call for posters: ARCHAEOLOGY OF FARMING AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE

The Research Group on Heritage and Cultural Landscapes   (GIPyPAC) from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) organises the  International Conference ARCHAEOLOGY OF FARMING AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY IN EARLY   MEDIEVAL EUROPE (5th-10th centuries), which will be held at the Faculty of   Letters during the 15th and 16th of November 2012 in Vitoria-Gasteiz. We are   planning to host a poster sesion related to the topics of the Conference  (mainly Archaeobotany, Zooarchaeology, pollen analysis, etc.). 

The call for posters will finish the 1st of July 2012. We invite you to submit an abstract of 300 words  (maximum) and the following information: 
- Title of the  poster:
- Keywords (5):
- Name(s) of the  author(s):
- e-mail:
- University/Department/Institution:

Once your  poster is accepted, we will send you the guidelines for the poster   presentation.

For more information:
- Web   page: https://sites.google.com/site/farmingandhusbandry/
-  e-mail: gipypac@gmail.com
- Address:
             Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo
            Departamento de Geografía,   Prehistoria y Arqueología,
            Facultad de Letras, UPV/EHU, 
            Calle Francisco   Tomás y Valiente s/n,  C.P. 01006 
            Vitoria-Gasteiz,   Spain

24th International Conference on Medievalism

I'm a little late on this, but still time for the student essay contest and of course, time for registering! 

24th International Conference on Medievalism
Hosted by Kent State University Regional Campuses
October 18-20, 2012
ON-CAMPUS LOCATION: Kent State University Stark
ONLINE LOCATION: A portion of this year's conference will be hosted online (October 15 to November 15) in a password-protected location.

PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITIES: Select papers may be published in THE YEAR'S WORK IN MEDIEVALISM, as well as be considered for publication in MEDIEVALLY SPEAKING and STUDIES IN MEDIEVALISM.

VIDEO GAME POSTER SESSION & WORKSHOP: Co-sponsored by Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization.

STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST: Undergraduate students might consider submitting completed papers to be judge by several members of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism; prizes are available for the top three essays.


DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: June 1, 2012
DEADLINE FOR STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST: July 15, 2012

THEME: Medievalism(s) & Diversity
Is there diversity in medievalism? How has medievalism represented diversity of religion, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender,...? How have medievalist works supported issues concerning equity and inclusion? How have medievalist works oppressed and suppressed? Are there elements of bigotry and discrimination? What about human rights as a medieval concept, as a contemporary concept? Media to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: novels, plays, poetry, films, art works, the Internet, television, historical works, political works, comics, video games. Angles to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: race, gender, sexuality, disability/ability, religion, corporation and/or class, nationality, human rights, political correctness, marginalization, anti-marginalization tactics, rewritten codes, rewritten ideologies, re-affirmed codes, re-affirmed ideologies.

Proposals for papers, paper sessions, round table sessions, workshops, and video game poster presentations will be considered.

MORE INFORMATION:  http://www.medievalism.net/conferences/ksu2012conference.html

Putting England in Its Place

Call For Papers

 Putting England in Its Place:
 Cultural Production and Cultural Relations in the High Middle Ages
 
33rd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, Manhattan
March 9-10 2013

Speakers Include:
 Oliver Creighton, Julia Crick, Robert W. Hanning, Sarah Rees Jones, Elizabeth Tyler, Carol Symes, Paul R. Hyams, Kathryn A. Smith

The Deadline for Submissions is September 5, 2012
 
 Please send an  abstract and cover letter with contact information to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu or by fax to (718) 817-3987.
 

Kristen Mapes
Administrative Assistant
Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University
medievals@fordham.edu
(t) 718.817.4655
(f) 718.817.3987

David J. Wallace

Judith Rodin Professor

University of Pennsylvania 

The Digital World of Art History

The Digital World of Art History

Databases, Initiatives, Policies and Practices Thursday July 12th

2012, Room 106 McCormick Hall Princeton University A one day

conference Full program is available at

http://ica.princeton.edu/conference.php

There is no charge to attend and all are welcome but registration is necessary as spaces are limited.

To register please contact Fiona Barrett at fionab@princeton.edu before July 7th.

