Journal of Northwestern Medieval Europe (JEMNE): July 2017

Monday, July 31, 2017

CFP: Medieval Eurabia: Religious crosspollinations in Architecture, art and material culture during the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1600)

by NIKOLAOS VRYZIDIS

Medieval Eurabia: Religious crosspollinations in Architecture, art and material culture during the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1600)

2018 Annual Conference of the Association for Art History (U.K.),

Panel organised by Sami De Giosa, Oxford University and Nikolaos Vryzidis, British School at Athens
Email: aahchristianmuslimpanel2018@gmail.com

Venue: Courtauld Institute of Art & King’s College London
Date: 5 – 7 April 2018, London

The coexistence of Christianity and Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean led to a transfer of knowledge in architecture and material culture which went well beyond religious and geographical boundaries. The use of Islamic objects in Christian contexts, the conversion of churches into mosques and the mobility of craftsmen are manifestations of this process. Although studies beginning with Avinoam Shalem’s Islam Christianized (1996), have dealt extensively with Islamic influence in the West and European influence in the Islamic Mediterranean, sacred objects, and material culture more generally, have been relatively neglected. From crosses found in Mosques, to European-Christian coins with pseudo/-shahada inscriptions, medieval material culture is rife with visual evidence of the two faiths co-existing in both individual objects and monuments.
This panel invites papers from scholars working on intercultural exchange in art, architecture and material culture. We particularly welcome contributions that focus on sacred objects that have been diverted or ‘converted’ to a new purpose, whether inside or outside an explicitly religious context.
Papers should present original research, which expands the boundaries of knowledge and which the scholars would like to be considered for publication. Abstract should be no more than 250 words long.
Deadline: 1 November 2017
http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/events/annual-conference-2018/

Cultural Memory in Late Antiquity

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2-5 July 2018

Problems of cultural memory abound in late antiquity. Issues like the precise import of myths of origins for ‘barbarian’ groups, the memory of councils, fathers and holy men for confessional disputes, or classical culture in a Christian Empire, have provoked lively (and often controversial) debate. Indeed, the existence of late antiquity as a distinct period could be seen as rooted in a claim about cultural memory: the persistence of aspects of the cultural inheritance of the ancient world as a framework through which people understood their world into the later centuries of the first Millennium CE.

Piggybacking on the overall IMC 2018 theme of ‘Memory’, we invite submissions which offer critical perspectives on problems of cultural memory in late antiquity. Our aim is for these sessions to be as inclusive as possible, bringing together scholars working on a wide range of fields, periods and geographical areas in the study of late antiquity, and ensuring an appropriate gender balance across panels. We particularly invite submissions from scholars who have not previously—or do not usually—present at the Leeds IMC, to encourage new and fruitful intellectual exchanges between those who work on late antiquity/the early middle ages within different departments and disciplines. Possible themes might include:

· the reconstruction of Roman or ‘barbarian’ pasts

· institutional memory, whether at a macro-level (e.g. church, empire) or micro (e.g. monastic communities, schools, army units)

· the inculcation and invocation of collective memory for community building

· the contestation of the past and collective memory for political purposes (broadly construed)

· late ancient conceptions of memory (e.g. Augustine in Confessions), notions of time, and the creation of histories for humanity (e.g. universal histories, chronicles, engagements with biblical time).

· modern appropriation/re-use of late antiquity

If you are interested in presenting, e-mail a title along with an abstract of no more than 250 words to the organisers. The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2017. And if you have any questions, feel free to write to us.

