Models of Authority and DigiPal are organising two digital methods sessions at Leeds 2017 

Session 1: "Digital Methods 1: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Palaeography"

Session 2: "Digital Methods 2: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Manuscript Studies"

Interested? Then send us an abstract! It's all pretty simple really. All you need to do is read the blurbs 
below; decide which session suits you best; and then send an abstract of a couple of hundred words or so 
(we won't count them, but try not to overdo it) to stewart.brookes@kcl.ac.uk by 28th September 2016.

Looking forward to reading your abstracts, 

Stewart
-- 
Dr Stewart J Brookes
Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London

"Digital Methods 1: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Palaeography"

Taking palaeography and codicology as its focus, this session will consider how computer-assisted techniques 
might advance our understanding of the handwriting of medieval scribes.

"Digital Methods 2: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Manuscript Studies"

The large number of initiatives to digitise medieval manuscripts mean that we now have unprecedented access 
to medieval texts. In many ways, this explosion of knowledge can be compared to the early years of the printing 
press. But how might we best utilise this growing body of material? This session will explore the potential for the 
computer-assisted study of medieval manuscripts; discuss the intersection of manuscript studies and Digital Humanities; 
and share methodologies. The topics under discussion will include the encoding and transcription of medieval texts, the 
practical and theoretical consequences of the use of digital surrogates and the visualisation of manuscript evidence and 
data.Models of Authority and DigiPal are organising two digital methods sessions at Leeds 2017 
Session 1: "Digital Methods 1: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Palaeography"

Session 2: "Digital Methods 2: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Manuscript Studies"

Interested? Then send us an abstract! It's all pretty simple really. All you need to do is read the blurbs 
below; decide which session suits you best; and then send an abstract of a couple of hundred words or so 
(we won't count them, but try not to overdo it) to stewart.brookes@kcl.ac.uk by 28th September 2016.

Looking forward to reading your abstracts, 

Stewart
-- 
Dr Stewart J Brookes
Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London

"Digital Methods 1: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Palaeography"

Taking palaeography and codicology as its focus, this session will consider how computer-assisted techniques 
might advance our understanding of the handwriting of medieval scribes.

"Digital Methods 2: Computer-Assisted Approaches to Manuscript Studies"

The large number of initiatives to digitise medieval manuscripts mean that we now have unprecedented access 
to medieval texts. In many ways, this explosion of knowledge can be compared to the early years of the printing 
press. But how might we best utilise this growing body of material? This session will explore the potential for the 
computer-assisted study of medieval manuscripts; discuss the intersection of manuscript studies and Digital Humanities; 
and share methodologies. The topics under discussion will include the encoding and transcription of medieval texts, the 
practical and theoretical consequences of the use of digital surrogates and the visualisation of manuscript evidence and 
data.

Call for Papers: Fifth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Saint Louis University

St. Louis, MO

June 19-21, 2017

The Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies provides a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars in all disciplines to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern worlds.

We invite proposals for papers, sessions, and roundtables on all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and early modern studies. Proposals from learned societies and scholarly associations are particularly welcome. The deadline for proposals submissions is December 31.

The plenary speakers for this year will be Christopher Baswell, of Barnard College and Columbia University, and Bruce Campbell, of Queen's University, Belfast.

The Symposium is held on the beautiful midtown campus of Saint Louis University, hosted by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. On-campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments and a luxurious boutique hotel. Inexpensive dorm meal plans are available.

All sessions take place in state-of-the-art classrooms and auditoriums with complete audiovisual facilities. All sessions, events, meals, and housing are located within easy walking distance of each other. A rich variety of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues are also only a short walk away.

During their stay, participants are welcome to utilize the Vatican Film Library as well as the rare book and manuscript collections of the nearby Pius XII Library. Those interested in using the Vatican Film library, should contact Susan L'Engle (lengles@slu.edu) by email or phone at 314-977-3090. Participants may also use the library's regular collections, which are especially strong in medieval and early modern studies.

All sessions are 90 minutes long. A variety of session formats are welcome. Preference will be given to organized sessions that involve participants from multiple institutions.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The John Doran Prize - $500
Dr. John Doran (1966-2012) was senior lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Chester, UK, and an expert in the history of the papacy and the city of Rome. In honor of his commitment to scholarly excellence, the annual John Doran Prize recognizes outstanding work by a graduate student. The author of the winning paper will receive $500 and the option to have their paper published in the journal Allegorica. The prize is endowed by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University. Submissions are due by April 31, and the winner will be announced at the Symposium. More info athttp://smrs.slu.edu/johndoran

--------------------------

Fifth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

June 19-21, 2017

http://smrs.slu.edu

Looking for Papers!!

