Members’ Events

“Of Bought Wit”: Plagiarism, Imitation and Borrowing in Early Modern England The Tenth IASEMS Conference Università degli Studi di Genova, 22-24 May 2019 Wit is never good till it be bought. Thy wit is dear bought, and yet stark nought. John Heywood, Epigrams upon Proverbs, xiv (1562) Early modern textuality seems directly to point at postmodern and contemporary visions of the text as a site of dynamic and multiple contribution. Given the role played in the foundation of an English national literature by a massive activity of rewriting and translating classical and contemporary foreign literature, early modern texts were also intrinsically inter-systemic and derivative. While early modern English began to come into its own as a national language, its more cultivated speakers felt the need to enrich and systematize its vocabulary mainly through borrowing and translation (a process contrasted by the so-called ‘purists’), so that it might compete with the more prestigious classical and continental languages. Indeed, competition with ancient or current models permeated the literary and cultural domain, and notions of imitation and borrowing were variously debated and practiced. Writers used their sources in a variety of ways, ranging from allusion to quotation to plagiarism; in the absence of legal protection of intellectual property, authorship, as well as co-authorship, was performed within more or less established patterns of literary and cultural production. In a context shaped by religious and political controversy, authorial identity was itself related to contemporary anxieties and experiences of dissimulation. The Tenth Iasems Conference will investigate the various ways in which originality, creativity, appropriation, and borrowing were inscribed in early modern British literature and culture. Proposals meant to explore critical paradigms and counter-paradigms in the approach to early modern textuality and authorship are particularly welcome, as well as papers focused on the relationship between textual theory/practice and the political, religious, philosophical and sociological context in which the debate is situated. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:  imitation and creativity in early modern literature  theories and ethics of textual production  borrowing in literary theory and practice  language policies: borrowing, enrichment, exclusion  translation in theory and practice  the debate on plagiarism  plagiarism on the stage  textual appropriation as discourse and metaphor  textual appropriation and gender  anonymity and authorship as literary practice and strategy  literary debts in manuscripts, unpublished writings  parody and satire  rewriting knowledge in early modern textuality (historiography, treatises, unpublished writings, patchwriting, commonplace books, diaries)  multiple authorship and collaborative writing  publishers, printers, authors  digital humanities and the early modern text Selected Bibliography: Biørnstad H. (ed.), Borrowed Feathers: Plagiarism and the Limits of Imitation in Early Modern Europe, Oslo, Oslo Academic Press, 2008. Clare J., Shakespeare’s Stagetraffic: Imitation, Borrowing and Competition in Renaissance Theatre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014. Cook T., Nielson J., Plagiarism and Proprietary Authorship in Early Modern England, 1590-1640, Department of English, University of Toronto, 2011 (PhD Thesis). Hope J., Shakespeare and Language: Reason, Eloquence and Artifice in Early Modern England, London, Arden, 2010. Hug T., Impostures in Early Modern England, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013. Kerrigan J., Shakespeare’s Originality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018. Kewes P., Plagiarism in Early Modern England, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. North M. L., The Anonymous Renaissance. Cultures of Discretion in Tudor-Stuart England, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003. Orgel S., The Authentic Shakespeare, and Other Problems of the Early Modern Stage, London-New York, Routledge 2002. Randall M., Pragmatic Plagiarism. Authorship, Profit and Power, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001. Terry R., The Plagiarism Allegation in English Literature from Butler to Sterne, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Van Es B., Shakespeare in Company, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. Wells S., Shakespeare and Co: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story, London, Allen Lane, 2006. White H. O., Plagiarism and Imitation during the English Renaissance. A Study in Critical Distinctions, New York-London, Frank Cass, 1963. We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers (maximum). Please send a 500-word abstract and 200-word curriculum vitae by 20 December 2018 to: Luca Baratta: lucabaratta85@gmail.com Giuliana Iannaccaro: giuliana.iannaccaro@unimi.it

2nd Pop@UBarcelona Symposium: Gender and the Graphic Novel 8 March 2019, Aula Magna, Universitat de Barcelona In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and English Studies at the Universitat de Barcelona invites proposals for panels and papers on any aspect of gender and the graphic novel or comics. This one-day symposium is both an academic and a outreach event, intended for researchers, secondary school students, and the general public. Papers should be lively and accessible to non- specialists. The official languages of the symposium are English, Spanish, and Catalan: English-studies specialists are encouraged to submit abstracts, and deliver their papers, in English. Possible topics included: • Women creators in comics and graphic novels • Superheroines (and superheroes) and bodies • Gender and re-worked graphic characters • Gender and graphic novel readerships/fandom • Gender and graphic genres • Gender and comic/graphic novel publishing houses • Gender-swapping characters (e.g. in cases of retroactivity continuity) • Comics and intersectionality (cue Ms Marvel) • Gender and mutants/aliens Abstracts of 150-250 words should be sent, in English, Spanish, or Catalan, to john.stone.bcn@gmail by 15 December 2018. A selection will be made by 20 December 2018. Abstracts should include the author’s or authors’ name(s) and affiliation, title, and 3-5 keywords, as well as the abstract proper.

