HOLY HERO(IN)ES:

Literary Constructions of Heroism in Late Antique and Early Medieval Hagiography

Ghent (Belgium), 18-20 February 2016

 

The ERC research group Novel Saints (Ghent University) hosts an international conference on ‘Holy Hero(in)es: Literary Constructions of Heroism in Late Antique and Early Medieval Hagiography’ in the  Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en Letterkunde (KANTL), Koningstraat 18, 9000 Ghent (Belgium) from Thursday 18 February to Saturday 20 February. 

 

Keynote lecture by prof. Stephanos Efthymiadis (Open University of Cyprus), ‘Saints and second heroes: cases and forms of an extended narrative in Byzantine hagiography’.

 

The full programme is available on http://www.novelsaints.ugent.be/holy-heroines/programme. Information about transport, accommodation, and practicalities can be found on http://www.novelsaints.ugent.be/holy-heroines/.

 

Online registration is now open. To register, please visit our booking page:https://www.congres.ugent.be/holyheroines2016/. There is an early birds registration fee until the 9^th of January. For further queries, please contact klazina.staat@ugent.be or julie.vanpelt@ugent.be.

 

Prof. dr. Koen De Temmerman

Klazina Staat

Julie Van Pelt​​

Narrating the Self: Autobiography in Late Antiquity

Organizer: E.J. Hutchinson, Hillsdale College

Sponsored by the Society for Late Antiquity

In relation to late antiquity--and, indeed, in relation to antiquity in general--the term “autobiography” is generically fluid: there was no genre devoted exclusively to αὐτοβίος, just as there was no genre devoted exclusively to βίος considered more broadly. And yet people still wrote about themselves; they just did so in a variety of modes and genres. The pace of the production of reflexive works of self-narration (or works that included such reflexivity) not only did not slow in late antiquity; it quickened, and from this corpus emerged works that plumbed the depths of interiority (but for public consumption) in ways that had not been seen previously. Augustine and Boethius are the most famous, but not the exclusive, examples of interior self-description that is simultaneously externalized, mannered, and offered for public review (cf., recently, S. Squires, “Contra Academicos as Autobiography” [Scottish Journal of Theology 64 (2011): 251-64]; P. Turner, Truthfulness, Realism, Historicity [Ashgate, 2012]). In addition, one might consider poets such as Gregory of Nazianzus, Paulinus of Pella, Rutilius Namatianus, Paulinus of Nola, or Ausonius; grave inscriptions; itineraria, in so far as they are metaphorical for or serve the purposes of a description of self-transformation; the differences and tensions between the self-display of an individual’s various personae, for example in literary prefaces, public offices, and private correspondence; and much else besides.

The Society for Late Antiquity invites abstracts (ca. 500 words) exploring any aspect of self-narration in late antiquity for its panel at the 2017 Society for Classical Studies (formerly the APA) annual meeting in Toronto. Abstracts for papers requiring a maximum of twenty minutes to deliver should be sent no later than February 15, 2016 by email attachment as .doc or .rtf files to Eric Hutchinson at ehutchinson@hillsdale.edu. Please follow the SCS’s instructions for the format of individual abstracts: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/guidelines-authors-abstracts. All submissions will be judged anonymously by two referees. Prospective panelists must be members in good standing of the SCS at the time of submission and must include their SCS membership number in the cover letter accompanying their abstract. The submission of an abstract represents a commitment to attend the 2017 meeting in Toronto should the abstract be accepted.

-- 

Dr. Paul E. Kimball
Bilkent University
Faculty of Humanities and Letters
Program in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas
06800 Bilkent
Ankara, Turkey
office: (+90) 312 290 1034
fax: (+90) 312 266 4606

37^th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Keene State College

Keene, NH, USA

Friday and Saturday April 15-16, 2016

Call for Papers and Sessions

“The Local and the Global in the Middle Ages”

Keynote speaker: Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto 

We are delighted to announce that the 37^th Medieval and Renaissance Forum will take place on April 15 and 16, 2016 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire.  This year’s keynote speaker is Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.  Her research focuses on intellectual history and philosophy, ranging from neo-Platonism and science in the twelfth century to national identity and religious conflict in the fifteenth. Akbari's books include Seeing Through the Veil (on optics and allegory), her important and influential study on images of Islam and Muslims in medieval Europe (Idols in the East), and a book on Marco Polo.  She is currently at work on Small Change: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in Chaucer and Christine de Pizan.