Merovingians and Their Neighbors

Sponsor: The Heroic Age

Session Organizer: Deanna Forsman

Contact: Deanna Forsman North Hennepin Community College 7411 85th Ave. North Brooklyn Park, MN 55445 Phone: 763-488-0405 dforsman@nhcc.edu

Recent scholarship has suggested that the political landscape of early medieval northwestern Europe owed a greater debt to the Huns, as opposed to the Romans or Germanic peoples. This session invites paper proposals that examine the Merovingian Kingdoms within the context of their relationships with their neighbors. We are particularly interested in papers that examine traditionally studied relationships from new perspectives and papers that examine little-studied interactions.

Echoes of Columbanus

Sponsors: The Heroic Age, ASIMS

Session Organizers: Deanna Forsman and James Lyttleton

The Irish ascetic Columbanus is the most famous example of the classic peregrinus: an individual who chooses a life of exile among foreigners as a form of religious devotion. Columbanus is also famous for his monastic establishments and Rule, as well as his interactions with royalty and the bishop of Rome. This session seeks to further explore the long-term influence of Columbanus in multiple venues. Papers will examine the influence of the Columbanian Rule on ascetic practice, the relationship between monastery and royalty, sources of spiritual authority, the practice of peregrinatio, etc.

Contact: Deanna Forsman North Hennepin Community College 7411 85th Ave. North Brooklyn Park, MN 55445 Phone: 763-488-0405 dforsman@nhcc.edu

Monsters III: Monstrous Acts of HeroismCo-sponsors: MEARCSTAPA, The Heroic Age
Session Organizers: Deanna Forsman and Asa Simon Mittman

Contact: Asa Simon Mittman California State Univ.–Chico Dept. of Art and Art History Chico, CA 95929-0820 Phone: 530-898-6885;asmittman@mail.csuchico.edu

Are there times when heroic acts might, from another perspective, be seen as monstrous? How are Crusader tales narrated in Muslim sources, expulsion tales in Jewish sources, battles from the losing side, slaying tales told by dragons? If we listen for the subaltern to speak, what will we hear? Can we hear the legitimate laments of Grendel's mother, or understand the actions of Lanval's fairy lover? How didretinues of “Saracen” princes perceive the oft-valorized scenes of conversion? Should we praise St. Patrick for cursing inlets and killing the local “wizards” upon his arrival in Ireland? Other saints are valorized for acts of mortification, self-mutilation, and willful starvation. What do we learn if we shift our perspectives, if we re-view these images and narratives from other angles? We invite panelists for a roundtable on “Monstrous Acts of Heroism,” and welcome analysis of surviving texts and image, as well as creative and speculative retellings of medieval tales.

CfP: Lineage, Loyalty, and Legitimacy in Iberia and North Africa (600-1600)

The Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University in conjunction with the Medieval Iberia and North Africa Group at the University of Chicago invite abstracts for an upcoming conference, “Lineage, Loyalty, and Legitimacy in Iberia and North Africa (600-1600),” to be held at the SLU campus on June 19-21, 2017 during the 5th Annual Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The aim of this subconference is to build on recent scholarship which has sought to move beyond notions of “the state” as a mode of inquiry in Iberian and North African studies, and to promote instead a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the study of the politics, cultural production, and religious practices of these regions. Toward that end, this conference will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines in order to facilitate conversations about the relationships between politics, historiography, art, literature, and religion in medieval and early modern Iberia and North Africa.

Preliminary guiding questions for proposals include:

• How were kinship and patronage networks forged and negotiated, dismantled and maintained?
• What (in)formal bonds and socio-religious rituals demonstrated (dis)loyalty, whether within families or between political actors?
• How were institutions formed and maintained?
• How were concepts of (il)legitimacy produced, critiqued, and perpetuated during this period?
• What role did art, architecture and material culture play in the construction of notions of legitimacy and authenticity?
• How did the transmission or co-production of knowledge and culture across religious boundaries contribute to medieval and early modern genealogies of knowledge? How did these processes bolster or discredit claims to epistemological legitimacy?

These questions are meant to be interpreted broadly, and applicants are invited to submit brief proposals for papers addressing the conference’s title themes. Possible topics include but are not limited to: royal and noble families; inheritance and succession; marriage; dynastic politics and genealogical narratives; oaths and fealty; jurisprudence and theology; intellectual traditions and networks; textual and artistic production, especially the “co-production” of culture across social, ethnic, and religious boundaries; document authenticity and forgery; administra9tive precedent and innovation.

