I am delighted to be serving as Program Chair this year for the South Central Renaissance Conference; but when I was asked if I might be willing to consider it, I said (with some trepidation), “But you do know I am not based in America, right?” (This was by email and before the conference and so my perhaps give-away accent had not yet been heard.)

This, therefore, perhaps begs the question, how did I, a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Buckingham (England), come to attend and now be involved with the SCRC? In relation to the US, where I live and work is neither Central, nor South, but assuredly North. This is not Buckingham, FL, which at least would qualify for the Southern part. Of course, I realise that even within the US “the South” is much contested—in fact, every time I teach Flannery O’Connor, I ask my students to draw where they think of as the south. (This often yields often a whole variety of responses). Buckingham, UK lines up roughly with Labrador City, Newfoundland & Labrador, so, very North. Still North America I suppose, but Canada rather than the USA. But despite having neither the “south-ern accent” Tom Petty sang so well about, nor being from the “right” part of the country (or even, for that matter, the right country), I was welcomed in Savannah with open arms, met so many wonderful new people, and had a great time when I first attended the conference this year (2024).

I first found out about the society and the conference through Sean Benson who, after inviting me to come and guest lecture for his Shakespeare class at Mary Hardin Baylor University, fall 2023, suggested I put in an abstract and sent on the CFP. As it turned out, I also knew another committee member too, our (now) President, Susan Dunn-Hensley. My research often takes me over to Wheaton College to work in their archives (primarily at the Marion E. Wade Center) and our paths had crossed there previously, as well as at Shakespeare sessions at Kalamazoo (ICMS).

To reduce further the credentials I had to attend this conference, although I am primarily an early modernist, I also work on C. S. Lewis—specifically, C. S. Lewis and Shakespeare.  Lewis was amongst those in the twentieth century decrying the very existence of a Renaissance in England. He didn’t think it had happened. In fact, elsewhere, he talked of “that fabulous monster called ‘the Renaissance’” he hoped to kill off. So in the light of this, perhaps I really did indeed have no claim to any right to attend the SCRC.

Happily though, my feeling of being rather an interloper (at best) quickly melted away. I had previously been to Shakespeare and Renaissance conferences that were welcoming, and where I had presented, but, aside from one at the Globe and a handful of others, they were mostly graduate conferences (things like the International British Graduate Shakespeare Conference), where most participants were roughly at the same level in terms of career, leading to discussions where people were treated as equals (mostly). By no means a given at an academic conference where one upmanship (and worse) can reign unchallenged. And I had heard friends’ horror stories about SAA encounters and people seeking to throw about their academic credentials or weight. But what struck me especially at SCRC this year was the sheer collegiality between scholars of many different levels. I was, in truth, a little dubious after I had seen a really harsh slam-down between a senior and junior scholar at a Spenser session at Kalamazoo previously. SCRC struck me, however, almost immediately I arrived, as a group of people gathered (some the same some different each year) genuinely invested in one another and in talking enthusiastically and encouragingly to one another about their work and—embodying the very idea (too often lost sight of) that criticism is indeed a conversation.

A conference which welcomes in (beyond just rhetoric) undergraduates through to emeritus professors is no mean feat, and it was lovely to see some of the mentoring and encouraging conversations going on (and to be a part of those both as a giver and receiver too). For me, so much of what makes a great conference are those times in between sessions: chatting over coffee and getting excited about one another’s papers, talking about our different projects and teaching responsibilities, sharing thoughts from papers others had missed.

On the Saturday morning for instance, as we fought over the last of the non-decaf coffee (with swords and decorum, of course), in quick succession I spoke with past Presidents of the society, current graduate students about their early stages of research, undergraduates helping out with the conference who wanted reading suggestions, senior scholars with more thoughts on their papers or my own.  Contacts were exchanged and talk of future conversations to be had were suggested—before we all, finally, pulled away to attend the last few panels of the conference.

