Call for Papers – Connecting Late Antiquities conference 

(Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, 03-05.02.2025) 

 

On behalf of Professors Julia Hillner (BCDSS) and Richard Flower (University of Exeter), we cordially invite colleagues to submit paper proposals for our conference on Connecting Late Antiquities, to be held at the University of Bonn, 3-5 February 2025. 

 

Connecting Late Antiquities, generously sponsored by Germany’s Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, is a collaborative project to create open, digital prosopographical resources for the Roman and post-Imperial territories between the third and seventh centuries. Its main aim is to digitise, unite, and link existing resources to make them more accessible and enhance their reach and utility. The enterprise will dramatically improve access to information about late-antique people for all scholars of this period and allow the easy integration of prosopographical material with online geographical, textual, epigraphic, and papyrological resources.  

 

Technological developments have provided new opportunities for prosopography, including allowing for both constant updating and an expansion beyond the traditional focus on the higher echelons of society. The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire and Prosopography of the Byzantine World projects provide excellent examples of the greater possibilities allowed by this approach. Connecting Late Antiquities will draw together material from a variety of major printed prosopographies and specialist digital databases, as well as incorporating entries for 'non-elite' individuals who are attested in ancient sources but have not been included in earlier publications. This approach will allow more extensive research into understudied figures and their social connections. 

 

We have a limited number of slots for papers of up to 20 minutes in length and therefore invite colleagues to submit abstracts of max. 300 words (plus a brief bio) on any aspect of Late Antique prosopography.  

 

We particularly welcome submissions suggesting new discoveries and approaches within the following themes: 

·       Prosopography and the rise of literature in Late Antique local languages, both western (e.g. Irish, Pictish, Welsh) and eastern (e.g. Armenian, Coptic, Syriac). 

·       Prosopography and the ‘usual suspects’ (aristocracies, rulers, office-holders, etc.). 

·       Prosopography and the ‘unusual suspects’ (e.g. anonymous individuals, marginalised individuals, religious minorities, non-privileged groups). 

·       Prosopography and gender.  

·       Prosopography and the challenges, limits, and opportunities of digital humanities.   

·       Methodological avenues to overcome traditional prosopographical segregations (e.g. clerical/secular, elite/lower-status, human/non-human). 

 

Confirmed roundtable participants and speakers include Yanne Broux,  Niels Gaul, Rodrigo Laham Cohen, Hartmut Leppin, Ralph Mathisen, Muriel Moser, Silvia Orlandi, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Claire Sotinel, Scott Vanderbilt, and Lieve Van Hoof.  

 

We are hoping to cover three nights of accommodation in Bonn, travel expenses, plus all lunches and one conference dinner.  

 

Please send your abstract plus bio to Jeroen Wijnendaele ( jwijnend@uni-bonn.de ) and Jessica van ’t Westeinde ( jwestend@uni-bonn.de ) no later than the 1st of May 2024.

With very best wishes,

Jeroen Wijnendaele & Jessica van ’t Westeinde

Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies

44^th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:

The Mystical, the Supernatural, and All Things Unexplained in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Keene State College

Keene, NH, USA

Friday and Saturday April 12-13, 2024

 

Call for Papers and Sessions

We are delighted to announce that the 44^th Medieval and Renaissance Forum will take place in person on Friday, April 12 and Saturday April 13, 2024 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. The theme of this year’s conference, the sixth and last dedicated to the senses, is The Mystical, the Supernatural, and All Things Unexplained in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As always, we also welcome papers on any and every topic related to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance as well as papers on medievalism. We plan to hold the 44^th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum in person with a limited number of virtual presentations.

 

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) from faculty, students, and independent scholars. If you are an undergraduate student, we ask that you obtain a faculty member's approval and sponsorship.

 

Graduate students are eligible for consideration for the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award upon submission of their essays by April 1, 2024. The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will win $100 to be used for registration and/or travel expenses to the 45^th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (travel expenses including but not limited to transportation to and from the conference and accommodations while in Keene). The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will be announced at lunch on Friday, April 12, 2024.

 

Please submit abstracts and full contact information on the google form available here

This year’s keynote speaker is Nahir Otaño Gracia, Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Mexico, who will speak about "Whiteness, Borders, and the Otherworld: Yvain in the Global North Atlantic." 

Dr. Otaño Gracia has published a number of articles on literature from the Global North Atlantic, including “Towards a Decentered Global North Atlantic," the winner of the MLA's article prize in critical race studies (Literature Compass 2019), “Gawain, Race, and the Borders in The Turke and Sir Gawain" (Exemplaria 2022), “Presenting Kin(g)ship in Medieval Irish Literature” (Enarratio 2018), and “Vikings of the Round Table” (Comitatus 2016). Her co-edited volume of essays, Women’s Lives: Self-Representation, Reception, and Appropriation in the Middle Ages, was published in 2023, and she is currently working on her monograph, The Other Faces of Arthur: Medieval Arthurian Texts from the Global North Atlantic.

Dr. Otaño Gracia is also an activist medievalist working to create a more inclusive medieval studies. The article “Constructing Prejudice in the Middle Ages and the Repercussions of Racism Today,” co-written with Daniel Armenti, appeared in Medieval Feminist Forum’s special issue on Microaggressions, Harassment, and Abuse—Medieval and Modern, and her essays “On hidden scars and the passive voice" (Ecocide), “Lost in Our Field” and “Welcome to a New Reality! Reflections on the Medieval Academy of America’s Panel” discuss the ways that medieval studies has begun to diversify the field and the ways it has fallen short. Dr. Otaño Gracia also helped create the Medieval Academy of America’s Belle Da Costa Greene award to be given annually to a medievalist of color for their research.

Abstract deadline: FEBRUARY 1, 2024

 

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2024

 

As always, we look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene in April!