We encourage submissions for 20-minute papers from a range of disciplines including: history, religious studies, literary studies, anthropology, archaeology, manuscript studies, and art history. The hope is that this conference will provide a forum for discussion and collaboration between scholars.  Graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and early-career faculty are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please submit a brief CV along with an abstract of roughly 300 words to Edward Holt (eholt3@slu.edu) by December 15. Direct any questions or concerns to Edward Holt or Mohamad Ballan (mballan87@gmail.com).

Emily Butler (John Carroll Univ.), Irina Dumitrescu (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univ. Bonn), and Hilary Fox (Wayne State Univ.) are delighted to issue the following CFP. The full call appears below; it can also be consulted at https://goo.gl/n6rc08.

ANGLO-SAXON WOMEN: A FLORILEGIUM
CALL FOR PAPERS
Project email: anglosaxonwomen@gmail.com

Abbess Hild. Empress Helen. Mary of Egypt. Juliana. Bugga. King Alfred’s mother. Grendel’s mother. The Welsh slave of Riddle 12. The nuns of Barking. The lamenting wife. Prudentius’ virtues and vices. The African woman picking up gold in Exodus. The Geatish woman with a dark vision of the future in Beowulf. What might it mean to tell the stories of Anglo-Saxon women -- historical, fictional, allegorical -- together?

This project confronts the frequent marginalization and erasure of women by contemporary scholarship from the historical record, and shows, by means of brief essays, what can be gained by focusing on female figures in the past. For example, an examination of the roles and rights of women in Anglo-Saxon England undermines narratives of societal progress. This is especially true in areas such as education or property rights, where women often had greater agency in the Anglo-Saxon period than in later periods. The lives and careers of the women featured in this collection also illustrate the complexity of Anglo-Saxon authorship and the roles of female audiences in male authorship, sanctity, and heroism.
We seek contributors for a collection of short, interpretive pieces (600-800 words) on a range of women in Anglo-Saxon England. These women include not only those long-recognized and studied, but those who occupy the background of texts--mothers, daughters, brothel-keepers--and who may not even have a name. The goal is the compilation of a florilegium of women from across the textual and material record that will reveal the obvious and obscure roles women played in Anglo-Saxon culture and their often over-looked, yet palpably felt, presence in their texts. We hope that this florilegium will be a resource for teachers to use in the classroom and for students to use while selecting research topics. We also hope that it will be a pleasure to read, both for Anglo-Saxonists and for those curious about the field.

By September 30, 2016, email the following to anglosaxonwomen@gmail.com:
1.) A list of 3-4 women on whom you would like to write, in order of preference
2.) A short academic biography or vita (no more than 1 page)
3.) Indication of willingness and ability to write more than one entry, if necessary.

Article assignments will be made on a first-come, first priority basis.
The list of potential entries can be found at https://goo.gl/J3K4YY.

If any woman or female figures does not appear on this list, please feel free to include them, along with the text in which they appear, in your list of choices. 

Guidelines for micro-essays are available at https://goog.gl/41khTN. Drafts will be due January 31, 2017.

SASMARS on Facebook!

We are moving with the times!

Our thanks and good wishes are due to Carin Marais, who has taken over the task of ensuring the SASMARS presence on the internet. Carin has set up a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SasmarsSA/

Please have a look and ‘like’ our page! You are welcome to contact Carin at marais.carin@gmail.com

The SASMARS homepage, with links to pages for the biennial conferences since 2010, is still athttp://sasmarsnewsletter.blogspot.co.za/

My sincere thanks to all who have been in touch and contributed to the SASMARS Newsletter since we entered cyberspace in 2008. Interest in SASMARS has grown beyond our wildest expectations and has attracted the attention of scholars from all over the world. As a result, our 20th biennial conference in 2010 received the largest group of international delegates ever and served to forge important links between international scholars and their Southern African counterparts. This trend has continued, as evidenced in the diverse mix of delegates to our recent conference at Mont Fleur in August this year. My contact with so many interested and interesting people locally and abroad has been personally enriching.

Warm wishes

Leonie Viljoen – signing out

Formerly Associate Professor and Research Fellow, Department of English Studies, Unisa

Cell: 0829244733

viljol@telkomsa.net

COMITATUS: A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES, published annually under the auspices of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, invites the submission of articles by graduate students and recent PhDs in any field of medieval and Renaissance studies.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 48 (2017): 1 FEBRUARY 2017.

