Tuesday, September 26, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS
Sixth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies
June 18-20, 2018
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis, Missouri

The Sixth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (June 18-20, 2018) is a convenient summer venue for scholars from around the world to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the Symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation into all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and early modern studies.

The plenary speakers for this year will be Geoffrey Parker of The Ohio State University, and Carole Hillenbrand of the University of St Andrews.

The Symposium is held annually on the beautiful midtown campus of Saint Louis University. On-campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments as well as a luxurious boutique hotel. Inexpensive meal plans are available, and there is also a wealth of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues within easy walking distance of campus.

While attending the Symposium participants are free to use the Vatican Film Library, the Rare Book and Manuscripts Collection, and the general collection at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library.

The 
Sixth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies invites proposals for papers, complete sessions, and roundtables. Any topics regarding the scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern world are welcome. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are scheduled for ninety minutes. Scholarly organizations are especially encouraged to sponsor proposals for complete sessions.

The deadline for all submissions is December 31. Decisions will be made in January and the final program will be published in February.

For more information or to submit your proposal online go to: 
http://smrs.slu.edu

Monday, September 25, 2017

"Interfaces" promotes connective and interdisciplinary views of the literatures of medieval Europe and explores their place and significance in a world of global literature.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

The Medieval Studies Institute of Indiana University invites proposals for its 30th Annual Medieval Studies Symposium, April 6-7, 2018, in Bloomington, Indiana

Iron maidens, the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch burnings: these images of violence, both fact and fiction, are profoundly connected to the Middle Ages. Yet if in many popular conceptions, the medieval world is associated with brutality and suffering, the period also offers unique formulations of mercy, compassion, and the power of resistance. In exploring both medieval violence or nonviolence, this symposium seeks to examine specific structures of power and brutality but also to complicate the narrative of the violent Middle Ages.
We invite papers on any medieval discipline or region that engage issues of medieval violence and nonviolence: What functions did violence serve in the Middle Ages? How might acts of physical and rhetorical violence against othered groups (gendered, religious, cultural, racial, nonhuman) reflect larger concerns or anxieties within medieval culture? Is there a medieval aesthetic of violence? How does medieval music, art, theology, and literature glorify or critique brutality and/or suffering? How do medieval texts understand the uses and effects of verbal violence? How might medieval violence operate in a metaphorical sense, as violence done to texts or to the material past? What does nonviolence look like in the Middle Ages? Given the functions and pervasiveness of violence, what are some ways in which it is resisted and negotiated? What alternatives do medieval people or institutions offer to violence? How might medieval understandings of mercy or love act as a counter to violence? We also encourage papers on modern representations of the Middle Ages that consider to what extent and to what ends these medievalisms employ violence and nonviolence.


Please submit 200 word abstracts or complete sessions proposals to IUMestSymposium@gmail.com bNovember 1st, 2017.

--
Meagan S. Allen
History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall 644

Religious Violence in Antiquity: https://arts.uottawa.ca/cla-srs/en/conferences/religious-violence-in-antiquity


Thursday, September 14, 2017

Dear Colleagues,

As the strand coordinator for all Music sessions and all Liturgy sessions at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, I’d like to draw your attention to the upcoming deadline for Session Proposals (Sept. 30, 2017).

This year marks the 25th Anniversary Congress, which will meet from 2-5 July 2018 at the University of Leeds. Paper and session proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome, but the conference is especially interested in boosting the number of music and liturgy sessions at the Congress.

This year’s conference theme is “Memory” and sessions and papers intersecting with memory are especially encouraged, but sessions and papers on any topic in Medieval music or liturgy are welcome.

More information and proposals may be submitted using this link:  https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2018_call.html

A few closing notes:

Though the deadline for individual papers has passed (Aug. 30), the Congress makes every effort to place individual papers that come in after the deadline. Individual papers may be submitted using the same link above.

For those of you wishing to attend Med-Ren Maynooth (5-8 July 2018),fortunately there is only one day overlap between the two conferences this summer and transportation between the two sites is not terribly complicated or costly.

Finally since this is the 25th Anniversary Congress, if anyone wishes to make a proposal for a musical performance at the Congress please be in touch with me directly at the email address below.

