"Come home wilde heades, then gad no more abroad": Some Notions of 'Home' in the Writings of Thomas Churchyard.

Thomas Churchyard (1523?-1604) – soldier, poet, mercenary, spy, deviser of royal pageantry verses, epitaph writer, war ‘journalist’, pamphleteer and indefatigable seeker after preferment has been said to ‘typify’ the Englishman during the sixteenth century.

This was also a time when notions of ‘home’ did not embrace ideas of family, privacy, intimacy and the domestic that are taken for granted when conceptualising the word in the twenty-first century.

This paper will examine some of the ways in which Thomas Churchyard – this ‘typical’ Englishman – imagined ‘home’ during one of the most eventful eras of English history.

Prof. Brenda Deen Schildgen (UC Davis) will speak on 'Cultural Tyranny in the Early Modern Period:
Girolamo Savonarola’s Apologeticus and the “Brucciamenti delle vanità”'

The Society for European Festivals Research, in association with the Universities of Bergamo, Pisa and Warwick, invites you to a conference under the title ‘The Iconography of Power: Ceremonial Entries in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe’. The conference will form part of the annual series of conferences promoted by the Society in a range of European locations. Edited and reworked proceedings of the conference, together with commissioned material, will be published by Ashgate Publishers, in both printed and eBook formats. The volume will be edited by Professors Maria Ines Aliverti (Pisa), Anna Maria Testaverde (Bergamo) and Ms Linda Briggs (Warwick).

Ceremonial Entries to capital and other cities took place across Europe in the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, as a means of expressing power relations and establishing communication between royal, ducal, civic and ecclesiastical authorities and their subjects. A common performance iconography, written and visual grew up, modified by local histories and current circumstances. The conference will deal with Entries in a wide European context, emphasising the period 1500 – 1650, and questioning the political, economic, and artistic motives of, and the political outcomes for, the kings, dukes, civic rulers, popes and bishops who promoted them. Attention will be paid to the individual administrators, scholars, artists, designers and performers, some of them among the leading practitioners in Europe, who devised and implemented the ceremonial programmes.

Conference Location. The conference will be held at the University of Bergamo on Friday to Sunday 25, 26, 27 May, 2012, beginning with Registration and Welcome at 3.30 p.m. on Friday and ending in mid-afternoon on Sunday.  A reception hosted by Ashgate Publishers will be held on Friday. A Conference Dinner will be arranged on Saturday. The names of invited speakers are given below. A detailed programme will be available in the New Year from the conference organisers, Professors Maria Ines Aliverti and Anna Maria Testaverde, and from Ms Linda Briggs, at the addresses below.

Posters prepared by Graduate Students and Early Career Researchers will be welcome. A Poster session will be held on the first evening of the conference, with opportunities to explain and comment on the topic concerned. For details of how to propose submitting a Poster please see the Call for Posters below.

Registration fee for the entire conference: €50, concessions (students and retired) €20. The registration fee will cover the cost of administration, lunches (Saturday and Sunday) and tea/ coffee. The Conference Dinner, to be held at a local hotel, will be separately costed.

Bergamo is a highly attractive and historic city of something over 130,000 inhabitants in the province of Lombardy, Northern Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The city borders the foothills of the Alps and is within easy driving distance of the Italian lakes. The city’s historic Città Alta includes many buildings of the medieval and Renaissance periods, including the famed Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (early 12^th century) and the Cappella Colleoni, an outstanding example of Renaissance architecture and art housing the tomb of the famous condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni and frescoes by Giovan Battista Tiepolo The town and province fell under Venetian domination in the earlier 15^th century, and remained part of the Venetian Republic until the end of the eighteenth. The Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto spent his most productive years in Bergamo (1513-25). The city’s Accademia Carrara is one of Italy’s most prestigious art galleries, with masterpieces by Pisanello, Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Raffaello, Tiziano, Canaletto and many others. The city has a strong musical tradition, much of it in Venetian style.

The University of Bergamo, founded in the 1960s, now includes 15,400 students in six faculties, and has been rated in recent years among the top ten universities in Italy. The Faculty of Scienza della Formazione, where the conference will be located, is situated in the former Convento di Sant’ Agostino in the Citta Alta.

Getting there. Bergamo International airport (Orio al Serio) is served by low-cost airlines. There is an inexpensive bus connection from the airport to the city. Frequent train connections to the city from Milan take 30-40 minutes, with connections from the international airport. There is a regular bus service from Milan, taking about 1 hour.

Accommodation for conference sessions will be located in the University buildings (detailed instructions will be supplied to conference members). Personal accommodation may be booked individually by conference members and speakers. Advice on available accommodation will be given by the conference organisers (contact information below) who will send details of local hotels on request. It will be possible to arrange discounted rates at certain hotels through the University of Bergamo.

Conference Organisers: Professor Anna Maria Testaverde, University of Bergamo (anna-maria.testaverde@unibg.it ); Professor Maria Ines Aliverti, University of Pisa (i.aliverti@arte.unipi.it ); Ms Linda Briggs, University of Warwick (L.A.Briggs@warwick.ac.uk).

Download the registration form.

Speakers

Maria Ines Aliverti (Università di Pisa)

Linda Briggs (PhD candidate University of Warwick)

Martine Boiteux (Paris, École des hautes études en sciences sociales)

Marie-Claude Canova-Green (Goldsmith’s College, University of London)

Monique Chatenet (Paris, Centre André Chastel, Institute national d’histoire de l’art)

Richard Cooper (Brasenose College, University of Oxford)

*Krista De Jonge (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

Julia De La Torre Fazio (Universidad de Málaga)

Rosa De Marco (PhD candidate University of Dijon)

Lucinda Dean (PhD candidate University of Stirling)

Iain Fenlon (King’s College, University of Cambridge)

Bernardo García García (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Ewa Kociszewska (PhD candidate University of Warsaw)

Margaret McGowan (Emerita, University of Sussex)

Lucia Nuti (Università di Pisa)

Federica Rossi (Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa)

Veronica Sandbichler (Innsbruck, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schloss Ambras)

Margaret Shewring (University of Warwick)

*Leonardo Spinelli (PhD candidate Università di Firenze)

Andrea Sommer-Mathis (Vienna, Ősterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften)

Anna Maria Testaverde (Università di Bergamo)

Sara Trevisan (University of Warwick)

Jacek Żukowski (PhD candidate University of Warsaw)

*CONFIRMATION AWAITED FROM THESE INVITED SPEAKERS

CHAIRPERSONS

Laura Fernandez Gonzalez (PhD candidate University of Edinburgh)

David Sánchez Cano (Universidad Alfonso X, Madrid)

Franca Franchi (University of Bergamo)

Ronnie Mulryne (Emeritus, University of Warwick)

Paulette Choné (Emerita, Université de Nancy, France)

Sydney Anglo (University of Wales, Swansea)

Cristina Grazioli (Università di Padova)

· Are you an MA or PhD student interested in early modern Latin?

· Would you like to discuss your research with other postgraduates and scholars working on the subject?

· Would you like to become more familiar with the collections of the world-famous Wellcome Library in London?

If so, sign up for the workshop organised by the Society for Neo-Latin Studies and the Wellcome Library: places are strictly limited. Further information is available from Dr Sarah Knight, University of Leicester (sk218@le.ac.uk