WEDNESDAY, March 20th, Lorna Hutson, “How England Became an Island: The Faerie Queene”

Please join the Renaissance Workshop
WEDNESDAY, March 20th,
for a talk given by
Lorna Hutson
Merton Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford
on
“How England Became an Island: The Faerie Queene” from England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland
WEDNESDAY, March 20th
5:00-6:30pm
Rosenwald 405
*please note the different room*
The book chapter, to be read in advance, has been distributed to the Renaissance Workshop mailing list and is available on our website under the password “chorography.” Light refreshments will be served.
If you would like to join our mailing list, please click here. We are committed to making our workshop accessible to all persons. Questions, requests, and concerns should be directed to Andrés Irigoyen (airigoyen@uchicago.edu) or Alyssa Mulé (amule@uchicago.edu).

Renaissance Workshop Spring 2024 Schedule

Dear Colleagues,

We hope you are all having a wonderful break after the Winter. We know many of you are taking this time to rest and recover as much as possible for the Spring Quarter, but because The Renaissance Workshop has two events to announce for Week One of Spring, we wanted to get some dates on your calendar sooner rather than later.

We are happy to announce the Renaissance Workshop’s Spring 2024 schedule, which can be found in full below. The workshop meets on Mondays from 5:00-6:30pm in Rosenwald 405 unless otherwise specified. Should you like to join a meeting via Zoom, please email either Alyssa Mulé (amule@uchicago.edu) or Andrés Irigoyen (airigoyen@uchicago.edu) for accommodation. In the event that the meeting switches to a virtual setting, we will notify you in the announcement a week in advance of the event.

Materials for the workshop, as well as the schedule and any updates, are available on our website. The Renaissance Workshop is free and open to the public, and we encourage those new to the workshop to attend.

We look forward to seeing you on TUESDAY, March 19th when we collaborate with the Medieval Workshop in hosting Jenny Tan (Acquisitions Editor in Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Studies) for a Workshop and Q&A on Publication! The location is TBA for this event.

Please also note, the very next day (WEDNESDAY, March 20th), we are excited to announce that Lorna Hutson, Merton Professor of English at Oxford University and author of Circumstantial Shakespeare, will be presenting a chapter from her most recent book, England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland. The chapter is titled “How England Became an Island.” This event is in Rosenwald 405, and you will not want to miss it!

Best,

Andrés and Alyssa

 

Spring 2024 

TUESDAY, March 19th | Jenny Tan

Acquisitions Editor in Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Studies

Publication Workshop and Q&A (Location TBA)

This event is co-sponsored by the Medieval Workshop​

WEDNESDAY, March 20th | Lorna Hutson

Merton Professor of English Literature

University of Oxford

“How England Became an Island” from England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland

This event is co-sponsored by the Nicholson Center for British Studies

Monday, April 15th | Sarah Kunjummen

Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of the Arts Program in the Humanities

University of Chicago, Department of English

“Blackness in Circulation: George Herbert’s ‘Aethiopissa’ in 17th-Century Context”

Monday, April 29th | Zoom Event!

Adam Zucker (co-editor at ELR) and Joe Campana (editor at SEL for 12 Years)

Journal Submission and Writing Workshop and Q&A Zoom Event

Monday, May 13th | Alyssa Mulé

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

Title TBD

TUESDAY, March 5th, Esther Sin-Ching Yu, “On the Novel as Practice: The Conscience-Consciousness Nexus and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)”

Please join the Renaissance Workshop
TUESDAY, March 5th, when
Esther Sin-Ching Yu
Assistant Professor of English, Stanford University
presents the paper
“On the Novel as Practice: The Conscience-Consciousness Nexus and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)”
TUESDAY, March 5th
5:00-6:30pm
Cobb Hall 430
*please note the different room*
The paper, to be read in advance, has been distributed to the Renaissance Workshop mailing list and is available on our website under the password “repetition.” Light refreshments will be served.
If you would like to join our mailing list, please click here. We are committed to making our workshop accessible to all persons. Questions, requests, and concerns should be directed to Andrés Irigoyen (airigoyen@uchicago.edu) or Alyssa Mulé (amule@uchicago.edu).

MONDAY, February 5th, Sarah-Gray Lesley, “Behn and Pulter’s Transatlantic Fictions: Writing White Femininity after 1650”

Please join the Renaissance Workshop

MONDAY, February 5th, when

Sarah-Gray Lesley

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

presents the paper

“Pulter and Behn’s Global Fictions: Writing White Womanhood after 1650”

MONDAY, February 5th

5:00-6:30pm

Cobb Hall 430
*please note the different room*

The paper, to be read in advance, has been distributed to the Renaissance Workshop mailing list and is available on our website under the password “whitefemininity.” Light refreshments will be served.

If you would like to join our mailing list, please click here. We are committed to making our workshop accessible to all persons. Questions, requests, and concerns should be directed to Andrés Irigoyen (airigoyen@uchicago.edu) or Alyssa Mulé (amule@uchicago.edu).

MONDAY, January 22nd, Joseph Torres, “The Worldmaking of the Parasite in John Donne’s Metempsychosis”

Please join the Renaissance Workshop

MONDAY, January 22nd, when

Joseph Torres

PhD Candidate, University of California Los Angeles

presents the paper

“The Worldmaking of the Parasite in John Donne’s Metempsychosis

MONDAY, January 22nd

5:00-6:30pm

Cobb Hall 430
*please note the different room*

The paper, to be read in advance, has been distributed to the Renaissance Workshop mailing list and is available on our website under the password “posthumanism.” Light refreshments will be served.

Abstract:

John Donne’s Metempsychosis (1601) is a thought-experiment that satirizes the Pythagorean system of metempsychosis as depicted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.1 This system serves as a legacy for Donne’s poem, but the poem depicts it as a post facto, synthetic, mental operation to make sense of the accidental array of circumstances that constitute the past. The “great Soul,” as Donne calls his protagonist, perpetually dies and reincarnates in multiple forms—vegetable, animal, and human (11).2 Throughout the text, the great soul becomes an effective parasite because she moves through different permutations of parasitic logic, learning how to locate weaknesses and take advantage of inherent flaws in new situations. Thus I draw on Michel Serres’s The Parasite, which argues that the asymmetrical relation of taking without giving is the basis for a model of parasitism that applies to a variety of contexts, including literary works.3 Parasitic logic provides linkages between the senses of failure and the posthumanist intuitions circulating throughout Metempsychosis. The poem capitalizes on weaknesses in traditional discourses and converts these flaws or failures into opportunities for remaking worlds. Virtually any form (perhaps all forms) of intertextuality can entail a species of parasitism, but the parasitic position of Metempsychosis subverts the older, universal sense of “the world” from within. In turn, the tactical, unfinished dimension of this worldmaking operation sets the stage for the dislocating effects associated with the text’s emergent, posthumanist insights. Donne’s poem shows the affinity between parasitic logic and posthumanist investments in thinking about the tenuous link between intentional agency and contingent processes.

If you would like to join our mailing list, please click here. We are committed to making our workshop accessible to all persons. Questions, requests, and concerns should be directed to Andrés Irigoyen (airigoyen@uchicago.edu) or Alyssa Mulé (amule@uchicago.edu).