Wednesday, December 28, 2016

International Conference
Parchment, Paper and Pixels. Medieval Writing and Modern Technology
  
Maastricht, The Netherlands, February 2-3, 2017
 
organised by the working group ‘Writing and Writing Practices in the Medieval Low Countries’,
(Schrift en Schriftdragers in de Nederlanden in de Middeleeuwen – SSNM) in collaboration with the
Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, The Regional Historic Centre Limburg and the Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (Ghent University).
 

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Dear Colleagues,
 
it is my pleasure to invite you, on behalf of its organizers, Stefan Esders, Silvia Polla, and Tonio Sebastian Richter, as well as its scientific board, to the international conference
 
THE 8TH CENTURY.
Patterns of Transition in Economy and Trade Throughout the Late Antique,
Early Medieval and Islamicate Mediterranean
 
which will take place in Berlin, 4 - 7 October 2017 and for which we are excited to announce the following keynote speakers:
 
Sauro Gelichi (Venice)
Stefan Heidemann (Hamburg)
Richard Hodges (Rome)
Andreas Kaplony (Munich)
Cécile Morrison (Paris/Dumbarton Oaks)
Bernhard Palme (Vienna)
Paul Reynolds (Barcelona)
Jean Christoph Treglia (Aix en Provence)
Joanita A. C. Vroom (Leiden)
Christopher Wickham (Oxford)
 
Please let us know whether you would like to participate with a paper or poster that fits our thematic framework. We would also greatly appreciate your sharing this Call for Papers with your colleagues and affiliated institutions who may be interested in our event. We are attempting to arrange for the funding of all travel and accommodation expenses.
 
We would ask those of you who indicate their wish to participate with a paper/poster to provide us with an abstract and a working title by 15 January 2017.
 
We are looking forward to receiving your responses and hopefully learning about your research in Berlin next year.
 
Kind regards,
 
Frederic Krueger
Conference secretary
Freie Universität Berlin
Project Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Meeting -  CALL FOR PAPERS 

Congress 2017
27-29 MAY 2017

RYERSON UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, ON 

The special theme for this year’s Congress is “From Far & Wide: The Next 150 Years/L’épopée d’une histoire: 150 ans vers l’avenir”, but papers for the CSM Annual Meeting can address any topic on medieval studies. Proposals for complete sessions are also invited, and special sessions seeking speakers include: 

1. Medieval art and architecture; 

2. 1417: The deposition of Avignon Pope Benedict XIII and the end of the Great Western Schism. 

Papers may be delivered in either English or French, and bilingual sessions are particularly welcome. 

Proposals should include a one-page abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae. Papers should be no more than 20 minutes' reading time. Please submit proposals by Sunday 15 January 2017 by email to dmarner@uoguelph.ca. If you prefer to send a paper copy, please post your proposal to the following address: 

Dominic Marner 

President, CSM 
SOFAM 
University of Guelph 
50 Stone Road East Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1 Canada

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Neue Veranstaltungsreihe/ Leipzig


Byzanz und der Westen: Kolloquium zur materiellen Kultur im Mittelalter
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Lecture Series: Material Culture in Byzantium and the Medieval West


13.12.16
Dr. Alex Rodriguez Suarez (Barcelona):  From Tower to Belfry: The Other Origins of the Byzantine Bell Tower

31.1.17
Dr. Stefan Trinks (Berlin): Byzanz in Iberien – Zwei Welten

Jeweils 19 Uhr, Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Leipzig, Dittrichring 18-20 (Wünschmanns Hof), 5. Etage, Raum 5/14


Die Veranstaltungsreihe widmet sich der Erforschung der materiellen Kultur des mittelalterlichen Westens, des Byzantinischen Reichs, von Grenzräumen und Schnittstellen und von Fragen des kulturellen Austauschs. Sie ist eine Kooperation  des Instituts für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Leipzig, des Studiengangs Museologie der HTWK Leipzig und des Handschriftenzentrums der Universitätsbibliothek. Den Auftakt bildet der Vortrag von Alex Rodriguez Suarez, dem pro Semester von ca. 3-4 Vorträgen folgen sollen.

Das Kolloquium will die Erforschung und die Sichtbarkeit der materiellen Kultur des Mittelmeerraums und angrenzender Kulturräume zwischen Antike und Neuzeit in Leipzig fördern. Neben der Kunstgeschichte und der Archäologie sucht das Kolloquium gezielt den Dialog mit anderen Disziplinen (Mediävistik, Philologie, Byzantinistik, Judaistik, Arabistik, Theologie, Historische Geographie etc.), um einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der mittelalterlichen materiellen Kultur und ihrer Verflechtungen zu leisten.


