Manuscripts in the Age of Print” for the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Ben Albritton of Stanford University Libraries and I are organizing two sessions on “Manuscripts in the Age of Print” for the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies.

The preservation and sharing of cultural heritages in digital form has brought renewed interest in manuscript studies and we would like to encourage conversations around manuscripts in the age of print. Until recently manuscripts and printed books have been considered products of different eras. Consequently, manuscripts bound with printed material traditionally have been studied separately, even when they are part of a single codex. The same held for early digitization efforts of manuscripts. The first of the two sessions welcomes proposals that examine the decision-making processes involved in producing codices composed of handwritten and printed components. The second session welcomes proposals that discuss how printed books impacted the production of handwritten books both materially and in terms of content; i.e., the introduction of new features such as title pages or the use of printed books as exemplars.

The deadline for submissions of proposals is September 15, 2021. Proposals should be submitted through the ICMS website at this link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi. You will need to scroll down to the “Session Selection” section and click “Begin Submission” under “Manuscripts in the Age of Print I-II” in order to propose a paper for either of these sessions. I would like to remind you that you can only make one paper proposal for the ICMS and that the Congress will be held online between May 9 and May 14, 2022.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss your proposal or have problems with the submission system. We look forward to hearing from you.

Dr N. Kıvılcım Yavuz
Kenneth Spencer Research Library
University of Kansas
1450 Poplar Lane
Lawrence, KS 66045
+1-785-864-1472 | nky@ku.edu
nkyavuz.com | transtextual.net

Remider: CFP Conflict and Integration: Crossing Medieval Borders - International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 4-7 July 2022
by Elisa Ramazzina
Just a reminder as the deadline is approaching!!

Organisers: Dr Elisa Ramazzina (University of Oxford and Queen’s University Belfast); Professor Karen Pinto

Borders are difficult to define, yet they have tangible resonance at various levels. Their function is ambivalent as they allow both alienation and integration. In the Middle Ages the situation was even more intricate, so much so that there are scholars who even deny the existence of boundaries in this era. Nevertheless, the role of borders in shaping particular critical events, such as political-religious conflict, the development of national kingship and the spreading of disease, is undeniable. It is also evident how these events have, in turn shaped or modified such borders.

This Call Papers aims at putting together a series of interdisciplinary sessions that will examine the ambivalent function of borders, how they worked, what they implied, how they were created, (trans)formed and moved. The sessions will foster a cross-disciplinary approach and will follow three interconnected main thematic strands examining different kinds of borders:<

Geographical borders which include concepts such as

insularity; periphery; regional networks; continents; regional boundaries; feudalism; the rising of national identities and national kingship; invasions; conflict and integration; development of social, ethnic and national identities; hybrid frontier cultures and languages; multilingualism and multiculturalism; the symbolic function of borders; moral, cultural and social barriers; etc

Permeable and moveable borders include travel, pilgrimage, migration; the function of small islands as borderlands with a pivotal role in migration, conquest and integration; the role of geographic, socio-political and cultural borders in the spreading of epidemics.

Intellectual borders include the social significance of knowledge (literary, scientific, medical, etc) as an element of cross-border integration and as a way to understand cross-cultural and trans-border relations, as well as the role of borders in its circulation; textual transmission and manuscript circulation; how borders influence the production, distribution and use of knowledge, trans-border relations among monastic centres and scriptoria.

Topics of Interest include but are not limited to:

All the fields of Germanic Philology, including Old and Middle English, Old Norse, Icelandic, Lombard, Gothic, etc; Celtic Studies; Medieval Islamic Studies Geography and Cartography; History of Science and History of Medicine; Landscape Epidemiology; Sociology; Anthropology; Human Geography.

Please, send abstracts of 250-300 words to elisa.ramazzina@ell.ox.ac.uk by the 5th of September 2021.

Via Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture
The Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA, are pleased to invite abstracts for the next Studying East of Byzantium workshop: Studying East of Byzantium VIII: Material Culture.

The three-part workshop intends to bring together doctoral students studying the Christian East to reflect on how to study the material world of the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Marica Cassis, University of Calgary, and Kate Franklin, Birkbeck, University of London. The workshop will meet on November 19, 2021, February 18, 2022, and June 6–7, 2022, on Zoom. The timing of the workshop meetings will be determined when the participant list is finalized.

We invite doctoral students working in any discipline of East Christian studies to discuss the role of material culture—monuments, archaeological sites, artifacts, images—in their research and to consider questions such as how the tools of the study of material culture can assist in understanding the realities of the Christian East? What is the difference between material culture and art-historical and archaeological approaches? How does attention to the non-verbal world harmonize with or challenge historical narratives based on textual study?

Participation is limited to 10 students. The full workshop description is available on the East of Byzantium website (https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/). Those interested in attending should submit a C.V. and 200-word abstract through the East of Byzantium website no later than September 13, 2021.

For questions, please con

tact East of Byzantium organizers, Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art, Tufts University, and Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at contact@eastofbyzantium.org.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

pre-CFP: Moravian Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies by K. Patrick Fazioli Dear Medievalist and Early Modernist Colleagues:

After a pause for Covid-19 in 2020, the Fifteenth Moravian Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies will be held in person on Saturday December 4, 2021 on Moravian’s campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. We’d be delighted if you’d bring the conference to the attention of your students and colleagues and encourage students to present or attend presentations and performances at the conference. CFP flyers will be sent out soon as email attachments.

