Power and gender

Durham University, 13-16 July 2007

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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.

Sequential sessions will be organised around five main themes:

• Representation of Power
• Gender and Power
• Wealth and Power
• Knowledge and Power
• Narratives and Power

If you are interested in contributing to the conference, please send your title and an abstract of no more than 300 words, preferably by attached file, to:

Dr Cathy McClive

CMRS Power Conference 2007

Department of History

University of Durham

43 North Bailey

Durham

DH1 3EX

United Kingdom

cathy.mcclive@durham.ac.uk

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 September 2006