There was a great diversity in subject matter too at the conference as, I suppose, the Renaissance invites. From mentions of Six: The Musical and popular perceptions of Anne Boleyn to George Chapman’s fragmented Iliads (yes, plural); from the reciprocal effects of suicide in Shakespeare’s tragedies like Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet’s exploration of the memento mori tradition. And then all the papers I couldn’t splice myself in two or three pieces to catch along the way too. Oh, for Hermione’s Time Turner.  It was fantastic to see papers being presented by people at each career stage, undergraduates sharing particular areas of interest, graduate students at different stages of their programs, early career academics, fully-fledged professors, and retired or emeritus professors still producing vast swathes of papers.

So I might not be Southern (even by British standards, I grew up in the East of England in a small city called Ely and now live in the centre part of the country, in a tiny little village called Gawcott, just outside Buckingham) or “Central” (by American standards), but I am definitely a Renaissance scholar (my PhD was in early modern studies and medical humanities with a particular emphasis on Shakespeare). Moreover, I am glad that the handshakes of welcome at SCRC extend beyond the South (wherever that is) and the Center, to me, and I am very excited to be this year’s program chair for SCRC and maybe, this year, I might even win a Queen Elizabeth I duck at the auction too.

And finally, and perhaps most notably, though I did get to have grits while I was in Savannah—with thanks to Holiday Inn Express on the flip side of town (and banana pudding ice cream)—“Old Sweet Savannah,” with thanks to a great hidden gelato place down by the river near the huge cargo-boats to ogle at), I was mostly disappointed to find that, down by the waterfront, True Grits is in fact a tourist shop with t-shirts and trinkets, and not a bowl of grits in sight.  I hope to meet many of your in St. Louis (maybe over a bowl of grits!), when we gather again in 2025 for SCRC. Please do submit an abstract, and above all, please do join us.

—Sarah Waters, University of Buckingham

Savannah is an eighteenth-century city, carefully planned to be orderly and symmetrical.  The downtown streets form a neat grid punctuated by tree-lined squares, each one the center of a small neighborhood known as a ward.   

Enlightenment values of balance, utility, and order inspired James Oglethorpe, Savannah’s founder and city planner.  As your local host, I’m hoping to deliver a conference that’s as well-designed as a Savannah ward.   

A resident of downtown Savannah, I know you’ll enjoy visiting this fascinating eighteenth-century city, which has something for everyone in our interdisciplinary crowd.  History lives at the Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center.  The Telfair Academy and neighboring Jepson Center are Savannah’s fine art museums, and the childhood home of Flannery O’Connor brings the great Southern writer to life. 

And if you tire of high culture, ghost tours and pub crawls await.  Everything is an easy stroll from the DeSoto Hotel, site of our 2024 conference.   

I’m looking forward to enjoying the intellectual exchange and camaraderie of SCRC in this uniquely beautiful setting.  See you soon!

— Mary Villeponteaux, Georgia Southern University

Book Review: Gerit Quealy, Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World’s Greatest Playwright, illustrated by Sumié Hasegawa-Collins. Harper Collins, 2017. $22.99. 205 pp.

This book, conceived by the illustrator Sumié Hasegawa-Collins, is stunningly beautiful. The color illustrations that appear on virtually every page of the main text are gorgeous and appear to also be most accurate. But the book’s beauty is far from its only value. The list of plants in this text is extremely thorough and the information provided about them of great worth. There are close to two hundred fruits, herbs, trees, seeds or grasses illustrated and discussed. The author and illustrator designed the book so that the reader can see what any plant mentioned by Shakespeare looks like, and Gerit Quealy also provides many quotations about these plants from the plays, the sonnets, and Shakespeare’s other poetry.

The sources that Quealy and Hasegawa-Collins used were primarily herbals and gardening books contemporary with Shakespeare, especially those by John Gerard, with also an acknowledgement of Henry Nicholson Ellacombe’s exhaustive The Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare (1878). I was especially interested in the clear connections that Quealy showed between Shakespeare’s use of plants and Gerard’s Herbal, demonstrating that Shakespeare must have read the book with some care and referred to it frequently. Quealy carefully notes the various texts, both early modern and recent, that she utilized in her research. It is an impressive range.

