‘Borderlines’ is an annual postgraduate conference in medieval and early modern studies, which aims to bring together researchers in a variety of disciplines, at MA, PhD and postdoctoral level, from across Ireland, Britain, Europe and around the world. The theme of this year’s conference will be ‘Site & Sound’. Amongst our many inheritances from the medieval and early modern ages, perhaps the most apparent and accessible are the streets, churches and landscapes we share with our ancestors. Along with these sites we have inherited a host of cultural assumptions about our spaces – big and small – from the home, through the city and the country, to our nations and the wider world around us.
While echoes persist in the spaces we inhabit, the languages we speak and the music we enjoy today, the sounds of the medieval and early modern ages are often obscured by the signal to noise ratio of the past to the present. In this conference, we hope to explore the sites and sounds of the past as the framework for an open and interdisciplinary consideration of current research in medieval and early modern studies. We welcome papers from researchers in the fields of Anthropology, Archaeology, Codicology, Drama, Film Studies, Folklore, Geography, History, History of Art, Languages, Literature, Music, Paleography, Philosophy and Theology. Topics may include (but are not limited to):
– Architecture and landscapes in the past and through time.
– Spatial dichotomies: urban/rural, public/private, male/female.
– The acoustics of space.
– The archaeological site and the idea(s) of excavation.
– The space of the page, the painting or the statue.
– The spaces and sounds of the text.
– Oral tradition.
– Drama on the stage and the page. Its spaces, sounds and spectacles.
– Art music, popular music and folkmusic in the past and in modern revivals.
– Music and space in the past and the present.
– Religious spaces, sounds and silences.
– Space, sound and the senses.
– (Re)creations of medieval and early modern spaces and sounds in film and television.
Please submit proposals of 250 words to borderlinesxvi@gmail.com by 1st March 2012.
