Activities

Colloquium on Textuality and Diversity

The Colloquium on Textuality and Diversity, exploring the main theme of TextDiveGlobal, aims to bring together scholars interested in new ways of defining and analysing the global diversity of textual objects, forms, and corpora and of telling literary histories of broad, multilingual and interdisciplinary scope. It welcomes scholars of early modern Europe and of other global regions and periods. The particular focus will be sources and theoretical models for exploring the relations between changing, variable texts and forms of textuality (oral-performative, material, written, printed) and vectors of sociocultural diversity (language, form, place, custom, opinion, morality, religion, race, nation, social status, gender, and so on). The format will range from a discussion of pre-circulated primary or secondary materials in the manner of a reading group, led by particular project members or network participants, to more standard, short papers. The Colloquium runs in hybrid mode (or online-only if circumstances require), approximately every 3-4 weeks during UK academic terms. 

Session 7: 15 April 2024 (Thursday), time tbc

• Talk by Farah Bazzi (Stanford)
• Topic: The construction of Al-Andalus in Spanish, Arabic, and Ottoman sources 
• Held in collaboration with Cristina Moreno Almeida's ERC Starting Grant project at Queen Mary, 'Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspectives of and through Al-Andalus'.

 

Past Sessions

Session 1: 10 March 2022 (Thursday), 5-6:30pm GMT

• Discussion led by Prof. Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary University of London).
• Topic: Karin Barber, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
• A selected chapter will be available for participants.

Session 2: 18 March 2022 (Friday), 5:30-7pm GMT

• Talk by Prof. Jessica Wolfe (UNC Chapel Hill).
• Title: 'Disorienting Thomas Browne'.
• Relevant sections from Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1648; 1672) will be made available for participants.

Session 3: 20 May 2022 (Friday), 5-6:30pm BST

• Discussion led by Prof. Miguel Valerio (Washington Univ. in St. Louis).
• Topic: A short festival book text relating to black performance in the Spanish Americas.
• The Spanish text with English translation will be made available for participants: Nicolás de Torres, Festín hecho por las morenas criollas de la muy noble, y muy leal Ciudad de México al recibimiento, y entrada del Excellentísimo Señor Marqués de Villena, Duque de Escalana, Virrey de esta Nueva España (México, Francisco Robledo, 1640).

Session 4: 30 March 2023 (Thursday), 5pm BST

• Discussion led by Prof. Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary University of London), Prof. Alessandra Petrina (University of Padua), and Sara Trevisan (Sokol Books)
• Topic: 'Padua and the university as a European space'

Session 5: 25 May 2023 (Thursday), 5-7pm BST

• Talk by Prof. Nabil Matar (University of Minnesota)
• Title: 'Europe in the Arab East: Missionaries in Print, 1566-1798' 

Session 6: 12 October 2023 (Thursday), 5-6:30pm BST

• Talk by Prof. Carme Font Paz (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), director and PI of ERC-funded project, 'Women’s Invisible Ink: Trans-Genre Writing and the Gendering of Intellectual Value in Early Modernity'
• PhD students especially welcome.

Latin Reading Group

The aim of our Latin Reading Group is to come together twice a month to read and discuss Latin texts that were current or were composed within the period of the TextDiveGlobal project (c. 16–17th century). Post-Classical Latin texts often pose very particular difficulties that other Latin texts don’t: as opposed to classical texts, no translations exist; wordforms and neologisms are often not covered by dictionaries; the influence of the author’s vernacular on the syntax, or their idiosyncrasies, can be a real headache. The aim is that participants develop reading fluency and advanced translation practices, so that we may be able to read longer extracts in each session. As the focus of this group will be the reading, translation and interpretation of texts, a thorough grounding in Latin (at least to post-beginner/lower intermediate level) would be ideal. You may, though, attend just to listen and follow until you are comfortable with participating more actively. As we plan to combine reading and translation with interpretation and discussions of broader issues, we hope that this reading group will provide an opportunity to get advice from experts, as well as an informal space to have fruitful conversations with colleagues with shared interests.

The reading group is convened by TextDiveGlobal Research Fellows Máté Vince and Christopher Archibald. This term, sessions will take place on the following Wednesdays at 4:45-6.15pm GMT:

• 17 January
• 31 January
• 14 February
• 28 February 
• 13 March 

All session are online. If you have any questions or would like to participate, please email Christopher: c.archibald@qmul.ac.uk.

Phase Seminars: twice each year

We will run two seminars each year, connected to the year’s research ‘principle’ (one of works, forms, spaces, events). These are primarily intended for project members who are working together in a particular phase. But they will be run in a hybrid format, and project members and network participants are welcome to join online.  Below is a list of all planned seminars with approximate dates. 

Phase 1: Works 

6—8 April 2022: University of York  
1—3 September 2022: University of Padua

Phase 2: Forms  

May 2023: University of Southern Denmark (Copenhagen campus) 
September 2023: University of Rijeka, Croatia

Phase 3: Spaces 

April/May 2024: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest 
September/October 2024: Jagiellonian University, Kraków

Phase 4: Events  

April/May 2025: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
September/October 2025: University of Valladolid 

Phase 5: Mixed (for new contributors in all four sections) 

July 2025: Queen Mary University of London 
October/ November 2025: Queen Mary University of London