This book has significant research but is written in a very clear, conversational style that is accessible to anyone interested in the topic. It is perfect to dip into, reading a few pages at a time. With the stunning illustrations and a fascinating topic, this book should have a very wide appeal. It would be lovely to own and lovely to give as a gift.

The introduction has a number of useful sections. I found the section, “The Birth of Botanicals,” especially valuable. Quealy describes how not only herbals but also books about gardens and tree planting were published during Shakespeare’s time.

There is also a fascinating short piece on the connections between Shakespeare’s references to fruit, plants, and flowers and sexuality, as well as a discussion of Shakespearean characters whose names imply plants.

There is such a range in the book. The page on garlic has two lovely illustrations and quotations from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, 1 Henry IV, Coriolanus, and the Winter’s Tale. Another page has both the poppy and the potato with lovely illustrations. Though I am familiar with both the Merry Wives of Windsor and Troilus and Cressida, I was surprised to see that there are mentions of potatoes in them. There are nine lovely pages of rose illustrations and quotations.

This book has significant research but is written in a very clear, conversational style that is accessible to anyone interested in the topic. It is perfect to dip into, reading a few pages at a time. With the stunning illustrations and a fascinating topic, this book should have a very wide appeal. It would be lovely to own and lovely to give as a gift.

The book concludes with nearly twenty pages of thorough descriptions of each plant and what was known about it in Shakespeare’s time. This section is of such great value as well. The information is fascinating to read about.  The author describes seven different kinds of apples and eight varieties of roses.

— Carole Levin, University of Nebraska

For our first in-person meeting in three years, the South Central Renaissance Conference is heading west!  We will convene at Berkeley’s International House at the end of April.

After years of practice, we’ve become accustomed to continual disruption as the new normal, so it’s only fitting that the University of California is still reeling from the largest academic strike in U.S. history, one of many such strikes across the country. The strike’s resolution has in fact resolved little. The agreement touted by union leaders as a historic win was rejected by many of the rank and file, and lines are already being drawn for the next round of negotiations in 2024. 

The upsurge of labor militancy in higher education is a response to the casualization of academic work.  It is powerful evidence that the attack on tenured lines across the humanities has not eroded the commitment to a scholarly life, or a belief in its intrinsic worth. In many cases, it has strengthened both.  

As we’re all aware, the upsurge of labor militancy in higher education is a response to the casualization of academic work.  It is powerful evidence that the attack on tenured lines across the humanities has not eroded the commitment to a scholarly life, or a belief in its intrinsic worth. In many cases, it has strengthened both.  

Many of us have been doing more with less for a long time.  Making the trip to come together in person, to resume arguments and collaborations and enter into new ones, will give us a chance to remind ourselves and each other why we bother.

Katie Kadue, a former officer of the Andrew Marvell Society, recently observed in the Chronicle that the conversations sustained by these small gatherings, at their best, constitute “a shared world that puts everything else in temporary suspension.” These utopian conditions for collective intellection are ephemeral, but their fruits can last.  As always, there will be a series of convivial gatherings on a more intimate scale than the mega-conferences can provide.  I hope you will join us!

— Joanna Picciotto

Joanna Picciotto is Associate Professor of
English at the University of California, Berkeley.
She was the Local Host for SCRC 2023.

Joan Faust dedicated her book, Andrew Marvell’s Liminal Lyrics, to the memory of one of her own high-school teachers, whose motto, she wrote, was, “We are but a grain of sand in time, but our mark may last forever.”

She made this lesson her own. Renaissance Studies is a community as well as a discipline. That community is held together, in part, by the knowledge we share—the books and articles that win awards or stir debates. But much more vitally, it is held together by the committees that arrange conferences and dole out those awards, the senior professors who show up at early morning panels to encourage a graduate student as she delivers her first paper, the instructors who share their passions with generations of students and nurture the scholarly societies that give those passions a local habitation and a name. Professor Faust, who passed away on November 22, 2022 at the age of 67, was a maker of community in all those ways. 

She also left her mark as Louisiana State University’s president of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as member of the executive committees of the Andrew Marvell Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the South Central Renaissance Conference, and the John Donne Society.