Richard Flower (Exeter) (r.flower@exeter.ac.uk)

Adrastos Omissi (Glasgow) (Adrastos.Omissi@glasgow.ac.uk)

Robin Whelan (Oxford) (robin.whelan@history.ox.ac.uk)

————

Dr Robin Whelan

Balliol College, Oxford, OX1 3BJ

Departmental Lecturer in Early Medieval History

Balliol College and Brasenose College, Oxford

Stipendiary Lecturer in Medieval History

St Peter’s College, Oxford

CFP: Women on the Global Medieval Stage: Performers, Producers, and

Artists (A Roundtable)

International Congress, Kalamazoo

May 10-13, 2018

In the preface to The Theatre of Medieval Europe (1991), editor Eckehard

Simon remarks that, “by the thirteenth century, to be sure, liturgical

plays were sung by nuns in some convents and fifteenth-century civic

records occasionally mention women in minor parts. But from the

Winchester Easter play of c. 975 to Shakespeare and beyond, theatre was

the province of men.” (xiii)

Despite ever-increasing evidence to the contrary, this paradigm of the

“all-male” pre-modern stage lingers, coloring our reading of women’s

public performances more broadly. A flood of revisionist scholarship –

by Pamela Brown, Melinda Gough, Natasha Korda, Peter Parolin, Clare

McManus, Lucy Munro, and Virginia Scott, for example – has wiped out

this stereotype for the early modern era. Yet despite the work of

individuals such as James Stokes, a similar movement has yet to coalesce

among medieval scholars.

This session thus seeks to reflect on the medieval community’s response

to the problem of women and performance. From nuns to noblewomen to

ordinary laywomen, instances of women’s participation in drama and other

kinds of performance are dismissed as anomalies or even impossibilities.

How many examples must be documented before the “exceptions” are seen

as part of larger cultural trends? How might consideration of varied

kinds of performance practices help us to integrate female performers,

producers, and artists into the “master” narrative? Reassessing the

influence of these women is far more than a negligible historical

corrective; reclaiming their performances is a necessity if we are to

understand the social and cultural importance of the contributions of

women to medieval life.

This session will be a roundtable in which speakers briefly share their

own work before taking part in a general discussion. In addition to

reflections on the field, we invite investigations of women as “makers”

of performance: subjects might include Hrotsvit, Hildegard, troubadour

poets, liturgical celebrations, female actors, lay patrons, and drama of

all sorts. Scholarship from varied disciplines, methodologies, time

periods, and geographical regions is especially welcome, as we hope to

engender a broad and lively exchange of ideas.

Please submit a one-page abstract *and* a completed Participant

Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to

Susannah Crowder and Jesse Njus (scrowder@jjay.cuny.edu and

janjus1@gmail.com) no later than September 15, 2017. Feel free to

contact Susannah and Jesse with questions about the session; for general

information about the 2018 Medieval Congress, visit:

http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Anglo-Saxon Riddles
CFP, IMC Leeds 2-5 July 2018
Sponsored by The Riddle Ages: An Anglo-Saxon Riddle Blog

After three successful years, we are again seeking papers for sessions on the Old English and Anglo-Latin riddles that allowed writers to explore, order and problematize the early medieval world. These sessions will bring together papers engaging with a wide range of thematic interests and methodological frameworks, including but not limited to: diction, style, sources, solutions, theoretical approaches, and cultural studies. Papers that compare Anglo-Saxon riddles with works in other medieval languages are also welcome, as are papers on this year's conference theme, 'Memory'.

If you would like to be considered for these sessions, please email an abstract of no more than 300 words, as well as your affiliation and contact details, to Megan Cavell (mccavell@gmail.com) and Jennifer Neville (J.Neville@rhul.ac.uk) by 18 September 2017.

Medieval Waterways

CFP, ICMS Kalamazoo, 10-13 May 2018

The Medieval Association of the Pacific welcomes papers that explore the significance of medieval waterways from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Waterways were the mainstay of travel, communication, and commerce in the Middle Ages. Roots of medieval economies, landscape management, agricultural production, and settlement patterns can be traced to waterway use. Routes of migration, trade, pilgrimage, and conquest align with networks of navigable rivers, canals, and sea crossings. These culturally and geographically fluid landscapes also served as borders and conduits in religious and literary imaginaries. Papers that offer a global perspective or that explore the medieval Pacific are especially encouraged.

Please submit a 300-word abstract to Miranda Wilcox (miranda_wilcox@byu.edu) by 15 September 2017.

