This page provides the conference programme. To read more about the conference, including how to register, and the ideas and themes behind the event, you can visit the main conference page.

Wednesday 7th October, The Court Room, Senate House, UoL

9:30 – 10:00 – Registration, welcome, tea and coffee

10:00 – 11:30 – Panel I. Visualising Laughter and Weeping

To Weep Irish: Keening and the Law, Prof. Andrea Brady (QMUL)

Donato Bramante’s Double Portrait of Democritus and Heraclitus: The Laugher and the Weeper, Prof. Nadeije Laneyrie Dagen (École normale supérieure)

Stop your Sobbing: The Politics of Early Modern Melancholy on the Twenty-First Century Stage, Dr. Bridet Escolme (QMUL)

Chair: Julia Bourke (QMUL)

11:30 – 12:15 – Keynote I

The Smile and the Selfie: Some Pre-Modern Perspectives, Prof. Colin Jones (QMUL)

Chair: Prof. Quentin Skinner (QMUL)

12:15 – 1:15 – Lunch

1:15 – 2:45 – Panel II. Laughter: Religious, Philosophical, Political

The Radical Laughter of the Early Franciscans, c.1210-1310, Dr. Peter Jones (NYU)

Tears and Smiles – but what about laughter?, Prof. Quentin Skinner (QMUL)

Serious Business: Laughter and the Problem of Legitimacy in the National Convention of the French Revolution, 1792-1794, Dr. Jacob Zobkiw (Hull)

Chair: Prof. Colin Jones (QMUL)

2:45 – 3:15 – Tea and coffee break

3:15 – 4:45 – Panel III. Reading Emotion: Tears in Medieval Literature

Margery Kempe’s Tears, and Other Signs of Emotions in The Book of Margery Kempe, Prof. Anthony Bale (Birkbeck)

Read it and Weep: The Textual Face of the Middle English Poet, Dr. Stephanie Downes (Melbourne)

(Mis)Reading the Crying Face: Problematic Tears in 13th-Century Hagiographies, Dr. Kimberley-Joy Knight (Sydney)

Chair: Stephen Spencer (QMUL)

 5:00 – 6:00 – Keynote II

William Hogarth’s Sigismunda: A Tragicomic Tale, Dr. Thomas Dixon (QMUL)

Chair: Hetta Howes (QMUL)

6:00 – 7:30 – Wine reception and book launch: Thomas Dixon’s Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears (OUP)