London a thousand years ago: a lively port, the centre of trade, cross-roads for armies going north and south, seat of political government and dispute, all against the backdrop of a war between Kings Æthelred II and Cnut with its culmination in the Siege of 1016.

Come and join us for a conference on this! Æthelred II and Cnut the Great: Millennial Conference to Commemorate the Siege of London in 1016 will be held Wednesday 6 through Saturday 9 July this summer, in UCL for the first three days and in the University of Winchester for the Saturday: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cnut-conference.

Here and also attached is our provisional programme, which aims to encompass Anglo-Saxon history and literature, the archaeology of England, London and Denmark during this period, as well as the history and literature of eastern Scandinavia and the Baltic.  There will be other Cnutonica for this year (‘The Viking World 2016: Diversity and Change’ in Nottingham, 27 June – 2 July; ‘Conquest 1016, 1066’, in Oxford, 20-23 July) but none other in the city where the war came to an end. Our conference on Kings Æthelred and Cnut will begin with a welcome on the morning of Wednesday 6 July 2016. There will be four plenaries, by

1.      Prof Simon Keynes of the University of Cambridge on the final days of Æthelred;

2.      Prof Andrew Reynolds of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, on the archaeology of London relating to the Vikings and the siege of 1016;

3.      Prof Andy Orchard of the University of Oxford, on the contemporary Beowulf manuscript, BL MS Cotton Vitellius A.XV; and

 4.      Prof Roberta Frank of Yale, on Skaldic art at Cnut’s court;

The day excursion to Winchester, whose university is co-host with UCL with its own lectures and tours, is included in the price of the ticket (£80 standard; £60 for students). Attendance at the conference banquet, on Friday evening, is included within a separate package (£120 standard; £90 for students).

To register, please click on http://onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=123&catid=153&prodid=1331. Good hotels local to UCL and at a range of affordable prices are bookable through https://www.imperialhotels.co.uk/en/.

All the best

Richard North

Town Cryer's Report!

Lost Castles Found in Scotland -I guess when you have a lot, they're easier to lose....


A Piece on the Galloway Hoard (found in 2014)


A Piece on the Stewartry Hoard (well, more about the Mar. 24 TV show about the hoard, another from 2014)


Norwegian Crusaders


The First Muslims in England


An American look at amateur metal detectorists' finds in England


Joan of Arc's Ring


Paper Use in England 


Shakespeare Missing His Head!


The 500 Year Commemoration of Hieronymus Bosch is SOON


A 3-D Interactive Image of Richard III


Late Medieval and Renaissance Gold Rings Found in Pembrokeshire


The Weaver's House in Coventry to host "Open House" events


Three Medieval Carved Stones Stolen From Darlington


The History of Student Loans is Medieval


Some Medieval Laws Still in Force Mocked--watch how you touch your salmon!


BIG NEWS!  Another Viking Outpost in North America Discovered!!


Rare Medieval Tile Floor on Display

Northern Early Medieval Interdisciplinary Conference Series (N/EMICS) is delighted to announce open registration for its conference, ‘Interrogating the Germanic: A Category and its Use in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, to be held on May 13th-15th.

The conference has an fantastic array of speakers, with keynote lectures from Prof. Michael Kulikowski of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. Philipp von Rummel of the German Archaeological Institute and we hope that you will join us in York for this exciting research event, which is generously funded by the University of York, the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures, and the Royal Historical Society.

The full programme may be found at https://northernemics.wordpress.com/interrogating-the-germanic-preliminary-conference-schedule/

Registration may be found at https://northernemics.wordpress.com/interrogating-the-germanic-registration/

Registration include tea and coffee, lunch on the saturday and sunday and wine receptions on the friday and saturday.

We look forward to seeing you in York.

Digital editions: representation, interoperability, text analysis and 
infrastructures

 Fifth AIUCD Annual Conference
 7-9 settembre 2016
 Aula Magna S. Trentin, Ca’ Dolfin, Dorsoduro 3825/e - 30123 Venezia

                       CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS

[Full announcement available on:
 http://www.aiucd2016.unive.it/ (work in progress)
 http://www.umanisticadigitale.it/edizioni-digitali-rappresentazione-interoperabilita-analisi-del-testo-e-infrastrutture-dedicate/]

The AIUCD 2016 conference is devoted to the representation and study of 
the text under different points of view (resources, analysis, 
infrastructures), in order to bring together philologists, historians, 
digital humanists, computational linguists, logicians, computer 
scientists and software engineers and discuss about the text.

