CFP: A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies
Special Sessions at the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies
10-13 May 2018
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI

A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies I: Interdisciplinary/Extramural

This session seeks papers focused on ways that a Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon studies can resonate inside and outside the university. Ideally, papers will combine traditional academic analysis of Anglo-Saxon artifact(s) (text, object, etc.) with reflection on ways that feminist analysis can or should function outside of traditional academia. We anticipate that some presenters will also grapple with the definition of the term “feminist” in 2017/2018, both in and out of the field.


A Feminist Renaissance in Anglo-Saxon Studies II:
Projects in Process (a roundtable)

Rather than the more usual roundtable of 6-8 short presentations, this roundtable seeks 5-6 scholars to describe feminist works-in-progress in the context of 2-3 specific questions about the state of the field and its future. Each panelist will take no more than 7 minutes, leaving time for substantial conversation after the initial, brief remarks. We plan to share these questions (over social media, listservs, etc.) before the Congress in order to give potential audience members and the presenters time to reflect on these issues and lay the groundwork for fruitful, substantive discussion that includes audience members as well as panelists. These questions could include: How does your current feminist project fit into your teaching? How does your current feminist project address the ongoing “crisis in the humanities”? How do you engage your non-medievalist colleagues in your feminist project? How do you convince your department head/dean/provost that your feminist project is worthwhile and thus worthy of institutional support? With input from digital communities, the organizers will finalize these centering questions in January of 2018.

Submit abstracts as PDF attachments to:
Mary Dockray-Miller
Humanities Dept.
Lesley University
mdockray@lesley.edumdockray@lesley.edu
>

Review of abstracts will be ongoing until the Congress deadline of 15 September 2017.

https://mdockraymiller.hcommons.org/2017/07/14/cfp-a-feminist-renaissance-in-anglo-saxon-studies/

On 17 November, 2017, a symposium will be held at Leiden University, entitled ‘Scholarly Correspondence on Medieval Germanic Language and Literature’. The symposium aims to bring together scholars who are working with the correspondence of prominent scholars of medieval Germanic language and literature before 1945.

 

Possible topics/themes include but are not limited to:

 

• Editing scholarly correspondence
• The role of scholarly correspondence in the study of the development of the academic study of (specific) medieval Germanic languages and literatures
• Scholarly correspondence in relation to:

• academic publications
• scholarly collaboration
• academic careers
• the personal life of scholars
• gossip and conflicts
• academic integrity
• archives

 

Subsequent to the symposium, we aim to publish the contributions as a special issue of the peer-reviewed journalAmsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (published by Brill), with the goal of furthering interest in the topic.

 

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to Thijs Porck (Leiden University; m.h.porck@hum.leidenuniv.nl) by 31 August, 2017. The language of presentation at the symposium is English.

Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages

 

38th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, New York City, March 17-18, 2018.  Abstracts due Sept. 15, 2017

 

Dress was a primary expression of identity in the Middle Ages, when individuals made strategic choices about clothing and bodily adornment (including hairstyle, jewelry, and other accessories) in order to communicate gender, ethnicity, status, occupation, and other personal and group identities. Because outward appearances were often interpreted as a reliable reflection of inner selves, medieval dress, in its material embodiment as well as in literary and artistic representations, carried extraordinary moral and social meaning, as well as offering seductive possibilities for self-presentation.

 

This conference aims to bring together recent research on the material culture and social meanings of dress in the Middle Ages to explore the following or related issues:

 

·       The implications of being able to study medieval dress only in representation

·       The strategies that were served by dress, either embodied or in representation

·       The effects of cultural economic factors, such as cross-cultural contact and trade, commerce, and/or technology on dress and its uses

·       The development of the so-called ‘Western fashion system’ and the cultural changes which it inspired or reflected
 

Please submit an abstract and cover letter with contact information by September 15, 2017 to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405B, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu, or by fax to 718-817-3987

 

Saturday March 17 –Sunday March 18, 2018
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
113 W. 60th St., New York, NY 10023

Institute of Classical Studies
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Friday July 7, 2017 at 16:30 in room 234

*Collation Visualization*
*Helping Users to Explore Collated Manuscripts*

Elisa Nury (King’s College London)

The comparison of manuscripts and recording of variant readings is an essential, but challenging task towards the preparation of a scholarly edition. A large amount of detailed data is collected during collation, and needs to be analysed and visualized. In the recent years, the use of digital format has been increasingly incorporated within the collation workflow: from writing down variants in Word or Excel documents to adopting complex automated collation tools such as CollateX. This presentation will focus on a method to help scholars and readers visualize collation results of a Latin text in a digital format.

Seminar will be livecast at: https://youtu.be/1YB_mFJ9SlQ

Full abstract: http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2017-06en.html

ALL WELCOME

We are now finalising details of a conference on vernacular languages in eastern and western Europe in the ninth century: if you would like to take part, please send abstracts by Monday 17^th July.

Helen Gittos

Vernacular languages in the long ninth century

The long ninth century was a period of great importance for the history of vernacular languages in Europe in both Eastern and Western Christendom. Some of those languages appeared for the first time in written form  and others changed considerably in that period. The examples are numerous and include:

·       Slavonic, with Methodius’ mission to Great Moravia, the creation of two alphabets, and Clement of Ohrid’s career in Bulgaria;

·       Romance (or Old French), with Nithard’s rendering of the “Oaths of Strasburg”;

·       Old English, with the translations ascribed to King Alfred, and also religious poems such as those of Cynewulf;

·       Old Saxon, with the biblical paraphrase known as the Heliand;

·       Classical Old Georgian, the earliest fully-fledged literary language to appear in Georgia;

·       Old and Middle Irish, the transformation happening towards the end of that period, along with the appearance of inscriptions in ogam on materials other than stone;

·       Old Norse, as runic inscriptions survive in many more numbers from the the early Viking Age on.

