Poetry at the Post: Moments of Becoming

Becoming a Redwood
BY DANA GIOIA
Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,…

‘Moments of Becoming’ Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

Moments of Becoming: Transitions and Transformations in Early Modern Europe

University of Limerick, Ireland, 20-21 November 2015.

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore the theme of ‘becoming’ in early modern European and Irish culture. The early modern period itself is often understood as a time of transition, but how did the people of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries experience periods of transformation/transition in their own lives and work, and how were these processes accomplished and accommodated? Conference papers will explore changes to personal, professional, religious or political identity and identifications, as well as understandings of transformations of state, status and nature more broadly.

Plenary Speakers: Professor Daniel Carey, Professor Raymond Gillespie, Professor Alison Rowlands.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on themes that might include:

Transition in religion and politics

Religious conversion
Alterations to political sympathies
Migration and naturalisation
Becoming a soldier, priest, rebel, martyr, hero or villain
Personal transformations

Acquiring competencies, skills or professional training
Social mobility, upwards or downwards
Becoming a parent
Rites of passage
Transition and the supernatural

Death and movement to the next world
Magical and miraculous transformations
Textual and performative transformations

Responses to societal transitions in poetry and prose
Transforming texts via translation, printing or performance
The use of space and material culture in ceremonial/ritual contexts

Please submit an abstract of about 250 words to Richard Kirwan (Richard.Kirwan@ul.ie) or Clodagh Tait (Clodagh.Tait@mic.ul.ie) before 10th July 2015.

This conference will occur under the auspices of the Limerick Early Modern Forum of the University of Limerick and Mary Immaculate College. The conference is funded by the Irish Research Council New Foundations Scheme. The organisers plan to publish a volume of essays drawn from the conference papers.

Organisers: Dr Liam Chambers (MIC), Dr Michael J. Griffin (UL), Dr Richard Kirwan (UL), Dr Clodagh Tait (MIC).