The Comitatus editorial board will make its final selections by early May 2017. Please send submissions as email attachments to Dr. Blair Sullivan, sullivan@humnet.ucla.edu.

As the strand-director for Music & Liturgy at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, I direct your attention to an upcoming deadline for session proposals (Sept. 30) for the 2017 IMC 3-6 July 2017.  

Paper and session proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome. TheHowever, every year, the IMC chooses a special thematic strand which – for 2017 – is ‘Otherness’. Sessions on any aspect of Music or Liturgy are welcome, including all aspects of secular Medieval music.

The conference is especially interested in bolstering participation from scholars and practitioners in the field of music.

Instructions and the CFP can be found here:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2017_call.html

Best wishes,

Daniel J. DiCenso

ddicenso@holycross.edu

Strand Director, Music & Liturgy

International Medieval Congress, Leeds

https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/strands/music.html

Global Digital Humanities Symposium

March 16-17, 2017

Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Find information and updates at digitalhumanities.msu.edu

Free and open to the public. CFP and further details will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

This day and a half symposium looks to continue in the critical and global spirit of examining digital humanities established at the inaugural Global DH Symposium in April 2016 (find out more at http://msuglobaldh.org/).

Thanks,

Kristen

Kristen Mapes

Digital Humanities Specialist

College of Arts and Letters

Michigan State University

718-216-5695

kristenmapes.com

kmapes@msu.edu

kmapes86@gmail.com

The Columbia University Seminar on Affect Studies, 

The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (CHE), 

and the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium (ASSC) 

are happy to announce the upcoming conference at Columbia University

Between the Lines: Discerning Affect and Emotion in Pre-Modern Texts

Fiona Somerset, University of Connecticut, Keynote

Thursday September 29-Friday September 30, 2016

Columbia University Faculty House, Seminar Room 1

http://www.dkv.columbia.edu/columbia_edu/site/about_columbia/map/faculty_house.html

(entrance on 116th, between Amsterdam and Morningside Heights

RSVP to premodernaffect@gmail.com by September 19, 2016. No registration fee; however, please note what parts of the program (see below) you will attend in your email. Note that, if you would like to attend,  dinner on Thursday night is $30.50 to be paid on arrival on Thursday by cash or personal check, and lunch on Friday is $20 (to be paid either Thursday or Friday with cash or personal check).

__________________________

Schedule

Thursday Sept 29th

Arrival, 3:00-3:15pm

Welcome, 3:15-3:30pm

 Session #1: Teaching and Learning Emotion, 3:30-5:00pm

Patricia Dailey, Columbia University, moderator

 “Embarrassment: Losing Face in Rhetorical School Texts of the Central Middle Ages”

Monika Otter, Dartmouth College

 “Swiðe swete to belcettan: Affective Eruptions in the Old English Boethius”

 Jennifer A. Lorden, University of California, Berkeley

“Medieval Stupor” 

Thomas Prendergast, College of Wooster 

Coffee Break, 5:00-5:15pm

Keynote Lecture: "Making Up People Between the Lines,", 5:15-7:00pm

Fiona Somerset, University of Connecticut

Stephanie Trigg, University of Melbourne, introduction

Dinner at Faculty House, 7:00-9:00pm 

RSVP's required by September 19^th

 _______________

FRIDAY, September 30^th.

 

Arrival, 8:15-8:45am

 Welcome, 8:45-9:00am

 

Session #2: Empathy and Compassion, 9:00-10:30am

Irina Dumitrescu, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, moderator

 

“Car je n’ay plus sens ne memoire: Feeling Other People’s Demons in Medieval French Theater” 

Andreea Marculescu, University of California, Irvine

“Emotional Contagion in the Middle Ages” 

Beatrice Delaurenti, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale 

 

“Griselda’s Swoon: Historicizing Medieval Affect Alongside Emotion” 

Glenn Burger, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center 

 

Coffee Break, 10:30-10:45am

 

Session #3: Images and Objects, 10:45am-12:15pm

Lauren Mancia, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, moderator

 

“Performing Emotion in the Sculpted Deposition” 

Julia Perratore, Montclair State University 

“Tears for Abraham? The Sacrifice of Isaac in Anglo-Saxon Imagination” 

Shu-han Luo, Yale University

“Feeling in the Margins in Fifteenth-Century Prayer Books” 

Sara M. Weisweaver, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

 