She will of course leave her mark in the scholarship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her book was a sensitive reading of Marvell’s liminal aesthetics, brilliantly interdisciplinary in the way it opened up dialogues between Renaissance painting and poetics.

But she also left her mark as Louisiana State University’s president of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as member of the executive committees of the Andrew Marvell Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the South Central Renaissance Conference, and the John Donne Society. In that work, she helped to establish networks of mutual support, scholarly critique, and fellowship that will outlast individual members, but that also will rely on individual members to carry this tradition of service. In that way, and many others, she will not only be missed, but appreciated and remembered.

— Blaine Greteman

Blaine Greteman is Professor of English at the University of Iowa and current President of the Andrew Marvell Society.

The SCRC Blog encourages further testimony of Joan’s legacy. Send notes of 200-500 words to Brendan Prawdzik, bmp16@psu.edu.

The Queen Elizabeth I Society sends our deepest condolences to the family and subjects of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch in English history.  The Queen’s peaceful death; the dignity of the funeral rituals, processions, and services; and the peaceful succession of Elizabeth’s son Charles are a fitting conclusion to Elizabeth’s 70 years of dedication to her people.

As with the deaths of  Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth I, now the second and third longest reigning English rulers, most of Elizabeth’s subjects have never lived under any other monarch, and, as with the earlier queens, the transition to “God Save the King” is likely to be a slow one.  In addition to the political realities of dealing with a king whose politics and presence are quite different from his predecessor’s, there are millions of banknotes, coins, and stamps; thousands of post boxes and warrants; and many other visible signs of royal rule that will need to change.  As with earlier royal transitions, Britons are asking important questions about the need for a monarch, the role of royal pageantry, the expense of the king’s household, the absence of inheritance taxes, the titles to be bestowed on children and grandchildren.  We are fortunate that such questions can be asked and debated out loud, and without fear of arrest or execution.

As with the deaths of  Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth I, now the second and third longest reigning English rulers, most of Elizabeth’s subjects have never lived under any other monarch, and, as with the earlier queens, the transition to “God Save the King” is likely to be a slow one.

Both Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II produced heirs of the body to succeed to the throne, but Elizabeth I, the childless Virgin Queen, departed under more unsettled circumstances.  She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, who, like the current King Charles, was the father of an heir and a spare, but James’s peaceful accession required some skilled political oversight by Robert Cecil and Elizabeth’s Privy Council and was preceded by years of anxiety over whether or not Elizabeth’s death would lead to civil war.  That war did, eventually, break out under James’s son Charles I, permanently altering the balance of power between the monarch and the people.

Elizabeth I died on March 24, 1603 after a short illness; a London lawyer, John Manningham, touchingly claimed “hir Majestie departed this lyfe, mildly like a lambe, easily like a ripe apple from the tree.”  Many of the rituals and practices we saw during Elizabeth II’s mourning period and funeral were also followed for the first Queen Elizabeth: careful guarding of the lead-lined royal casket; a procession through London; a simple burial service; a months-long delay before the coronation ceremonies.  While many subjects seemed genuinely to mourn Elizabeth I’s death, once it was clear that James would take the throne peacefully, Roger Wilbraham asserted that the people rejoiced and that “few wished the gracious Quene alive again.”  But a comment from early modern chronicler John Stow was also true for Queen Victoria’s subjects and will be true for Elizabeth II’s: “the name of a King was then so strange as few could remember, or had seene a King before, except they were aged persons.”  We wish our friends in Britain and the Commonwealth countries a time of peace and prosperity as they begin life with their new monarch King Charles III, whose name, we hope, quickly becomes familiar.

The Queen Elizabeth I Society shared a post (also written by Catherine Loomis) celebrating the 70th anniversary of Elizabeth II’s reign. Since the Queen passed before that post was published, it is included here below the present post.

On Jubilees and Succession

The Queen Elizabeth I Society sends our heartiest congratulations to Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her platinum jubilee, a celebration of the 70^th year of her reign.  The festivities begin the week of May 29^th and will involve much in the way of pageantry and drama.

