN 2018
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room Phil 204
26th Sept: Collaborative close-reading: Expressive Animals
24th Oct: Prof. Cathy Shrank (Sheffield), ‘When is dialogue a dialogue? Dialogue and other genres’ to be preceded by a lecture on ‘Virtuous matrons and subtle bawds: women (and their absence) in early modern dialogue’
14th Nov: Work-in-progress papers:
Aleida Auld (Geneva), ‘Pairing Paradise Regain’d: Milton’s Minor Epic among his Major Poems’
Douglas Clark (Manchester), ‘Props, Property, and Propriety: The Will and Testament on the English Renaissance Stage’
Vincent Laughery (Lausanne), ‘Mercutio and Hermeticism: Intermediary Figures in Romeo and Juliet’
28th Nov: Prof. Marion Uhlig (Fribourg), ‘From Text to Codex: Barlaam and Josaphat as matrix’
12th Dec: Prof. Greg Walker (Edinburgh), ‘The Songs of John Heywood: Merriness, Malice, and the Death of Thomas More’
SPRING 2018
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
28 February, FNS research project presentation: ‘Region and Nation in Late Medieval Devotion to Northern English Saints’, by Prof. Denis Renevey, Dr Christiania Whitehead, and Ms Hazel Blair (University of Lausanne)
14 March, workshop led by Prof. Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto) on ‘Early English Books and the History of Reading’
Advancements in digitisation, online cataloguing, and social media have transformed how medievalists and early modernists approach the history of reading. These new tools, at the same time as they make early books and related scholarship more accessible than ever before, raise pressing questions regarding what they leave inaccessible.
The workshop will be preceded by a lecture by Prof. Gillespie on ‘Chaucer’s Books’, also in room A210, at 2.15 p.m.
28 March, work-in-progress papers by Mark Darcy (UNIGE), Diana Denissen (UNIL), and Florence Schnebelen (UNIGE)
18 April, workshop by Prof. Laurie Maguire (University of Oxford) on ‘“This page intentionally left blank”; or, the rhetoric of the page'
When Google books reassures us ‘this page intentionally left blank’, it signals our unease with blank space. But early modern writers and printers invited readers to interact with blanks (from omission of single words to entire blank pages). This lecture-discussion explores the ways in which the blank calls attention to itself as a mark of vacancy, and documents the ways early modern writers exploit the blank’s ludic and creative potential.
2 May, workshop led by Prof. Dympna Callaghan (Syracuse University) on ‘Outing Tarquin: Speaking Up in Shakespeare’s Lucrece’
It is hardly fortuitous that our present moment provides us with a wealth of up-to-the minute examples of some of the most long-standing and contentious issues surrounding female speech in relation to male sexual violence. The hashtags “Me too” and “balance ton porc” along with vigorous ripostes from Catherine Deneuve, among others, suggest that, despite the urgent need to give language to the unspeakable, naming sexual violation is no straightforward matter. This seminar will explore the history of these dynamics in relation to Lucrece and do so especially in the context of the constraints—both aesthetic and political—on Shakespeare’s own poetic freedom of expression.
23 May, workshop led by Dr Nicole Nyffenegger (UNIBE), ‘The Textuality of Human Skin’
This workshop focuses on the textuality of human skin in medieval and early modern literature and in particular on the ways in which skin marked by wounds invites conceptualisations as a mise-en-abyme page. Starting from the medieval Charter of Christ tradition, we will discuss wounds as inscriptions in medieval crucifixion lyrics and in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. We will pay particular attention to the pain of the wounded as perpetuated by the reading practices applied to the thus inscribed skin, both by intra-and extratexual audiences.
AUTUMN 2017
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
27 September., Collaborative Close Reading: Six Noble Kinsmen
This workshop will be an exercise in collaborative close reading. We will look at three versions of the moment at which Palamon and Arcite both fall in love with Emilia—from Boccaccio’s Il Teseida, Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, and Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen. Our discussion will explore the differences between the three versions in the hope of coming to a better understanding of the choices made by each writer.
11 October, work-in-progress papers: Ms Amy Brown (UNIGE), Mr Azamat Rakhimov (UNIGE) and Dr Olivia Robinson (UNIFR)
25 October (postponed to 13 December), Prof. M.J. Kidnie (University of Western Ontario), ‘Performance and Adaptation’
Further information to follow.
