Departmental news

Each year the History Department holds a two-day conference, at which MA and PhD students present short papers on their research. The audience is composed of students and members of academic staff, who provide a friendly environment for sharing ideas and receiving feedback. The Warwick History Postgraduate Conference 2011 will take place on Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th June 2011 in the Maths and Statistics Building, University of Warwick.

Who did they think they were? The Sea and the Making of Identities, University of Exeter, 17-19 Spetember 2010

A conference focusing on the relationship between the sea and identity in widest possible sense, naval or maritime; local, regional, national or international; gender and sexuality; fact, film or fiction. It will look beyond the usual nationalistic rhetoric to explore how identity has been moulded by attitude to and relationships with the sea. The conference will interrogate the idea of identity in its various manifestations in order to examine the importance of the sea to different audiences.

3-4 September, University of Cambridge

This conference will seek to explore 19^th century concerns about the power of ‘negative’ influences upon individuals and society.  It will attempt not only to document the attention paid to the perceived dangers of moral corruption, but also to describe how ‘innocence’ was conceptualized as a moral category, and to understand its cultural, philosophical, and religious underpinnings.  The keynote address will be given by Dr. Rochelle Gurstein, who will be speaking on the ‘reticent sensibility’, and how its status was threatened from the new ‘agents of exposure’. Proposals for 20-minute papers, with a 250-word abstract, may be sent to David Sandifer at djs212@cam.ac.uk before 30 June 2010. Travel bursaries will be available for speakers, contingent upon funding.

23 - 26 June 2010, Cambridge University

A four day program of lectures, seminars, and panel discussions organised by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in cooperation with the Cambridge Union Society, that will look at the theory and development of 'hard' and 'soft' power, explore their application in contemporary global politics, and consider their relevance to the changing nature of international relations. Speakers will be leading figures from international politics and diplomacy, academia, civil society, the armed forces, and related fields.

28 May 2010, University of Greenwich, Maritime Greenwich, London SE10

A conference to mark the 350^th anniversary of the Restoration. Students £15 only, including lunch and guided tours of those parts of the Royal Hospital site at Greenwich associated with Charles II. For further information, see www.courtstudies.org

The AHRC project Aesthetics After Photography announces the programme for its forthcoming conference: 

Agency and Automatism: Photography as Art since the 1960s

Tate Modern, London, 10-12 June 2010

The Afterlife of Used Things in Britain and France, 22 -23 June 2010, Université Paris Diderot / LARCA

We invite participants to study the versatile practices of recycling and refashioning that shaped the eighteenth-century world of goods with particular emphasis on the double question of waste and luxury. Thus the refashioning of old objects into new desirable ones, the thriving second-hand market often fuelled by the luxury trades and the problem of “waste management” in societies characterized by increased opulence are among the questions that the conference will seek to explore. Please send your proposals (max 300 words) to the organisers by 12th April 2010.

14 September 2010, University of Portsmouth

This one-day conference develops out of, and responds to, research into the history and representation of the kinship, amity and community during the early modern period that has been accumulating steadily over recent decades. We hope to promote a reassessment of this body of work and to develop new lines of enquiry into the implied exclusions that result from or engender social organisation. We invite proposals for papers (of 20 minutes duration), or panel sessions, dealing with any aspect of exclusion in the 16th-18th centuries, and would welcome interdisciplinary proposals. The deadline is Friday 14 May, 2010.

7-9 July 2011, Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, University of York

This conference, timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Bible, will look at the reception of the Bible in the early modern era. It will bring together an impressive range of scholars from a variety of disciplines, to assess the significance of the scriptures to cultural, political, theological and philosophical history throughout the long seventeenth century.  Papers are invited on any aspect of the reception and use of the Bible in the early modern era.

20 July 2010, 10-4pm, British Library Conference Centre, London

Not only has the digitisation of historical newspapers made it easier to discover information about events from the past, but the way in which they have been digitised makes it possible to discover how those events were represented, debated and sold as news. This conference will debate current limitations of this digitisation as well as opportunities for future development.

The conference is being organised jointly by the British Library and JISC. Speakers will include Professor Laurel Brake, Professor Tim Hitchcock, Professor Robert Shoemaker, Professor Miles Taylor and Dr James Mussell.