CEMS Conference 2015 : Conceiving Peace, Pacification, and Conflict Resolution

This conference will touch on several interrelated questions : how can enemies reconcile ? How can we imagine peaceful coexistence ? How can nations and individuals get along ?

 

 

 

The early modern period was witness to wars and civil strife of unheard-of dimensions, fueled not only by traditional political ambitions of sovereigns but by religious differences within European populations and the brutal beginnings of colonial conquest. When conflict did not result in simple elimination of the adversary (for example, by genocide or forced conversion), some means had to be found to reintegrate the former enemy into the community, or to reinvigorate diplomatic and commercial ties with a defeated nation, if the conflict had been international. Nations could resort to treaties; regimes could institute rules of “pacification” for formerly warring parties within the community, in anticipation of what we now call “toleration” of minorities. England, France, the Netherlands and the German countries all underwent horrific civil warfare during the Reformation and its aftermaths, and produced varying solutions to this conflict.

 

 

 

This conference is designed to give us some insight into how pre-secular regimes were able to imagine civil and international peace and to apply principles of pacification. The conference will draw on the expertise of scholars from literature and intellectual history, in the areas of English, French, German studies, and Political Science. We will include as well colleagues and advanced graduate students from the UW-Madison.

 

 

 

Among our speakers will be :

 

Daniel Kapust (Political Science, UW-Madison). His research focuses on the history of political thought, especially Roman, Florentine, early modern, and the 18th century, along with rhetoric, democratic theory, and the republican tradition. He is currently working on a second book project on flattery and political theory, entitled Flattery in the History of Political Thought: That Glib and Oily Art. Additional projects include articles on rhetoric and character in Cicero and Adam Smith, deliberative democracy and international relations, and fear in Hobbes and Lucretius.

 

 

Andrew Shifflett (English, University of South Carolina) is the author of Stoicism, Politics, and Literature in the Age of Milton (Cambridge, 1998), essays on Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley, Katherine Philips, and John Milton, and has served as editor of three volumes of Renaissance Papers. His current book project is entitled Literature and the Power of Forgiveness in Early Modern England.

 


Mara Wade (Germanic Languages and Literatures, Comparative and World Literatures, Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). She is the managing Editor of Emblematica and the PI for Emblematica Online, an NEH funded multi-year, international research project. Most recently she has edited Gender Matters (2014); with Sara Smart (Exeter University) The Palatine Wedding of 1613, Context, Celebration and Consequence of An Anglo-German Alliance. Wolfenbüttel Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung (2013), which earned the Weiss/ Brown award in Renaissance Studies, Newberry Library, Chicago; and Emblem Digitization: Conducting Digital Research with Renaissance Texts and Images 2012, in Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 20) http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html. Her interests include the “mise-en-scène” of reconciliation in emblems.

Cathy Yandell (French, Carleton College). Her research focuses on the body, temporality, poetics, and gender in Renaissance France. Having published articles on writers from Marguerite de Navarre to Montaigne, she has also authored, edited, and co-edited several books including Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France (2000) and Vieillir à la Renaissance (2009). Her current project explores the relationship between the body and knowledge, or “ways of knowing,” from Rabelais to Descartes.  She is also writing on the chancellor Michel de l’Hospital, a major figure in reconciliation attempts during the wars of religion in France.

 

 

For more information, contact Ben Hair.