Prof. Kidnie will also give a lecture at 10.15 a.m., in room A210, title tba
15 November, work-in-progress papers: Dr Ruth Mullett (UNIGE), Ms Laura Pereira Domínguez (Univ. Santiago de Compostella) & Mr Killian Schindler (UNIFR)
29 Nov.,workshop led by Dr Antoinina Bevan-Zlatar (UNIZH) on ‘Milton’s Images’
This workshop explores Milton’s use of what George Puttenham calls ‘hypotyposis, or counterfeit representation’ and ‘omiosis, or resemblance’ (simile), particularly in his descriptions of Adam and Eve in the Edenic books of Paradise Lost. To what degree are Adam and Eve both made in the image of God? How do their differences manifest themselves in the descriptions or types of similes deployed? Is there a tension in these books between the classical valorisation of sight as the pre-eminent sense and the Reformation suspicion of sight as the devil’s door? Can Adam be accused of idolising Eve?
13 December (postponed to next semester), workshop led by Dr Nicole Nyffenegger (UNIBE), ‘The Textuality of Human Skin’
This workshop focuses on the textuality of human skin in medieval and early modern literature and in particular on the ways in which skin marked by wounds invites conceptualisations as a mise-en-abyme page. Starting from the medieval Charter of Christ tradition, we will discuss wounds as inscriptions in medieval crucifixion lyrics and in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. We will pay particular attention to the pain of the wounded as perpetuated by the reading practices applied to the thus inscribed skin, both by intra-and extratexual audiences.
Spring 2017
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
1 March, jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop
Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
15 March, workshop led by Dr Mary Flannery (UNIL) on ‘The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s Obscene Legacy’
Chaucer’s literary legacy plays a crucial role in determining what is culturally and even legallypermissible in present-day language and art. This workshop makes a case for a new project that investigates the foundations of Chaucer’s current status as an icon of literary fame and of obscenity (or acceptability) by examining the impact of obscenity on the transmission of The Canterbury Tales and on Chaucer’s shifting reputation from age to age.
29 March, workshop led by Prof. Alan Fletcher (University College Dublin) on ‘Continuities and Beginnings: Theatrical Art in the Long Tudor Century’
This workshop proposes that we must revisit some of scholarly narratives about the nature of drama in Britain and Ireland during the long Tudor century. It will proceed on a clockwise tour of Britain and Ireland and examine some of the local dramatic traditions. It will try to estimate whether the diversity encountered allows for any meaningful general statement about theatre history in this period to be made, or whether such statements may always ever be prone to fall far short of the target.
The workshop will be preceded by a lecture by Prof. Alan Fletcher on ‘John Heywood’s Johan Johan, also in room A210, at 2.15 p.m.
12 April, work-in-progress papers: Ms Beatrice Montedoro (University of Oxford), Dr Chunxiao Wei (UNIFR), and Dr Florence Hazrat (UNIGE)
3 May, workshop led by Dr Emma Depledge (UNIFR) on 'Biblio-Detectives'
This workshop will focus on the production of early modern paper and books to explore the insights material texts can provide into the works we study. We will tackle a series of hands-on exercises, including: how to determine the format of a book, using printers’ ornaments to determine the order of printing, using paper to date books, and differentiating between (likely) authorial variants and print shop errors and interference. Although the main focus will be on early modern paper and books, the workshop should also be of interest to medievalists.
17 May, work-in-progress papers: Dr Sarah Baccianti (UNIL) and Dr Maria Shmygol (UNIGE)
Autumn 2016
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
28 Sept. Prof. Kevin Curran (UNIL), ‘The Legal Imagination: Archive, Practice, Concept’
Between 1400 and 1700, English legal culture underwent massive changes on a number of fronts: textual, professional, procedural, jurisdictional. With this in mind, this workshop invites participants to consider two basic questions: (1) how did law shape fundamental aspects of thought and experience in the late medieval & early modern periods? (2) what sort of evidence helps us address this subject?