In a recent opinion piece in The Guardian, Ian Jack compared the physical difficulties the 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II faces as she celebrates seven decades of ruling England to those Queen Victoria suffered during her diamond jubilee.  Elizabeth has been riding on a motorized device during some recent public appearances; Victoria, also unable to walk without assistance, had herself moved about in a carriage during the public celebrations.  Jack uses the aging bodies of each long-reigning monarch to warn his readers—republicans and monarchists alike—that the inevitable end will still come as a shock:

Victoria lay dying four years after her diamond jubilee, and in Lytton Strachey’s words ‘it appeared as if some monstrous reversal of the course of nature was about to take place. The vast majority of her subjects had never known a time when Queen Victoria had not been reigning over them.’

When the present Queen’s turn comes, be prepared. 

But a comment from early modern chronicler John Stow was also true for Queen Victoria’s subjects, and will be true for Elizabeth II’s:  “the name of a King was then so strange as few could remember, or had seene a King before, except they were aged persons.”   

Similar warnings, and a similar sense of a monstrous reversal, were found at the end of Queen Elizabeth I’s 44-year reign.  While both Victoria and Elizabeth II produced heirs of the body to succeed to the throne, Elizabeth I, the childless Virgin Queen, departed under more unsettled circumstances.  She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, who, like the current Prince Charles, was the father of an heir and a spare, but James’s peaceful accession required some skilled political oversight by Robert Cecil and Elizabeth’s Privy Council, and was preceded by years of anxiety over whether or not Elizabeth’s death would lead to the outbreak of a civil war.

Elizabeth I died on March 24, 1603 after a short illness; a London lawyer, John Manningham, touchingly claimed “hir Majestie departed this lyfe, mildly like a lambe, easily like a ripe apple from the tree.”  While many subjects seemed genuinely to mourn the Queen’s death, once it was clear that James would take the throne peacefully, Roger Wilbraham asserted that the people rejoiced, and that “few wished the gracious Quene alive again.”  But a comment from early modern chronicler John Stow was also true for Queen Victoria’s subjects, and will be true for Elizabeth II’s:  “the name of a King was then so strange as few could remember, or had seene a King before, except they were aged persons.”   

Here’s hoping Queen Elizabeth II enjoys many more years of good health, and that she has a jubilant June.  And here’s hoping our study of the reign of Elizabeth I gives us perspective on who and what will succeed.

— Catherine Loomis

Catherine Loomis is Professor of
English at the University of New
Orleans. She is current President
of the Queen Elizabeth I Society

Brendan Prawdzik is Assistant Teaching Professor
of English at the Pennsylvania State University.
e is currently SCRC’s Past President and has been
its Webmaster since 2018.

UPDATE: SCRC 2022 was conducted remotely and successfully through the University of Tuscaloosa-Alabama’s infrastructure and financial support.

To begin our annual business meeting in July 2020, midst plague, an elephant sauntered into the Zoom room. 

Our President at that time), Patricia Garcia, eyed it with cool disdain. “So,” she lofted as the elephant vanished into cyberspace, “should we cancel 2021?  Or should we try to do it online?”  I have been SCRC’s webmaster since September 2018.  “Yes.  We can do it.  Piece of cake.”

Not really—but I spoke on two clear facts: 1) any web page could link to a Zoom room; 2) among our respective universities, we could easily accommodate 50 or so Zoom rooms.  Develop an online program that links to Zoom rooms with one or more universities’ Zoom infrastructures.  Green light: allons y!

Participants joined from 14 nations; however much the online format constrained the conference experience, this diversity was unthinkable before the pandemic. We hosted three plenary speakers and 37 panels with 158 attendees over three days.

We are not the Evergiven of conferences for early modern scholarship, nor a vast shrinking glacier.  We’re a modestly sized vessel that can carry a warm, mirthful party and turn course well short of an “Iceberg dead ahead!” In conversations with the Pennsylvania State University tech people, I learned that Zoom use for PSU faculty was unrestricted and free for groups of under 500 people—far exceeding our norm.  We needed only PSU’s Zoom infrastructure to hold our three-day conference: without cost for the technology.

