Conference hashtag: #RenSA18
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Call for Proposals
CfP Blogs
Submissions
Plenaries and special events
Registration and conference program
Travel grants
Hotel
Membership
Cancellation policy
Presentation language
Conference collegiality and social media
Audio and video recording policy
The Program Committee for the 64th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America invites submissions for individual papers or sessions on any aspect of Renaissance studies (1300–1700). At our conference we aim to foster an environment of inclusion, collaboration, and academic freedom. Because the RSA is a multidisciplinary society we especially welcome submissions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, as well as those that spotlight scholarship that is discipline specific.
Sessions sponsored by our Associate Organizations and Discipline Representatives will make up part of the program. The rest will consist of sessions and individual papers proposed by RSA members and other scholars and selected by our Program Committee. You do not need to be an RSA member to submit a proposal or be included in a proposal, but if your session is accepted you must become a member for the year 2018.
The RSA Annual Meeting in New Orleans will be a large conference with more than forty sessions meeting concurrently. Please note that the Program Committee will not be able to accept every submission. Therefore, proposing a session or a paper indicates your firm commitment to attend. To take a slot and then later withdraw is discourteous to colleagues who would have liked to present a paper.
Discipline Representatives are authorized to submit up to five sessions, which may be linked or not. Associate Organizations are allotted up to three sessions (linked or not). Any additional sessions proposed by Discipline Representatives or Associate Organizations will be vetted by the Program Committee. Other Organizers may also propose up to three sessions (linked or not). However, please note that sessions organized in honor or in memory of an individual scholar are limited to no more than two.
Proposals for roundtables are also welcome but these should be stand-alone sessions in terms of their content. Roundtables that involve recapping the content of other sessions are not likely to be accepted, because they take up valuable space in the program that could be used to present other research.
The Program Committee welcomes sessions that present the scholarship of members at various stages of their careers. Each session must include at least one speaker who has received the PhD or other terminal degree. Graduate student speakers must be in candidacy or the equivalent for their program; that is, they must be advanced students who have completed coursework, examinations, and much of their dissertation research, and expect to defend their dissertations in 2018 or 2019. They must speak on topics directly related to their dissertation research, rather than presenting term papers.
In order to avoid scheduling conflicts, participants may not give more than one paper, be a discussant in more than one roundtable, or be a respondent in more than one session. A participant may chair up to two sessions.
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To post directly to CfP blogs for RSA 2018 New Orleans, you must be logged in to a current rsa.org member account. Non-members may email rsa@rsa.org to post a CFP.
Art History CfP blog
History CfP blog
Literature CfP blog
Interdisciplinary/Other CfP blog
The submissions website will open in mid-May, and the deadline for submissions will be Wednesday, 7 June 2017, at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). Travel Grant applications for those coming from outside North America are also due on June 7. Acceptance decisions will be communicated to submitters in mid-August. For more information regarding submissions, see our Submission Guidelines page.
The Josephine Waters Bennett lecturer for RSA 2018 New Orleans will be Nabil Matar of the University of Minnesota. Information on additional plenary lecturers and other special events will be added to this page as it becomes available.
Registration for the New Orleans conference will open in the fall, after acceptance notifications have been sent out. Non-member Conference Submitters will have the opportunity to become a 2018 member and register for the conference at the member rate starting in November 2017. The initial registration rate will rise twice before the conference, on the dates indicated in the table below.
Beginning this year, to help offset the associated labor and production costs, a ten-dollar surcharge will be applied at the time of registration for those attendees who wish to receive a print copy of the conference program in New Orleans. Programs will also be on sale at registration for ten dollars. The most up-to-date version of the program will always be freely available online and through the RSA 2018 New Orleans smartphone app. The full text of the print program will also be made available as a PDF download shortly before the conference. Registration rates including a print copy of the program are shown in parentheses in the table below.
| until 15 December 2017 | from 15 December 2017 to 15 March 2018 | from 15 March 2018, including on site | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Member Rate (+ print copy of program) | $185 ($195) | $235 ($245) | $260 ($270) |
| Reduced Member Rate – students, independent scholars, adjunct instructors, part-time instructors, unemployed non-students (+ print copy of program) | $120 ($130) | $145 ($155) | $165 ($175) |
| Non-member (+ print copy of program) | $330 ($340) | $370 ($380) | $415 ($425) |
Scholars traveling from outside the US or Canada to participate in the New Orleans conference may apply for a $500 travel stipend, supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation or the RSA General Fund. Applications for international travel grants should be submitted through the general conference submissions website, which will open in mid-May and close on 7 June 2017.