12 Oct. Work-in-progress papers: Ms Stephanie Allen (UNIFR), Ms Aleida Auld (UNIGE), and Ms Camille Marshall (UNIL)
26 Oct. Dr Oliver Morgan (UNIGE), ‘Analysing Dialogue in Medieval & Early Modern Texts’
‘It seems odd’, Lynne Magnusson has remarked, that we have ‘so few shared terms or concepts’ with which to ‘talk about dialogue as opposed to single voiced poems or speeches’. This workshop looks at ways in which a turn-taking model of conversation (borrowed from interactional linguistics) can help us, as literary critics, to develop a richer and more accurate vocabulary for the analysis of dialogue.
16 Nov. Prof. Bart van Es (University of Oxford), ‘Shakespeare versus Blackfriars: Hamlet, Othello, and the Boys’ Acting Companies 1599-1604’
This seminar explores Shakespeare’s response to the repertory of the newly established child acting companies at St Paul’s and Blackfriars around the turn of the century, especially in Hamlet (1600-1) and Othello (1603-4). We will look at the distinctive audience, production conventions, and physical place of the indoor playhouses. Considering but also moving beyond the idea of a ‘poets’ war’, the seminar encourages creative reappraisal of Shakespeare’s relationship with his fellow dramatists.
Prof. van Es will also give a lecture on ‘“Captive Children”: John Lyly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, & Child Impressment on the Early Modern Stage’, room A210, 10.15 a.m.
30 Nov. Prof. Greg Walker (University of Edinburgh), ‘“Sources” for (Very) Early English Reformation History’
The seminar examines John Heywood’s ‘Play of the Weather’ and the chronicler Edward Hall’s account of Thomas More’s address to the opening of the Reformation Parliament. Is the latter a ‘source’ or context for the former? Is the literary text an ironic comment on the parliamentary speech, or are both better thought of as literary engagements with the early stages of Henry VIII's supremacy? What are the advantages, and the dangers, of reading literature historically and history with a literary sensibility?
14 Dec. Work-in-progress papers, Dr Alice Leonard (UNINE) and Dr Juliette Vuille (University of Oxford)
Spring 2016
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
2 March (NB: in Room B307), performance of Marge and Jules, followed by discussion
Marge and Julesis an hour-long play, written and performed by Sarah Anson and Mairin O’Hagan. Marge and Jules resurrects the historic moment where – as writings record – Margery Kempe met Dame Julian of Norwich. As spiritual enlightenment meets the darker stories of life in the Middle Ages, these women confess all; talking faith, life, after-life, semantics, erotics and the mysteries of the man they love. With a post-show discussion, led by Professor Elisabeth Dutton (UNIFR), about the challenges of adapting Julian and Margery to dramatic performance, and of presenting the medieval world on the modern stage.
16 March (NB: at the University of Lausanne, 5.15 p.m., Room Anthropole 2055), workshop led by Dr Daniel Starza Smith (Lincoln College, Oxford) and Ms Jana Dambrogio (MIT) on ‘Letterlocking in Shakespeare’s England: The Art and Technology of Epistolary Security’
13 April, workshop led by Prof. Greg Walker (University of Edinburgh) on ‘Arrested Development?: Bruegel’s Children and Shakespeare’s Clowns?’. From 2.15 to 4 p.m., Prof. Walker will teach a seminar on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, also in room A210.
27 April, jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop. Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
11 May, workshop led by Dr Damien Boquet (University of Aix-Marseille): ‘Une histoire culturelle des émotions au Moyen Âge’. The workshop will be preceded by a lecture by Dr Boquet on ‘De l’amour courtois à une éthique aristocratique de l'affectivité’, also in room A210, at 2.15 p.m.
25 May, workshop led by Prof. Lynne Magnusson (University of Toronto) on ‘The Language of Literature’
Autumn 2015
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
23 Sept. Ovid in English Literature: a collectively led workshop. The Roman writer Ovid had a significant afterlife in both medieval and early modern literature, and in this workshop we will consider the importance of his writings across both periods. Medievalists and early modernists will relflect on the impact that Ovid had in their respective fields, and we will focus on a medieval and an early modern text based on Ovid, and discuss how his work has been translated or adapted.
7 Oct. Prof. Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex), ‘Thomas Nashe and the Morality Tradition’. This workshop will explore the vexed relationship between Thomas Nashe’s complicated and provocative prose writings – in particular, the works that established his reputation, Pierce Peniless His Supplication to the Divell (1592), Christ’s Tears Over Jerusalem (1593) and The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) in relation to an established Christian morality tradition.