Call for Papers “Enter the Crowd” Mass Communication in Early Modern England Florence, 12 April 2019 The 2019 IASEMS Graduate Conference at The British Institute in Florence is a one-day interdisciplinary and bilingual English-Italian forum open to PhD students and researchers who have obtained their doctorates within the past 5 years. This year’s conference will focus on the multifaceted connections between communication and the crowd in early modern English literature, language and culture. John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598) provides a narrative of a crowded city whose identity was being shaped by masses of people arriving from outside the city boundaries. In the early modern period, the crowd is associated with contradictory ideas of uniformity and disorder, coherence and monstrosity, and with potential sovereignty. It embodies a cultural space of variability and instability, reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties. In a context shaped by urgent nationalistic political agendas, public communication and rhetoric played a vital role. To investigate the nexus between communication and the crowd means to explore arenas of debate and political control, representations of collective identities and leadership, but also networks of relationships. The theatre was itself a potent medium of mass communication. The goal of this Conference is to develop an understanding of the various ways in which the tie between public communication, politics and collective identity is inscribed in early modern English literature and culture. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following: – representations of the crowd in early modern writing – rhetoric and politics in theoretical treatises – the rhetoric of public communication in proclamations, speeches, sermons – public discourse and the construction of class, gender, national identity – church regulations, the construction of the citizen(s), and dissenting voices – communication and mass control in drama – language as instrumentum regni – narrative strategies in polemical writing – rhetoric and propaganda across genres – visual propaganda – representations of mass leaders and historiography – shaping/questioning collective identities – the orator and popularity – theatre, communication and audiences – crowds, networks and urban spaces in early modern writing Select Bibliography: Anderson B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983. Hopkins, L., The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008. Low, J, Myhill, N. (eds), Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama 1558-1642, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Munro, I., The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London: The City and its Double, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Peltonen M., Rhetorics, Politics and Popularity in Pre-revolutionary England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012. Richards J., Thorne A. (eds), Rethoric, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, London-New York, Routledge, 2006. Shepard A., Withington P. J., Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000. Shnapp J., Tews M. (eds), Crowds, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2006. Stage K., Producing Early Modern London: a Comedy of Urban Space, 1598-1616, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Candidates are invited to send a description of their proposed contribution according to the following guidelines: – the candidate should provide name, institution, contact info, title and a short abstract of the proposed contribution (300 words for a maximum 20-minute paper), explaining the content and intended structure of the paper, and including a short bibliography; – abstracts are to be submitted by Sunday 23 December 2018 by email to giuliana.iannaccaro@unimi.it and lucabaratta85@gmail.com; – all proposals will be blind-vetted. The list of selected papers will be available by Monday 7 January 2019; – each finished contribution should not exceed 20 minutes and is to be presented in English (an exception will be made for Italian candidates of departments other than English, who can give their papers in Italian); – candidates whose first language is not English will need to have their proposals and final papers checked by a mother-tongue speaker; – participants will be asked to present a final draft of the paper ten days before the Conference. Selected speakers who are IASEMS members can apply for a small grant (http://www.iasems.org/?page_id=2) For further information please contact Luca Baratta (lucabaratta85@gmail.com)

