COMING SPRING 2008:

Lecture: Jean Howard (Department of English, Columbia), "Beatrice's Monkey: Staging Exotica on the Early Modern Stage" Monday, April 14th at Washinton & Jefferson on a topic from her most recent book, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642 (UPenn Press, 2006).

For more information about this talk, please contact Kevin Curran (kcurran@staff.washjeff.edu).

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Cross-Pittsburgh Course in 17th Century Materialism

Please enjoy these pictures of the Spring 2007 joint 17th Century Materialism class co-taught by Mike Witmore (CMU: English) and Dan Selcer (Duquesne: Philosophy). Photos taken in the CMU Hunt Botanical Library. 1. 2.

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Recent Spring 2008 Events:

Lecture: Pamela Sheingorn (Professor Emerita of History, City University of New York), "Was Jesus' Foster-Father a Martyr? Constructing the Death of Joseph the Carpenter" Thursday, March 27th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie:  The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors" Friday, March 21st at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Mind and World in The Winter's Tale" Thursday, March 20th at 4:30 in the Giant Eagle Auditorium, Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Carol Brown Lecture at CMU.

Lecture: Timothy Hampton (Department of French and Comparative Literature, UC-Berkley), “The Useful and the Honorable: Literature, Diplomacy, and the Ethics of Mediation in the Late Renaissance” Friday, Febuary 8th at 4:30 in the Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A, at Carnegie Mellon University.

This paper will explore a point of contact between the Renaissance political practice of diplomacy, and the emerging discourse of secular literature. Modern diplomatic practice takes shape in and around the culture of Renaissance humanism, which offers deeply idealistic accounts of how diplomacy works. By the late sixteenth century, however, diplomatic theory struggles to bring humanist moral and ethical ideals into harmony with the contingencies of practical diplomacy. One of the ways in which writers reflect on the changes in diplomacy's relationship to moral philosophy is through a consideration of whether political action is to be 'useful' (that is, politically expedient), or 'honorable' (that is, morally correct). This is a topic that occurs repeatedly in discussions of the role of the mediator in diplomatic negotiations. My paper will trace this theme through the works of several late-Renaissance writers. Particular focus will be on Torquato Tasso, the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, and Michel de Montaigne, who writes at length in his Essais about the ethics of diplomacy. I will show that both of these authors use diplomatic representation to explore the dynamics of literary representation. Thus the paper will open perspectives on how literary discourse represents the limits of political power.

Timothy Hampton is currently a Bernie Williams Professor of Comparative Literature and a Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in early modern European literature and culture, he has written extensively on the relationship between literature and politics, historiography, questions of cultural transmission and cross-cultural encounters. His books include Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Cornell University Press, 1990) and Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Cornell University Press, 2000), which won the Modern Language Association¹s Scaglione Prize for the best book in French and Francophone Studies. His latest book, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, will be published later this year.

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

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Fall 2007 Events:

Jonathan Sawday (Chair of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow), “Calculating Engines: Minds, Bodies, Sex and Machines on the Eve of the Enlightenment” Thursday, September 27th at 4:30 in the Adamson Wing of Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon University

The lecture explores the fascination with the idea of creating artificial life and 'thinking machines' in the pre-enlightenment period.  It concentrates on the pertinent ideas of Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, and Leibniz, but ends by exploring the 'anti-machine' of the late seventeenth century, i.e., the malfunctioning sex machines of the notorious John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

Sponsored by the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies .

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Ruth Evans (Head of Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland), "Crossing the Road with Margery Kempe" Friday, September 28th 4:30 in the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, Room 501

Professor Evans has published on Chaucer, medieval virginity, Margery Kempe, medieval origin myths, Middle English religious drama, Derrida, romance, translation theory, translation in the Middle Ages, the representation of Jews in medieval texts, and fifteenth-century courtly literature, among others.

Jointly sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

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David Rothenberg (Department of Music, Case Western Reserve University) "A Maiden, a Shepherdess, and a Queen: The Parisian Assumption Vespers Services and Two Thirteenth-Century Motets," Thursday, October 18th at 4:00 pm in room 132 of the Music Building at the University of Pittsburgh

David J. Rothenberg, Assistant Professor of Music at Case Western, is a music historian with research interests in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. His articles on topics ranging from Ars antiqua motets to compositions by Heinrich Isaac, Josquin des Prez, and Orlando di Lasso appear in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, and Musik in Bayern. Current projects include a study of Isaac's liturgical music for Emperor Maximilian I and a book about the confluence of Marian devotion and secular song in music of the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries.

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Ramie Targoff (Department of English, Brandeis University) "Making Love: Petrarch, Wyatt, and the English Love Lyric," Wednesday, November 14th at 4:00 pm at The University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, Room 501

Ramie Targoff is Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at Brandeis University. Her first book, _Common Prayer: Models of Public Devotion in Early Modern England_ (Chicago, 2001) won the prize for Best Book of the Year from the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her second book, _John Donne, Body and Soul_, will be published by Chicago University Press in 2008. She is currently at work on a book-length study of love in the Renaissance.

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

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Deanna Shemek (Italian and Comparative Literature, UC Santa Cruz), "From Document to Text and Back Again: Renaissance Women's Letters and the Interpretive Shuttle" Friday, November 30th at 4:00 pm at The University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, Room 501

Deanna Shemek is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and Cowell College Provost at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has authored, edited, and translated numerous books and essays, including _Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy_ (Duke, 1998). She is currently at work on a translation of the letters of Isabella d'Este for the University of Chicago Press and a book manuscript titled "'In Continuous Expectation': Isabella d'Este's Epistolary Dominion."

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Department of French and Italian and the Women's Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.