21 Oct. Work-in-progress papers: Dr Kathrin Scheuchzer (UNIBE) and Ms Marie Waltz (UNIL)
11 Nov. Prof. Lorna Hutson (University of St. Andrews), ‘The “Unscene”: Meantime, Elsewhere and Motive in Early English drama’. This workshop will investigate to what extent drama from the late 15th to the late 16th century enables us to imagine extra-mimetic elements, elements that can’t be staged. I’ll probably use extracts from plays like the Wakefield Second Shepherd’s Play, Lindsay’s Satyre of the Threi Estatis, Gorboduc, Gammer Gurton, the anon Edward III, Shakespeare’s King Lear to ask questions about how dramatists enable us to infer/imagine what we can’t see.
The workshop will be preceded by a lecture by Prof. Hutson on ‘Circumstantial Shakespeare’, also in room A210, at 10.15 a.m.
25 Nov. Work-in-progress papers: Dr Rory Critten (UNIBE / UNIFR) and Dr Devani Singh (UNIGE)
9 Dec. Thinking about Materiality: a workshop led by Dr Sarah Brazil (UNIGE). This workshop will explore how materiality can be integrated into work on clothing, particularly work that considers skins, leather, fur, or any such type of material used to make clothes. We will try to explore what directions such research might take.
Spring 2015
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m., Room, A 210, Uni Bastions, Aile Jura
25 February, Workshop led by Prof. Indira Ghose (University of Fribourg) on ‘Early Modern Courtesy Literature and the Textual Transmission of Cultural Capital’
18 March, Work-in-progress papers by Derek Dunne (University of Fribourg) and Marco Nievergelt (University of Lausanne)
1 April, Workshop led by Dr David Matthews (University of Manchester) on ‘Fame and Oblivion: Remembering Middle English Texts after Reform’. This workshop will consider texts from the Middle Ages which were reproduced in the Tudor period (e.g. sixteenth-century editions of the Canterbury Tales) and Tudor texts which reflect on the Middle Ages (e.g. Edward Hall's Chronicle), with particular reference to the contested period of the reign of Henry VII, that time which is in between medieval and early modern.
The workshop will be preceded by a lecture by Dr Matthews on ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: History, Narrative, Description’ in the same room at 2.15 p.m.
15 April, Jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop. Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
6 May, Practical workshop: Using Digital Resources for Medieval English Studies
20 May, Work-in-progress: FNS research project presentation, by Kirsten Stirling, Kader Hegedüs and Sonia Pernet (University of Lausanne)
Autumn 2014
1 October, Jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop. Each participant brings a short text and/or problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary, critical, bibliographical, methodological, etc. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
15 October, work-in-progress: FNS research project presentation, by Denis Renevey, Marleen Cré and Diana Denissen (all Lausanne)
22 October, Dr Stewart Brookes (Digital Humanities, King’s College London) will lead a workshop on DigiPal, the Digital Resource and Database for Palaeography, Manuscript Studies and Diplomatic.
12 November, work-in-progress papers: Angela Benza (Geneva), Amy Brown (Geneva), and Beatrice Montedoro (Oxford)
26 November, Practical workshop: using EEBO, EEBO-TCP, the ESTC and other digital resources for early modern English studies
10 December, from the MA thesis to the doctorate: Mark Darcy (Geneva), Aleida Demartin (Geneva), Azamat Rakhimov (Geneva), Kilian Schindler (Fribourg)
Spring 2014
19 February, Lucy Perry leading a workshop on ‘The Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation’
5 March, Sarah Kelen leading a workshop on ‘Chaucer as an Early Modern Author’
19 March, work-in-progress papers: Matthias Heim (Neuchâtel) and Nadine Weiss (Geneva)
20-21 March, CUSO doctoral programme in English, module on ‘Postfeminism’, University of Lausanne
2 April, work-in-progress papers: Beatrice Montedoro (Oxford) and Nicole Nyffenegger (Bern)
3 April, 3.15 p.m., lecture by Laurie Maguire (Oxford), ‘Hail Muse, etcetera!’, University of Fribourg
4 April, 2.15 p.m., SAUTE AGM and lectures by Ina Haberman (Basel) and Martin Hilpert (Neuchâtel), University of Berne, UniS, A 022
5 April, CUSO doctoral programme in English, PhD Skills Day, University of Geneva
16 April, a jointly-led workshop on bibliography (details tba)
30 April, a practical workshop on funding led by Emma Depledge (Geneva) and Mary Flannery (Lausanne)
9-11 May, CUSO doctoral programme in English, module on ‘Literary Theories’, Schloss und Seminarcenter Münchenwiler, Morat, canton de Berne
20 May, 11 a.m., lecture by Patrick Cheney (Penn State) on ‘Editing English Renaissance Poetry’, University of Geneva, B 307
21 May, Patrick Cheney (Penn State) leading a workshop on ‘Authorship, Influence and Intertextuality’
Autumn 2013
26 September, University of Fribourg, 3.15 p.m., lecture by Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford)
2 October, Work-in-progress papers, Sarah Baccianti (UNIL) and Alice Leonard (UNINE)
16 October, Jointly-led ‘Bring a Text / Present a Problem’ workshop
Each participant brings a short text and/or a problem they have encountered in their research and has ten minutes to present it to or share it with the group. The text and/or problem can be of any kind, literary or critical or bibliographical or methodological or what not. The only requirements are that it/they be related to research and can be profitably shared with the group in ca. 10 minutes.