The coincidence is even more striking when we realise that this phenomenon appears not to have been confined to Christendom; in the ninth century, many classical Greek works began to be translated into Arabic at Baghdad’s “House of Wisdom”.

In 2018, we will hold two conferences to focus on this, in Canterbury and Boulogne, and we invite proposals for papers. We would be interested in ones that address any aspect of the topic, especially these questions:

1.     To what extent were these phenomena connected? The prose preface to “Alfred’s” translation of Gregory the Great’s Cura pastoralis, explains that Scriptures were first written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek and Latin, and that “similarly all the other Christian peoples turned some part of them into their own language”. Did the author know about previous Armenian or Slavonic versions of Biblical texts? We know that vernacular languages sometimes appear together, for example, one of the earliest literary texts in Old French, theSequence of Saint Eulalia, is in the same manuscript, on the same page (Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, 150, f. 141v) and in the same hand, as the Old High German heroic poem Ludwigslied. How many other examples are there of such interconnections?

2.     Why was all this happening in the long ninth century? Why was it then that there was so much confidence about writing in the vernacular? We would be especially interested in papers on the specific historical contexts in which these changes happened.

3.     To what extent was this primarily a religious phenomenon restricted to literary forms and high status media? We would also be interested in examples that are more ephemeral, oral or domestic such as inscriptions on personal objects or sermons for oral delivery.

The two conferences will be held at the:

-          University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, on Saturday, 30th June 2018

-          Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, on Friday, 12th October 2018

Proposals may be sent to Alban Gautier (alban.gautier@univ-littoral.fr) and Helen Gittos (H.B.Gittos@kent.ac.uk) before 17 JULY 2017, with a title and a short summary in English. At the conferences, papers may be delivered in English, French, German or Italian, but we will ask all speakers to provide a longer English abstract.

CFP: Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages

by Maryanne Kowaleski

Your network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.

Type: 

Call for Papers

Date: 

September 15, 2017

Location: 

New York, United States

Subject Fields: 

Medieval and Byzantine History / Studies, Women's & Gender History / Studies, European History / Studies, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Archaeology

Dress was a primary expression of identity in the European middle ages, when individuals made strategic choices about clothing and bodily adornment (including hairstyle, jewelry, and other accessories) in order to communicate gender, ethnicity, status, occupation, and other personal and group identities. Because outward appearances were often interpreted as a reliable reflection of inner selves, medieval dress, in its material embodiment as well as in literary and artistic representations, carried extraordinary moral and social meaning, as well as offering seductive possibilities for self-presentation.
This conference aims to bring together recent research on the material culture and social meanings of dress in the Middle Ages to explore the following or related issues:

• The implications of being able to study medieval dress only in representation
• The strategies that were served by dress, either embodied or in representation
• The effects of cultural economic factors, such as cross-cultural contact and trade, commerce, and/or technology on dress and its uses
• The development of the so-called ‘Western fashion system’ and the cultural changes which it inspired or reflected
   

CFP Submission: Please submit an abstract and cover letter with contact information by September 15, 2017 to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405B, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu, or by fax to 718-817-3987
Conference Dates: Saturday March 17 –Sunday March 18, 2018
Conference Location: Lincoln Center Campus, Fordham University, 113 W. 60th St., New York, NY 10023

Contact Info: 

Conference Committee, Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458. phone: (718) 817-4655. Fax: (718)-817-3987

Contact Email: 

medievals@fordham.edu

URL: 

https://www.fordham.edu/info/26756/inside_out_dress_and_identity_in_the_middle_ages

CFP: Sexy Beast: Amorous Monsters, Incest, and Bestiality in Medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian Literature

by David Pecan

Your network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.

Type: 

Call for Papers

Date: 

April 12, 2018 to April 15, 2018

Location: 

Pennsylvania, United States

Subject Fields: 

British History / Studies, Literature, Sexuality Studies

A Call for Papers for the 49^th NeMLA Annual Conference, April 12^th-15^th, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA.
Sexy Beast: Amorous Monsters, Incest, and Bestiality in Medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian Literature
The realistic and fantastic narratives of the early medieval world contain no shortage of encounters that stretch, challenge, and break accepted social guidelines.  The theoretical analysis of non-traditional modes of desire, other-worldly wish fulfilment, and human-animal relations in the literatures of medieval Northern Europe offers opportunities for the provocative consideration of mythopoetic ritual, social syncretism, source study, literary innovation, authorial or cultural fetish, and the iconography or design features of the material culture of early Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, and Scandinavia.  Eco-criticism, psychoanalytic and gender theory, and linguistic and cultural poetics provide a lens for the discussion of sexualized monster combat, romantic encounters with otherworldly or mythic entities, cross-species or magical seduction, angelic ravishments, the sexualized negotiation of clan or family structure, and the totemic representation of monstrous or animalistic couplings.  The deadline for abstract submission is September 30th, 2017.  Please submit 200 to 400 word abstracts to this panel via the official NeMLA website and follow the instructions posted there.  https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/cfp  This panel is hosted by Professor David Pecan, SUNY Nassau.

Contact Info: 

This panel is hosted by Professor David Pecan, SUNY Nassau.  It is requested that all abstract submissions be sent through the NeMLA website at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/cfp

Contact Email: 

david.pecan@ncc.edu