It is time for research infrastructures to be able to guarantee 
interoperability and integration between the instruments for 
philological studies and the instruments for the analysis of large 
textual corpora, breaking down the rigid barriers between digital and 
computational philology on the one hand, and corpus linguistics on the 
other hand.

As a consequence, without ruling out other possible topics belonging to 
the Digital Humanities area, we solicit your contributions (talks and 
posters) on these topics:

_Representation and Interoperability_

  * Which digital representation models prove most effective for 
overcoming the dichotomy between diplomatic and critical editions?
  * How to integrate multimedia products (such as 2D images, 3D models, 
audio, video) in the digital edition?
  * How to apply the methods of digital philology to multimedia products 
(such as film quotations, restored versions, musical variations, etc.)?
  * How to build a constructive dialogue between traditional 
philologists and digital philologists?

_Text Analysis and Digital Objects Processing_

  * Which extensions are needed, in order to apply the methods of 
computational linguistics to the study of variants?
  * How to create linguistic and textual analysis chains starting from 
texts that present variants?
  * How can computational linguistic tools be used to bring out regions 
of interest in large amounts of text on which to focus the attention?
  * What is the state of art for the analysis of digital objects?
  * How to assess the quality of analyses produce by means of the 
crowdsourcing method?

_Infrastructures_

What can research infrastructures offer for the management of digital 
editions?
How to conduct a study of requirements for infrastructures so that they 
are increasingly accessible to both digital humanists and traditional 
philologists?
How can Digital humanities scholars be put in contact with the community 
of traditional scholars?

_Communities and Collaboration_

  * Which benefits do the interaction and the involvement of teachers, 
high school and university students in digital editions projects bring 
to research activities?
  * How can digital libraries collaborate to create, access, share and 
reuse digital resources?
  * How may teachers and students get interested in the dissemination of 
research results?
  * How do digital libraries contribute to the dissemination of research 
results?
  * How to prepare a shared syllabus, in order to train digital 
humanists to become aware of aware of the problems and potentialities of 
digital editions?
  * Which are the best practices to enroll a broader audience in the use 
of digital editions?

*Abstract submission*

The contributions (talks and posters), to be proposed in the form of an 
abstract of 1000 words maximum, in PDF format, must be loaded through 
the EasyChair Web site at this URL: 
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aiucd2016. Abstracts will be 
accepted in Italian or in English.

The deadline for submission of abstracts to the Programme Committee is 
scheduled for midnight on May 31, 2016. Information on the acceptance 
will be communicated to the authors by June 30, 2016.

*Abstract preparation and evaluation*

The abstract should describe the objectives of the contribution, a brief 
reference to the state of the art, the methodology adopted, and - if 
possible - the results achieved or expected. It should also contain a 
bibliography.

The call for papers welcome three types of contributions: (1) full 
paper, mainly to discuss innovative methodologies; (2) short paper, 
mainly to present accomplished research outputs; (3) poster, mainly to 
present early and innovative work in progress.

The conference proposals will be selected through peer-reviewing by at 
least two Italian and/or foreign scholars expert in the fields of 
(Digital) Humanities and/or Computer Science.

At the end of the evaluation process, the Scientific Committee may 
decide to move an accepted proposal to a different category.

*Instructions for talks*

Full papers will last 30 minutes (20-25 min + 5-10 min for questions). 
Short papers will last 20 minutes (15 min + 5 min for questions). The 
conference room is equipped with a computer, a projector, and internet 
connection.

*Instructions for posters*

Poster will be accepted in Italian or in English:

  * The best configuration of your poster is A1 vertical (841mm x 594mm).
  * Posters will be displayed in a dedicated space at the Conference 
venue. Display panels will be provided. Please bring your printed poster 
as we are unable to provide printing service.
  * Display panels for posters will be ready by Wednesday, 7th September 
2016 at 10:00 am and all posters should be put up before 2:00 pm.
  * Personal laptop computers may be used at the poster display area. 
Should your presentation include a laptop, please inform the organizing 
committee on acceptance of your proposal.
  * Specific sessions will be scheduled in the conference programme for 
authors to provide the audience with a quick intro (max 2 minutes) to 
their poster.

Further information will be progressively published on the conference 
site: http://www.aiucd2016.unive.it/.

