Call for Papers
'At Close Quarters: Experiencing the Domestic c.1400-1600'

Friday 3rd March 2017
Humanities Research Centre, University of York

This interdisciplinary conference invites papers on aspects of the domestic interior in the late-medieval and early modern world. Building on current research into the architecture and objects that shaped the experience of the pre-modern household, we examine the nooks and crannies of domestic life and its various manifestations, through interaction with art, objects, literature, music and thought.

With a keynote lecture delivered by Dr. Tara Hamling (University of Birmingham) and Dr. Katherine Richardson (University of Kent) based on their forthcoming book A Day at Home in Early Modern England: The Materiality of Domestic Life, 1500-1700, the conference aims to question, examine and explore the significance of domestic encounters ‘at close quarters’.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

- theoretical approaches to domesticity
- the experience of domestic art, architecture and decoration
- literary constructions of domesticity
- musical landscapes and practices within houses
- domestic ritual, customs and manners, policing of space
- strategies of display: coats of arms, allegories
- lineage, procreation, regeneration
- religious practices and domesticity
- gender, sexuality, class identities
- domestic animals, food, hunting
- lesser examined spaces such as kitchens and pantries.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Maria-Anna Aristova (ma622york.ac.uk) and Oliver Fearon (of509york.ac.uk) by Friday 9th December.