Babel News

the theme of the 2009 Leeds Medieval Congress is "heresy and orthodoxy," which
seems to me to be an ideal BABEL-y theme, and Jeffrey Cohen will also
be one of
the plenary speakers. Due to heavy organizing duties for other conferences, I
could not get my act together to put together BABEL panels for Leeds,
but one of
our members, Asa Simon Mittman, has done so under the auspices of MEARCSTAPA
[Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology
through Scholarly Theory And Practical Application], a group that has much
overlap with BABEL, member- and otherwise, and I am sharing the Call
for Papers
here in case any of our members might want to submit paper abstracts to these
excellent sessions [something I will be doing myself].

CFP: 2008 International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Title of Session(s): Unorthodox Beings: Monsters and the Monstrous
Sponsor: Mearcstapa

At the 2008 International Medieval Congress, I organized four sessions
on monsters and monstrosity. These were a great success, filled with
twelve diverse and exciting papers. Interest in the subject continues
to grow, and so a group of scholars has now banded together to form
MEARCSTAPA (http://www.csuchico.edu/monsters), an organization dedicated
to the study of medieval monstrosity, currently sponsoring a pair of
sessions at the 2009 Congress in Kalamazoo.

We would like to bring the monsters back to Leeds! In accordance with
the year's theme of "Heresy and Orthodoxy," we are calling for papers on
the subject of "Unorthodox Beings: Monsters and the Monstrous." We are
seeking papers in any discipline, dealing with any aspect of monstrosity
in the Middle Ages. Depending on the submissions, we will propose
between one and four full sessions to the selection committee at Leeds.
Possibility exists for the collective publication of the papers,
following the Congress.

Please send a paper title and abstract, along with you name,
affiliation, mailing address and email address to Asa Simon Mittman
(asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 20. Also please note if you will
need any A/V equipment.

For more information, see the general CFP:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2009_call.html

If you are interested in joining MEARCSTAPA (we have no dues) and our
listserv, please send Asa an email. All are welcome.