Boccaccio at 700: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts

Boccaccio at 700: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts

An Interdisciplinary Conference: April 26-7, Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York

CFP: http://www2.binghamton.edu/cemers/conferences/boccaccio.html

Panel seeking submissions: Boccaccio in Medieval England

Every Middle English scholar is familiar with Boccaccio’s presence in Chaucer’s work. In 1378, Chaucer went to Lombardy under the direction of the King and John of Gaunt.  On this trip Chaucer is thought to have his first encounter with Boccaccio’s Teseida, the source of his Knight’s Tale, and also to have possibly come in contact with Boccaccio’s Filostrato at this time.  Much work has been done on the textual, cultural, and historical connections between Chaucer and Boccaccio.

But what about other Middle English authors?  With such a well-known and diverse body of work in both Latin and Italian, it is clear that Giovanni Boccaccio would have been known to other Middle English authors besides Chaucer.  This panel seeks to explore the intertextual reverberations between the corpus of Boccaccio and Middle English texts beyond Chaucer.  For instance, contemporary and friend of Chaucer, John Gower undoubtedly was affected by Boccaccio’s writings, but little work has been done showing the Florentine’s impact on Gower.  Likewise, the presence of Boccaccio’s Latin texts, like his De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, in Lydgate’s work would benefit from further investigation.  No single approach, theory, Middle English text or author (with exception to Chaucer) is beyond the purview of this panel.  One of the primary goals of this panel is to explore, on the occasion of his 700^th birthday, the extent of Boccaccio’s reach into late medieval English textual cultures.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20 minute papers to:

christianbeck@ucf.edu  Deadline: September 1, 2012.

Reframing Ekphrasis

“Reframing Ekphrasis” 

Comparative Literature Graduate Conference

King’s College London

Friday, November 9^th, 2012

Keynote Speaker:

Stephen Cheeke (University of Bristol)

Ekphrasis is a literary mode that spans the entire breadth of literature, from Achille’s shield to Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’. Defined by James Heffernan as “the verbal representation of graphic representation,” the referential scope of ekphrasis has expanded and contracted according to critical taste.  In the light of the increasingly complex way contemporary scholars have come to view visual literacy and culture, ekphrasis once again demands reconsideration. The “visual turn” in criticism, alongside the upsurge of interest in digital and material cultures, has enlarged the boundaries of what representation entails, and has questioned its stability.  In an age of interdisciplinarity, ekphrasis could provide a model for comparison that moves beyond binary encounters between discrete categories, such as national literature, art history, and the classics?  Rather than sublating image to word, might we resituate ekphrasis as a multi-media negotiation of meaning and form?

In this conference, we are interested in questioning not only the nature of ekphrasis, but also the supposedly essential nature of representation.  What dualisms, such as literature/visual arts, subject/authority, are implicit in traditional modes of ekphrasis, and how might other creative forms, like music, subvert this?  What kinds of power structures or hierarchies are embedded in ekphrasis, and how might we negotiate these, especially in the light of post-colonial and transnational theory?  What type of gaze does ekphrasis entail, and is this related to anxieties about the form?  What other art forms might be included in ekphrastic poetics that would contribute to interdisciplinary modes of thinking, such as architecture, performance art, or digital media? How far can ekphrasis provide a self-reflexive model for comparison?

Potential topics for papers might include, but are not limited, to:

-       Literature as a translation of the visual

-       Ekphrasis and the Modern Languages

-       Ekphrastic hierarchies: word/image, dominant/submissive, etc.

-       Taste and aesthetics

-       Relations of space and time in ekphrasis

-       Stasis and movement

-       The reverse: art depicting literature

-       Anxieties of ekphrasis

-       Ekphrasis in the digital age reproduction

-       Music and ekphrasis

-       New media and ekphrasis

-       Icononology and iconoclasm

-       Metapictures

-       Architecture and ekphrasis

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers exploring any aspect of ekphrasis as an inherently comparative mode. Please send 300 word abstracts plus a short biography to reframingekphrasis@gmail.com. Deadline for abstracts is 31^st July 2012. We will inform participants of acceptance by 15^th August 2012.

JMMLA--Flood them with medieval submissions!

The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association has extended the deadline for essay submissions on its 2011 Conference Theme: “Play.” Essays treating any aspect of “Play” in language, literature, drama, film, and popular culture are welcome.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: drama and performance studies; satire and parody; linguistic play; game theory; innovative pedagogies; scholarship as play; hoaxes and cons; queerings; subjectivity and identity performance; sport; transgressions and boundary-crossings; mindgames.

All submissions should be sent via email to the MMLA office at mmla@luc.edu by August 1, 2012. Please read the submission guidelines for additional information.

