Hello Claire, I’m keen to participate! I’m a second year PhD student in early modern theatre history and my research does involve some bits about senses, especially auditory experiences!
SLAVES, toil no more! Why delve, and moil, and pine, To glut the tyrant-forgers of your chain? Slaves, toil no more! Up, from the midnight mine, Summon your swarthy thousands to the plain ; Beneath the bright sun marshalled, swell the strain Of liberty; and, while the lordlings view Your banded hosts, with stricken heart and brain, Shout, as one man,-' Toil we no more renew, Until the Many cease their slavery to the Few!' II. We'll crouch, and toil, and weave, no more to weep!' Exclaim your brothers from the weary loom: Yea, now, they swear, with one resolve, dread, deep, We'll toil no more to win a pauper's doom!' And, while the millions swear, fell Famine's gloom Spreads from their haggard faces like a cloud Big with the fear and darkness of the tomb. How, 'neath its terrors, are the tyrants bowed! Slaves, toil no more to starve! Go forth and tame the Proud!
"SLAVES, toil no more! Why delve, and moil, and pine,
To glut the tyrant-forgers of your chain?"
---Thomas Cooper the Chartist, The Purgatory of Suicides (1847).
#history #poetry #politics #literature #English #Chartism
'people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing than are those who speak just one language.'
Good thing that schools, universities and governments are so actively promoting modern languages then, isn't it? 1/2
Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns European University Institute, Florence, May 22, 2026 - May 22, 2026 Deadline for submission/application: December 20, 2025 Call for Papers Organiser: Dr Giada Pizzoni Keynote Speaker: Dr Jonathan Davies (Warwick) Violence puts the gender roles in a society firmly on records. Although we can never fully grasp the motives behind past acts of violence, through them we can gauge what was tolerated or sanctioned in any given society. Historical violence can suggest which meaning early modern people had of assault and abuse, whether physical, verbal or psychological. This brings us to the fundamental methodological question of how modern categories can capture past social realities. In this regard, the aim of the workshop is to offer a more precise picture of gender violence, with a quantitative study on survivors, their witnesses, and the negotiating process. This gathering aims to promote a discussion on how to defy certain stereotypes around gender-based violence by investigating how women and men in the past viewed and talked about their roles within the abusive act. While some treated the violence suffered as an intimate matter, charged with shame and danger and therefore difficult to articulate, others saw it as a matter to be publicly outed and put into words. This workshop invites proposals for short papers (4,000-5,000 words) on any aspect of gender and violence in early modernity. Papers that investigate the possibility to offer significant input for the study of what we would regard as psychological/physical trauma; dynamics of power; for understanding responses to assault; to investigate the status and forms of victims and perpetrators. The past can share its feelings as violent acts are always initially expressed through language and shaped by specific social and cultural norms.
CFP: Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns
Confirmed keynote speaker: @jddavies66.bsky.social
Deadline: 20 December 2025
Conference: 22 May 2026, European University Institute, Florence
all info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/gender... #EarlyModern #SkyStorians
New #CFP on 'Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World', to be held in June 2026 at the University of Amsterdam
Abstracts of >200 words due by the 1 February 2026
#18thc #skystorians 🗃️
Call for Papers This two-day interdisciplinary symposium will invite scholars to re-consider practical texts written between c. 1558 and 1642 as productive sources for literary criticism. In a period best known today for its poetry and drama, practical texts such as Gervase Markham’s The English Husbandman were ‘almost literally read to pieces’, Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry ‘led the market’ as ‘a Tudor best-seller’, and cookery books enjoyed a staggering 70% reprint rate. That these texts occupied such a prominent position in the publishing industry is testament to their importance in early modern life. Yet despite this, literary criticism has been slow to embrace such texts as more than merely contextual sources for canonical texts by poets and dramatists such as Shakespeare and Spenser. Critics continue to frame Tusser’s work as an agricultural manual or almanack rather than a book of poetry, for example, while literary scholars tend to note his significance in the same breath as they denigrate the quality of his verse: an ‘agrarian book of jingles’ or ‘collection of doggerel’. Other practical texts such as receipt books and surveying texts have been interrogated primarily as a means of understanding early modern culture and society. Less common are studies of practical texts as works of literature, studies that centre the practical text rather than positioning it as context for the work of more canonical writers. This symposium seeks to address this gap, and invites contributors to consider how studying non-traditionally canonical texts can help scholars to reassess established positions. It is designed to lead to an edited collection, provisionally aimed at Routledge’s Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge series, so speakers are encouraged to propose papers suitable for extension into a 6000-8000 word chapter. Recent scholarship by Katarzyna Lecky, Jessica Rosenberg, and Kyla Tompkins has begun to demonstrate
CFP: Reading the Practical in #EarlyModern Literature
University of Sheffield, 16-17 April 2026
Deadline for submissions: 24 November 2025
All info: www.rensoc.org.uk/event/readin...