Miranda Wilcox

Associate Professor of English

Brigham Young University

4165 JFSB

Provo, Utah 84602

(801) 422-3339

Friday, July 21, 2017

We are seeking submissions for the following session at the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 10-13, 2018. These sessions are sponsored by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with the Centre for Medieval Literature at the University of Southern Denmark and the University of York.

Session #1. Boundaries of Negotiations in Later Medieval Europe: political, cultural, economic

Recent research has demonstrated an increased interest in the various forms of negotiating in the Middle Ages. In late medieval Europe, in particular, amid political, social and religious conflicts, to negotiate is a prominent practice at different levels of society. A whole set of vocabulary in vernacular languages is used, for instance, to describe occurrences of transactions, diplomatic talks, social or even religious claims. This session welcomes papers using any disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches that consider aspects of negotiating that may take place in, but not limited to, political, cultural, or economical contexts in later medieval Europe, including papers that consider the role of emotion in a negotiation. The aim of this session is to bring together scholars from different fields in order to examine aspects of intercommunication during that time period.

Session #2. Interpreting unfinished later medieval manuscripts: Interdisciplinary Approaches

In this session, we would like to address from an interdisciplinary standpoint questions regarding unfinished manuscripts in later medieval Europe. Were image programs planned and never finished? Was the text altered in a significant form? What can an informed understanding of the text/image relationship in a given case of an unfinished manuscript reveal? Are there extant sources of any unfinished manuscripts that might reveal how a later patron or artist/ script may envision adapting a work to suit his or her current needs? Why were specific manuscripts/versions of manuscripts never finished? This session will include visual elements such as images and marginalia, the physical layout of text and image, spaces for images that never got executed, and the codicological structure of the manuscripts themselves.

Abstracts for papers of 15-20 minutes or any questions should be sent to Anne-Hélène Miller (ahm@utk.edu). The deadline for submissions is September 15 2017. The submission guidelines and the required Participant Information Form are available at wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions.

The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

601 Greve Hall

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Phone: 865-974-1859

Fax: 865-974-3655

Mailing Address:

915 Volunteer Blvd.

Dunford Hall, Sixth Floor

Knoxville, TN 37996-4065

Thursday, July 20, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Manuscripts in the Curriculum": New Perspectives on Using Medieval Manuscripts in the Undergraduate Classroom from Special Collection Librarians, Faculty, and Booksellers (A Roundtable)

Integrating medieval manuscripts into an undergraduate curriculum changes the game. Students are transformed from passive learners to active scholars; observing objects and seeking to understand and interpret their context teaches critical thinking. Implementing programs to give students this opportunity requires the cooperation of special collection librarians and faculty, two disciplines that speak slightly different languages. Inspired by Les Enluminures's new program Manuscripts in the Curriculum, this session will also introduce a third perspective and explore the practical issues of how to build collections for teaching.

The session organizers wish to bring people together from these communities to share their experiences, to discuss successful results, to analyze problems, and to envision future directions. We invite papers that explore efforts to bring manuscripts into the classroom, and the challenges of implementing these programs at specific institutions from the perspectives of librarians, faculty, and booksellers. The session will be structured as a roundtable with a series of short ten- and fifteen-minute papers (the number and duration to be determined depending on response), with ample time for discussion.

Please send abstracts of no more than a page, along with a current CV and the Participation Information Form (available on the Medieval Congress Submissions page: http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to lauralight@lesenluminures.com by September 10, and sooner if possible.

Please feel free to circulate and post this CFP.

Emily Runde

Text Manuscripts Specialist

Les Enluminures

www.lesenluminures.com

www.textmanuscripts.com

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS: Celtic Studies at Kalamazoo, May 2018

On behalf of the Celtic Studies Association of North America, Professor Frederick Suppe is organizing two panels of papers for presentation at the annual International Medieval Studies Congress which will meet at Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA during May 10-13, 2018. The general topics for these two panels are:

"Interactions between Celtic and non-Celtic Societies: Juxtapositions, Connections, Confrontations, and Cross-Influences,"

"New Work by Young Celtic Studies Scholars."