Best wishes,

Dan DiCenso
ddicenso -at- holycross.edu
Call for Papers, International Congress on Medieval Studies, 2018
Sessions: Bede and Material Culture (I and II)
Sponsored by: BedeNet.com
Organizers: S. Rowley, M. MacCarron, P. Hilliard

Fueled by recent discoveries and benefiting from over 70 years of
meticulous labor, the study of insular material culture has become
essential to any scholar seeking to understand the societies located in
early medieval Britain and Ireland.  The relationship between Bede, the
primary textual source, and that material record continues to be a source
of dialogue and debate.  While both the study of insular material culture
and the understanding of Bede have greatly developed over the past thirty
years, these new perspectives have not always been brought together.  It
seems fitting then to facilitate further dialogue and integration by
focusing our two sessions on Bede and material culture.

For these sessions the theme of Bede and material culture is broadly
understood and may include the impact of material culture on Bede and the
use of material culture for understanding the age of Bede.  Additionally,
papers are also welcome which place Bede himself in a thick context of
early anglo-saxon material cutlure and/or advance ways in which the study
of material culture helps us to read better Bede’s own scholarly writings.
 In short, these sessions are dedicated to explore what things have to
tell us about Bede and his world. Please contact Paul Hilliard at
philliard@usml.edu with questions and submissions.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies and the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University are pleased to announce the program for the 2017 meeting of ReLACS (Regional Late Antiquity Consortium Southeast), a regional workshop on Late Antiquity to be held October 19-20, 2017.

The workshop is free and open to all interested scholars.

Highlights of the program (https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/news/relacs2017.php) include:
Keynote Lecture—October 19: “The Archaeology of Early Christian Monasticism: Evidentiary Problems and Criteria,” Stephen J. Davis, Yale University

Professional Seminar—October 20: “Introduction to the Cairo Geniza,” Phillip I. Lieberman, Vanderbilt University

Works in Progress Workshop—October 20:
On Friday, the workshop will feature 6 presentations of work in progress by regional scholars of Late Antiquity.
“The Western Delta in Late Antiquity: Archaeology and History,” Ariel Lopez, Rhodes College
“The Flesh that Wasn’t: Ascetic Assemblages and the Becoming of Angels,” Katie Kleinkopf, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
“Using Digital Humanities to Solve Early Christian Mysteries: A Re-Examination of the ‘Ascension’ Panel on the Doors of Santa Sabina, Rome,” Lee M. Jefferson, Centre College
“Ravaging Warfare and Martial Rape from Late Antiquity to Modernity,” Kathy L. Gaca, Vanderbilt University
“Quoting in the Courtroom: Cyril’s Use of Philosophical Testimony in the Contra Julianum," Aaron P. Johnson, Lee University
“Peter Beyond Rome: Achilleus of Spoleto, Neon of Ravenna, and the Epigramma Longum,” Dennis Trout, University of Missouri
A full program and registration information can be found at: https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/news/relacs2017.php 
The Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages is requesting submission for three sessions at Kalamazoo, in May 2018.
Please contact Dr. James Matenaer ( jmatenaer@franciscan.edu ) to submit proposals and abstracts, by September 15.
 
The Psalms. The SSBMA has traditionally sponsored a session dedicated to discussing the interpretation of a particular book, or books, of the Bible. This session invites papers on current research being done on the interpretation and uses of the Psalms in medieval Europe. The Book of the Psalms was integral to the Christian devotion of medieval Europe as witnessed by its liturgical function in the saying of the divine office and its popularity among scripture commentators at medieval universities. This session is of interest to at least one member of the society, who has already communicated his interest in presenting his research as part of the session.
 
Illuminating Jesus (A Roundtable). The SSBMA would like to sponsor a roundtable discussion on the theme of "Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages." Jesus is a central, influential figure in the medieval period who is of intellectual, interdisciplinary interest to many medievalists. The critical impact of recent books by Mary Dzon and Sarah McNamer demonstrates this. Several of our members are doing new work on the reception history of Jesus in the Middle Ages, including our intended presider, Jane Beal, who is editing a volume for Brill on this subject, and one of our planned presenters, Sara Andyshak, who is completing a dissertation on illuminations of Jesus in the French/Spanish Bible moraliseé tradition. This session will provide networking and discussion opportunities for SSBMA members as well as other scholars interested in this theme. It also will serve as a bridge into a conference being planned by Steven Partridge on the "life of Christ" at the University of British Columbia for 2019.
 