We migrated the website to an independent .org URL and enhanced its tools to facilitate online payments and other operations that would support the event.  I hired an undergraduate in cybersecurity to instruct panel chairs and to troubleshoot during the conference.  The three-day event cost SCRC $650.00. Tangles? One panel was delayed 10 minutes. One plenary was presented as a webinar — a mistake, since the webinar format restricted the audience-presenter interaction that makes plenaries so enjoyable; for groups of our size, “Meeting” remained the perfect format.

Having distributed the CFP for our online conference, we saw a healthy flow of proposals level with most years.  Unusual, however, was the extent of international representation.  Participants joined from 14 nations; however much the online format constrained the conference experience, this diversity was unthinkable before the pandemic. We hosted three plenary speakers and 37 panels with 158 attendees over three days.  (Mary Villeponteaux, our Program Chair at that time and Current Vice President, built her second program in two years; our stalwart Secretary-Treasurer, Tim Moylan, continued his inestimable and vital service.)

Attendees could use the program intuitively, as though it were paper.  They clicked the panel title and were Scottied to a populating conference “room”: resembling, to the extent possible, what you remember from in-person three-paper chaired sessions.  Given the general Zoom literacy by that time, features like images, sound, and video were easy to execute without cost. Beyond a trio of underused social rooms—only the Tavern will return if we must meet again in cyberspace—SCRC and its affiliate societies held their business meetings, and QEIS hosted a somewhat muted Queen’s Revels.  (We remain in plague time.)

We thrived during the pandemic’s second spring because our size is moderate and because our constituency is loyal and spirited.

If you wish and are able to send stories or information about SCRC, its affiliate societies, or related things, please send me (bmp@psu.edu) a post of 500 or fewer words to publish on our blog.  (Images are also welcome.) We would be thrilled to add your voice.

— Brendan Prawdzik

Tim Moylan is Professor
of English and Director of
Theater at the St. Louis College
of Pharmacy. He is also
Treasurer of the SCRC and
Lord High Treasurer of the
Queen Elizabeth I Society.

As a graduate student, I was encouraged by Dr. Donald Stump, my then instructor and later dissertation director, to submit a paper I wrote for his class on Elizabeth I to the South Central Renaissance Conference.  Although I had taught for almost twenty years in high school, this was one of my first forays into the world of big-league academic scholarship.  I had read about and heard first-hand the horror stories of graduate students being grilled, or worse, dismissed at conferences, so I was more than on edge attending my first SCRC sessions.

The tone of the conference was uniformly welcoming and affirming.  The senior scholars took a genuine interest in the graduate students’ work and especially in them as students, fellow scholars, and people.

The scholarly rigor was everywhere in evidence: the other papers erudite, well-written, and well-argued; the questions and discussions direct, detailed, and insightful.  What was not happening, though, was what impressed me the most.  I witnessed none of the academic arrogance, snobbery, or just plain meanness I had heard might happen at an academic conference.  The tone of the conference was uniformly welcoming and affirming.  The senior scholars took a genuine interest in the graduate students’ work and especially in them as students, fellow scholars, and people.  Make no mistake, we were not given a pass as to the scholarly expectations, and I more than once defaulted to the stock and lame response, “No, I hadn’t thought about that, but I certainly will look into it.”  However, all the back and forth was done in a spirit of genuine inquiry and interest, with an eye to pushing the junior scholar to, in fact, “look into it, and to get back to us with something we can publish.” 

That first experience drew me back to the conference the next year, and I have attended almost without exception ever since.  I am happy to report that its essential character has remained the same, and while my direct experience is predominantly with the members of the Queen Elizabeth I society, I have attended and presented in other sessions as well, and those interactions have had the same affirming character.  In fact, one of the premier draws for me of this conference, in addition to its supportive atmosphere, is the variety the affiliate organizations provide.  I have met and count as friends many colleagues in the Marvell Society and the Society of Renaissance Art History, as well as Shakespeareans and musicologists.  As each conference concludes, I am left only with the felt sense of having missed out when I couldn’t be in two or more sessions at once.