Paper proposals are welcome which treat any topic relevant to Celtic Studies and which are based on any relevant academic discipline(s). Papers should be written for a presentation time of approximately 20 minutes. Presenters are required to be members of CSANA at the time of the Congress and to present their papers in person. (CSANA dues are very reasonable, especially for students.) A proposal should include both a succinct one-page summary of the topic and methodology of the paper and a "Participant Information Form," which can be accessed via the website of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University (the academic host for the Congress) at:

http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress . Paper proposals should be submitted to Professor Suppe before the deadline of Friday, September 15, 2017. They may be submitted as e-mail attachments to fsuppe@bsu.edu or by FAX to (765) 285-5612 or by regular mail to:

Professor Frederick Suppe

History Department

Ball State University

Muncie, IN 47306

USA.

Please circulate this Call for Papers to any scholars who may be potentially interested and feel free to post the CFP on other locations.

CFP: Venice, Materiality, and the Byzantine World

by Brad Hostetler

CFP: Venice, Materiality, and the Byzantine World

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Sponsored by the Research Group of Manuscript Evidence

http://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2018-international-congress-on-medieval-studies-call-for-papers/

Abstracts to: Linde M. Brocato, linde.brocato AT gmail.com

>>>DO NOT CLICK "REPLY" AS YOUR MESSAGE WILL GO TO THE ENTIRE LIST<<<

Alfonso X, “the Wise,” of Castile was a polymath himself and sponsored many more across the various communities of Iberia. His court was the political center of Castile, at least until the rethinking of law and politics he promulgated in the Siete Partidascombined with his (invited) Ghibelline bid for the Holy Roman Emperorship to provoke a civil war in his realms, led by his second son Sancho IV. Iberia was also a crossroads of travelers – scholars, pilgrims, diplomats, merchants – from all over the world, with destinations like the courts of Castile and of the Crown of Aragon.

Among the vast corpus of works he either directly or indirectly composed, Alfonso X’s book on games and gaming, the Libros de ajedrez, dados y tablas (also known as the Libro de los juegos), likely finished in the early to mid-1280s at the end of his life, seems to have reflected these intellectual and political dynamics, and recorded many such travelers and dwellers of his court. In spite of a facsimile from the late 1980s, it has until recently garnered very little attention, particularly attention that considered it beyond the domains of chess and gaming, and art history.

With Sonja Musser Golladay’s 2007 dissertation and Olivia Remie Constable’s article of the same year, however, and more recent studies, analysis of the book and its context have begun to contribute to our understanding of many other aspects of the 13th century, due to its incredibly rich representation of layers of information, ranging from the portraits in its miniatures to the intertextual networks of translation in multiple domains.

In this era of “big data” and datamining, the Libro de los juegos offers a very interesting counter-case: one specific manuscript of only moderate length that provides insight into multiple domains. It is “small data,” but data so rich that it produces big results when placed in productive tension across domains and disciplines. It is a book that lends itself to interdisciplinary conversation, and to conversations that trace its contents and its effects over time, as part of a particular corpus and part of a concrete library.

The purpose of this session is to encourage a lively interdisciplinary discussion of its texts, images, and the physical book from a variety of domains, perspectives, and methods in order to address a broad array of questions both related to and beyond its explicit topic, games and aristocratic leisure, and, as such, invites participants from all quarters interested in cross-disciplinary analysis and discussion of the Libro de los juegos.

