Thursday, October 22, 2020 – Thursday, October 29, 2020
Online
Organized by Elisa J. Jones, Newberry Library and College of Charleston
CENTER FOR RENAISSANCE STUDIES PROGRAMS
What constitutes speech? What is a public space, and how is it policed? How are the boundaries drawn between those who want to be seen and heard, and those who want them to remain absent? This interdisciplinary symposium will address how the permeable boundaries between public presence and absence were created, enforced, and challenged in the medieval and early modern periods. Ada Palmer, professor of history at the University of Chicago and renowned author, will deliver the keynote address, “The Modern Political Impact of How We Talk about Premodern Censorship,” on Thursday afternoon and will participate in the final roundtable.
Through roundtable discussions and collection presentations, the symposium will explore how various premodern publics were formed and contested by a range of cultural forces. Possible topics include social mobility, public spaces, printing and censorship, control over one’s body, slavery and personhood, representation aurally or visually of minority groups, and tolerance or intolerance of religious sects.
This virtual symposium will frame discussions about these premodern subjects as part of a larger conversation about the ways that rights exist as cultural artifacts with premodern histories, as well as how premodern scholars can best bring these histories about premodern publics into contemporary public conversations.
Schedule
Thursday, October 22, 12-1:30 pm CDT
Keynote Address and Q&A: The Modern Political Impact of How We Talk about Premodern Censorship
Opening and Introduction: Elisa J. Jones, College of Charleston
Keynote Address: Ada Palmer (University of Chicago)
Friday, October 23, 12-1:15 pm CDT
Roundtable I: Patterns of Censorship
Moderator: Elisa J. Jones, College of Charleston
Bureaucratic Middlemen as Arbiters of Culture: Crimes of Speech in Medieval Italy
Melissa Vise, Washington and Lee University
Saving Face: Early-Modern Musicians and Their Bodies
Michael Bane, Indiana University
Testimonies of the Enslaved: Speaking within the Fraught Legal Terrain of Race Governance
Sherwin K. Bryant, Northwestern University
Moderating Speech in the Feminine Counterpubilc: Eighteenth-Century Britain and the Bluestockings
Norah Alsuhaibani, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Monday, October 26, 12-1:15 pm CDT
Roundtable II: Forms of Dissent
Moderator: Christopher D. Fletcher, Newberry Library
Pasquino, Vox Populi: Public Dissent in Early Modern Rome
Brendan Small, University of Chicago
“There is Not a Single Catholic in This City”: Public Preaching and Conversion during the French Wars of Religion
Brian Sandberg, Northern Illinois University
“Shee Citizens’ ” and Mass Petitioning to Parliament, 1642-1653
Catherine Hinchliff, Johns Hopkins University
“We Protestants in Masquerade”: Burning the Pope in London
Kathleen Lynch, Folger Shakespeare Library
Wednesday, October 28, 12-1:15 pm CDT
Roundtable III: Representation in Time and Space
Moderator: Elisa J. Jones, College of Charleston
“Traces of the Past”: Public Writing and Public Space in Southwest China
Eloise Wright, University of Michigan
Contextualizing Sex Work in Early Modern Venice
Saundra Weddle, Drury University
A World on the Margins: Court Records and Sensory Experiences in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul
Erdem Idil, University of Toronto
“Speak Of Me As I Am”: Race, Futurity, and Early Modern Atlantic Archives of Slavery
Urvashi Chakravarty, University of Toronto
Thursday, October 29, 12-1:45 pm
Final Roundtable and Q&A: Bringing the Premodern into Conversation with the Modern
Moderator: Elisa J. Jones, College of Charleston
Viewing of Collection Presentation
Analú María López, Newberry Library
Christopher D. Fletcher, Newberry Library
Discussion Participants
Sherwin K. Bryant, Northwestern University
Urvashi Chakravarty, University of Toronto
Christopher D. Fletcher, Newberry Library
Kathleen Lynch, Folger Shakespeare Library
Analú María López, Newberry Library
Ada Palmer, University of Chicago
Cost and Registration Information
This virtual event will be free and open to the public. Space for some events will be limited, and priority will be given to scholars from CRS consortium institutions. To register, complete this online submission form.