Ansprechpartner:

Armin Bergmeier (Universität Leipzig): armin.bergmeier@uni-leipzig.de
Johannes Tripps (HTWK): johannes.tripps@htwk-leipzig.de

Monday, December 12, 2016

Editing Late-Antique and Early Medieval Texts. Problems and Challenges
International Workshop
University of Lisbon, 23-24 November, 2017
This workshop aims at fostering and promoting the exchange of ideas on how to edit Late-Antique and Early-Medieval texts. By presenting case-studies, participants will be encouraged to share the editorial problems and methodological challenges that they had to face in order to fulfil their research or critical editions. Troublesome issues will be addressed like how to edit, for instance,
- an 'open' text or a 'fluid' one (as in the case of some glossaries, grammatical texts, chronicles or scientific treatises),
- a Latin text translated from another language, like Greek, or bilingual texts (like some hagiographic texts, hermeneumata, Latin translations of Greek medical treatises, etc.),
- a text with variants by the author or in double recensions,
- a text with linguistic instability,
- a collection of extracts,
- a lost text recoverable from scanty remnants or fragments,
- a text transmitted by a codex unicus or, on the contrary, a text transmitted by a huge number of manuscripts,
- a text with a relevant indirect tradition,
- homiliaries and passionaires as collections of selected texts.
Attention will be devoted as well to different aspects of editorial practice and textual criticism.
Keynote speakers
Carmen Codoñer (U. Salamanca), Paolo Chiesa (U. Milano), Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute).
Call for papers
download call for papers
The papers should be 30 minutes in length and will focus on the edition of late-antique and early Medieval texts, in particular on editions currently in preparation, forthcoming or recently concluded. The scientific committee will select a number of proposals to be presented and discussed during the workshop. The papers can be presented in English, French, Italian and Spanish.
An abstract of around 200 words, including the name, institution and email, should be sent before May 30, 2017 to: Lisbonworshop17@letras.ulisboa.pt.
Acceptance of the papers will be communicated until June 30, 2017.
Inscription fees
70 € for participating with paper.
50 € for Ph.D. students presenting a paper.
Organizing Committee: Paulo F. Alberto (Univ. Lisboa), David Paniagua (Univ. Salamanca), Rossana Guglielmetti (Univ. Milano).
More information: here
Centro de Estudos Clássicos
Faculdade de Letras
Cidade Universitária
1600-214 LISBOA
TEL (351) 21 792 00 05 (Secretariado)
FAX (351)21 792 00 80
E-mail: centro.classicos@fl.ul.pt / centro.classicos@letras.ulisboa.pt
Sítio electrónico: http://www.letras.ulisboa.pt/cec
Siga-nos no Facebook.
Horário do Secretariado:
2.ª, 4.ª e 6.ª-feira: 10h-12h / 14h-17h
3.ª e 5.ª-feira: 11h-12h / 14h-18h

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

*La version française suit*
*Please circulate widely*/*Excuse cross-posting*

Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce the Call for Proposals (CFP) forCAPAL17: Foundations & Futures: Critical Reflections on the Pasts, Presents, and Possibilities of Academic Librarianship. This will be the fourth annual conference of the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) to be held May 30th – June 1st as part of Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2017 in Toronto, Ontario which lies in the territory of the Haudenosaunee and the Mississaugas of the New Credit River.

This conference provides an opportunity for the academic library community to critically examine and discuss together the ways in which our profession is influenced by its social, political, and economic environments. By considering academic librarianship within its historical contexts, its presents, and its possible futures, and by situating it within evolving cultural frameworks and structures of power, we can better understand the ways in which academic librarianship may reflect, reinforce, or challenge these contexts both positively and negatively.

The deadline for proposals is the 23rd of December, 2016.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Winchester: An Early Medieval Royal City.
University of Winchester 9-12 July, 2017