R

-- 

Roberto Rosselli Del Turco   roberto.rossellidelturco at unito.it
Dipartimento di Studi        roberto.rossellidelturco at fileli.unipi.it
Umanistici                   Then spoke the thunder  DA
Universita' di Torino        Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)

Vernal Equinox News about Medievaly Things

And this week's news slurp:

A Piece on the Founding of Baghdad


Alaric the Goth, Sacker of Rome, died of Malaria?


The Viking Age Cross found in Denmark


Studies on the Bones of St. Erik


St. Nicholas Priory in Devon slated for some repairs


What Would St. Patrick Eat?---Probably not snakes....


Elfdalian to be sole language at a pre-school--we featured the Elfdalian language in the news last year


Exhibition on Late Antique Mediterranean Textiles


A Scam Involving Buying Manuscripts Uncovered


Mapping Paper in Medieval England


Interesting Bit on Medieval Times knights teaching Chivalry in response to Cyber Bullying


A Piece on Medieval Origins of Easter Eggs


St. Olaf Prof Interviewed for Tehran Newspaper on Influence of Muslim Thought on Medieval Philosophy--Since most of us don't subscribe to the Tehran Times


A Danish Viking Buckle likely British Isles in origin


Lost Runestone Recovered


Benin City, the medieval capital you've never heard of

Border States:
Marginalia in North American Manuscripts and Incunables

Call for Papers

for a Special Session
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
and Organized by Justin Hastings
(Department of English, Loyola University College, Chicago)

at the Conference of the Midwest Modern Language Association (M-MLA)
to be held 10-13 November 2016 at St. Louis, Missouri

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, in keeping with the M-MLA conference’s theme of “Border States,” is sponsoring a panel on the marginalia present in manuscripts and incunables currently housed within libraries and collections within North America.

The session invites all approaches, including textual, art historical, codicological, and paleographical.

Interested panelists should send brief abstracts of no more than 300 words to jhastings@luc.edu by 5 April 2016.

Justin Hastings for
The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Department of English
Loyola University Chicago
1032 W Sheridan Road
Chicago, Illinois 60626

 

Details here:

http://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/marginalia-in-manuscripts-and-incunables-in-north-america/ .

 

The Tenth International Conference on Middle English (ICOME 10) will be hosted by the Department of Cultural Studies and Languages at the University of Stavanger (Norway), 31 May – 2 June 2017.

ICOME 10 continues the series of ICOME conferences held at Rydzyna (1994), Helsinki (1997), Dublin (1999), Vienna (2002), Naples (2005), Cambridge (2008), Lviv (2011), Murcia (2013) and Wroclaw (2015). It will cover different aspects of Middle English language and texts, including papers on historical linguistic, philological-textual and literary topics.

The following plenary speakers have kindly confirmed their participation:

Richard Dance (University of Cambridge, UK)

Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto, Canada)

Gabriella Mazzon (University of Innsbruck, Austria)

Matti Peikola (University of Turku, Finland)

Participants are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute presentations (followed by 10 minute discussion) on any aspect touching on the areas of interest of  ICOME: Middle English language, linguistic variation, textual studies, manuscript studies and literature. Abstracts (between 250 and 500 words excluding references), should be submitted by 1 November 2016.  

Please send your abstract by email to icome10@uis.no as a .docx, .rtf or .odt file. If at all possible, please include a .pdf copy as well. Notification of acceptance will be sent out in January 2017 and registration will open in February.

There will be a pre-conference workshop organized by the Stavanger team, presenting the Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD). The conference itself will include a workshop on Middle English administrative texts. If you would like your paper to be considered for the workshop, please indicate this in the abstract. 

Proposals for other workshops are welcome and should reach us by 1 August 2016.

We look forward to seeing you in Stavanger!

Merja Stenroos (for the organizing committee)

Organizing committee:

Geir Bergstrøm

Anastasia Khanukaeva

Martti Mäkinen

Delia Schipor

Jeremy J. Smith

Merja Stenroos

Kjetil V. Thengs

Programme committee:

Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre (University of Murcia)

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (University of Notre Dame)

Tim Machan (University of Notre Dame)

Donka Minkova (UCLA)

Joanna Nykiel (University of Silesia)

Janne Skaffari (University of Turku)

Irma Taavitsainen (University of Helsinki)

Jacob Thaisen (University of Oslo)

Laura Wright (University of Cambridge)