18-19 October, CUSO doctoral programme module, ‘Literary Geography’, University of Basel
30 October A workshop led by Professor Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchâtel) on blank verse
13 November, University of Lausanne, 5.15 p.m., lecture by Judith Butler, ‘Is Gender (Un)translatable?’
15-16 November, CUSO doctoral programme module, ‘The Media of Literature in the Digital Age’, University of Geneva
20 November A workshop led by Professor Hugh Craig (University of Newcastle, Australia) on computational stylistics and digital research into early modern drama and other literature. This event, co-hosted by Prof. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchâtel), is cross-listed as a module of the CUSO doctoral programme in English.
27 November, Work-in-progress papers, Emma Depledge and Sarah Brazil
7 December, CUSO doctoral programme PhD day at the University of Neuchâtel
11 December, Professionalization workshop led by Mary Flannery (UNIL)
Spring 2013
27 February, Two texts for discussion: the death of Arthur in Malory’s Morte Darthur and the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra in Dryden’s All for Love (passages will disseminated in preparation for the workshop).
8-9 March, University of Bern, Studientag zum Englischen Mittelalter, www.sem2013.ens.unibe.ch.
13 March, Work-in-progress papers by Mary Flannery(University of Lausanne) and John McGee
25 March (probably 6.15 p.m.), University of Geneva, lecture by Dr Marco Nievergelt (University of Lausanne), Groupe d‘études sur les XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Faculté des Lettres
27 March, Workshop led by Prof. Irena Backus devoted to the topic of ‘Religious Satire or Religion of Satire? The Ridiculing of Religion by Chaucer and Ben Jonson’. Some brief passages from The Canterbury Tales and The Alchemist will be disseminated in preparation. The guiding question of the workshop will be: how does religious satire change between Chaucer’s and Jonson’s time?
17 April, Practical Workshop devoted to managing large Word files and bibliography software, led by Arnaud Barras and Sangam MacDuff
19-20 April, University of Lausanne, SAUTE Conference on ‘Emotion, Affect, Sentiment: The Language and Aesthetics of Feeling’
8 May, Work-in-progress papers by Emilija Kraguevska and Rahel Orgis
15 May, Workshop led by Prof. Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford): ‘Making Amends for the Past: Early Modern Corrections of Medieval Texts’
24 May (to be confirmed), 10.15 – 12.00: University of Geneva, lectures by Professors Raphael Lyne (University of Cambridge) and Scott Newstok (Rhodes College, Memphis)
7-8 June: University of Bern, Conference 2013 on ‘The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: Literature and Language’ (note that the SAMEMES AGM will take place at this conference on 7 June)
Autumn 2012
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m. (fortnightly), A 210
7-9 September, CUSO doctoral programme module on ‘New Aesthetic Paradigms’, Brienz (canton Berne)
26 September, Work-in-progress papers by Emma Depledge and Oliver Morgan
3 October, 5-7 p.m., workshop with Prof. William Kennedy (Cornell) on ‘Ronsard and Shakespeare: The Economics of Revision’ at the University of Fribourg, Salle Laure Dupraz (Kinderstube) (PhD students can have travel expenses reimbursed by CUSO)
4-6 October, CUSO doctoral programme module on ‘English in a Multilingual World’, Kloster Kappel am Albis (canton Zurich)
10 October, Two texts for discussion
In this workshop, we will collectively discuss, compare and contrast two well-known, short texts, one medieval (Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’) and one early modern (the first canto of Book I of Spenser’s Faerie Queene) in order to investigate what it means for these texts to be ‘medieval’ or ‘early modern’.