A multi- and interdisciplinary conference on the development of the city of Winchester, its cultural and political life, and its place in the early medieval world. Hosted by the Winchester, The Royal City project team in association with the University of Winchester.
Proposals for 20-minute papers and themed sessions of three papers are invited on aspects of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman city of Winchester from the seventh to the twelfth centuries. These may include the structures of power and Winchester's place in local/regional/national/global histories (eg the 'Second Viking Age' or the 'Anarchy'), communities within the city, Winchester's minsters, representations of the Anglo-Saxon city in (early) medieval literature, the role of the city in the development of language and literature, comparative work on other early medieval royal cities (e.g. Laon, Cordoba), urban topography, or representations of the early medieval heritage of Winchester since the middle ages. The aim of the conference is to be both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary, to think about the position of a city within a wider community, the communities of the city itself, and the perceptions of the city.
Please send a 200-word abstract and 1-page summary CV to Ryan.Lavelle@winchester.ac.uk by 13 February 2017. Contact Ryan.Lavelle@winchester.ac.uk and/or Carolin.Esser-Miles@winchester.ac.uk for enquiries.
Keynote speakers confirmed are Professor Martin Biddle (Emertitus Fellow, Hertford College Oxford; Director of the Winchester Excavations Committee) Professor Barbara Yorke  (Professor Emerita, University of Winchester; Visiting Professor, UCL)

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Dear colleagues,

Please consider submitting an abstract for the upcoming graduate conference of the Italian Department at Columbia University, to be held on February 3-4th, 2017. 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Department of Italian 
GRADUATE CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
Great Incompletes: Italy’s Unfinished Endeavors
3-4 FEBRUARY 2017Keynote speaker: Professor Thomas Harrison (UCLA)
This conference will investigate the question of incompleteness in Italian cultural and social history through an array of theoretical perspectives and case studies. From the unfinished works of Dante to Puccini’s Turandot, from Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere to the grandi opere of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria, the list of “great incompletes” is as long as it is diverse. What do incomplete projects have in common? How does an unfinished film differ from an unfinished bridge or novel? How can a text be deemed complete? Are our expectations as readers, viewers and witnesses influenced because of this purported unfinished-ness?
The history of Italian art, philosophy and politics is also brimming with works that deploy incompleteness as a deliberate narrative device. Michelangelo’s poetics of non-finito and the aesthetic debate on the possibility/impossibility of reaching perfection in art, reappears in Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore. The openness of Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana challenges the limits of a literary genre, just as Antonioni’s inherently incomplete plots inform his spatial and temporal filmic aesthetics. Many have noticed a connection between unfinished infrastructure projects, clientelism, corruption, and organized crime: the works’ ability to remain perpetually “in progress” is precisely their point.
We welcome papers in English that explore the viability of incompleteness as a theoretical notion across media, its scope as a technique that may or may not solicit a specific hermeneutical strategy, and finally its implications as a political and philosophical concept.
Possible topics may include:
  • -  Unfinished works and their textual tradition
  • -  Infrastructural incompleteness and organized crime
  • -  A poetics of non-finito
  • -  Reaching perfection in art
  • -  Incompleteness across media
  • -  Incompleteness as a narrative device
  • -  Pastiche/Patchworks vs. Incompleteness
  • -  Hermeneutical strategies facing incompleteness
  • -  Incomplete plots/spaces/times
  • -  Incompleteness vs. Failure
    Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio (50-60 words) in English no later than December, 11th to: graditalian.columbia@gmail.com
    The conference organizers:
  • Carlo Arrigoni
  • Nassime Chida
  • Massimiliano Delfino
  • Matteo Pace
In 1967, during a period of intense student protests, the AAUP and four other groups issued a Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students. Many issues covered in the statement are as pertinent fifty years later as they were in 1967. The AAUP invites proposals for presentations focused on these issues for our 2017 Annual Conference, to be held June 14–18 in Washington, DC.
The issues include the following:
  • Freedom of access to higher education
  • Rights of students in the classroom
  • Student rights outside the classroom (for example, in forming student groups or participating in protests)
  • The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, national origin, and sexual orientation
  • Evaluation of students
  • The roles of faculty advisers of student groups
  • Student-invited speakers
  • The intersection of institutional disciplinary authority and the law
  • Freedom of student press and other publications
  • Student participation in institutional government
  • Procedural standards in disciplinary proceedings
Presentations might also:
  • Explore student protest movements of the past
  • Analyze current student activism on race, student debt, gender, labor justice, or other issues
  • Comment on the joint statement itself
  • Discuss the rights of students to organize labor unions
  • Explore the possibilities for student activism opened up by digital tools
Presentation proposals on other topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience are welcome. We encourage proposals that raise questions, engage conference participants in discussion, and foster dialogue. Proposals will be accepted through December 13, 2016. See our website for complete submission details: https://www.aaup.org/CFP-2017
Activism and Art
Have student activists on your campus created posters, puppets, or other types of compelling protest art? We’d like to hear from you! Please send a description or photos along with contact information to gbradley@aaup.org.
Call For Papers:
Medieval Rites: Reading the Writing, Yale University, New Haven, CT
April 21-23, 2017
 
CFP Deadline: January 1, 2017
 
 
To study the history of the Christian liturgy is usually to study texts. Though some
texts survive even from the period of the early Church, it was mostly during the Middle Ages that thousands of texts—prayers, hymns, and lections—were compiled and organized into large and complex liturgical books. Some of these medieval liturgical books continued to be used by worshippers even into modern times, or served as modelsor anti-models for compilers of post-medieval liturgical books.
 
