RSA Boston 2016 Panels: Intoxicants and Early Modernity

View of Boston from Wikimedia Commons. Woodcut from Wellcome Library, London.

Further to our CFP back in May, we’re pleased to report that three panels on Intoxicants and Early Modernity featuring ten papers have been included in the programme of the Renaissance Society of America’s next Annual Conference, which will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, in early 2016. The full conference schedule is now online; our sessions will run consecutively on the afternoon of Friday 1 April (1.30–7pm) in the Tremont Room of the Park Plaza Hotel. Here are the details, with links through to paper abstracts:

Intoxicants and Early Modernity I: Strange Rituals

1.30-3pm
Chair: Edward Muir (Northwestern University)

• Detecting Drunkenness in Early Modern England
  James Brown (University of Sheffield)
• Barstool Babels: Multilingual Drinking in Early Modern Europe
  John Gallagher (University of Cambridge)
• Rituals, Routine, and Materiality: Drinking ‘Too Much’ and ‘Just Enough’ in Early Modern England
  Angela McShane (V&A Museum)
• Early Modern Witch Ointments and Intoxication
  Maia Newley (Independent Scholar)

Intoxicants and Early Modernity II: Concepts and Conceptual Change

3.30-5pm
Chair: B. Ann Tlusty (Bucknell College)

• Medicine, Law, and the Early Modern Drunkard: Psychosomatic Interaction and the Problem of Moral Agency
  David Clemis (Mount Royal University)
• The Invention of Addiction in Early Modern England
  Jose Cree (University of Sheffield)
• The Renaissance Provenance of Enlightenment Wit
  Kate Davison (University of Sheffield)

Intoxicants and Early Modernity III: Intoxicating Discourses

5.30-7pm
Chair: Allen J. Grieco (Villa I Tatti)

• Dishes of Coffee and Sack Triumphant: Intoxicants in Early Modern Dialogue
  Cathy Shrank (University of Sheffield)
• Stimulants, Sex, and the Body in Early Modern Europe
  Scott K. Taylor (University of Kentucky)
• ‘The Riotous Use of this Strange Indian’: The Politics of Tobacco Consumption in Early Modern London
  Lauren Working (Durham University)