The Renaissance Society of America will offer ten diversity grants for attendance at the 2018 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. These grants, of $500 each, will provide financial assistance for graduate students and untenured postdoctoral minority scholars (African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and other traditionally underrepresented groups), registered at US or Canadian universities, to attend the conference. The conference registration fee will also be waived for the grant recipients. We will welcome applications from both conference participants and attendees. International students from historically underrepresented minorities registered at US or Canadian universities at the time of the conference are also eligible to apply. Application forms will be available in September 2017 and the deadline for applications will be 1 November 2017.
The conference hotel will be the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. A link to book sleeping rooms in the RSA block will be posted in the fall.
All participants in the 2018 Annual Meeting are required to hold active RSA memberships for the year of the conference. Doing so will allow you to register for the conference at the reduced member rate. 2018 membership renewals for current and expired members and new member registrations will both open in November 2017.
2018 RSA membership dues rates
| Annual Income ($) | 2018 Dues ($) |
| Patron | 200 |
| Dual | 147.90 |
| 100,001 and above | 147.90 |
| 80,001–100,000 | 122.40 |
| 60,001–80,000 | 102 |
| 48,001–60,000 | 86.70 |
| 36,001–48,000 | 76.50 |
| 24,001–36,000 | 56.10 |
| 12,001–24,000 | 45.90 |
| 12,000 and below | 35.70 |
Acceptance to the conference is a commitment to attend. To withdraw after the registration deadline, except in cases of emergency, is discourteous to your colleagues and to all those whose papers were not accepted for lack of space. Reading in absentia (whether by video-conferencing or presentation by surrogates) is not permitted. The RSA wants to encourage discussion and dialogue among panelists and attendees, and this is not possible if the author of a paper is not present. Speakers who fail to register and fail to show up at the conference to give their papers will be barred from speaking at the next year’s conference.
If you must cancel your attendance at the RSA Annual Meeting due to an emergency and wish to request a refund, the following rules apply:
There are no refunds on RSA membership dues.
A partial refund of the conference registration fee may be available, under limited circumstances.
If you submit a refund request on or before 31 December 2017, you will be refunded 50 percent of your registration fee, minus a $25 administrative fee.
No refunds will be issued for requests sent on or after 1 January 2018.
Exceptions for serious medical and family emergencies will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the RSA Executive Director, President, and Vice President, upon receipt of an explanation. In such cases, if a refund is granted, a $25 administrative fee will be assessed.
The RSA encourages presenters to submit their abstracts and give their talks in English when possible, in order to ensure the broadest potential audience for the work being presented. Papers may be given in other languages as appropriate. We expect that papers will be delivered in the language in which the abstract is submitted.
The primary purpose of the RSA’s annual conference is to promote interdisciplinary exchange and the study of the period between 1300 and 1700. Recent advances in technology have opened up many new and exciting possibilities that can facilitate this exchange of ideas, and the use of social media like Twitter and Facebook at conferences has sparked a series of dynamic discussions over the best way to incorporate social media into the conference experience. We encourage members to use the new tools of social media to engage with the conference, while at the same time maintaining the basic standards of professional courtesy and collegiality that encourage open and unfettered intellectual exchange.
We thus offer two basic principles for interactions at the conference. First, following the common understanding of intellectual property, attributions and quotations on social media should be as clear as possible, accurately representing presenters’ arguments and ideas. Secondly, presenters, audience members, and commentators (whether in-person or online) should maintain a professional tone, avoiding personal comments or other matters one would not typically raise in a published forum.
A list of guidelines for all conference participants is available here.
Audio recording, video recording, and live broadcasting of sessions is not permitted without the prior express consent of speakers and audience members, in order to protect the privacy and intellectual property rights of conference participants. Violators will be asked to leave the conference, and may be barred from attending future RSA conferences.
In rare circumstances, members of the media may record short pieces designed to convey the conference atmosphere. Such arrangements must be made through the Renaissance Society of America and require the consent of all speakers at a session. When recording is approved, a representative of the Renaissance Society of America will accompany the reporter and crew. The session organizer will announce to the audience that audio or video recording will take place during a part of the session. Only background recording is allowed, not the recording of an entire session.
Requests for exceptions must be made in writing to the Renaissance Society of America and relevant speakers at least thirty (30) days before the conference.
Members of the media may occasionally record short segments at non-session events, such as receptions. Such arrangements must be made through the Renaissance Society of America.