Traveling through Texts in / to the Middle Ages

South Atlantic MLA Convention, Durham NC, November 9-11, 2012: Traveling
through
Texts in / to the Middle Ages (DEADLINE EXTENDED)

Writers of the Middle Ages frequently wrote about travels—their own or
someone else’s—as a way to bring their contemporary readers to distant,
exciting, exotic, or holy places. But travel literature is not the only way
we as modern readers can journey through, to, or within the Middle Ages.
Medieval texts, by their very nature, require us to travel through time to
the Middle Ages, and many modern texts set in the medieval period encourage
us take the same journey. This panel seeks to explore how medieval texts(and
texts set in the medieval period) help us travel within or through the
place(s) of the medieval world, and / or these texts help us travel into
the Middle Ages, by taking us within medieval culture, philosophy, history,
and daily life.

Please submit abstracts to Wendy Hennequin (mwhennequin@gmail.com or
whennequin@tnstate.edu) by July 1, 2012.
Please feel free to cross-post.

5th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

5th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age
November 16-17, 2012

Taxonomies of Knowledge

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries are pleased to announce the 5th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year's symposium considers the role of the manuscript in organizing and classifying knowledge. Like today's electronic databases, the medieval manuscript helped readers access, process, and analyze the information contained within the covers of a book. The papers presented at this symposium will examine this aspect of the manuscript book through a variety of topics, including the place of the medieval library in manuscript culture, the rise and fall of the 12th-century commentary tradition, diagrams, devotional practice, poetics, and the organization and use of encyclopedias and lexicons.

For more information, go to http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/ljs_symposium5.html.

Rethinking Medieval Methodologies

Rethinking Medieval Methodologies
21st Century Approaches to Understanding the Middle Ages
7 July 2012 • 9.00-5.00 • The University of Nottingham

Interdisciplinary, cross-fertilisation, thinking outside the box.  Hidden
behind these buzzwords are a myriad of new and exciting ways in which
scholars are rethinking the discourse of the Middle Ages.  For example,
work within the fields of empirical science and the inroads made by the
social sciences have allowed for the development of unique and innovative
ways to contextualize and interpret the Medieval world.
In this conference, we will from scholars applying methods and approaches
normally reserved for other fields or time periods to any study of the
Medieval era.

Keynote speakers:
Prof Howard Williams (University of Chester)
Dr Faye Simpson (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Dr Christina Lee (University of Nottingham)
Registration is now open with a deadline of Friday 29 June.  Please see the
attached form for payment and postal address details.

All enquiries can be sent to the organising committee at
imrpostgradconference@gmail.com.

The Center for Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania invites submissions for papers to be read at the interdisciplinary international conference

THE MONK, THE PRIEST, THE NUN

22-23 MARCH 2013

The conference, held at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore how monks, priests, and nuns dwell in literary texts and the visual arts quite comfortably, from Saint Anthony's life to Boccaccio's Decameron, from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Diderot's La religieuse, from Giotto's frescoes to Salvator Dali's surrealistic visions. What is their destiny in our desacralized age? Are they the new wanderers, do they live as foreigners in a world of people who no longer not recognize them? From Lewis to Manzoni, from Bernanos to Chesterton, from Fogazzaro to Parise, priests, monks and nuns still inhabit our literature, art, cinema, as a sort of uncanny presence.

The keynote speaker will be Victoria Kirkham  Plenary speakers will include Armando Maggi, Millicent Marcus, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Roland Martinez, Christine Poggi, Janet Smarr, David Wallace, Elissa Weaver, Rebecca West, and others.

Please send a 250 words proposal and a brief vita (no cv) to italians@sas.upenn.edu by Nov.  15.



Marina Della Putta Johnston, PhD
Assistant Director, Center for Italian Studies
University of Pennsylvania
549 Williams Hall
255 South 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel. 215 898 6040

________________________________________

For information on subscribing, unsubscribing and posting to the AAIS list-serve, go to http://www.aais.info/list-serve/.

David J. Wallace

Judith Rodin Professor

University of Pennsylvania 

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~dwallace

The SCRIPTO graduate programme (Scholarly Codicologi­cal Research, Information & Palaeographical Tools) at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nurem­berg aims to provide a systematic, research-oriented introduction to the study of medieval and early modern books and their interpretation. It combines research and instruction within the framework of a uniquely innovative course, at the end of which each candidate will be awarded a diploma from Friedrich-Alexander-University.