#SkyStorians #EarlyModernEvents @sheffieldcems.bsky.social
Deborah Cartmell and I are pleased to announce a virtual conference on AI and Shakespeare which we're running on behalf of the BSA in February 2026. Details and cfp at
www.britishshakespeare.ws/events/
EARLY MODERN PHDs!!! #EarlyModern #SkyStorians
Not specifically about fairies in Shakespeare but worth a reading as in these articles are so comprehensive on the topic of fairies in em culture: 1. Ronald Hutton, The Making of Early Modern British Fairy Tradition 2. Darren Oldridge, Fairies and the Devil in early modern England.
On Shakespeare: 1. Diane Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden 2. Regina Buccola, Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith.
I am looking for recommendations for recent scholarship about the English Civil War from a literary historical perspective, what have you got? Realizing that both my knowledge and confidence in that knowledge crater c. 1640.
“I’m anti-Trump, but…”
I realized today that my article on source study and the plot of romeo and juliet was published online a few days ago! i'm very proud of this one & if you're working on R+J or teaching the play, please check it out
Anyone aware of any non-Shakespeare early modern plays being performed Jan-Mar 2026 in London? Setting texts for a Renaissance Drama module and would love to track down something the students can go and see!
Cambridge, CCCC 140, fol. 116r
Cambridge, CCCC 140, fol. 116r, detail
For the feast of William Tyndale, executed 1536, here's a reminder that 500y earlier it wasn't such a big honking deal to translate scripture into English. Here's the opening of John in Cambridge, CCCC 140, an 11c copy of the West Saxon Gospels. 🕯️
On frymðe wæs word ond þæt word wæs mid gode.
Cat next to the book
Toddler reading the book
I was very excited to come home to find the author copies of my book had arrived!
Though one young reviewer is disappointed that there are no tractors in it, if you are interested in early modern poetry and the occult, you can order below 👇
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...
Hannah Arendt should be compulsory reading for everyone right now.
When the last Labour government got in, if you married a UK citizen you could get British citizenship after one year for less than £100, and claim benefits straight away.
By 2010, it was a minimum five-year process that cost seven grand, you had to do a test, and couldn't claim benefits in that time
AN #EARLYMODERN POST!! They still exist! And a lovely one at that, for five years and with the brilliant people at KCL who have turned that place in quite the hub of exciting early modern research.
Run, don’t walk.
Incoming 18 year old undergraduates have never known Pluto as a planet (ousted in 2006!) and that makes me sad all over again for Pluto - and the students with an impoverished solar system - and me as I’m so old.
Smol voice: perhaps my first book, RENAISSANCE ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters, would work as what an example-of-a-dissertation-might-become? www.surekhadavies.org/renaissance-...
OH MY GOD
'Scale of unite the kingdom march shows free speech alive and well in UK, says minister
This is, I believe, the first official word from the Government on what happened yesterday in London. Not only inaction in the face of violence and hate, but a celebration of it. I passed through London twice yesterday with my two kids & what Labour seem to be missing is that people aren't just...
Our collection, Mapping the Early Modern Inns of Court: Writing Communities, is being launched! Come and join us (in person at Middle Temple Library or online) at 6.15pm on Tuesday 9 Sept. Email MappingInns@gmail.com for more details. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
I was delighted to have a chance to be on what turned out to be Melvyn Bragg’s last series of In Our Time and also thrilled that an article in The Times today lists our episode (on George Herbert) as one of the best 15 ever! You can listen to it here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
paperback coming early 2026! ✨
Melvyn Bragg has decided to stand down as host of In Our Time, the BBC says.
Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project has just landed on Bluesky. We will be sharing stories, history and a few surprises behind our local place-names.
Do you have ideas on what type of content you would like to see? Maps, archives or just fun facts? Let us know below 😀
📣 #CfP: "Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520–1689"
Join us for a one-day conference at the University of St Andrews on 26 June 2026. The keynote speaker is Professor Alec Ryrie.
The deadline for proposals is 11 December 2025. #EarlyModernHistory #skystorians
I've updated #EarlyModern Resources earlymodernweb.org/resources/ Quite a few new links but also a big overhaul of the site to be more usable + a visual refresh.
(If you can't see a change, you may need to clear your browser cache and refresh hard. 😬)
