Call for Papers: **Gender and Medieval Studies Conference

Apologies for my tardiness, I've been swamped and so postings are behind and hopefully not too late. Much more to come:

*Call for Papers: **Gender and Medieval Studies Conference, Birmingham, 7-10
th January, 2010*

* *

The Annual Gender and Medieval Studies Conference will be hosted in January
2010, by the Centre for the Study of Middle Ages (CeSMA) at the University
of Birmingham. The programme organisers welcome c.250 word proposals for 20
minute papers on the following topic by *30th September, 2009*:

* *

*Gender and the Family*



Family is arguably the fundamental and universal unit of gendered
experience. Gender identities and embodied understandings of the world are
acquired through socialization into family configurations of
relatedness. This
conference will examine the functions and representations of the medieval
family in a range of contexts, addressing the ways in which the family could
be used to reinforce or challenge wider forms of association and provide a
rich metaphorical language for use in the articulation and legitimization of
wider social institutions and hierarchies. It will examine the ways in which
gender roles inform the definition of the medieval family and affect its
internal economy, emotional dynamics, and links to other institutions and
social networks.



We invite papers on a range of themes, which may cover: defining the family;
the changing meanings of relatedness within the family in the medieval
period, including motherhood, fatherhood, sisterhood, and brotherhood, and
the wider family; roles of family members – for example, in socializing the
young; the link between family and patriarchy, including the family’s uneven
distribution of gender roles and opportunities among sons and daughters;
images of the Holy Family and their implications for gendered behaviour in
medieval society; the queer family and the motherhood of Christ; royal
families and the interaction of gender and power; the monastic community as
family and the (cross-gendered) mapping of family roles onto ecclesiastical
ones; female saints and the dysfunctional family; biblical depictions of the
family and their interpretation by medieval cultures; the meanings of family
in minority medieval communities, including Jewish and Islamic society.



We hope to welcome scholars and perspectives from a range of disciplines,
including history, literature, art history and archaeology, and to promote a
productive and interdisciplinary discussion of this area. It is anticipated
that proceedings will be published after the conference.





Simon Yarrow and Philippa Semper

gender.family.2010@googlemail.com

CFP: Students Writing "Early English": Practice, Promise, Problems

CFP: Students Writing "Early English": Practice, Promise, Problems
45 th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan
May 13-16, 2010

A pedagogical technique sometimes practiced by college and university teachers of early English language or literature is to allow - or require - students to communicate in the early dialect, or at least as close an approximation as they can manage. Arguments in favor of this technique include greater enthusiasm by students, greater and longer responses on online classroom forums, and greater student insights about the texts. However, there is an argument against such assignments as well - principally, that speaking or writing responses in the studied language will result, perhaps unwittingly, in parody or bombast. This session will explore the options, problems, benefits of having students communicate in an approximation of early English.

This session is sponsored by the Chaucer MetaPage. Please submit a brief proposal by September 15 to:
Susan Yager
Associate Professor, English
Iowa State University
syager@iastate.edu

As of Aug. 28, sorry for the tardiness:

There is one slot left in the session on The Postcolonial Landscape
of Anglo-Saxon England sponsored by the Richard Rawlinson Centre for
Anglo-Saxon and Manuscript Studies. Papers on any aspect of the topic
(literary, historical, archaeological, art historical, etc.) are
welcome. Proposals should be sent asap to Catherine Karkov at
c.e.karkov@leeds.ac.uk
Catherine

Professor Catherine E. Karkov
School of Fine Art
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT

Crosscurrents and Connections: Ireland and the Atlantic World

Call for Papers for the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, May 2010

Session: Crosscurrents and Connections: Ireland and the Atlantic World

Ireland has often been seen as a land apart from the rest of Europe, perched on the edge of the far western Atlantic, isolated by the sea. However, a comparative approach is now being applied to understanding Ireland's place in Europe that emphasizes how ocean travel enables, rather than divides, connections between Ireland and the larger Atlantic world.

We seek papers that explore local culture and connections to wider northwestern Atlantic networks, from shared literary culture to trade networks and economic connections to religious interaction. We seek to have an interdisciplinary panel that reflects the connectivity inherent within the textual and material culture of Ireland and the wider Atlantic world.

We especially encourage submissions that deal with early medieval Ireland, but will happily include papers that consider a broader medieval time line.

Please send abstracts and Participant Information Forms (available at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to Amber Handy at the University of Notre Dame at ahandy@nd.edu by September 15th.


