London events of interest to this list:

Wednesday 4th February, 4pm – Mary Laven, ‘Presents for the Emperor: 
Material Cultural and the Jesuit Mission to China, 1580-1610’ (RCA/V&A 
Renaissance Decorative Arts and Culture Seminar), Seminar Room A, 
Research Department, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Thursday 5th February, 5pm – Susan Brigden, ‘Henry VIII and the princes 
of Italy’ (Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy Seminar), 3rd Floor 
Seminar Room, IHR, Senate House.

Friday 6th February, 7pm – Evelyn Welch, ‘Touching the Renaissance’ 
(Society of Renaissance Studies ‘Exploring the Renaissance’ Lecture 
Series), Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Research Centre, Victoria and 
Albert Museum. Admision free but booking necessary – visit www.vam.ac.uk.

Saturday 7th February, 2pm-5pm - British Museum Study Session: Maiolica. 
Speakers: Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson. Booking required - visit 
www.britishmuseum.org.

Wednesday 11th February, 4pm – Richard Williams, ‘Material Subcultures: 
A Pasteboard Triptych in Reformation England’ (RCA/V&A Renaissance 
Decorative Arts and Culture Seminar), Seminar Room A, Research 
Department, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Monday 16th February, 2pm-6pm - Workshop: 'Medieval 'mise-en-abyme': the 
object depicted within itself' - includes papers on Giovanni di Paolo, 
Donatello, Research Forum South Room, Courtauld Institute of Art. 
Booking essential - contact [log in to unmask] for further 
details.

Wednesday 18th February, 4pm – Suzy Knight, ‘Something old, something 
new: the Trousseau and Private Devotion in Fifteenth- and 
Sixteenth-Century Florence’ (RCA/V&A Renaissance Decorative Arts and 
Culture Seminar), Seminar Room A, Research Department, Victoria and 
Albert Museum.

Monday 23rd February, 5pm – Alessandro Pastora, ‘Fear of Poison in 
Renaissance and Early Modern Italy’ (European History 1500-1800 
Seminar), Low Countries Room, IHR, Senate House.

Wednesday 25th February, 4pm – Flora Dennis, ‘Listening to the Past: 
Sound, Spaces and Objects in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy’ 
(RCA/V&A Renaissance Decorative Arts and Culture Seminar), Seminar Room 
A, Research Department, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Wednesday 4th March, 4pm – Fabrizio Nevola, ‘Street Life and Street 
Culture in Early-Modern Italy’ (RCA/V&A Renaissance Decorative Arts and 
Culture Seminar), Seminar Room A, Research Department, Victoria and 
Albert Museum.

Thursday 5th March, 5pm - Paula Hohti, ‘Beyond the palace: Splendour and 
sociability in the homes of sixteenth-century Sienese artisans’ (Late 
Medieval and Early Modern Italy Seminar), 3rd Floor Seminar Room, IHR, 
Senate House.

Wednesday 11th March, 4pm – Ulinka Rublack, ‘The Art of Spending Well in 
Early-Modern Nuremberg’, (RCA/V&A Renaissance Decorative Arts and 
Culture Seminar), Seminar Room A, Research Department, Victoria and 
Albert Museum.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘Looking Before and After’: Cultural Exchange and the Inheritance of 
Ideas c.1200-c.1700

Saturday 13th June 2009
University of Oxford

In collaboration with the University of Cambridge, Queen Mary University 
of London, and University College London

Keynote Speakers:
Dr Nicola Gardini (Oxford)
Professor Evelyn Welch (Queen Mary, University of London)

Drawing on classical ideas of reason and man’s power to contemplate both 
past and future, Hamlet’s ‘looking before and after’ demonstrates a 
Renaissance version of cultural exchange that this conference seeks to 
promote. Aiming to encourage interdisciplinary study of text and other 
cultural artefacts in the medieval and early modern periods, the focus 
will be on the relationship of the ‘object’ under analysis to 
pre-existing literary, cultural, social historical codes, and the way in 
which that relationship shapes linguistic and cultural legacies for 
future generations.

This conference seeks to reshape the sense of where boundaries fall 
between periods and genres, and to open up new perspectives on what 
establishes as well as what transgresses these boundaries. It is 
envisaged that a forum for discussion of transferrable approaches and 
methods will provide new insights for future research. Scholars working 
in any related discipline are invited to participate and present papers 
that examine the creative cross-fertilisation between different media 
and genres, such as written and oral narratives, images and texts, and 
the visual arts.

Cultural inheritances from any part of the world may be considered, from 
the medieval age to the end of the seventeenth century. Speakers may 
wish to consider, among other issues:

• The processes by which ideas are inherited; are borrowings active or 
passive, deliberate or subconscious?
• Expressions of cross-cultural references; are these debts or legacies, 
precursors, forerunners or successors?
• The idea of the past as a need or a rule
• How intellectual debts and legacies change over time; reappropriation 
of or distancing from inherited models
• The ‘influential imagination’; the construction of literary and 
cultural memory
• Is the assimilation of ideas and ideologies individually or culturally 
determined?
• Hermeneutics and the nature of interpretation; the reworking of 
sources in the light of contemporary discourses
• Constructing the idea of the ‘individual’ over time

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from scholars in any 
related discipline.  Proposals of no more than 300 words should be 
emailed to the organising committee at the address below by Friday, 27 
February 2009.  Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and 
contact details.

Freyja Cox Jensen
Francesca Magnabosco
Kavita Mudan
Francesca Southerden

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