SCRIPTO is made up of a broad spectrum of subjects and offers the following courses:

• History and principles of cataloguing
• Text typology (philosophical and theological texts; literary texts; liturgy; music; law; medicine; medieval Latin)
• Book illumination (technology; stylistic history; illustrational typology; iconography); palaeography
• Codicology; incunabula studies
• Informatics (use and construction of databanks for the interpretation; drawing up and administration of information about manuscripts; preparation of printed catalogues).

SCRIPTO VI offers additional research seminars by E. Kwakkel (Leiden) and A. Stieldorf (Bamberg), a practical training course in medieval bookbinding by M. Strebel (Hunzenschwil, CH) as well as an expected study trip to Sweden. Participants will also have the opportunity to work on a common research project.

The German Manuscript Centres in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Wolfenbüttel are supportive of the SCRIPTO programme.

Sessions will take place in Erlangen (Universitätsbibliothek), Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek), Nuremberg (Stadtbibliothek) and Wolfenbüttel (Herzog August Bibliothek) at a fee of 1280 Euros per participant (which includes travel and accommodations for seminars outside of Erlangen). It is possible to take part in chosen modules instead of taking part in the complete programme (The fee will be reduced). Further information may be obtained online:

http://www.mittellatein.phil.uni-erlangen.de/scripto/scripto.html

Note also: http://www.facebook.com/SCRIPTO.Programm

SCRIPTO VI will run from 22 April 2013 until 29 June 2013. Applicants should write enclosing a full CV to:

Prof. Dr. Michele C. Ferrari

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Mittellatein und Neulatein
Kochstr. 4/3
D-91054 Erlangen (Germany)

The application deadline is 1 March 2013. The language of instruction is German (Foreign participants, however, will be able to take German language courses at Friedrich-Alexander University if they so wish; they have to mention this in their application).

Those applicants accepted for the course will be charged 1280 Euros and will receive a document stating the terms of agreement and detailed information about the course, including the timetable.

In 2013 again, the Paul Lehmann Graduate Fellowship (1500 €) will be awarded to a young scholar who wishes to apply for SCRIPTO VI. For further information see the web page mentioned above.

--
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Institut für Alte Sprachen
Mittellatein und Neulatein
Kochstr. 4/3, D-91054 Erlangen

Tel.: (0049 9131) 85 22414 / 22415

Homepage: www.mittellatein.phil.uni-erlangen.de
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Mittellatein
Facebook (SCRIPTO): facebook.com/SCRIPTO.Programm

Beratung Lateinkenntnisse und Latinum: Lateinberatung@web.de

 

BYZANTIUM, ITS NEIGHBOURS AND ITS CULTURES: DIVERSITY AND INTERACTION AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION FOR BYZANTINE STUDIES XVIITH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

BYZANTIUM, ITS NEIGHBOURS AND ITS CULTURES: DIVERSITY AND INTERACTION

AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION FOR BYZANTINE STUDIES XVIITH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~byzaus/conferences/17th2012/

20-21 July 2012, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia

Full programme and abstracts now available on the web site.

Registration closes 29 June.

Our understanding of Byzantium's external and internal interactions has
shifted significantly as a result of recent scholarship. The significance of
this state to a millennium of developments throughout Eurasia has been
examined; more importantly, the nature of contacts between Byzantium and its
Eurasian neighbours has been reconceived. Models for understanding
Byzantium's interactions with its neighbours have moved from imperial centre
and periphery, to 'commonwealth', to 'overlapping circles', to parallel and
mutual developments in political and cultural identity. The Byzantine
millennium now seems more connected, by commerce, diplomacy and common
cultural heritage, than before. Artefacts and ideologies were acquired,
appropriated or mediated amongst Byzantium and its neighbours in the Latin
West, southeastern and central Europe, Iran and Dar al-Islam; even prolonged
conflict did not preclude exchanges and indeed sometimes sprang from shared
developments. At the same time, what we think of as the distinctively
Byzantine milieu of Constantinople also interacted with regional cultures
that at various times formed part of its empire. Coptic and Syriac cultures
in Late Antiquity, Latin and Arabic regions in later periods, displayed both
ambivalence and engagement with the culture of Constantinople and with its
imperial and ecclesiastical leaders. As with Byzantium's external
connections, 'centre and periphery' models of internal interactions are
giving way to more dynamic models seeing metropolis and regions as parts of
broader, common developments. The conference aims to explore these
developments.

