CALL FOR PAPERS

Tenth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies
June 12-14, 2023
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri 

 

The Tenth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (June 12-14, 2023) is a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the Symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation into all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and Renaissance studies.

The plenary speakers for this year will be Uta-Renate Blumenthal, of the Catholic University of America, and Lia Markey, of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

The Symposium is held annually on the beautiful midtown St. Louis campus of Saint Louis University. On campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments as well as a more luxurious hotel. Inexpensive meal plans are also available, although there is a wealth of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues within easy walking distance of campus.

While attending the Symposium, participants are free to use the Vatican Film Library, the Rare Books Division, and the general collection at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library. These collections offer access to tens of thousands of medieval and early modern manuscripts on microfilm as well as strong holdings in medieval and Renaissance history, literature, languages, manuscript studies, theology, philosophy, and canon law. The Jesuit Archives & Research Center is adjacent to the university and also accessible to Symposium attendees.

The Tenth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies invites proposals for papers, complete sessions, and roundtables. Any topics regarding the scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern world are welcome. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are scheduled for ninety minutes. Scholarly organizations are especially encouraged to sponsor proposals for complete sessions, and organizing at least two sessions in coordination with each other is highly recommended.

Submission are currently open and the deadline for all proposals is December 31, 2022. Decisions will be made by the end of January and the final program will be published in March.

For more information or to submit your proposal online go to: https://www.smrs-slu.org/. 

 International Anchoritic Society Conference Call for Papers July 2023

 

Conference hosted by Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, July 26-29, 2023. These dates are inclusive of the conference excursion.

 

Theme: Anchorites and the City

 

Anchorholds were located at key points in a village or city. Many of them were built contiguous to church walls. Still others were built into city walls, especially by bridges and gates. In this manner, anchorites themselves were often situated at the heart of political, social, and religious networks within their own city and beyond.

 

Papers could explore networks of prayer, communal interaction, parish responsibilities, archaeological structure of cells, political maneuvering between locations and anchorites, or any other topic that sees anchorites as connected to the local community at hand rather than the larger sphere of the Church or country. In other words, anchorites and the city is loosely interpreted, and we encourage you to submit anything for consideration.

 

Keynote speakers: Liz Herbert McAvoy and Michelle M. Sauer

 

Please send abstracts of 200-250 words to iasconference@gmail.com

 

Deadline November 1, 2022

 Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the German-speaking lands: a symposium in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022)

When: 19/20 May 2023

Where: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Taylor Institution Library, St Edmund Hall

To celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer, Professor of German Medieval Literary and Linguistic Studies at the University of Oxford, we invite expressions of interest from those who wish to honour his memory with an academic contribution to speak at a symposium in Oxford that is to take place 19-20 May 2023. Presentations of twenty minutes’ length are sought. They should speak to an aspect of the wide spectrum of Nigel’s intellectual interests, which ranged extensively within the broad scope of the literary and religious history of the German- and Dutch-speaking lands, treating Latin alongside the vernaculars, the early printed book alongside the manuscript, and the court and the city alongside the monastery and the convent. His primary intellectual contributions were methodological rather than theoretical, and he brought together a study of the book as a material object with the philological and linguistic discipline of the Germanophone academic tradition.

The first session planned for the afternoon of Friday 19 May will take place consequently in the Weston Library, and will consider the manuscript cultures of the German-speaking lands; presentations may take a workshop format, and may – though need not – focus upon one or more manuscripts in the Bodleian collections. The second and third sessions will take place on Saturday 20 May in the Taylorian Library, and will consider the religious and literary history of the German-speaking lands in relation to the questions, issues and working methods central to Nigel’s published scholarship.

We would request expressions of interest, of not more than one full page, to be received by 11 November 2022, to be sent to Stephen Mossman. We ask in advance for the understanding of all who submit that we anticipate receiving many more expressions of interest than we can accommodate within the schedule. A reception will be held at St Edmund Hall on the Saturday afternoon, to which all are cordially invited and welcome, followed by a dinner in College. Those planning to attend are advised to reserve accommodation in good time, e.g. via universityrooms. We hope to secure funding to support early career researchers in attending the symposium, but anticipate that participants will need to cover their travel and accommodation expenses. Details of the symposium and registration will be available through the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages web-site in early 2023.

For the organising committee: Racha Kirakosian, Henrike Lähnemann, Stephen Mossman, Almut Suerbaum

 Call for Papers: Marco Manuscript Workshop 2023, “Writing the World”

February 3-4, 2023

Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

 

The eighteenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop will take place Friday, February 3, and Saturday, February 4, 2023, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The workshop is organized by Professors Charles Sanft (History) and Roy M. Liuzza (English) and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies.

