Conference on Power

For those in Europe:
"Power," organized by the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Conference 2007, at Durham University. How was power exercised,
implicitly and explicitly, in the centuries of the medieval and
Renaissance eras? How was it displayed and performed, theorised,
ritualised, romanticised, codified, sanctified or opposed?

The conference will consider questions such as these in a sequence of
interdisciplinary
sessions covering the full span of the periods and looking at social
contexts ranging from the medieval republic of Iceland to the imperial
courts of Renaissance Europe. It will discuss both the typical and the
atypical structures of power and ways in which power was embodied in
persons and institutions. It will investigate the roles of wealth in the
acquisition of power and the maintenance of it. The conference will ask
how power was related to knowledge: how it was determined by access to
knowledge, how it regulated such access, and how it was challenged by
knowledge in its various forms. It will seek to understand the ways in
which power was gendered. And it will ask to what extent the
realities of power were revealed in literature, historical writing
and other cultural products. Call for papers: sequential sessions
will be organised around five main themes: Representation of Power,
Gender and Power, Wealth and Power, Knowledge and Power, and
Narratives and Power. Send title and an abstract of no more than 300
words, preferably by attached file, by 15 September 2007. Contact:
Cathy McClive, CMRS Power Conference 2007, Dept. of History, Univ. of
Durham, 43 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3EX, U.K.
(cathy.mcclive@durham.ac.uk; http://www.dur.ac.uk/cmrs/conferences/).