We sincerely welcome contributions from all departments in explorations of connections to the period between approx. 500 C.E. and 1800 C.E. In the past, we've had some great papers, panels, and poster presentations that began as coursework, in addition to engaging performances in music, drama, and dance. The conference generally draws over 200 people and typically features presentations and performances by 80 to 100 students from 30 schools or so. The typical presentation format consists of a 15-minute paper or a 45-minute group performance, but alternative formats would certainly be considered. Both registration and submission of proposals will open October 1 and will be handled via the conference website. The deadline for the submission of proposals is November 5.

For a look at past conferences, please visit our website at Conference website (which is currently being updated.) The day typically runs from about 9:00am-4:00pm, with concert and reception following. Registration and all activities (apart from lunch) are free for ALL registrants. This year, we are especially excited about a display of medieval manuscripts that is being organized in conjunction with the conference. This may be suitable for end-of-semester class activities for those planning to bring entire classes.

More data will be available in coming weeks. We are in the process of working out details of this year’s plenary and early music performance; please look out for updates on these, too. Bethlehem, in eastern Pennsylvania, is easily accessible from the Philadelphia area (about an hour and a half’s drive), the New York City area (about two hours’ drive), and other locations in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Since the last conference, Moravian College has become Moravian University.

We would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the conference. Please look out for the cfp and feel free to email questions to jrblack@moravian.edu or sandybardsley@moravian.edu.

All best wishes for the start of the new semester!

Cordially,
Sandy Bardsley, History Department
John Black, English Department
Moravian University
1200 Main Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018

Naples and Beyond: World-Wide Cultural Networks Sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 9 – 14, 2022

The city and the kingdom of Naples in the late medieval period have attracted much exciting scholarly attention in the last two decades. No longer swayed by Vasari’s bitter commentary on Naples, recent research has been applying new methods and new digital technology to understand the city and its environs. This double session on Naples seeks to build on this recent scholarship by considering Naples as a world city and center of cultural production whose art, artists, and architecture were not only distinct but also influential beyond the boundaries of the kingdom of Naples to the wider Mediterranean, Europe, and other continents between c.1250 and c.1435.

Session 1: Within Naples: The City and the Regno c. 1250-1435

The only monarchy in Italy, Naples had a unique position in contrast to the many city-states of northern Italy. A powerful fiefdom of the papacy with a firm military and political grip over the entire peninsula during the fourteenth century, how did that powerful position manifest itself in art, architecture, and material culture? If Naples should be considered not on the periphery of mainstream Italian art but a center of it, then what aspects allow us to consider it as such?

Please submit proposals that consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• ● Representations of kingship/queenship and themes of personal and dynastic glorification
• ● Patronage of religious orders
• ● Medieval topography of Naples, including digital mapping or reconstruction/ maps as palimpsests
• ● Local saints and pilgrimage; nuns, religious leaders/preachers in Angevin Naples Francesco Rosselli, Tavola Strozzi, 1472-1473, tempera on panel, 82 x 245 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale di San Martino
• ● Importation of artists (painters, architects)

Session 2: Beyond Naples: Angevin Naples and its Reach beyond the Regno c. 1250-1435

A port city, Naples was a complex site of artistic mobility and exchange during the medieval period. What impact did the art and artists of late medieval Naples have on the global stage? And equally, what impact did the wider connected world have on Naples?

Please submit proposals that consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• ● The movement of art, other objects of material culture, and artistic materials between Naples and the wider Mediterranean and beyond
• ● Trade, especially maritime trade, as a trigger of cultural and artistic innovation
• ● Royal, diplomatic, cultural, commercial, and artistic relationships between Naples and other Italian city states, the wider Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and Asia

Please submit abstracts no later than 15 September through the ICMS Confex site at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi. We will send out notifications in the latter half of September. Please direct all questions or concerns to janis.elliott@ttu.edu and dgallant@udel.edu.

Since the International Congress on Medieval Studies will be run virtually in 2022, the ICMA (via a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant) will cover the conference fees of those participating in the ICMA-sponsored session(s).

The ICMA Student Committee is also organizing a session on Naples, New Approaches to the Art and Architecture of Angevin and Aragonese Naples (1265-1458). To promote stronger networks between ICMA student and senior scholars, Janis Elliott and Denva Gallant will moderate the Student Committee session.

CALL FOR PAPERS 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (virtual congress) May 9-14, 2022, Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States Session Sponsored by the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (HSMS) Medieval Ibero-Romance Languages: Linguistic Approaches to Medieval Texts (session ID 2405) This session seeks to bring together advances to our knowledge of the medieval Romance languages of Iberia. It also seeks to shed light onto Ibero-medieval texts through the analysis of their language(s). Presentations may focus on intrinsic linguistic features found on medieval texts, or on extrinsic aspects (e.g. social, cultural, political, artistic, literary) that affected the use or development of any of the medieval languages of Iberia. Any approach dealing with the use, contact, variation or change in any of the Ibero-Romance languages is welcome. Please submit abstract/proposal and complete participant information through the Confex system (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi) by Sept. 15, 2021. This call for papers is also available on the Congress website (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call). Questions about this session can be sent to Pablo Pastrana-Pérez (pablo.pastrana@wmich.edu). Pablo