The South Asian literary scene, after the breakthrough of the Indian Anglophone novel, is now in its complex entirety a space of extremely lively and variegated narrative production. After the groundbreaking postcolonial sweep of the 80s and 90s with Rushdie, Roy, Seth, Mistry to set the model, in the third millennium a vast train of authors continue to experiment with a multifarious variety of trends, genres, forms and voices, exploring also the intersections between English and the other regional languages and literatures of the subcontinent. Among the different nation-states comprising South Asia, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal, a new generation of writers chart out a vibrant and energetic literary landscape in which the novelistic and other modes, such as the graphic novel, the autobiography or the diary, question changing notions of authorship and interrogate the role of translation in creating reading communities across national borders. Millennium’s Children intends to explore new possible foreground subjects, styles and genres, so as to contribute to a reflection on the expressive possibilities of narrative prose in English and in translation in the 21st century. What devices does it still offer to the children of the new Millennium, those heirs of 1981 Rushdie’s novel in need of attuning to a particularly challenging contemporary scene? How do these writers delineate new political geographies necessary to locate the position of those who have lost their voice or are in need to speak for the first time? Due to the unmatched variedness of its social composition, the complex network of relations between different castes, religions, ethnic and social groups, the political unrest of the region, and the rapid growth of its economic and technological capabilities, it is no surprise that in South-Asian literature the themes dominant in writing from and about the subcontinent cannot but engage intensely with civic, public, political, historical and at the same time personal, individual, affective issues. In welcoming essays dealing with development and ecological emergencies, persisting casteism and limited access to literacy, internal displacement and diaspora, gender troubles and religious violence together with the exhilarating effects of neo-liberal globalization, modernity’s fast-changing pace in megalopolises and global cities, communication, the media and the economy of call centers and reality shows, we invite scholars to discuss the expansion and specialization of the publishing industry in response to new reading practices. Dalit and tribal literature, women fiction, the novel of the North-East and other border regions, as well as chick-lit, crick-lit, crime, detective and sci-fi fiction will be welcome areas of analysis. With Millennium’s Children we wish to gather scholars actively willing to discuss, to paraphrase once again Salman Rushdie, how newness enters the novel. https://millenniumschildre.wixsite.com/millenniumsc…/cfp-sub

Call for Papers: International Conference Translation as Political Act /La traduction comme acte politique/ La traduzione come atto politico Date: Thu, 9th May – Fri, 10th May 2019 Location: University of Perugia, Italy Organisers: Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche (Università di Perugia) in collaboration with the Genealogies of Knowledge Project (University of Manchester) Invited key note speakers Mona Baker, University of Manchester, UK Nicole Doerr, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Fruela Fernandez, Newcastle University, UK & Universidad Complutense, Spain Lynne Franjié, Université Lille 3, France Guy Rooryck and Lieve Jooken, Ghent University, Belgium Organizing Committee: Diana Bianchi (Università di Perugia, Italia), Jan Buts (University of Manchester, UK), Henry Jones (University of Manchester, UK), Francesca Piselli (Università di Perugia, Italia), Federico Zanettin (Università di Perugia, Italia) Detailed information about the conference and on how to submit abstracts can be found at: http://home.translationaspoliticalact.net/

Workshop proposal Title: “The concept of lightness: new perspectives and applications”. Venue: 52nd Meeting of the SLE (Societas Linguistica Europaea) – Leipzig (21-24 August 2019) Convenors: Roberta Mastrofini, Jodi L. Sandford, Marco Bagli (University of Perugia, Italy) The term lightness was first coined by Jespersen in relation to English verbal constructions formed by “an insignificant verb, to which the marks of person and tense are attached, before the really important idea” (Jespersen, 1954: 117-118). In other words, lightness was first detected as a property of general English predicates (i.e. to make, to have, to give, to take) when found in combination with a nomen actionis (Nickel, 1968) or, following a more recent definition, an eventive deverbal noun (Kiefer & Gross, 1995; Kiefer, 1998), as in the case of to make a call, to give a talk, to take a walk, to have a row. These examples represent a verbal construction in which the predicate is devoid of its literal meaning through a process of “predicate bleaching” (Szabolsci, 1986). As a consequence, the verb turns into a mere syntactic device (sometimes serving as an aspectual element too), while the noun undertakes the main semantic content of the construction (i.e. to make a call means “to call”; to give a talk means “to talk”, and so forth). Since then, the so-called Light Verb Constructions (LVCs) have been a highly debated topic in literature, and have been the object of research in a number of different languages. Nevertheless, many aspects seem to be unsolved. The first question concerns the methodology: using a single level of analysis (morphological vs. syntactic vs. semantic) has shed some light on the properties of the verb or of the noun, but failed in considering the phenomena of interface underlying the construction as a whole. Secondly, the criteria used to determine what is a LVC from what is not are not universally recognized by scholars, or not applicable to all instances of LVCs detected in literature. Moreover, several studies (Gross G., 1981; Cicalese, 1999; Jezek, 2011; Mastrofini, in press) detected lightness in full lexical predicates when found in specific syntagmatic environments. This construction has been named Light Verb Extension (LVE), since it shares semantic and syntactic similarities with traditional LVCs. Like LVCs, LVEs contain a bleached predicate, and the noun carries the semantic content of the pattern. Unlike LVCs, the verb functions as an aspectual device (i.e. to nourish resentment; to launch a project; to run a risk; to break a relationship). Lastly, Simone & Masini (2014) proposes a scale of “nouniness” including designative nouns (i.e. spoon), classifiers (i.e. spoonful), quantifiers (i.e. plenty), qualifiers (i.e. type), approximators (i.e. sort), and light nouns (i.e. act of courtesy, fit of crying, burst of laughter), suggesting the idea that lightness is not only a verbal feature. Our workshop proposal wants to bring together scholars working on lightness from any type of perspective ranging from syntax to semantics, in English, or even better in a cross-linguistic perspective. Diachronic, typological, and corpus-based approaches are welcome. The aim is to find an answer to the following unsolved questions: What is a LVC and what is not? Should we consider “light” only the prototypical instances retrieved by Jespersen or postulate different degrees of lightness in verbal constructions? And, if so, how, and by which parameters is lightness assessed? Would it be plausible to say that any lexical predicate may turn “light” under specific syntagmatic conditions? If so, which ones? Is lightness only a verbal property? Can lightness in LVEs be the result of a metaphorical shift? If so, could a semantic cognitive approach be relevant? How can lightness be considered from a Cognitive Linguistics approach? Is it a matter of conceptual metaphor extension (Lakoff, 1990; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, 2003)? When did lightness emerge, in a diachronic perspective? Can we apply Prototype Theory to distinguish LVCs from LVEs? If you are interested in this topic, you are encouraged to send us an abstract of max. 300 words by October, 31st, 2018. We will select the most relevant contributions and submit them to SLE convenors by November, 20th. Please do not hesitate to spread the proposal to anybody who might be interested in this research. If you have any questions, or would like to submit a proposal, you can reach us at: Roberta Mastrofini: roberta.mastrofini@unipg.it Jodi L. Sandford: jodi.sandford@unipg.it Marco Bagli: marco.bagli@unipg.it

