The Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture project (SOEALLC) is happy to announce two sponsored sessions at the ICMS at Kalamazoo in May ’23:

Session 1: Augustine in Pre-Conquest England (Session of Papers)

This session will focus on Augustine of Hippo’s influence on Old English and Anglo-Latin literary culture. To that end, we invite papers that consider what quotations, references, translations, and manuscript circulation can tell us about how and why Augustine was being read in early England. As Augustine’s corpus is so large and varied, possibilities for papers are many: proposers might consider the influence of Augustinian themes on Old English poetry or homilies, how Augustinian the Alfredian Soliloquies truly is, or what manuscript evidence can tell us about the specifics of early English interest in Augustine. We invite contributions from scholars of all methodological bents, and, while we are focused on Augustine’s presence in pre-Conquest England, we welcome papers that cast a wider chronological net as well.

 

Session 2: “Source Study and Material Culture” (Roundtable)

 

While source criticism is usually considered to be a textual enterprise, this session will gather several scholars together in a roundtable format to discuss the ways in which material culture (archaeology, visual art, manuscript studies, etc.) can inform the source critic’s work. Participants might reflect on the way in which art can be a “source” for literature and vice versa, the uses of material culture to help us interpret source relationships, or the ways in which source study in a manuscript culture always requires attention to the material. In putting on this roundtable, we hope for a rich session that puts different methods in dialogue with one another. Source criticism is our principle focus, but we invite paleographers, archaeologists, art historians, and others whose distinctive methods can challenge source critics to refine their own approach. While our principle focus is pre-Conquest England, we welcome papers that reach beyond those geographical and temporal boundaries to consider source relationships more broadly.

 

Both sessions are virtual, so please feel free to apply even if you aren’t planning to attend the conference in person. All submissions are due September 15th, through the Congress’s Confex system (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2023/cfp.cgi).

 

Curious about what SOEALLC is doing? Visit us at https://soeallc.hcommons.org/.

 

All best wishes,

 

Ben Weber

 

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Dr. Benjamin D. Weber

 

Assistant Professor of English

 

Wheaton College

 

309 Blanchard Hall

 

benjamin.weber@wheaton.edu