Moving beyond the notion that writing was simply a means of coordinating ritual
activity, or an alternative to oral transmission, Medieval Rites: Reading the Writing will explore the breadth of possible literate interactions with Christian liturgy during, before, and after the Middle Ages, in both Eastern and Western traditions.
 
Anyone interested in reading a 20-minute paper at the conference may send a 300-word abstract toismevents@yale.edu, by 1 January 2017.
 
Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by email no later than the end of January.
 
Conference organizers:
Henry Parkes (Yale Institute of Sacred Music)
Peter Jeffery (University of Notre Dame)
 

Monday, November 21, 2016

Sunday, November 20, 2016

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Department of Italian 
GRADUATE CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
Great Incompletes: Italy’s Unfinished Endeavors
3-4 FEBRUARY 2017
Keynote speaker: Professor Thomas Harrison (UCLA)
This conference will investigate the question of incompleteness in Italian cultural and social history through an array of theoretical perspectives and case studies. From the unfinished works of Dante to Puccini’s Turandot, from Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere to the grandi opere of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria, the list of “great incompletes” is as long as it is diverse. What do incomplete projects have in common? How does an unfinished film differ from an unfinished bridge or novel? How can a text be deemed complete? Are our expectations as readers, viewers and witnesses influenced because of this purported unfinished-ness?
The history of Italian art, philosophy and politics is also brimming with works that deploy incompleteness as a deliberate narrative device. Michelangelo’s poetics of non-finito and the aesthetic debate on the possibility/impossibility of reaching perfection in art, reappears in Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore. The openness of Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana challenges the limits of a literary genre, just as Antonioni’s inherently incomplete plots inform his spatial and temporal filmic aesthetics. Many have noticed a connection between unfinished infrastructure projects, clientelism, corruption, and organized crime: the works’ ability to remain perpetually “in progress” is precisely their point.
We welcome papers in English that explore the viability of incompleteness as a theoretical notion across media, its scope as a technique that may or may not solicit a specific hermeneutical strategy, and finally its implications as a political and philosophical concept.
Possible topics may include:
  • -  Unfinished works and their textual tradition
  • -  Infrastructural incompleteness and organized crime
  • -  A poetics of non-finito
  • -  Reaching perfection in art
  • -  Incompleteness across media
  • -  Incompleteness as a narrative device
  • -  Pastiche/Patchworks vs. Incompleteness
  • -  Hermeneutical strategies facing incompleteness
  • -  Incomplete plots/spaces/times
  • -  Incompleteness vs. Failure
    Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio (50-60 words) in English no later than November, 27th to: graditalian.columbia@gmail.com
    The conference organizers:
    Carlo Arrigoni 
  • Nassime Chida 
  • Massimiliano Delfino 
  • Matteo Pace 



Matteo Pace
Ph.D. Candidate - Teaching Fellow
Department of Italian
Columbia University

Sunday, November 13, 2016

CFP: Concealment and Revelation in the Art of the Middle Ages (Nicosia, 22-24 September 2017)

CFP Deadline:  30 April 2017

‘To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim’ – thus Oscar Wilde in his aphoristic Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). In the western intellectual tradition, art has repeatedly been conceived and understood as existing at the intersection of the antithetical notions of concealment and revelation – from the old unattributed adage that ‘it is true art to conceal art’ (ars est celare artem) to Robert Rauschenberg’s lapidary statement about the ability of a work of art to reveal something beyond itself (‘A light bulb in the dark cannot show itself without showing you something else too’, scribbled in pencil on the photo collage entitled Random Orderc. 1963). Veiled or unveiled, obscured or illuminated, opaque or transparent, works of art are often invested with meaning(s) and function(s) at the liminal moment of transition from the one state to the next; after all, to resort again to Wilde’s witty prose, ‘the commonest thing is delightful, if one only hides it’.