Presentations of the Bible in the Middle Ages. With this session the SSBMA hopes to stimulate thought and discussion on the various guises in which the text of the Bible was communicated in the Middle Ages. From early medieval pandects to multivolume Bibles, both in Latin and the vernacular, and even to the imagery that has sometimes been referred to as “the people’s Bible,” biblical prose and poetry permeated the culture of Western Europe in the Middle Ages in a myriad of different forms and countless vehicles. This session is of interest to a number of our members, one of whom has already communicated his desire to present on the topic.
 
 
Frans van Liere

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Final Call for these two sessions!  (and with apologies for cross-posting)

We have not finalized the panels, so last-minute abstracts are still welcome! Thanks!

 ******
The Anglo-Saxon Hagiography Society (ASHS) is once again sponsoring two sessions at the Kalamazoo International Congress in 2018. The panels for these sessions have not been prearranged, and we are still actively accepting abstracts for both sessions! We are looking for submissions on these broad topics:

(1) Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives

(2) Gender in Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Prose Saints’ Lives

The ASHS sessions have by now become an established platform for sustained conversation about and exploration of anonymous hagiography, in both the vernacular and Latin, of Anglo-Saxon England. With last year’s congress, we have also begun a more focused conversation on aspects of gender specifically in anonymous prose saint’s lives and look forward to continuing that this year. We invite scholars at any stage in their career to share their work on anonymous hagiography.

Submit abstracts by September 15 to:
Robin Norris (RobinNorris AT cunet.carleton.ca)
and
Johanna Kramer (Kramerji AT missouri.edu)

Meanwhile, feel free to contact either of us with questions.

The co-organizers,
Robin Norris, Carleton University
and
Johanna Kramer, University of Missouri-Columbia
The Institute of English Studies is pleased to announce that applications are now open for our Palaeography Study Day, held Saturday 20 January 2018 at Senate House in Bloomsbury, central London.

Students can choose from one of the following courses:

Introduction to Latin Palaeography
Introduction to Early Modern English Palaeography
Introduction to Anglo-Saxon Palaeography
Introduction to Codicology

Visit https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/study-training/short-courses/palaeography-study-day for more details

Courses cost £100 (£80 students), including tea/coffee breaks and lunch.
Final call for papers
K'zoo 2018 -- Eustache Deschamps -- Deadline, Sept. 10, 2017

Eustache Deschamps -- Gourmet, Bailiff, Courtier, and Social Critic: 
A Fourteenth-Century Gentleman Looks at Life
Organizer:  Deborah Sinnreich-Levi (Stevens Institute of Technology)

The work of Eustache Deschamps (1340-1406) survives principally in one immense, complete manuscript (BNF ff 840).  Contained therein are some 1500 poems offering insights into the life the poet who served generations of nobility.  Although the poet fulfilled his societal obligations to his royal masters, his main delights stemmed from capturing in verse the foibles and fashions of those around him, great and small.  The food of Paris, Brie and Champagne was beyond reproach:  that of Germanic lands, beyond contempt; the manners of courtly diners, atrocious; people’s grimaces, amusing; and ladies’ under garments, torture devices.  His own appearance was such that he styled himself the King of the Ugly.  Diseases and their cures; the study of the seven liberal arts; the practical jokes of Oton de Grandson and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and Guillaume de Machaut; and the life styles and deaths of the rich and famous – all fascinated Deschamps, and all have been preserved in his poems.  His Livre de memoire does not survive, but hundreds of shorter poems attest the focus that Deschamps had on his contemporaries and the peculiarities of life at court in the fourteenth century.  The reigns of Charles V and Charles VI, the battle of Nicopolis, the Hundred Years’ War; outbreaks of the plague; the death of Bertrand du Guesclin – all these are chronicled by the poet alongside cheeses and wines; meals of fish and fowl; condiments and convicts; arms and armor; seduction and satiety; fevers and fat waistlines.

Papers on any aspect of Deschamps’ take on medieval life are welcome.

Feel free to post this CfP widely with my thanks.

