"Landscape, Space, and Place in Anglo-Saxon England"

"Landscape, Space, and Place in Anglo-Saxon England"



The Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium

Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference



Friday, February 20, 2009

at the University of Connecticut



The Medieval Studies Program at the University of Connecticut, in partnership with the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium, invites submissions for the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference of the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium.



The theme of this year's conference is "Landscape, Space, and Place in Anglo-Saxon England." The conference seeks to explore the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of landscape, envisioned and interacted with space, and constructed and used place. Such concepts played an important role in Anglo-Saxon England: from the interior of Heorot to the exotic locales of Wonders of the East; from the discrete boundary clauses of charters to the placeless roaming of the Wanderer; from the innovative images of the Harley Psalter to the careful layout of Hiberno-Saxon interlace. Indeed, 2009 will mark twenty years since the publication of Nicholas Howeʼs Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, a landmark work highlighting the importance of space and place in Anglo-Saxon culture. Howe's book has continued to influence work on the subject, with a broad body of subsequent scholarship developing during the past two decades, including Della Hooke's The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England (1998), Fabienne Michelet's Creation, Migration, and Conquest (2006), and Catherine Clark's Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England, 700-1400 (2006), to name a few. This year's conference, therefore, seeks papers participating in this growing tradition and partaking of the wide-ranging possibilities of such study.



The organizers invite submissions addressing any and all manifestations of landscape, space, and place in Old English or Anglo-Latin literature, Anglo-Saxon history, art, architecture, archaeology, or religion. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches, and, in order to foster further dialogue, we will be following the conferenceʼs tradition of including respondents for papers.



Possible topics include but are not limited to:



- use of landscape, place, and space in Anglo-Saxon literature

- poetic space

- gendered space
- space in religious texts

- liturgical, ecclesiastical, and/or sacred space

- hermits in space, place, and landscape
- space and place Anglo-Saxon charters
- landscape on the space of the page in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
- theories of medieval space and place (modern and medieval)
- space and place beyond migration
- Anglo-Saxon maps

- topography and geography
- issues of movement through space, between places, and across landscape
- visual representations of space and visual representations as space
- inclusivity and exclusivity within a space or place (e.g., encounters with foreigners)
- the relationship between time and space/place/landscape

- discerning space and place

- Anglo-Saxon definitions of space and place

- domestic space



Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by Friday, December 12, 2008.

Please list your contact information, including active email address, street address, and phone number, as well as any requests for audio-visual equipment.

You may submit abstracts via email to assc.uconn@gmail.com.



Conference organizers: Brandon Hawk and Andrew Grubb.



For other ASSC events and for further updates on this conference, please visit the ASSC website at www.columbia.edu/cu/assc.