Amber Handy
Department of History
219 O'Shaughnessy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
ahandy@nd.edu

Marco Manuscript Workshop - Call For Proposals

Marco Manuscript Workshop - Call For Proposals

"Unruly Letters & Unbound Texts"

The Fourth Marco Manuscript Workshop will be held Friday and
Saturday, February 5 and 6, 2010, at the University of Tennessee
in Knoxville; the workshop is organized by Professors Maura K.
Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English).

Last year's workshop focused on "textual trauma" -- instances of
violence, deliberate or otherwise, against texts. This year our
focus will be on texts and manuscripts that cross or confound the
boundaries scholars have tried to place around them, that do not
fit neatly into the genres or categories of modern scholarship,
or that pose peculiar difficulties of definition, categorization
or reading. These might include: macaronic and multilingual
texts, prosi-metric and metri-prosaic texts, glosses and
commentaries, diagrams and tables, ciphers and strange alphabets,
incongruous or appropriated forms and textual designs,
interpolations and conflations, marginal commentaries that
overwhelm their texts, miscellanies and composite manuscripts,
and manuscripts in the age of print. We welcome presentations on
any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and students at any rank and in
any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies,
or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to
each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text
and its context, discuss their approach to working with their
material, and exchange ideas and information with other
participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to
be more a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to
share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their
successes and frustrations, to offer both practical advice and
theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing
better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We
particularly invite the presentation of works in progress,
unusual manuscript problems, practical difficulties, and new or
experimental models for studying or representing manuscript
texts. Presenters will receive a stipend of $500 for their
participation.

The deadline for applications is October 1, 2009. Applicants are
asked to submit a current CV and a two-page letter describing
their project to Roy M. Liuzza, Department of English, University
of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430, or via
email to rliuzza@utk.edu .

The workshop is also open to scholars and students who do not
wish to present work but are interested in sharing a lively
weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. More
information will be available by contacting Roy Liuzza
mailto:rliuzza@utk.edu .

Manchester Middle English Manuscripts Conference

In 2008 the John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester,
received funding from the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee to
digitise its important collection of over forty Middle English manuscripts,
including literary texts by Chaucer and Lydgate, and major collections of
manuscripts of the Brut Chronicles and Wycliffe's Bible translations.

To celebrate the completion of this project and the launch of the Manchester
Medieval Digital Library, the JRUL is hosting a major academic conference on
17-18 September 2009. The Manchester Middle English Manuscripts Conference
will consider the Rylands collection within the wider context of other
corpora of ME manuscripts, and explore the potential of digitisation to
enable novel methods and new avenues of scholarly enquiry.

Keynote speaker Professor Julia Boffey of Queen Mary University, London,
will open the conference with a public lecture on the evening of Thursday
17th September. Other speakers include Professor Wendy Scase (Birmingham),
Prof. Tony Edwards (De Montfort University) and Professor John Thompson
(Queen's, Belfast).

The conference will be of interest to medieval historians, students of
Middle English literature, linguists, codicologists, historians of the book,
archivists and manuscript curators.

For further information and to download a booking form, please visit
http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/specialprojects/incipit/conference/.
The deadline for registration is Friday 28th August.

The project blog http://mmems.wordpress.com/ contains the latest news on the
progress of the digitisation work.

Third Annual Harvey Stahl Lecture

The International Center for Medieval Art

in association with the

Art History Department, University of Illinois at Chicago

and the

Department of Art and Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis

present


The Third Annual Harvey Stahl Lecture


Opening Up the Alhambra: Comparative Consideration of a ‘Unique’
Monument in the Context of Nasrid Court Life

Cynthia Robinson

Associate Professor, Cornell University


The Alhambra, the famous medieval Islamic palace located in Granada,
Spain, is often referred to as the culminating artistic achievement
of medieval ‘Hispano Islamic civilization.’ The dynastic seat of the
fourteenth-century Nasrid Sultanate, it is often characterized as a
‘unique’ monument. Yet despite the enormous body of scholarship on
the Alhambra, it is puzzling that until very recently this ensemble
has remained resistant to the sort of historically contextualized
interpretation that has unlocked the mysteries of many other medieval
monuments. Using a variety of contemporary written sources and
comparative buildings, both Islamic and Christian, this presentation
considers the Alhambra through the eyes of the audience[s] for which
it was created and sheds light on the aesthetics, courtly culture,
and literary tastes of the Nasrid court. Finally, the lecture
reaffirms the Alhambra as a distinctly Islamic palace in relation to
the medieval monuments of Christian Spain.

The Stahl lecture will be delivered twice.

Both presentations are free and open to the public.
************ ********* ******

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 6p.m.

Steinberg Auditorium

Sam Fox School of Art and Design, Washington University