24 October, Workshop led by Prof. Elisabeth Dutton (University of Fribourg), title and topic to be announced
14 November, Practical workshop on the topic of conference papers: from conception to publication
28 November, Work-in-progress papers by Kathrin Reist (University of Berne) and a second person, to be announced
8 December, CUSO doctoral programme PhD day (venue tba)
12 December, Group-led workshop on the topic of mediality
Whether or not we agree that ‘the medium is the message’ (Marshall Luhan), there is no denying that mediality is of importance for all of us. Loosely defined, for our purpose, as the material channels through which (literary) data reach us, media raise important questions. For example: What is the relation of media to content? If literature is designed for more than one medium (e.g. drama), what difference do the respective media make? If a medieval or early modern literary work is transferred into a modern medium (think the Zemeckis Beowulf), does the original subsist and, if yes, how and what of it? Each of us will briefly present and offer for discussion a problem, question, or issue we have encountered in our work related to mediality.
Spring 2012
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m. (fortnightly), B 220
29 February, Writing book reviews
14 March, Work-in-progress papers by Sarah Brazil and Susanna Gebhardt
28 March, Using electronic databases in research and teaching
25 April, Workshop led by Prof. Alan Fletcher, University College Dublin.
Friday, 27 April 14.00-17.30 (Neuchâtel): SAUTE AGM with talks by Rachel Falconer and Olga Timofeeva.
9 May, Work in progress: Erzsi Kukorelly and Patricia Ronan.
18-20 May (Bern), Association for the Study of New Literatures in English, 23rd annual conference: Post Empire Imaginaries. Medieval strand: Medieval Imaginaries of History, Alterity and Empire
23 May, Group-led session on “gender.”
Whether or not we are methodically using gender theories in our work, most of us in the course of our reading are confronted by issues that relate to gender. In this session we shall discuss how gender matters and explore our aims, methods, experiences, and/or problems in regarding our texts and sources through the gendered lens.
27-29 June (Lausanne), SAMEMES conference: Literature, Science and Medicine in the Medieval and Early Modern English Periods
Autumn 2011
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m. (fortnightly), B 220
5 October, work-in-progress papers by Keith McDonald (University of Leicester) and Fiona Tolhurst
19 October, workshop led by Prof. Rachel Falconer (University of Lausanne)
2 November, no workshop – CUSO PhD day in Geneva on 5 November instead
5 November, CUSO Doctoral Programme PhD day, University of Geneva
16 November, visit to and practical workshop at the Musée de l’imprimerie in Lyon
30 November, work-in-progress papers by John McGee and Juliette Vuille (University of Lausanne)
2-3 December, CUSO Doctoral Programme module, ‘Designing the Body’, University of Geneva
14 December, workshop on the topic of history
Spring 2011
Wednesdays, 4.15-6.45 p.m. (fortnightly), B 220
2 March, Workshop led by Prof. Neil Forsyth (University of Lausanne) on John Milton’s Paradise Lost (III)
4-5 March, CUSO Doctoral Programme module, ‘Literature and Altered States’, Crêt-Bérard
16 March, Workshop led by Prof. Neil Forsyth (University of Lausanne) on John Milton’s Paradise Lost (IV)
30 March , Work-in-progress papers by Dana Monah and Petya Ivanova
13 April, Workshop devoted to editing, led by Lukas Erne
22-29 April, Easter break
4 May, Workshop led by Prof. Annette Kern-Stähler (University of Berne) on medieval authorship
6-7 May, SAUTE conference, ‘On the Move: Mobilities in English Language and Literature’, University of Berne
17-22 May, Shakespeare-in-Performance Study Trip to London and Stratford-upon-Avon
25 May, Work-in-progress papers by Tamsin Badcoe and Rahel Orgis
17-19 June, CUSO Doctoral Programme module, ‘The Violence of Aesthetics – The Aesthetics of Violence’,
University of Zurich