CFP: Second Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (SAMEMES)

> Call for Papers
> Second Biennial Conference of the Swiss Association of Medieval and
Early Modern English Studies (SAMEMES)
> Medieval and Early Modern Authorship
> 30 June – 2 July 2010, University of Geneva
> Confirmed keynote speakers:
> Colin Burrow (Oxford)
> Patrick Cheney (Penn State)
> Helen Cooper (Cambridge)
> Rita Copeland (Pennsylvania)
> Robert Edwards (Penn State)
> Alastair Minnis (Yale)
> Authorship has come to the forefront of medieval and early modern
English studies in recent years. The objective of this conference is
to take 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.
> Contributions are invited on any aspect of medieval and early modern
authorship. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
> • The history of authorship – The pre-history: authorship in
> antiquity; the history of medieval authorship; the reception of
Chaucer and/or other medieval authors in early modern England; the
history of early modern authorship; the post-history: from early
modern to modern authorship
> • Authorship and critical theory – Eliot, Bloom, Barthes, Foucault and
beyond: theorizing the medieval and/or early modern author
> • Authorship and its social contexts – Authorship and gender;
> authorship and censorship; authorship and patronage; the economics of
authorship; early professional authorship; authorship and
> copyright, authorship and the law; authorship, forgery and
> plagiarism; authorship and the culture of authority; authorship and
anonymity
> • Authorship and its literary contexts – Authorship, imitation,
intertextuality; authorship and literary style; authorship in
> medieval and/or early modern literary theory
> • Authorship and the theatre – Authorship and playwriting;
> authorship and theatrical collaboration; authorship and acting
> • Authorship and literary genres – Authorship and genre; authorship
and early ‘lives of the poets’; the ‘I’ in medieval and early modern
poetry; authorship and commendatory verse; authorship and miscellanies
• Authorship and the material text – Authorship and paratext;
> authorship and the book trade; authorship and the scriptorium;
authorship and publication; authorship and media: manuscript, and
print
> • Medieval and early modern literary careers – Authorship and the
Virgilian cursus; Spenser, Jonson, Milton and print-constructed
careers; careers of medieval and early modern female writers
> • Constructing the medieval and early modern author through the
centuries – The Making of ‘Chaucer’, ‘Gower’, ‘Langland’, ‘Malory’,
‘Marlowe’, ‘Sidney’, ‘Shakespeare’, ‘Donne’, ‘Milton’
> • Authorship attribution – Modern methods of determining medieval and
early modern authorship; Chaucer and the Chaucer apocrypha: authorship
and co-authorship questions; Shakespeare and the
> Shakespeare apocrypha: authorship and co-authorship questions; the
case of Middleton: collaboration, authorship, and The Collected Works;
disputed authorship attributions: from Shakespeare and the Funeral
Elegy to Milton and de doctrina Christiana; editing,
> authorship, and authorial intention
> Proposals for full panels are welcome. These should include three
proposed speakers, including, or in addition to, a chair and/or a
respondent. Individual papers will be grouped with two others.
Parallel sessions will last an hour and a half, which means that
papers should usually be no longer than 20 minutes to leave
> sufficient time for discussion.
> The final deadline for proposals is 15 January 2010, but early
submissions are encouraged. Proposals should contain a title, an
abstract (ca. 200 to 400 words) as well as a short bio sketch (no more
than 100 words). Proposals will be reviewed in the weeks
> following their submission, so that prospective participants will
usually be notified of the decision within a month of reception of the
proposal.
> Proposals should be sent to authorship2010@unige.ch. The conference
website can be accessed via http://www.samemes.org.
> A selection of papers presented at the conference will be published in
a collection (in the SPELL series).
> For the conference organizers,
> Lukas Erne (University of Geneva)
> --
> President of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern
English Studies (SAMEMES)
> Département d'anglais
> Faculté des Lettres
> Université de Genève
> 5, Rue de Candolle
> CH-1211 Genève
> ph: +41 22 379 70 34 / +41 22 379 70 27
> fax: +41 22 320 04 97
> http://www.unige.ch/lettres/angle/index_en.html