Keynote Speaker:
Professor Jonathan Shepard, University of Cambridge, former Lecturer in
History at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Selwyn College and of
Peterhouse; his major publications include inter alia: Jonathan Shepard and
Simon Franklin, 'The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200' (1996), Jonathan Shepard
and Simon Franklin (eds), 'Byzantine Diplomacy' (1992), Jonathan Shepard,
'Byzantium's Overlapping Circles', Proceedings of the 21st International
Congress of Byzantine Studies (2006), Jonathan Shepard (ed.), 'The Expansion
of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia' (2007), Jonathan
Shepard (ed.), 'The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c. 500-1492'
(2008).


The Biennial General Meeting of the Association will be held during the
conference.


Conference Organisers

Andrew Gillett
Danijel Dzino
Ken Parry

Email: AABS2012@mq.edu.au

Ligatus Summer School 2012

Ligatus summer school schedule 2012

Apply online by clicking here.

Identifying and Recording Bookbinding Structures for Conservation and Cataloguing
and
The History of European Bookbinding 1450-1830
Institut National du Patrimoine and Centre Culturel des Irlandais
3-7 and 10-14 September 2012
The 7th Ligatus Summer School, following the success of the courses in Volos, Patmos, Thessaloniki, Wolfenbüttel and Venice, is to be held this year in collaboration with the Institut National du Patrimoine and the Centre Culturel des Irlandais in Paris. We are delighted to announce the summer school this year in Paris, a city with a long tradition in the study of the history of the book. This year students will have the opportunity to see bindings from historic collections in the city, including the Centre Culturel des Irlandais, the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal and the Bibliothèque Richelieu. Also, this year, the structure of the summer school has been enriched to include new developments in the field and more extensive hands-on sessions. Paris is a centre of culture in Europe and a city which always inspires creativity and academic excellence. Join us for this year’s summer school to learn more about books and their documentation in this beautiful city.
http://www.ligatus.org.uk/summerschool
Summer school context:
The contribution that bindings can make to our understanding of the history and culture of the book is often neglected, but they can offer insights into the study of readership, the booktrade, and the provenance of books which are often not available elsewhere. In order to realise this potential, it is important to understand not only the history of the craft but also to learn how to record what is seen in a consistent and organised way. Librarians, cataloguers, conservators, book historians and all scholars who work with early books, need therefore to understand the structure and materials of the bindings they encounter in order to be able to record and describe them. Such descriptions of bindings are not only valuable for the management of library collections, pursuing academic research and making informed decisions about conservation, but are also important for digitisation projects, as they can radically enrich the potential of image and text metadata. It is our belief that bindings should be seen as an integral part of the book, without which, our understanding of the history and use of books is often greatly circumscribed.
The main purpose of the summer school is to uncover the possibilities latent in the detailed study of bookbinding and it mainly focuses on books that were bound between the fifteenth and the early nineteenth century. While both courses concentrate in particular on the structure and materials of bookbindings, each of the two courses offered in this summer school looks at bindings from different geographical areas and with a different approach. The first course looks at the development of bookbinding in the eastern Mediterranean and gives theoretical and hands-on training in a) the manufacture of specific aspects of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine bindings and b) the development of methodologies and tools for recording bindings, working with examples from the collections. The second course looks at the history of bookbinding as it was carried out in Europe in the period of the hand press (1450-1830), with the opportunity to look at examples from different collections during the afternoons.
The courses are taught in English and each is open to 12 participants. Although the courses can be attended individually, participants are encouraged to attend both courses in order to get a more complete understanding of the issues discussed, through the comparison of the wide range of bookbindings considered in each week. Since these are not beginner-level courses, the participants are expected to be familiar with bookbinding terminology and have a basic knowledge of the history of book production in the periods under discussion. A basic understanding of the use of databases is also desirable for those who will attend the course in the first week.
Description of courses:
Week 1, Identifying and recording bookbinding structures
Tutors: Dr. G. Boudalis and Dr. A. Velios
This five-day course is divided into two interconnected sessions. The sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are shared by Dr Velios and Dr Boudalis, but this year participants of this course will be asked to select one of two concurrent sessions for both Thursday and Friday.
Dr. Georgios Boudalis, will focus on the major structural and decorative features of Byzantine and post-Byzantine bookbindings and their evolution in time and space. The relationship between these bindings and the early bindings of the Coptic and other Eastern Mediterranean cultures will be discussed, during lectures, slide-shows and demonstrations of real bookbindings from Parisian collections. This part of the course will concentrate on the influences of and comparisons between these different types of bookbinding. It will consist of six (shared) 90-minute presentations from Monday to Wednesday, supplemented by a two day workshop on Thursday and Friday during which participants who chose to attend it will be able to bind a small book in the Byzantine manner.