Lunch, 12:15-1:30pm (please register if you would like to participate in lunch)

 

Session #4: Affections in Community, 1:30-3:00pm

Piroska Nagy, Université de Québec à Montréal, moderator

 

“Private Emotions and Public Display: Normative Court Community in Castile-Leon, c. 1250-1350”

Kim Bergqvist, Stockholm University

“Can Emotions Make Law?: Collective Trauma, Apostasy and Legal Responsiveness in Fifteenth Century Austrian Jewry”

Tamar Menashe, Columbia University

“Jealousy (ghayra) in Pre-Modern Islamic Constructions of Masculinity"

Marion H. Katz, New York University

 

Break, 3:00-3:15pm

 

Session #5: Affective Genres, 3:15-4:45pm

Stephanie Trigg, University of Melbourne, moderator

 

“The Abstemious Affect of the Couplet Genre in Early Modern South Asian Devotional Poetry”

Manpreet Kaur, Columbia University

 “Negative Interiority: Unruly Feelings in Premodern Korean Fiction”

Ksenia Chizhova, Princeton University 

 

“Moving the Soul: Exegesis and Medieval Psychology in Simone Fidati's De Gestis Domini Salvatoris"

Xavier Biron-Ouellet, Université de Québec à Montréal

Closing Discussion, 4:45-5:30pm

Poster and Registration procedure are here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/ccf32c21-ddf8-4e13-b2e2-6ec555aa329d

"Repudiated", "(Hi)Stories", Iberia should be considered in the broadest reasonable terms (and I have an expansive view of "reasonable").

While the description of the panel includes some ideas that might merit consideration, I offer these in addition, to perhaps provoke possible comparative work:

• Alfonso X's repudiation(s) 
• his repudiation of Sancho IV 
• the greater repudiation in his subsequent offer of Castile to Philip III if his De la Cerda grandchildren did not survive to inherit
• repudiation of Alfonso X during the 13th-c. civil war waged by Sancho and other "rebellious" nobles
• the Partidas as repudiation of autochthonous legal traditions and legal culture
• the public repudiation of the Partidas along with their implementation in various ways
• our repudiation of this side of Alfonso X's behavior, very seldom brought forward in our discussions
• Repudiation of Iberian kings and dynasties by nobles, commoners, subgroups
• Repudiation of the French by the Castilians -- perhaps related to Alfonso X's attempted gift of the kingdom to them?  (Once upon a time when I was touring this and that historical monument in Spain, each and every "docent" at said monuments arrived at a point in their shtick when they said the equivalent of "...and everything was fine until the French came [meaning of course Napoleon's armies], at which point they stole what they could and defaced what they left behind..."
• Repudiation of the orthodox view of the effects of conversion, i.e. conversos as always already suspect of not really being converted
• Repudiation of their previous religion, their previous lives by those who convert from one to another religion 
• Repudiation of autochthonous poetic and intellectual traditions -- indeed, repudiation of autochthonous medieval liturgies, scripts, documentary practices

Herewith I reproduce, in finer fettle, the Call:

Repudiated (Hi)Stories

Both in the Middle Ages and now, many narrative and historiographical texts of medieval Iberia are slandered and deprecated, with sides taken on whose story to accept. 

Texts and other forms of cultural production were and are denounced for their faithlessness to facts, tendencies toward mere propaganda, irritating anachronisms, poor technique, lousy characters, general dullness, desecration, or obscenity -- indeed, one might begin to fear that they outnumber the pure, the admirable, the artful, the inspiring, the chaste.  

Too, stories that began as acceptable and orthodox in the fifteenth century wound up surprisingly often on the Index librorum prohibitorum, an extraordinarily effective repudiation. 

For another example, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, considered one of the earliest "real," "modern" historians of fifteenth-century Castile, considered the Crónica Sarracina to be a farrago of historiographical bad behavior.  

In our own day, many modern publications and translations of medieval works are accompanied by introductions in which the editors comment that their work creating the edition has made an authentic but mediocre-to-execrable medieval or early modern text accessible to modern readers for purely academic reasons. 

This panel seeks papers examining such repudiated (hi)stories from medieval Iberia and medieval Iberians from any perspective: language, ethnicity, religion, philosophy, literary features, etc.

Please submit a one-page abstract and the Participant Information Form.https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

Submissions by Sept 15 to Linde Brocato, linde (.) brocato AT gmail.com.

 THE 'ZOO

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES

Western Michigan University

Kalamazoo, Michigan

11-14 May 2017