Medieval News!

Haggis was a Viking dish?

Iron Age Bling

Viking Hoard at Watlington!

Norton Priory dig uncovers skeleton 

Zurich and Charlemagne Insignia

Staffordshire Hoard Update

The Sad News of Steve Cartwright's passing

CfP: Re//generate: Materiality and the Afterlives of Things in the Middle Ages

Next May, the University of St Andrews School of Art History in collaboration with the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies will host an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference. Re//generate: Materiality and the Afterlives of Things in the Middle Ages, 500-1500 will investigate the reuse and recycling of materials in the medieval world.

Dear Colleagues,

Most of you need no introduction to the splendid work of the Dictionary of Old English and its importance to the work of Anglo-Saxonists worldwide. I am writing on behalf of the Dictionary to enlist your aid.

At the end of 2013, the DOE was awarded a five-year, $500,000 Challenge Grant from the Triangle Family Foundation of Raleigh, North Carolina. To release each annual installment of the grant, the Dictionary must secure new matching funds from other sources. So far two $100,000 installments have been matched and released, but the editorial team is concerned that it will not meet its target to match the third installment by April 1, 2016. In this time of urgency, they have asked me to reach out to people who might be able to support this worthy project.

Such matching means that what you donate now will have maximum impact. Every dollar you give will provide two dollars to the Dictionary; every pound, euro, or yen will be a double gift. Your donation will ensure that the work of the Dictionary continues.

This is a particularly exciting time for the project. The current editorial team -- co-editors Stephen Pelle and Robert Getz and Drafting Editor Val Pakis -- are readying H for publication. This is a large and complex set of entries, many years in the making, and its publication will mark a significant step towards completion of the Dictionary. With the publication of H, the DOE will also make public some significant improvements of its user interface and search functions, as well as the latest updated version of the Corpus of Old English and a fully updated set of entries for A-G. DOE entries are now reciprocally linked to the OED, the MED, and the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies project at the University of Edinburgh. In addition, a number of thumbnail images from Parker on the Web are included to help clarify problematic citations. In these and other ways, the DOE continues to expand its role as a pioneer in the field of digital lexicography and an indispensable resource for scholars in our field.

Your support in the past has done the project an enormous amount of good with granting agencies and foundations and within the University of Toronto itself. You have demonstrated by your generosity that you, who are best able to judge the worth of the DOE because you use it in your research, value it highly. And so we turn to you again. Please help support this important project by giving as generously as you can. Donations can be made online; simply visit 

https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/59 

and fill in the box for ‘Dictionary of Old English’. Donations by check (made out to ‘DOE/University of Toronto’) or credit card can also be sent by mail; a convenient donation form can be downloaded from 

http://web.utk.edu/~rliuzza/DOE_Donations_Page.pdf 

and sent to


Dictionary of Old English
Room 14285, Robarts Library
130 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3H1
CANADA

Caroline Minuscule Mapping Project: call for papers

The Network for the Study of Caroline Minuscule, with the support of APICES and the Association for Computers and the Humanities, is publishing a series of 30 summary articles on the major scribal centres and regions that used Caroline minuscule in Europe c. 700–1000 AD. The articles will be blind peer-reviewed and published on a purpose-built online open access platform, which is currently in development. Each article is remunerated at €50. Contributors should be scholars working on the early middle ages, and preferably have an interest in manuscripts and/or palaeography. Graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply. For a full list of available centres and further information, see http://carolinenetwork.weebly.com/mapping-project.html.

If you are interested in contributing, please email Anna Dorofeeva at dorofeeva@jur.uni-frankfurt.de.

Best wishes,

--
Anna Dorofeeva
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Collaborative Research Centre: 'Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes'
(Sonderforschungsbereich 1095: Schwächediskurse und Ressourcenregime)
University of Frankfurt
Gräfstr. 78
Juridicum Postfach 104
60486 Frankfurt am Main
+49 (0) 697 983 3960

The Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship Fund of The Dallas Foundation announces its Summer Research Fellowship for 2016, designed to support the research of women medievalists below the rank of full professor. The $10,000 award is to be used during the period of June 1–December 31, 2016. Deadline for applications is January 31st, 2016.

go to http://bonniewheelerfund.org/ for full details and how to apply.

Please share widely.