The International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures (IASSL) are pleased to announce the launch of the annual Jack Prize, to be awarded annually for the best article on a subject related to Reception or Diaspora in Scottish Literatures (including Scots, English, Gaelic and Latin). The prize is named in honour of Professor Ronald Dyce Sadler Jack D.Litt. FRSE (1941-2016), Professor of Scottish and Mediaeval Literature at the University of Edinburgh from 1987-2004 and director of the Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation. Professor Jack’s work on Scottish literature’s Continental and Italian dimensions was groundbreaking. From his The Italian Influence in Scottish Literature (1972) on, he championed a concept of Scottish literature open to the world and engaged in dialogue with it. This prize of £100 or equivalent is named in his memory and awarded in his honour annually. Submissions should be sent to Professor Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming: CMF@uwyo.edu), Convenor of IASSL, by St Andrew’s Day, 30 November 2018. https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/researchcentresandnetworks/iassl/thejackprize/

Approaches to Multimodal Digital Environments: from theories to practices (A-MODE) Multimodal digital communication is the main theme of this conference meant to attract multidisciplinary research on a wide range of issues from teaching and learning to analysing multimodal digital data appearing in multiple communication arenas. Drawing on the work related to the European project EU-MADE4LL, European Multimodal and Digital Education for Language Learning, the conference intends to bring together international scholars belonging to various fields of research sharing an interest in exploring recent developments in multimodal digital communication. We wish to tackle the complex arenas of digitality by reflecting on a broad range of multimodal texts, social practices and communities: content management systems, corporate web pages, institutional web pages, blogs, corporate videos, mash up, fanvids, etc … We are keen to address this ever-increasing complexity of digital communication by adopting a broad range of multimodal, semiotic and educational perspectives. Keynote speakers: Marina Bondi, University of Modena, Italy Carey Jewitt, UCL – Institute of Education, London, UK Rodney Jones, University of Reading, UK Gunther Kress and Jeff Bezemer, UCL – Institute of Education, London, UK David Machin, Örebro University, Sweden Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology, Sidney Detailed information about the conference can be found at http://a-mode.eumade4ll.eu. TITOLO DEL CONVEGNO Approaches to Multimodal Digital Environments: from theories to practices (A-MODE) ORGANIZZATORI Elisabetta Adami (University of Leeds) Ilaria Moschini (Università di Firenze) Sandra Petroni (UNiversità di Roma ‘Tor Vergata) Maria Grazia Sindoni (Università di Messina) DATA 20-22 June 2019 SEDE Rome, University of “Tor Vergata” LINK http://a-mode.eumade4ll.eu.