A pdf of the CFP is also available on my academia.edu page:

https://www.academia.edu/33912138/Alfonso_Xs_Libro_de_los_juegos_Big_Results_from_Small_Data

Monday, July 17, 2017

CFP: “From Intolerance to Inclusion: Intersections between Teaching and Research of Persecution in the Middle Ages” (May 2018)

The panel, “From Intolerance to Inclusion: Intersections between Teaching and Research of Persecution in the Middle Ages,” proposes to look at the ways research and teaching of intolerance and persecution of marginalized groups in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean can promote a more inclusive vision of the Middle Ages. In recent years, public perceptions of medieval societies as culturally and racially homogeneous—explicitly antithetical and hostile to modern concepts of diversity—have gained a particularly problematic currency among conservative and right-wing groups. Many a critic has noticed that this interpretation casts the Middle Ages, with a sense of wistful nostalgia, as “the good old days”: racially pure, sexually normative past dominated by universal Christianity and patriarchy. It is up to medievalists—as educators, as well as scholars—to dispel this dangerous misinterpretation of the Middle Ages among our students and the public.

This panel’s organizers would like to suggest that medievalists have championed, researched, and taught a more inclusive vision of the Middle Ages for decades, especially in works of scholarship and courses that deal—perhaps surprisingly—with intolerance and persecution during this period. Studies of and courses on medieval heresies and inquisition, interreligious violence, suppression of non-normative manifestations of gender and sexuality demonstrate, first and foremost, that the Middle Ages were racially, culturally, religiously, and sexually diverse. This panel will invite its participants to discuss their experience with both studying and teaching persecutions of marginalized groups in the Middle Ages and to share their approaches to teaching a more inclusive and multicultural vision of this period to their students and the general public.

Key questions include, but are not limited to the following:

- Strategies for promoting a balanced and inclusive understanding of the period in the classroom and beyond

- How discussion of persecuted minorities in the Middle Ages can be usefully placed in modern context; what is gained or lost in the process?

- How to emphasize medieval diversity in the classroom beyond mere “tokenism”

- What scholars of the Middle Ages can do to counteract the “alt-right’s” attempts to claim the period as ultra-conservative utopia

We hope that the panel will initiate conversations and stimulate future scholarship.

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, current CV, and the Participant Information Form (available on the Congress’ Submissions page, http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to esmelyan@uci.edu by September 10, or sooner if possible.

CFP: A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies

Special Sessions at the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies

10-13 May 2018

Western Michigan University

Kalamazoo, MI

A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies I: Interdisciplinary/Extramural

This session seeks papers focused on ways that a Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon studies can resonate inside and outside the university. Ideally, papers will combine traditional academic analysis of Anglo-Saxon artifact(s) (text, object, etc.) with reflection on ways that feminist analysis can or should function outside of traditional academia. We anticipate that some presenters will also grapple with the definition of the term “feminist” in 2017/2018, both in and out of the field.

A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies II:

Projects in Process (a roundtable)

Rather than the more usual roundtable of 6-8 short presentations, this roundtable seeks 5-6 scholars to describe feminist works-in-progress in the context of 2-3 specific questions about the state of the field and its future. Each panelist will take no more than 7 minutes, leaving time for substantial conversation after the initial, brief remarks. We plan to share these questions (over social media, listservs, etc.) before the Congress in order to give potential audience members and the presenters time to reflect on these issues and lay the groundwork for fruitful, substantive discussion that includes audience members as well as panelists. These questions could include: How does your current feminist project fit into your teaching? How does your current feminist project address the ongoing “crisis in the humanities”? How do you engage your non-medievalist colleagues in your feminist project? How do you convince your department head/dean/provost that your feminist project is worthwhile and thus worthy of institutional support? With input from digital communities, the organizers will finalize these centering questions in January of 2018.

Submit abstracts as PDF attachments to:

Mary Dockray-Miller

Humanities Dept.

Lesley University

mdockray@lesley.edu

Review of abstracts will be ongoing until the Congress deadline of 15 September 2017.

https://mdockraymiller.hcommons.org/2017/07/14/cfp-a-feminist-renaissance-in-anglo-saxon-studies/

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Monday, July 31, 2017

CFP: Medieval Eurabia: Religious crosspollinations in Architecture, art and material culture during the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1600)

Friday, July 28, 2017

Friday, July 21, 2017

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

CFP: Venice, Materiality, and the Byzantine World

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Monday, July 17, 2017

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