The other part of the course will be taught by Dr. Athanasios Velios and will deal with the methodologies and techniques that can be used to record bookbindings. After an introduction on the capacity and scope of each methodology and technique, this session will focus on a) the semantic web and the CIDOC conceptual reference model, b) standardised vocabularies for book descriptions (SKOS), c) the development of database schemas for both the relational and the hierarchical model, d) the advantages of various implementation tools and e) photographic records and workflows for large collection surveys.
A large part of this session will be devoted to the actual development and use of a sample of a bookbinding glossary, a documentation system for recording binding structures and the actual recording of specific bindings. This session will consist of six (shared) 90-minute presentations from Monday to Wednesday and eight 90-minute hands-on workshops on Thursday and Friday for those students who chose to attend them. A basic knowledge of the use of databases is desirable for this course.
Week 2, European Bookbinding 1450-1830
Tutor: Professor N. Pickwoad
This course will follow European bookbinding from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, using the bindings themselves to illustrate the aims and intentions of the binding trade. A large part of the course will be devoted to the identification of both broad and detailed distinctions within the larger groups of plain commercial bindings and the possibilities of identifying the work of different countries, cities, even workshops without reference to finishing tools. The identification and significance of the different materials used in bookbinding will be examined, as well as the classification of bookbindings by structural type, and how these types developed through the three centuries covered by the course. The development of binding decoration will be touched on, but will not form a major part of the discussion.
The course consists of ten 90-minute sessions each morning with Powerpoint presentations (over 800 images will be shown). Actual examples of bindings will be shown in the afternoon sessions.
The courses are supported by Ligatus and the University of the Arts London, with generous help from the Institut National du Patrimoine and the Centre Culturel des Irlandais. We have therefore been able to reduce the cost of the course for this year to £350.00 per week, excluding travel, meals and accommodation.
A number of accommodation options will be provided to the participants . A detailed schedule of the courses can be sent upon request. Applications, including a short CV can be submitted online (http://www.ligatus.org.uk/summerschool/).
For information about registration please e-mail Karen Di Franco (k.difranco@arts.ac.uk ) and give the e-mail subject as: 'Ligatus Summer School'. A reading list will be sent in advance to those who will attend the courses. The deadline for applications is 1 July. The participants will be contacted by the end of July.
About the Institut National du Patrimoine:
The Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) is a higher education institution of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. Its mission is to recruit and train curators for public institutions and to train conservators. The five-year conservation programme is divided into seven main fields: Painting, Sculpture, Textile, Objects (metal/ceramics/glass/enamel), Furniture, Photography and Book and Paper. The INP also offers a wide range of training sessions for professionals and organises conferences on cultural heritage.
2, rue Vivienne – 75002, Paris
(www.inp.fr)
About the Centre Culturel Irlandais:
The Centre Culturel Irlandais is located in the historic Latin quarter in Paris, in the 5th arrondissement. As well as its diverse programme of events, the CCI offers residencies for Irish artists and Irish language courses, as well as being home to the Irish Chamber Choir of Paris. The brief of the Centre Culturel Irlandais is to show a wide range of art forms, including visual art, film, literature, music and combinations of all of these.
The Old Library of the Irish College, built between 1772 and 1775, is one of the few surviving library rooms of the many colleges, convents and monasteries which were situated in the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve area of Paris until the end of the 18th century. However, the original library collection was entirely lost during the French Revolution. The current collection consists of almost 8000 volumes, consisting of printed books and manuscripts, half of which were written or published between the 15th and the 18th centuries.
5, rue des Irlandais 75005, Paris
(www.centreculturelirlandais.com)
About Paris in September 2012:
In the first weeks of September, Paris is in transition between the last days of summer and the surge of activity bought about by the general return to work after the very quiet month of August. The weather is usually as nice as in the summer but the city starts again as the new school year does and as French administrative life resumes. This concept of rentrée extends to literary, theatrical, cinematic and all the art-related and commercial activities, offering a great many new exhibitions and events of all sorts. One of the major events is the Journées du Patrimoine (Heritage days: 15-16 Sept.) during which museums and historical monuments, such as libraries, usually closed to the public, offer free access, guided tours and workshops. This year’s topic is “les patrimoines cachés” (hidden heritages).
Find out more here: http://www.moreeuw.com/histoire-art/journees-du-patrimoine-2012.htm
About Ligatus:
Ligatus is a research centre of the University of the Arts London with particular interest in the history of bookbinding, book conservation, archiving and the application of digital technology to the exploration and exploitation of these fields. Ligatus’s main research projects currently include the conservation of the books in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai and the development of a multi-lingual thesaurus of bookbinding terms.
Find out more about Ligatus here: http://www.ligatus.org.uk