 

This year’s theme is, broadly, manuscripts in and of the world. We imagine two aspects to this theme. The first is manuscripts that travel: manuscripts always bear the marks of the time and place of their creation, and many remain rooted to their place of origin, but others range widely in the world as cargo, gifts, devotional or collectible objects, or simply baggage that can be left behind. How do some texts get from one place to another, and why? What evidence of their travels do they bear? The second aspect of our theme concerns texts that try to convey the world beyond their pages. How do they describe the world? How is it depicted? Where is the center? What lies at the margins? What ideas and doctrines exist in the broader world? Understandings about the size and shape of the world have changed considerably since the ancient world and vary greatly from one culture to another. How have texts adapted to new information and ideas? We invite participants to consider manuscripts that connect the reader to the world—descriptions, travelogues, maps, accounts of distant places, cosmologies, stories of other worlds—or that record or reflect encounters between people in different places. As always, we welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined. We are especially interested in presentations that address these questions from a non-European perspective.

 

The workshop is open to scholars and students in any field who are engaged in or interested in textual editing, manuscript studies, or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to each presentation and discussion; 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 like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer 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 problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation.

 

The deadline for applications is October 15, 2022. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page abstract of their project to Roy M. Liuzza, preferably via email to rliuzza@utk.edu, or by mail to the Department of English, University of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430.

 

The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who do not wish to present their own work but are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. Further details will be available later in the year; please visit //marco.utk.edu/ms-workshop or contact the Marco Institute at marco@utk.edufor more information.

 

European Society for Textual Scholarship

Annual Conference, 13-14 April 2023

University of Kent

‘‘Authorship, Identity, and Textual Scholarship”

CALL FOR PAPERS

To what extent does the identification of an author’s identity affect how we approach and edit their texts? Or, to pursue a contested poststructuralist line of thinking, why might it matter to an editor, or any reader, that they know who is speaking? Though the Barthesian idea of the ‘Death of the Author’ has been largely dismantled, theoretical questions about agency, intentionality, and reception still loom large in modern critical discourse. Given our present-day concerns with anonymity, fake news, misattributed quotations, and the spread of disinformation, this timely conference shines a light on the relationship between the identification of an author-figure and the transmission, mediation, and reception of their texts.

The organisers invite proposals for creative, critical, and analytical papers, panel sessions, roundtables, posters, and digital exhibitions that approach and analyse the overlap between studies in attribution, authorship, biography, and textual scholarship from antiquity to modern day.

We particularly encourage proposals which consider the range of identities that authors take and investigate how the imperative for diversity, relates or challenges conventional concepts of authorship The digital turn in literary studies has enlivened debates about authorship, reflecting a concurrent rising interest in textual issues related to co-authorship, revision, and adaptation. Traditional canons of literary and non-literary works have been challenged vigorously in recent years.

So, too, authorship has figured significantly in the detailed analyses of the lives and output of scribes and stationers (publishers, printers, booksellers) from the premodern to modern periods, producing rich new evidence about the transmission and circulation of text. Similarly, the material turn in literary scholarship has provided original insights into the material conditions of authorship, from the everyday experience of life as a practicing author to the tools used in producing the material book itself. The work that is produced and disseminated is now studied as a social as well as textual object.

Registration website:

https://bit.ly/ESTS2023

Contributions to the ESTS Conference may take the following forms:

Research Papers

Individual scholars are welcome to submit proposals for papers which may then be selected for panels. 20 minutes in length. Please supply an abstract of 150 words (max) + bio of 100 words (max).

Panel sessions

We also invite groups of scholars (3 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked research paper panels. 90 minutes in length (3 x 20 minute papers + q&a). Please supply 3 abstracts of 150 words (max) each + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker. The organisers will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field.

Roundtable

We also invite groups of scholars (up to 6 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked roundtable sessions. 90 minutes in length (10 mins per speaker + q&a). Please supply an overall abstract of 250 words (250 words) for the roundtable + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker. The organisers will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field.

Digital Projects Exhibition

We invite scholars working on DH projects related to authorship to showcase their work through a poster/exhibition session. A DH project session will be held during one of the days of the conference. Please supply abstract of 150 words (max) + bios of 100 words (max) for each presenter; if the project is live, please supply a link.

Poster Session

We invite scholars to submit an abstract for a poster presentation linking their research to the

themes of the conference. A poster session will be held during one of the days of the conference.

Please supply abstract of 150 words (max) + bios of 100 words (max) for each presenter. All proposals are due by 1st October 2022. Please send proposals to ESTS2023@gmail.com

If you have any queries about the submission process, please contact R.Loughnane@kent.ac.uk or any of the members of the Planning Committee.