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) or panel proposals on all medieval and Renaissance topics from all fields and on the reception of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome. Please indicate your status (undergraduate, graduate, or faculty), affiliation (if relevant), and full contact information (address and e-mail address), on your proposal.

Undergraduate sessions are welcome but require faculty sponsorship.  

Please submit abstracts, audio/visual needs, and full contact information to Dr. Meriem Pagès, Director. For more information please e-mail mpages@keene.edu.

Abstract deadline: Friday January 15, 2016

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2016

Medieval News!

Haggis was a Viking dish?

Iron Age Bling

Viking Hoard at Watlington!

Norton Priory dig uncovers skeleton 

Zurich and Charlemagne Insignia

Staffordshire Hoard Update

The Sad News of Steve Cartwright's passing

CfP: Re//generate: Materiality and the Afterlives of Things in the Middle Ages

Next May, the University of St Andrews School of Art History in collaboration with the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies will host an interdisciplinary postgraduate conference. Re//generate: Materiality and the Afterlives of Things in the Middle Ages, 500-1500 will investigate the reuse and recycling of materials in the medieval world.

Dear Colleagues,

Most of you need no introduction to the splendid work of the Dictionary of Old English and its importance to the work of Anglo-Saxonists worldwide. I am writing on behalf of the Dictionary to enlist your aid.

At the end of 2013, the DOE was awarded a five-year, $500,000 Challenge Grant from the Triangle Family Foundation of Raleigh, North Carolina. To release each annual installment of the grant, the Dictionary must secure new matching funds from other sources. So far two $100,000 installments have been matched and released, but the editorial team is concerned that it will not meet its target to match the third installment by April 1, 2016. In this time of urgency, they have asked me to reach out to people who might be able to support this worthy project.

Such matching means that what you donate now will have maximum impact. Every dollar you give will provide two dollars to the Dictionary; every pound, euro, or yen will be a double gift. Your donation will ensure that the work of the Dictionary continues.

This is a particularly exciting time for the project. The current editorial team -- co-editors Stephen Pelle and Robert Getz and Drafting Editor Val Pakis -- are readying H for publication. This is a large and complex set of entries, many years in the making, and its publication will mark a significant step towards completion of the Dictionary. With the publication of H, the DOE will also make public some significant improvements of its user interface and search functions, as well as the latest updated version of the Corpus of Old English and a fully updated set of entries for A-G. DOE entries are now reciprocally linked to the OED, the MED, and the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies project at the University of Edinburgh. In addition, a number of thumbnail images from Parker on the Web are included to help clarify problematic citations. In these and other ways, the DOE continues to expand its role as a pioneer in the field of digital lexicography and an indispensable resource for scholars in our field.

Your support in the past has done the project an enormous amount of good with granting agencies and foundations and within the University of Toronto itself. You have demonstrated by your generosity that you, who are best able to judge the worth of the DOE because you use it in your research, value it highly. And so we turn to you again. Please help support this important project by giving as generously as you can. Donations can be made online; simply visit 

https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/59 

and fill in the box for ‘Dictionary of Old English’. Donations by check (made out to ‘DOE/University of Toronto’) or credit card can also be sent by mail; a convenient donation form can be downloaded from 

http://web.utk.edu/~rliuzza/DOE_Donations_Page.pdf 

and sent to


Dictionary of Old English
Room 14285, Robarts Library
130 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3H1
CANADA

Caroline Minuscule Mapping Project: call for papers

The Network for the Study of Caroline Minuscule, with the support of APICES and the Association for Computers and the Humanities, is publishing a series of 30 summary articles on the major scribal centres and regions that used Caroline minuscule in Europe c. 700–1000 AD. The articles will be blind peer-reviewed and published on a purpose-built online open access platform, which is currently in development. Each article is remunerated at €50. Contributors should be scholars working on the early middle ages, and preferably have an interest in manuscripts and/or palaeography. Graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply. For a full list of available centres and further information, see http://carolinenetwork.weebly.com/mapping-project.html.

If you are interested in contributing, please email Anna Dorofeeva at dorofeeva@jur.uni-frankfurt.de.

Best wishes,

--
Anna Dorofeeva
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Collaborative Research Centre: 'Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes'
(Sonderforschungsbereich 1095: Schwächediskurse und Ressourcenregime)
University of Frankfurt
Gräfstr. 78
Juridicum Postfach 104
60486 Frankfurt am Main
+49 (0) 697 983 3960