Spaces of knowledge: an interdisciplinary approach to medieval thought

Call for papers "Spaces of knowledge: an interdisciplinary approach to medieval thought" to be held in Barcelona (November 14-16, 2012). Deadline June 30!!

Scroll down for details in English at http://arditculturesmedievals.weebly.com/1r-congreacutes-internacional-ardit.html

Texts Transformed: Learning & Literature Plagiarizing the Past

This is a call for papers (for any unfamiliar with "CFP") for the
Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May 2013.  The
proposed session is "Texts Transformed: Learning & Literature
Plagiarizing the Past."

Editions and studies of texts often note sources but tend to restrict
attention to identification rather than discussion of selection or
significance.  However, an author usually devotes some attention to
what sources to employ, which bits, and how to use them.  This happens
with both learned and popular texts, both of which we might consider
literary, though the latter more so.  For example, Bartholomaeus
Anglicus use various learned texts for his De proprietatibus rerum,
aimed at a more basic audience; his work, in turn, was mined by
sermon-writers and even poets, such as the anonymous author of the
Prick of Conscience.  Why did that author use Bartholomaeus?  Why the
passages chosen?  How did the Prick of Conscience revise those
passages and perhaps their intended significance?  These relationships
might reveal the changed environments that time produced and could
lead us to deeper understandings of how medieval authors worked and
thought.

Alliteration is not required.  Proposal deadline: Sept. 15.  Please
see details at

  http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html

CFP: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies

Call for papers for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be
held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 9-12, 2013.  

 

Sessions sponsored by the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies:  

 

Linguistic Contacts in Medieval Iberia (2 sessions)

 

As a crossroads of cultures, the Iberian Peninsula provides a fertile field
for the study of the contact and interaction of peoples, cultures and
languages. This session seeks to examine linguistic contacts in any region
of Iberia during the middle ages. It includes the contact between any
languages, be they Romance (e.g. Castilian, Aragonese, Mozarabic) or
non-Romance (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Germanic). Any form of Latin and its
“interaction” with any other language during the Middle Ages in the Iberian
territory are also included here. Both synchronic and diachronic approaches
to language contact are welcome. Emphasis may be on the written word and its
literary manifestations, as well as on specific linguistic features (i.e.
sound system, morphology, syntax, and lexicon).  Ultimately, this session
seeks to add the linguistic evidence to the increasingly productive field of
intercultural exchanges in medieval Iberia. Any relationship between the
medieval languages of the Iberian Peninsula and the languages of its
overseas colonies during the sixteenth century is also welcome. Equally
acceptable is the reception or reinterpretation of medieval Iberian
languages (e.g. Astur-Leonese, Navarro-Aragonese, Judeo-Spanish) in
post-medieval times.

 

Please send abstract and Participant Information Form (available at
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to either
Vicente Lledó-Guillem (Vicente.LledoGuillem@hofstra.edu) or Cynthia Kauffeld
(kauffeld@macalester.edu) by Sept. 15.

CFP: Illinois Medieval Association 2013 meeting

Theme: Piety, Ritual, and Heresy: The Varieties of Medieval Religious Experience
Call for Papers (deadline October 15, 2012)

We are pleased to announce that the 2013 annual conference of the Illinois Medieval Association, co-sponsored by the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies, will take place at the Newberry Library in Chicago, February 15 and 16, 2013.

We invite papers from across the disciplines; we will give preference to submissions related to the conference theme, but abstracts on any aspect of medieval studies are welcome.

We welcome proposals for individual papers as well as entire sessions. Three-paper sessions will be scheduled for 90 minutes, with 20 minutes for each paper plus time for discussion. Proposals should include a short abstract of the proposed paper (not more than one page), or an abstract for each paper in a proposed session, as well as contact information for the individual submitting the proposal.