I am an unapologetic advocate for this conference and strongly encourage other scholars on all levels to participate in it, to submit to our flagship journal, and to welcome others as we have been welcomed.

— Tim Moylan

\\

Andrew Fleck is Associate Professor
of English at the University of Texas at
El Paso. He is also the Editor-in-Chief
of Explorations in Renaissance Culture,
SCRC’s peer-reviewed journal.

You probably know that you have access to a really outstanding journal through your organization. You’re buying an electronic subscription to it (and you should use it til you abuse it!). You may even be interested in that old-fashioned thing called a hard copy (and two hard copies per year only cost you 15 dollars more than your pixilated e-version!). Maybe you or your students are even accessing Explorations in Renaissance Culture through your institution’s subscription. But, did you ever wonder about how the delectable sausage that is ERC gets made? Well, my friends, read on!

It’s important to me, personally, that members of the SCRC know that our journal wants submissions from you: an expanded version of a paper you presented at the conference, part of a chapter from your book manuscript, or something you’ve been kicking around for a while and want to put out there for others to read.

Almost fifty years ago, the South-Central Renaissance Conference made the decision to create a journal as an outlet for the best scholarship presented by its members. Over the years, Explorations in Renaissance Culture was produced as a labor of love by the leaders of the organization. Recently, we partnered with a large scholarly publisher, Brill, to expand our reach. The journal now receives submissions from scholars in the global south, central and southern Asia, across Europe, and from North America. ERC appears twice a year and turns submissions around comparatively quickly.The SCRC continues to sponsor an award in honor of Albert W. Fields for the best essay to appear in Explorations each year.  It’s important to me, personally, that members of the SCRC know that our journal wants submissions from you: an expanded version of a paper you presented at the conference, part of a chapter from your book manuscript, or something you’ve been kicking around for a while and want to put out there for others to read.

Explorations in Renaissance Culture is itself a respected journal, publishing outstanding peer-reviewed research in all areas of early modern interest. We often publish essays about Elizabethan literature, Italian Art History, or European History. But we also would love to read and publish high-quality submissions on musicology, philosophy, histories other than the Tudors, ecclesiastical history, visual arts from across Europe, literatures other than English, or any other early modern scholarly topic. The editorial team of the journal is always pleased to receive inquiries about publishing with ERC. If you are considering where to publish your next piece of scholarship, give some thought to submitting your work to ERC. We want you and your work in our journal!

— Andrew Fleck

Michelle M. Dowd is Hudson
Strode Professor of
English and Director of the
Hudson Strode Program
in Renaissance Studies.
She is also the Local Host
for the 2022 SCRC in
Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

On behalf of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, I am delighted to welcome the South Central Renaissance Conference to our beautiful campus at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa! March is typically a lovely time of year here on campus, and we hope you will join us in-person for lively scholarly exchange in T-Town!

For those of you unfamiliar with the Strode Program, we are a privately endowed program named for a longtime faculty member that promotes the study of early modern British literature and culture. Part of the UA English Department, our program includes six tenured and tenure-track faculty members working in premodern British and transatlantic literature, and we also work closely with faculty from across the College of Arts and Sciences, including the Departments of Art and Art History, Gender and Race Studies, History, Modern Languages and Classics, and Theatre and Dance. We support graduate study at both the MA and PhD levels, and we also host a range of programs, including symposia, lectures by distinguished scholars, a film series, and The Alabama Shakespeare Project—a performance-based research collective exploring early modern entertainment. We also sponsor an academic book series, Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, that is welcoming new submissions!

I am delighted to welcome the South Central Renaissance Conference to our beautiful campus at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa!

The University of Alabama is a member of The Folger Institute Consortium, and Strode students have successfully applied, with funding, to competitive Folger programs. The intellectual work and educational activities sponsored by the Strode Program benefit not only our students and faculty but also the broader University of Alabama and West Alabama community.

We can’t wait to welcome you to our community this March for SCRC 2022. Roll Tide!

— Michelle M. Dowd