Deborah


Prof. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi
Stevens Institute of Technology

Email:  dsinnrei@stevens.edu
Office Hrs:  T W TH 8-10 and by appt. in M327
Tel:  201.216.5403  Fax:  201.216.8245                                             
*http://www.stevens.edu/cal/faculty-profile?id=912  

Friday, September 8, 2017

The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee invites applications for its Lindsay Young Visiting Regional Faculty Fellowships. These non-service fellowships are intended to bring scholars from Tennessee and the neighboring region to UTK, where they can make use of research resources in late antique, medieval, and Renaissance fields to further their research agendas and take part in the intellectual life of the Institute.

The fellowship carries a stipend of $600/week, and also covers one-time round-trip travel costs to and from Knoxville.

Application deadlines:

  • September 15, 2017 (for fellowships held between December 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018)

  • March 15, 2018 (for fellowships held between June 1 and November 30, 2018)


For further details and information on how to apply, visit: http://marco.utk.edu/ly-visiting-fac-fellowship/



The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
601 Greve Hall
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Phone: 865-974-1859

Mailing Address:
Dunford Hall, Sixth Floor
Knoxville, TN 37996-4065

Facebook/Twitter: marcoinstitute
Join the Friends of Marco Listserv: http://eepurl.com/ck1L0z
Two sessions “Identifying Creative Impulses in Early Medieval Art and Culture” will convene at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 10-13, 2018) in Kalamazoo, MI.

Papers are solicited that encourage novel—even experimental—approaches, to the exploration and identification of various conceptions of early medieval, creative cultural activity.  

The first panel seeks to engage with the actual haptic and experiential practice of manufacturing, reading and studying the early medieval book.

The second panel focuses upon culturally apposite forms of interpretative and compositional fashioning that can be discerned in manuscripts belonging to the liberal arts traditions of the Early Middle Ages.

Abstracts and paper proposals of not more than 250 words can be submitted via email on or before Friday, September 15, 2017 to the session organizers: Lynley Anne Herbert (lherbert@thewalters.org) and Eric Ramírez-Weaver (emr6m@virginia.edu).

Please copy both co-organizers when submitting a proposal, posing a question, or requesting additional information via email.

Complete panel descriptions follow. We particularly encourage inventive strategies promising new approaches to the investigation of early medieval creativity.

Warm regards,
Lynley AH and Eric R-W


Identifying Creative Impulses in Early Medieval Art and Culture

Special Sessions organized by Eric Ramírez-Weaver (emr6m@virginia.edu) and Lynley Anne Herbert (lherbert@thewalters.org)

I. Creative Modes of Activating the Early Medieval Manuscript
The way a manuscript behaves when used “in the flesh,” so to speak, can at times reveal layers of creativity built into them, which must be actively experienced rather than passively seen. Often as modern scholars we work from digitized images of individual folios, or at best openings, and “page flipping” technologies (such as the Walters’s “Ex Libris” platform or the British Library’s “Turning the Pages” program) provide a false sense that we are experiencing the physical book. Evidence of the performative qualities of a manuscript can at times be rediscovered, not just in the sense of how a reader might perform the text written in the book, but how the user activated the book as an object during use.  Does an image show through a page and become part of the visual experience on the other side, and was there intentionality there? Do images interact across an opening? Does imagery function together from recto to verso? How is the artist creating an experience for the user, or conversely, how did the user alter the book to create a personal experience? This session seeks papers that explore creative approaches that open up new possibilities regarding how early medieval manuscripts functioned as objects.

II. Creative Strategies of Intellectual Engagement with Tradition and the Auctores
Recent scholarship (consider Benjamin Anderson, Lynda Coon, Paul Edward Dutton, Rosamond McKitterick, Lawrence Nees, Eric Ramírez-Weaver, and Immo Warntjes), has increasingly emphasized the creative strategies for intervention and manufacture of meaning that were acutely linked to early medieval eastern and western engagements with various aspects of the liberal art traditions. From star pictures to poetic acrostics, devotion to erudition and pious personal reform transformed the possibilities for innovation that proliferated during the Carolingian period. Interlocking networks of artists, chroniclers, historians, and poets communicated their translations, textual redactions, and visual records of classical tradition and contemporary study with one another, engaged in debate or collaboration, but advancing science. This session seeks papers willing to reconsider methodologically apposite ways to reinterpret the various brands of early medieval creativity manifest in texts pertaining (as broadly as possible) to the seven liberal arts, including texts of astronomical, computistical, rhetorical, geometric, arithmetic, musical, lyrical, philosophical, diagrammatic, or historical significance.