Submit proposals electronically to Karen Christianson at christiansonk@newberry.org, no later than October 15, 2012.

See this web page for more information: http://www.newberry.org/02152013-illinois-medieval-association-annual-meeting

Printable PDF Call for Papers flyer: http://www.newberry.org/sites/default/files/calendar-attachments/IMALetterCFPEmail.pdf

Please forward this announcement to others who may be interested.

University of Louisville's Medieval and Renaissance Faculty Workshop K'zoo '13

I am pleased to announce two sessions for next year's international Congress in Kalamazoo sponsored by the University of Louisville's Medieval and Renaissance Faculty Workshop:

1. Law and Legal Culture in Anglo-Saxon England
Recognizing the extent to which our understanding of early law has changed over the last century, the purpose of this session is to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss new ways of understanding pre-Conquest legal culture.   We invite papers that examine the many ways in which law was made, understood, practiced, promulgated, and transcribed in the Anglo-Saxon world.   We are eager to receive submissions representing a variety of perspectives, methodologies,  and disciplines.  Possible topics include (but are not limited to): royal legislation, legal manuscripts, law in/and literature, legal procedure, charters and diplomatics, writs and wills, dispute resolution, theories of law and justice, perceptions of early law in later periods, law in/and art.

2. Archbishop Wulfstan and the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos
This session is dedicated to the career of Archbishop Wulfstan of York in commemoration of the upcoming millenary (more or less...) of his most famous composition, the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos.  We invite papers covering all aspects of Archbishop Wulfstan's career as "homilist and statesman," to borrow Dorothy Whitelock's famous formulation.   We are eager to receive submissions representing a variety of perspectives, methodologies,  and disciplines.  We welcome traditional philological and historicist approaches, as well as those informed by modern critical theory. Archbishop Wulfstan is perhaps the most important and influential political thinker of the later Anglo-Saxon period, and this session offers a valuable opportunity to reassess his legacy.

Abstracts can be sent via post or e-mail (preferably the latter) to:
Andrew Rabin
Department of English
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
andrew.rabin@louisville.edu<mailto:andrew.rabin@louisville.edu>

MESA!!

We are very pleased to announce that, following a one-year planning
grant, the Mellon Foundation has awarded the Medieval Electronic
Scholarly Alliance (MESA) a three-year implementation grant.

MESA serves two related purposes: to develop a federation of digital
medieval resources, and to provide peer review for scholarly digital
projects in all areas of medieval studies. MESA is a federation both
in the sense of a community - of scholars, librarians, and students
developing and using digital resources - and as a website that
federates disparate collections and projects. The website will provide
a search across various types of resources spanning the disciplines,
geographical areas, and temporal spans that make up the Middle Ages,
in the broadest sense.

MESA joins with Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online (www.nines.org),
18thConnect (www.18thconnect.org), and the Renaissance English
Knowledgebase (REKn) project as a node of the Advanced Research
Consortium (ARC). ARC is a developing organization, centered at Texas
A&M University and directed by Laura Mandell, which serves to provide
support for the constituent nodes. This support includes coordination,
sustainability, and scalability by providing shared infrastructure -
including development of the COLLEX platform and maintenance of a
shared catalog including metadata from objects represented in all the
nodes.

During the second half of 2012, we will be loading the first group of
12 resources into the MESA website. The site will launch with those
resources in late 2012. At the same time we will be developing our
procedures and policies for including other resources in the site. We
have already started compiling a list of projects and collections that
we would like to include in MESA in the second phase of the project
(after the initial launch). If you have a project that you would like
to see included in MESA, please contact us.

MESA Co-Directors

Dot Porter, Indiana University Bloomington
Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University

MESA federation blog: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/mesa/
Press Release from NCSU:
http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/technology/wms-medieval-online/

Decoding Digital Humanities This Week!

Decoding Digital Humanities (DDH) London will be meeting again on

 * Wednesday 27 June 18:00 *

at The Jeremy Bentham, 31 University St., WC1E 6JL

(Please note the change of venue; in fact, back to where it all
started!)

This month we will be reading:

Steve Anderson. "Past Indiscretions: Digital Archives and Recombinant
History". In Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson (eds.) Interactive
Frictions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (forthcoming).

<http://www.technohistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Anderson_Past_Indiscretions.pdf