ESTS 2023 Planning Committee: Rory Loughnane (Kent, Chair); Bashir Abu-Manneh (Kent); Anne Alwis (Kent); Claire Bartram (Canterbury Christ Church University); Jennie Batchelor (Kent); Karen Brayshaw (Kent); Helen Brooks (Kent); Robert Gallagher (Kent); Emily Guerry (Kent); Anna Jordanous (Kent); Ryan Perry (Kent); Catherine Richardson (Kent); David Rundle (Kent); Amy Sackville (Kent); Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University); Matthijs Wibier (Kent); and Cressida Williams (Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives). Postgraduate Advisors: Ségolène Gence (Kent; MEMS PG Ambassador); Samantha McCarthy (Kent); Jonathan Pinkerton (Kent Lille).

 

The Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture project (SOEALLC) is happy to announce two sponsored sessions at the ICMS at Kalamazoo in May ’23:

Session 1: Augustine in Pre-Conquest England (Session of Papers)

This session will focus on Augustine of Hippo’s influence on Old English and Anglo-Latin literary culture. To that end, we invite papers that consider what quotations, references, translations, and manuscript circulation can tell us about how and why Augustine was being read in early England. As Augustine’s corpus is so large and varied, possibilities for papers are many: proposers might consider the influence of Augustinian themes on Old English poetry or homilies, how Augustinian the Alfredian Soliloquies truly is, or what manuscript evidence can tell us about the specifics of early English interest in Augustine. We invite contributions from scholars of all methodological bents, and, while we are focused on Augustine’s presence in pre-Conquest England, we welcome papers that cast a wider chronological net as well.

 

Session 2: “Source Study and Material Culture” (Roundtable)

 

While source criticism is usually considered to be a textual enterprise, this session will gather several scholars together in a roundtable format to discuss the ways in which material culture (archaeology, visual art, manuscript studies, etc.) can inform the source critic’s work. Participants might reflect on the way in which art can be a “source” for literature and vice versa, the uses of material culture to help us interpret source relationships, or the ways in which source study in a manuscript culture always requires attention to the material. In putting on this roundtable, we hope for a rich session that puts different methods in dialogue with one another. Source criticism is our principle focus, but we invite paleographers, archaeologists, art historians, and others whose distinctive methods can challenge source critics to refine their own approach. While our principle focus is pre-Conquest England, we welcome papers that reach beyond those geographical and temporal boundaries to consider source relationships more broadly.

 

Both sessions are virtual, so please feel free to apply even if you aren’t planning to attend the conference in person. All submissions are due September 15th, through the Congress’s Confex system (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2023/cfp.cgi).

 

Curious about what SOEALLC is doing? Visit us at https://soeallc.hcommons.org/.

 

All best wishes,

 

Ben Weber

 

--

 

Dr. Benjamin D. Weber

 

Assistant Professor of English

 

Wheaton College

 

309 Blanchard Hall

 

benjamin.weber@wheaton.edu

Call for papers

The 2022 International Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association

Memory and Forgetting

Hosted Online from the University of Melbourne, Australia (throughout the world) 30 September-1 October 2022 

 

This conference invites papers on the theme of memory and forgetting. Memory is malleable. It is shaped by selection, by mediation, by transmission, by ideologies, by societies and, above all, by forgetting. In the words of Ann Rigney,

 

‘like water transported in a leaky bucket which slowly runs dry, [memories] are continuously being lost along the way’.

 

And yet, the archive contains a multiplicity of memories that have survived their journeys, that have been remade in their transmission, and continue to be remade as historians select those memories that speak to particular perspectives or narratives. What can we say about this selective approach to the archive? An approach that often masquerades as ʹmemoryʹ ‐ in terms of presenting a distinct narrative ‐ and ʹforgettingʹ ‐ in terms of omission, whether deliberate or through ignorance or inattention. This conference examines the process of how early medieval societies created their pasts and, in turn, how those pasts have continued to be created in subsequent centuries.

This conference calls for papers that relate to this theme, or, in the spirit of the theme, that do not. Topics might include:

• Agendas and identities
• Biography and autobiography
• Individual and cultural memory
• Oral and textual histories
• Transmission and reimaginings
• Education and memoria
• Transnational and global memory
• Memory of conflict – forgetting of peace

 

Submissions may be in the form of individual papers of 20 minutes duration, themed panels of three 20‐minute papers, or Round Tables of up to six shorter papers (total of one hour). All sessions will include time for questions and general discussion.

Please send proposals (150–200 words per paper), along with author’s name, paper/panel/RT title, and academic affiliation (if any) to conference@aema.net.au by 9 September 2022.