Recent scholarship on medieval art has brought such considerations to the fore, by tackling issues of screening, veiling / unveiling, temporal and performative transformations, the permeability of barriers and the movement of objects in space, among others. The visibility of sacred relics and their reliquaries, the metal revetments and textile curtains of miracle-working icons, the folding wings of northern European altarpieces, the parting womb of the Vierges ouvrantes or Schreinmadonnen and the porosity of choir screens East and West have all received fairly extensive treatment in monographic studies and specialist articles. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of these individual phenomena within a broader framework, encompassing both the religious and secular sphere, as well as several different religious traditions, has only seldom been attempted.

The present conference aspires to explore the role of the concept and the act of concealment and revelation in the arts of the Latin West, Byzantium, Islam and Judaism in the course of the Middle Ages (defined chronologically as c. 500-c. 1500). Subjects to be broached include, but are not limited to, the use of curtains or veils in screening objects or spaces; the function of permeable screens (in a variety of materials and media) in structuring accessibility, whether physical, visual, aural or spiritual; the performative aspect of concealing and revealing in all its civic and private manifestations, and the issues of emotional manipulation thereby raised; the role of gesture and spatial motion in the performance of concealment and revelation; the hierarchy of sacred and secular space as the outcome of its compartmentalisation; and the representation of these practices in the pictorial arts.

The conference is planned as a three-day event, to take place at the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, in 22-24 September 2017. Due to budgetary constraints, the speakers’ travel and accommodation expenses cannot be covered, but every effort will be made to secure conference rates at hotels near the conference venue. There is no registration fee for participation or attendance.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit electronically a title and a 300-word abstract (in either English or Greek) for consideration by 30 April 2017. Please send all materials and address all queries to the conference convenors, Michalis Olympios (olympios.michalis@ucy.ac.cy) and Maria Parani (mparani@ucy.ac.cy).

Friday, November 11, 2016

Global Digital Humanities Symposium at Michigan State University
March 16-17, 2017
Call for Proposals Deadline to submit a proposal: Friday, December 9, 11:59pm EST

Digital Humanities at Michigan State University is proud to continue its symposium series on Global DH into its second year. Digital humanities scholarship continues to be driven by work at the intersections of of a range of distinct disciplines and an ethical commitment to preserve and broaden access to cultural materials. The most engaged global DH scholarship, that which MSU champions, values digital tools that enhance the capacity of scholarly critique to reflect a broad range of literary, historical, new media, and cultural positions, and diverse ways of valuing cultural production and knowledge work. Particularly valuable are strategies in which the digital form expresses a critique of the digital content and the position of the researcher to their material.
With the growth of the digital humanities, particularly in under-resourced and underrepresented areas, a number of complex issues surface, including, among others, questions of ownership, cultural theft, virtual exploitation, digital rights, and the digital divide. We view the 2017 symposium as an opportunity to broaden the conversation about these issues. Scholarship that works across borders with foci on transnational partnerships and globally accessible data is especially welcome.
Michigan State University has been intentionally global for more than 60 years, with over 1,400 faculty involved in international research, teaching, and service. For the past 20 years, MSU has developed a strong research area in culturally engaged, global digital humanities. Matrix, a digital humanities and social science center at MSU, has done dozens of digital projects in West and Southern Africa that have focused on ethical and reciprocal relationships, and capacity building. WIDE has set best practices for doing community engaged, international, archival work with the Samaritan Collections, Archive 2.0. Today many scholars in the humanities at MSU are engaged in digital projects relating to global, indigenous, and/or underrepresented groups and topics.
This symposium, which will include a mixture of presentation types, welcomes 300-word proposals related to any of these issues, and particularly on the following themes and topics by Friday, December 9, 11:59pm EST:
  • Critical cultural studies and analytics
  • Cultural heritage in a range of contexts
  • How identity categories, and their intersections, shape digital humanities work
  • Global research dialogues and collaborations
  • Indigeneity - anywhere in the world - and the digital
  • Digital humanities, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism
  • Global digital pedagogies
  • Digital and global languages and literatures
  • The state of global digital humanities community
  • Digital humanities, the environment, and climate change
  • The practice of digital humanities across textual, historical, and media divides
  • Innovative and emergent technologies across institutions, languages, and economies
  • Open data and open access policies in a global, postcolonial context
  • Scholarly communication and knowledge production in a global context

Presentation Formats:
  • 3-5-minute lightning talks
  • 15-minute papers
  • 90-minute workshop proposals

Proposal form: https://goo.gl/forms/ClMqfXNSi9bAHURl1

Kristen Mapes
Digital Humanities Coordinator
College of Arts and Letters
Michigan State University