Explore Frankish Skies…
~~
A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts is available from Penn State University Press! http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07126-8.html
~~

Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Director of the Program in Medieval Studies
Director of the Undergraduate Program in Art History
Office Hours: Fridays, 9am-1pm
University of Virginia
McIntire Department of Art
Carl H. and Martha S. Lindner Center for Art History
303 Fayerweather Hall
P.O. BOX 400130
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4130
Apologies for cross-posting.
53rd International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI (May 10–13, 2018)
CALL FOR PAPERS: Mediterranean Materiality and Consumption
Session sponsored by the CU Mediterranean Studies Group/Mediterranean Seminar
This session addresses the study of materiality and consumption in the Medieval Mediterranean. What was the specific material culture of the medieval Mediterranean? What was consumed and by whom? Papers may focus on any related themes, for example, the relationship between material and immaterial, the fabrication of objects and texts and the perception of these works, the circulation of objects, and the networks that made that circulation possible. Papers that adopt a comparative perspective, including one which examines Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures and their interaction, or those that propose novel approaches and methodologies are particularly welcome.
Contact Nuria Silleras-Fernandez at silleras@colorado.edu for further information or to submit a proposal (300-word abstract, one-page CV, and media equipment request by 15 September 2017).
________________________________
Núria Silleras-Fernández, PhD
Associate Professor
Associate Chair for Graduate Studies
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Director of the Consortium for Doctoral Studies in Literature and Culture
University of Colorado at Boulder
278 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0278
USA
e-mail: silleras@colorado.edu
office phone: 303-492-5864
fax: 303-492-3699

In their 2011 volume in the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks Series, The Carolingian World, the authors raise the question of whether such a place or concept existed in eighth- and ninth-century Europe.[1] They conclude that indeed there was a “Carolingian World,” amorphous and difficult to define as it was, and that most scholars tie it to the political, religious, and cultural plans of the Carolingian elites, whose domains spanned most of western and central Europe from the mid-eighth until the end of the ninth century. Thus, the “Carolingian World” did not map onto any specific borders or boundaries so much as it reflected the influence and ambitions of its rulers and thinkers who imagined their unique place in history and the world. What is not clear, however, is the extent to which those living under Carolingian rule and influence experienced a “Carolingian World.” These sessions on “Living in the Carolingian World” invite papers to consider this fundamental question from a variety of perspectives, drawing inspiration both from Heinrich Fichtenau’s Living in the Tenth Century, which explored post-Carolingian Europe through the actions and points of view of those who lived in it, and from recent scholarly work that has expanded investigation of early medieval Europe in both methodological and conceptual terms. We welcome papers on topics that address this question, particularly proposals that focus on the daily lived experience of those who inhabited the Carolingian empire, whether male or female, free or unfree, young or old, plant or animal, but who were not part of the Reichsaristokratie. In short, these sessions will test the limits and usefulness of the “Carolingian World” as a framework for understanding life in eighth- and ninth-century Europe.

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words before 15 September 2017 to the session organizers, Valerie L. Garver and Noah Blan, at noahblan@umich.edu.


[1] Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 9-16.

Valerie L. Garver, PhD
Associate Professor and
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of History
Co-Coordinator, Medieval Studies
Northern Illinois University
Submissions Editor, Medieval Prosopography

The International Anchoritic Society is seeking proposals for our Kalamazoo 2018 sessions:
 
[Roundtable] New Directions in Anchoritic Studies: a roundtable providing overviews of new directions in the study of vocational withdrawal, with emphasis on Q&A. This is important to establish how the field has grown and changed.
 
[Panel] Ecocritical responses to anchoritism: this is a topic that has not yet been widely addressed in reclusive studies; however, since anchorites are fused with their cells, and the anchoritic life is dependent upon constructions of the desert, there are rich avenues of investigation available.
 
 
I will take abstracts until Monday, September 25. Please email them directly to me, along with your PIF.
 
Thank you!
 
 
-- 
Michelle M. Sauer, PhD
Professor of English & Gender Studies
University of North Dakota
Department of English; Stop 7209
276 Centennial Drive
Grand Forks, ND 58202