This one might be a little late for us in GMT, but looks a fascinating paper so I thought I should share anyway! The University of Toronto Early Modern Working Group presents: Jennifer Park University of North Carolina at Greensboro Thinking Racecraft through Recipes: Early Modern Fantasies of Making and Racing Friday, March 5 4pm EST / 1pm PST via Zoom Register to attend: https://utoronto.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CCYTjn5RSJaJEtamuJXlyg Jennifer Park is assistant professor of English, specializing in early modern literature, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her work on the intersections of literature, science and medicine, race, gender, embodiment, and materiality in early modern England has been published in Renaissance and Reformation, Studies in Philology, and Performance Matters. She is currently working on two book-length projects at the intersection of early modern science and racemaking in text and performance/interaction: the first examines early modern recipes, science, and race in early modern English drama; the second examines race-making in the material-textual cultures of games and science in seventeenth-century England.

With apologies to those who have received this through the MEMS email list, just reposting here in case! CMRC STUDY DAY People, Space and the City Online event Wednesday 26 May This interdisciplinary study day is dedicated to the urban world and, more particularly, to the forces and dynamics that shaped urban spaces, cultures and identities in pre-modern societies (c. 500- c. 1700). The role that municipal authorities played in organising urban life and space is, arguably, as important as the response and engagement of the people living under their rule. This study day takes a broad view, exploring both the ‘organised’ and the ‘self-organising’, the civic and the organic, elements of the urban environment. We will consider the role that political and civic governance played in shaping the urban world from above and the impact of personal agency among the ruled in influencing the urban world from below. Likewise, we will consider the interface between the centre and the periphery of the urban space, expanding our view beyond the town centre to those who occupied the world between the urban and the rural. The study day will conclude with the 2021 Reuter Lecture, this year to be delivered by Professor Catherine Clarke (Institute of Historical Research). We welcome any proposal that engages with People, Space and the City in the pre-modern world, including, but not limited to, papers on the themes of: • The evolution of urban space • Organisation vs self-organisation in urban environments • Civic rule, politics and governance • Religious governance and spiritual guidance in urban spaces • Urban economics, finances and commercial structures • Civic and non-civic identities • The centre and the periphery in urban spaces and beyond • The live experience of urban communities • The development of urban culture • Urban architecture and (the limits of) civic planning • The materiality of urban spaces If you would like to deliver a paper please email Dr Rémy Ambühl (ra4c09@soton.ac.uk), by Friday 26 February.

Brian Richardson is talking at the Warburg Institute's Book and Print Initiative seminar on 25th February about his recently published monograph, Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy (2020). Just flagging up as looks particularly interesting! https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/event/23617 During the Italian Renaissance, laywomen and nuns could take part in every stage of the circulation of texts of many kinds, old and new, learned and popular. This first in-depth and integrated analysis of Italian women's involvement in the material textual culture of the period shows how they could publish their own works in manuscript and print and how they promoted the first publication of works composed by others, acting as patrons or dedicatees. It describes how they copied manuscripts and helped to make and sell printed books in collaboration with men, how they received books as gifts and borrowed or bought them, how they commissioned manuscripts for themselves and how they might listen to works in spoken or sung performance. Brian Richardson's richly documented study demonstrates the powerful social function of books in the Renaissance: texts-in-motion helped to shape women's lives and sustain their social and spiritual communities.