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Pre- and Early Modern Studies (PEMS) at the University of California, Santa Cruz is a Research Unit in the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research. PEMS is dedicated to the study of pre-industrial Europe and brings together faculty and graduate students from the departments of Literature, Art History, History, Women's Studies, and Theater Arts. Incorporating the traditional fields of Classics, Medieval Studies, and Renaissance Studies, we broaden these fields to embrace both popular culture and traditions outside Europe. Both the research and course offerings of PEMS members reflect our intensive engagement with new theoretical approaches and interdisciplinary topics. PEMS is available as a graduate focus in the Literature Department and also as an optional "concentration" for undergraduates majoring in Literature. For more information or to be added to the PEMS electronic mailing list, contact Margo Hendricks (margoh@ucsc.edu) or the PEMS GSR, Maria Frangos (mef@ucsc.edu).
2007-2008 Events
Fall 2007
The Pre and Early Modern Studies Research Unit Presents:
Valerie Traub
Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Michigan
"Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern West"
Monday, October 15, 4pm
Valerie Traub (Ph.D., Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1990) is Director of the Women's Studies Program and Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Her publications include Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (Routledge Press, 1992); The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002); and Gay Shame , co-edited with David Halperin (Univ. of Chicago Press, forthcoming). She is currently at work on two projects: Mapping Embodiment in the Early Modern West: The Prehistory of Normality and Making Sexual Knowledge: Essays in the History of Sexuality .
Winter 2008
The Pre and Early Modern Studies Research Unit Presents:
Zrinka Stahuljak
Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, UCLA
“‘Outrage': Shame and Sexuality in Old-French Romance"
Zrinka Stahuljak is assistant professor at the Department of French & Francophone Studies at UCLA. She is the author of Bloodless Genealogies of the French Middle Ages (University of Florida Press, 2005) and co-editor of Minima Memoria: Essays in the Wake of Jean-François Lyotard (Stanford University Press, 2007). She has published articles on Jean Froissart, Chrétien de Troyes, and medieval and contemporary translation theory. She is currently working on medical histories of the Middle Ages, a project for which she was awarded a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Also of PEMS interest:
“Helen of — ???”a symposium
Saturday, March 8, 2008 1-5 p.m.
Kresge College 321
University of California, Santa Cruz
Helen of Troy has been the subject of innumerable depictions, in art, literature, music, and drama. But these depictions don’t tell the same story. Did she abandon her husband and her country for love of another man? Was she abducted? Did she cause the Trojan War? Who was she, really? This symposium, held in connection with the UCSC Theater Arts Department’s production of Helen of Egypt, a version of Euripides’ Helen, offers a closer look at the issues involved in staging ancient Greek drama for modern audiences, and the representation of Helen of Troy in myth, literature, visual art, and drama.
Presentations:
Helene P. Foley (Classics, Barnard
College/Columbia University;
Sather Classical Lecturer 2008, UC Berkeley)
“Re-Imagining Ancient Greek Drama for the Modern Stage”
Ruby Blondell (Classics, University
of Washington)
“Writing Helen” (Helen in myth and literature)
Janina K. Darling (History of Art and
Visual Culture, UCSC)
“Sketching Helen” (Helen in ancient visual art)
C. W. Marshall (University of British
Columbia)
“Staging Helen” (on representations of Helen in ancient drama)
Each presentation will be followed
by audience discussion. The symposium is free and the public is cordially invited.
Sponsored by the Siegfried B. and Elisabeth Mignon Puknat Endowment for Literary
Studies.
Helen of Egypt will be performed at the Mainstage Theater, UCSC Theater Arts Center February 29-March 1-2 and March 6-7-8-9 7 p.m. (3 p.m. Sundays) Post-show talk-backs: both Saturdays March 1 & 8$14 general, $11 seniors, $11 students (UCSC undergrads w/valid ID: 1 ticket for free). UCSC Ticket Office 831-459-2159, santacruztickets.com ADULT CONTENT, NUDITY
Spring 2008
The Department of Literature, the
Italian Studies Program, the Pre- and Early Modern Studies Research Cluster
of the Institute for Humanities Research, and the Mediterranean Studies Research
Cluster of the Institute for Humanities Research present two lectures on early
modern translation and translation theory.
Andrea Rizzi, University of Melbourne
Translating useful and ornate stories: practices and politics of translation
in Renaissance Italy (1420s-1480s)
Tuesday April 8, 4:00
Humanities 1, Room 300
The early Italian Renaissance is one of the most important periods of development
for translation as a cultural and commercial practice. Italian ruling centers
were the first in Europe to promote the superiority of modern languages over
Latin. Lorenzo de' Medici's preface to his collection of poems gave the necessary
political and ideological impulse for the liberation of supra-regional languages
in Early Modern Europe (Rener 1989: 46). It is in the Italian peninsula that
we see, in the fifteenth-century, the establishment of the natural languages
(mother tongues) as the new lingua franca, to the detriment of the so-called
artificial languages (Latin and Greek). Other European 'nations' (France, England,
Spain) followed suit. However, many translators and texts still remain unstudied
and do not feature in the Translation Studies anthologies or in historical and
literary studies on the fifteenth century. To date there are only a handful
of monographs on the history of translation theory and practice (eg. Ross Amos
1920; Rener 1989; Ellis 1989; Folena 1994; Furlan 1999; France 2000; Wyatt 2005).
This paper will discuss a selection of translated texts and translators' prefaces,
in order to address the relations between translators and political rulers as
well as the magnitude of the translation project in fifteenth-century Italy.
and
Translating Current News in Elizabethan England: Petruccio Ubaldini's
'Commentario del successo dell'Armata Spagnola' (1589)
Thursday April 10, 4:00
Humanities 1, Room 300
The proliferation of dispatches, reports, descriptions and relations of proceedings
in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe were the result of an ever-expanding
need to understand and share political, social, economic and historic issues
. The printing of these pamphlets offered a fast, efficient and accessible way
to exchange such information (about wars, battles, the New World, etc.). Accordingly,
governments and rulers demanded ambassadors, travellers, and scholars to act
as political observers and compile brief accounts of crucial events, or simply
personal analyses of current affairs. However, political propaganda, self-promotion
and the ambition of political entourages encouraged the translation of these
texts into foreign languages. This is hardly surprising for Renaissance England,
for the court of Elizabeth I hosted several foreign men of letters, politicians
and artists offering their services to the Queen and the English elite.
By analysing Ubaldini's translation of High Admiral Howard's 'Relation of Proceedings',
this paper will discuss the little-studied role of the translator in the
production and transmission of this production; the diversity of functions of
the news quartos genre and the diverse readerships; and the need to study -whenever
possible- the production process of these pamphlets, from their preliminary
materials, to their translation and publication.
For more information, contact shemek@ucsc.edu