Dorsey Armstrong
Professor of Medieval Literature
Editor-in-Chief, Arthuriana
English Department, Purdue University
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907

765-427-2717

darmstrong@purdue.edu
camelot@purdue.edu

PhD and MA fellowships in medieval/early modern culture and digital humanities: the Canterbury Tales and Textual Communities projects 
Following major funding awards from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan is inviting applications for four-year PhD and one-year MA scholarships to work on the following research projects:

• The Canterbury Tales Project (http://www.textualcommunities.usask.ca/web/canterbury-tales)
• The Textual Communities Project (http://www.textualcommunities.usask.ca/)

Applicants should propose a MA or PhD thesis project related to some aspect of these projects. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

• The manuscripts, incunables and textual tradition of the Canterbury Tales
• Analysis of large manuscript traditions, including use of mathematical/statistical/phylogenetic methods for both research into manuscript relations and spelling variation across time
• Theory and practice of scholarly editing in the digital age
•  The effect of the digital revolution on our models of the humanities, archives and the community
• Digital humanities and scholarly editing/archival collections

The successful candidate will join one of the Canterbury Tales and Textual Communities projects, commencing in September 2016. Both projects are at an exciting moment, as the Canterbury Tales Project approaches its 20-year goal of complete transcription of all 88 pre-1500 witnesses to the Tales, and Textual Communities approaches full public release. Past students who have worked on the Canterbury Tales project now hold academic posts in Belgium, Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, America, Scandinavia, and elsewhere. 

Facility with Latin or a modern European language and skills in computing will be particularly valuable, but not essential. We welcome applicants from anywhere in the world. With support from SSHRC and the university, we are able to offer full funding of fees, travel, training and subsistence during study to qualified students. You will be joining a small but vibrant international cohort, currently including students from Italy, Nigeria and Mexico.

Please follow the Department of English guidelines for application, which can be found at http://artsandscience.usask.ca/english/graduate/application.php. In your cover letter, please specify that you are applying for this position and provide a substantial description of your research interests as they relate to the projects named above.

For more information about these research opportunities, please contact Peter Robinson at peter.robinson@usask.ca,. The deadline for complete applications is January 15, 2016.

Anglo-Saxons 2016

Exchange: Cultures, Ideas, and Materials

The organising committee is delighted to announce the final call for papers for Anglo-Saxons 2016, a multidisciplinary two-day conference celebrating Anglo-Saxon culture and history. This event is to be held at the University of Edinburgh on 9-10 June 2016.

Anglo-Saxons 2016 is calling for papers on the impact of Anglo-Saxon culture and history, engaging with the theme of ‘exchange’.

The year 2016 marks the one thousandth anniversary of Cnut’s Danish Conquest and 950 years after William marched onto British shores, but what of those they conquered? The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms stood for four centuries before the Danes or Normans took the monarchy, and even after these conquests, the Anglo-Saxon peoples remained the primary indigenous population. Anglo-Saxons 2016 reflects upon the culture, history, and impact of the Anglo-Saxons, looking back over their influence across the medieval world.

Anglo-Saxons 2016 is a two-day multidisciplinary conference for postgraduate students and early-career researchers. The conference brings together scholars from different disciplines studying the Anglo-Saxon period in order to share papers outlining their current research around a central core celebration of Anglo-Saxon culture, history, and impact. We will promote discussion, and explore how a range of perspectives can lead to a new understanding of the Anglo-Saxons.

The early medieval period is one of exchange in all senses of the word. The fifth to eleventh centuries in England marked a period of great transformations in culture, history, intellectual development, and materiality through internal and external factors and different cultural influences. Beyond this, we ourselves as researchers will come together in an exchange of knowledge, thoughts, and approaches.

We invite those working in any facet of Anglo-Saxon history (inclusive of art history), culture, literature, or archaeology (inclusive of osteoarchaeology) to submit abstracts for papers of approximately 20 minutes.  Papers should be delivered in English. 

Keynote Speaker: Dr Alan Thacker MA, DPhil (Oxon)

               Institute of Historical Research

We welcome proposals for papers and sessions related to, but not limited by, this list:

• The exchange of ideas in the Anglo-Saxon world

• Exchange, trade, and economic relations 

• North Sea/Scandinavian cultural exchange and influence

• Intellectual exchange 

• The Danish and/or Norman Conquests

• The Anglo-Saxons and the rest of the early medieval world

• Transformation or continuity in the Anglo-Saxon world

• Anglo-Saxon art as a means of idea exchange

• Old English literature

• Anglo-Saxon coinage

• The Danelaw

• Anglo-Saxon laws

• Material culture in the later Viking Age

__________________________________________________________________

Submission details:

Please send all proposals to: OrganisingCommittee@anglosaxons2016.net

Individual Paper Proposals:

• Title of Paper;

• Abstract – including potential strand (250 words maximum);

• Short Speaker’s Biography (approximately 50 words)

Session proposals:

• Session Title

• Session Abstract/Rationale (approximately 100 words)

• Organisers’ details

• Details for each paper (3) as per Individual Paper Proposals

Posters:

• Title of Poster;

• Abstract (250 words maximum);

• Short Speaker’s Biography (approximately 50 words)

___________________________________________________________________

Please note the deadline for abstract submissions is 31 December 2015.

