CALL FOR PAPERS: THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK—TEXTS AND RECEPTION

I am pleased to announce that the 9th Annual Comitatus Graduate
Student Medieval Conference will be held at Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Indiana, on Feb 4th-5th, 2011.


CALL FOR PAPERS: THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK—TEXTS AND RECEPTION

9th Comitatus Graduate Conference on Medieval Studies, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, Indiana, Feb. 4-5th, 2011.

Comitatus, the Purdue Medieval Studies Graduate Student Organization,
is pleased to announce its ninth annual Graduate Conference on
Medieval Studies to be held on February 4-5, 2011. The theme of this
year’s conference is "The History of the Book: Texts and Reception,"
and it will feature a keynote address from Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, The
Notre Dame Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
Kerby-Fulton has written many works on manuscript studies, religious
writers and visionaries, and textual reception, and is author of
_Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing
in Late Medieval England_ (Winner of the 2007 Snow Prize from the
North American Conference on British Studies, as well as the Medieval
Academy of America Haskins Gold Medal in 2010).

We invite submissions of abstracts for papers on any area of the
history of the book and its reception in the medieval to the early
modern period. Possible themes include but are not limited to:

1. Textual studies of manuscripts and early printed books
2. The material culture surrounding the text
3. The history of textual dissemination and its impact
4. The contents of libraries
5. Textual illuminations, artwork, and its relationship to text
6. Cultural support for literary production
7. The relationship between the text and the reader
8. Reception theory
9. Book or textual fetishism
10. Trust in the written record
11. Religious and secular theories of the book
12. The social life of texts
13. Marginalia and glosses
14. Medieval literacy and the text
15. Sponsored educational and literacy programs and the use of the text
16. Renaissances and renewals, and their impact on readers and texts
17. Political uses for the text and literacy
18. Writing and memory

Please submit an abstract of approximately 200 words to
cjudkins@purdue.edu by Dec. 1st, 2010.

Please see http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~comitatu/conference.html for
further details and for registration.

The Newberry Library Anglo-Saxon Seminar

Having attended a few of these in my graduate student days, including one by Allen Frantzen, I can only highly recommend these to any grad student in the consortium.

THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY

Center for Renaissance Studies

The Anglo-Saxon Seminar:
Masculinity and the Anglo-Saxons

2010-11 Graduate Seminar

2:00-5:00 pm Fridays, January 7 – March 11, 2011
Professor Allen Frantzen, Loyola University Chicago

The class will focus on models of
male identity and various scales of
masculinity as they emerge from a
selection of the most famous Old
English poems, including “The
Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and
“The Battle of Maldon,” and from
Old English prose texts. In addition
to some supplementary texts
(handouts), reading will include
excerpts from Clare A. Lees, ed.,
Medieval Masculinities.

Class meetings will be divided
between Old English—reviewing
the basics of grammar as we
translate—and analyzing the cultural
and theoretical aspects of
masculinity in our readings. Advanced skills in Old English are not required,
just familiarity with the basics acquired in an introductory course. Two papers,
one at the mid-point (6-7 pp.) and one at the end of the course (10-12 pp.);
Loyola students and others on a semester calendar will have until mid-April to
complete the final paper requirement.

Prerequisite: An introductory course in Old English.

Enrollment is limited. To register, contact the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies. To
receive credit you must also enroll in either a Newberry course at your campus (available at several
Chicago-area schools) or an independent study; the course is cross-listed at Loyola University Chicago as
as English 540. Please contact the consortium Representative Council member at your home institution
for your university’s policies and to apply for travel reimbursement.

See www.newberry.org/renaissance