The Open University will be hosting their annual two-day conference on Medieval and Early Modern Spaces and Places

The conference will examine life in buildings, institutions and broader geographical areas from a variety of perspectives and will consider the following questions:

How were medieval and early modern spaces adapted and transformed through the movement of material and immaterial things?
Which particular aspects of political, social and economic infrastructures enabled the exchange of objects and ideas?
To what extent did a sense of place depend upon the activities taking place there?

further details here: http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/medieval-and-early-modern-research/spaces-places

Registration here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/medieval-and-early-modern-spaces-and-places-23-24-february-2018-tickets-42041521322

Medieval and Early Modern Spaces and Places, Hub Lecture Theatre, Walton Hall, 23-24 February 2018

Provisional Programme

Friday 23 February
9:45-10:00 Registration

10:00 Introductory remarks (Helen Coffey and Leah Clark)

10:15 Spaces and Bodies

Anuradha Gobin, University of Calgary: ‘Subverting Spaces of Control: Transformation, Deviance and Identity Formation in the Dutch Republic’

Michael Grillo, University of Maine: ‘Spatial Memory, Mapping and Perspective in the Wake of the Plague’

Naomi J. Barker, The Open University: ‘Intellectual polyphony: Music at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, 1600-1630’

11:45 Break

12:15 Travels and Movement

Jennifer Allport Reid, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘‘Fallen Am I in Dark Uneven Way’: Wandering from the Road in Early Modern Folklore’

Lisa Regan, University of California, Berkeley/IES, Vienna: ‘When the City Gates Close: Wayfaring Chapels and the Disciplining of Space’

13:15 Lunch

14:15 Sacred Spaces I

Zahra Ahari, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran: ‘Transformation of Mosalla into space of spectacle in Safavid Isfahan’

Judith Utz, Freie Universität Berlin/Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome: ‘Materiality and Space. Southern Italian Exultet scrolls in their liturgical setting’

15:15 Break

15:45 Sacred Spaces II

Julia Kotzur, University of Aberdeen, ‘Performing Spatial Change: Transformations and Redefinitions of Religious Space in Jonson’s The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair’

Kader N. Hegedüs, University of Lausanne, “A scant map of this”: John Donne and the (Un)mapping of the Reformation’

17:15 End (Reception/Dinner in evening)

Saturday 24 February
10:00 Domestic Spaces

Stephanie Bowry, University of Leicester: ‘”A goodly Gallery with a most pleasaunt Prospect […]”: Early Modern Gardens and Galleries as Entangled Spaces’

Lynsey McCulloch, Coventry University: ‘Choreographing the Early Modern Garden’

Audrey Thorstad, Bangor University: ‘”When thou comes to a lordis gate”: Hospitality and Socialising Spaces in Tudor Castles’

11:30 Break

12:00 Women and Domestic Space

Ja Young Jeon, City University of New York: ‘“Enter my closet”: The Gendered Early Modern Closet in The Changeling’

Eva Lauenstein, Birkbeck, University of London: ‘Within these tombes enclos’d’: Interring Renaissance Love in Mary Sidney Herbert’s Antonius

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Urban Spaces

Luise Scheidt, University of Cambridge: ‘An Iconography of Warfare: The Representation of Battle and Military Success in Early Modern Venetian Spaces’

Koching Chao, University of York: ‘Constituting Public Piazza in Trecento Communal Statues: Framing Montepulciano’s Piazza Grande in 1337’

15:00 Break

15:30 Performance Spaces

M.A.Katritzky, The Open University: ‘Transnational interpretations of theatrical space at the 1589 Florentine intermedi’

Michael Gale, The Open University: ‘Music-making and identity-formation in the Elizabethan universities’

17:00 End