Send all submissions and queries to OrganisingCommittee@anglosaxons2016.net.

Full details and contact via:

www.anglosaxons2016.net

Facebook.com/AngloSaxons2016

Tweet @AngloSaxons2016

Call for papers

WORDS - Medieval Textuality and its Material Display

Paris, 30^th June-2^nd July 2016

Keynote Speakers: Eric Palazzo (Université de Poitiers), Geoffrey Koziol (University of California, Berkeley)

For its 13^th Annual Symposium to be held in Paris, the International Medieval Society invites abstracts on the theme of Words in the Middle Ages. The digital humanities, while altering the landscape of Medieval Studies as a whole, have most importantly overhauled the concept, appearance, and analysis of words and texts. Between the increasing use of paperless media forms and the rise in the number of digital collections, medievalists are seeking to adapt to these new means of producing knowledgeabout the Middle Ages. At the same time, scholars in this field are also trying to outline the methodological and historical issues that affect the study of words, which now simultaneously exist in the form of primary sources, codices, rolls, charters and inscriptions, digitally reproduced images, and th

e statistical and lexicographical data made possible by storage platforms and analytical tools.

In parallel with the digital humanities, the 13^th Annual IMS Symposium on WORDS aims to return to words themselves and to probe the intellectual, technical and aesthetic principles that underpin their use and social function in medieval graphical practices. By analysing the material and symbolic properties of a particular medium; the conditions in which texts become signs; and scribal expertise, this symposium will address questions that initially seem simple yet which define the very foundations of medieval written culture. What is a word? What are its components? How does it appear in a given medium? What is the relationship between word and text, word and letter, word and medium, word and reader? In a Middle Ages forever torn between economic and extravagant language, what is the status of the word and what kind of elements – visual or acoustic, linguistic or extralinguistic – does it contain?

This IMS Symposium will thus explore (but is not limited to) four broad themes with a particular focus on medieval France, Francia and post-Roman Gaul:

1)      Words and wording: medieval discourse on texts and writing; texts that reflect upon the act of writing (the poetic arts, prologues, colophons and signatures); the relationship between the writer (scribe, copyist, notary, stonecutter) and words, between copy and creation.

2)      Words in and of themselves: the word between alphabetical symbol/grapheme and other symbols; images and sounds of words (nomina sacra, punctuation, poetic features); musical notation (naming/interpretation of neumes, litterae significativae); variations of meaning e.g. between mots and paroles; hierarchies of writing and of content.

3)      Words and matter: the word and its format; the concept of the pagina, its definition, margins and limits, from manuscripts to inscriptions; the material turn and palaeography; writing and object, from book to amulet; the word beyond the text (images, heraldry, emblems, numismatics); impressions and the first printed texts, beyond the act of writing.

4)      Beyond words: content-less words (pseudo-writing, pseudo-alphabets, pseudo-texts); word, name and identity; etymologies; word games and wordplay; the middle-ground between word and text (calligrams, anagrams, epigrams); the relationship between words and music (verse, prose etc. as expressed in melodies).

Through these broad themes, we aim to encourage the participation of researchers with varying backgrounds and fields of expertise: historians, specialists in the auxiliary sciences (palaeographers, epigraphists, codicologists, numismatists) art historians, musicologists, philologists, literary specialists...By bringing together a wide variety of papers that both survey and explore this field, the IMS Symposium intends to bring a fresh perspective to the word in medieval culture.

Proposals of no more than 300 words (in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be e-mailed tocommunications.ims.paris@gmail.com by 30^th January 2016. Each should be accompanied by full contact information, a CV, and a list of the audio-visual equipment that you require.

Please be aware that the IMS-Paris submissions review process is highly competitive and is carried out on a strictly anonymous basis. The selection committee will email applicants in February to notify them of its decision. Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris website. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel costs and conference registration fee (35 euros, reduced for students, free for IMS-Paris members).

The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (French/English) organisation that fosters exchanges between French and foreign scholars. For the past ten years, the IMS has served as a centre for medievalists who travel to France to conduct research, work, or study. For more information about the IMS-Paris and past symposia programmes, please visit our website: www.ims-paris.org.

IMS-Paris Graduate Student Prize:

The IMS-Paris is pleased to offer one prize for the best paper proposal by a graduate student. Applications should consist of:

1) a symposium paper abstract/proposal

2) an outline of a current research project (PhD. dissertation research)

3) the names and contact information of two academic referees

The prize-winner will be selected by the board and a committee of honorary members, and will be notified upon acceptance to the Symposium. An award of 350 euros to support international travel/accommodation (within France, 150 euros) will be paid at the Symposium.

Call for Proposals

CAPAL16: BEYOND THE LIBRARY: AGENCY, PRACTICE, AND SOCIETY

CAPAL/ACBAP Annual Conference – May 28–June 3, 2016

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2016

University of Calgary

Calgary, Alberta

The Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) invites participation in its annual conference, to be held as part of Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2016 at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada (http://congress2016.ca/). The conference offers opportunity to share critical research and scholarship, challenge current thinking, and forge new relationships across all disciplines.

THEME

In keeping with the Congress 2016 theme, Energizing Communities, CAPAL16 seeks to look “Beyond the Library” to rethink how academic librarians engage with their communities within which our institutions are situated or those with whom we share disciplinary concerns or approaches. Such communities may be physical, epistemic, academic, or imagined communities, communities of identity, or those communities around us and to which we contribute.

What can the discipline of library and information studies (LIS) learn from other disciplines?  What might LIS as an interdisciplinary field look like?  Where and how should academic librarianship be situated within and in relation to other communities?

RATIONALE

Like any institution, academic libraries both reflect and help shape the societies of which they are part. It is therefore critical for academic librarians to consider how they and their work are situated – professionally, ontologically, ethically, epistemologically, and physically. As social agents, we share and occupy socio-economic, political, and technological spaces in our efforts to provide diverse, high quality, informational resources and critical education within a contemporary (i.e., neoliberal) legal and economic framework.

In such an environment, effecting change requires seeking out, examining, and engaging with new ideas, approaches, theories, communities, understandings, and ways of knowing, which, themselves, may fall outside the traditional boundaries of the discipline of library and information studies. We need to move our lines of inquiry “beyond the library”–physically and intellectually–into new arenas and new communities. This conference is an invitation to academic librarians and scholars who study libraries and information to discuss how we can reframe academic librarianship: in practice, in policy, in theory, and in society.

Potential topic areas include but are not limited to:

·         Academic librarianship in the context of urgent socio-political priorities, such as climate change, environmental sustainability, and social equity;
·         The relationship between academic librarianship and democracy;
·         Academic librarianship and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples;
·         Indigenizing, decolonizing, diversity, and inclusion in academic librarianship;
·         The philosophical bases of academic librarianship in social theory;
·         The history of academic librarianship and the role of academic librarians in the academy;
·         The potentially biased treatment of controversial issues and scholarly debates in knowledge organization and information retrieval systems;
·         The sociology of knowledge mobilization;
·         Academic librarianship and its relationship to the design of user spaces;
·         Academic librarianship’s response to privacy and security in the “post-Snowden” era;
·         Community development, “town-gown” relationships, and academic librarianship;
·         Core values of academic librarianship in mediated spaces;
·         Critical theory, interdisciplinary approaches and subject expertise in LIS education for academic librarians.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

The Program Committee invites proposals for individual papers as well as proposals for panel submissions of three papers. Individual papers are typically 20 minutes in length. For individual papers, please submit an abstract of 300 words and a presentation title, with brief biographical statement and your contact information. For complete panels, please submit a panel abstract of 300 words as well as a list of all participants and brief biographical statements, and a separate abstract of 300 words for each presenter. Please identify and provide participants’ contact information for the panel organizer. International proposals and proposals from non-members and students are welcome.

Please feel free to contact the Program Committee to discuss a topic for a paper, panel, or other session format. Proposals should be emailed as an attachment as a doc. or docx. file, using the following filename format:

Lastname_Keywordoftopic.docx

Proposals and questions should be directed to the Program Chairs:

Michael Dudley:         m.dudley@uwinnipeg.ca

John Wright:               jpwright@ucalgary.ca

Deadline for proposals: January 4^th, 2016.

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