Copies, Copying, and Mimetic Acts
New England Medieval Studies Conference
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Middlebury College
The medieval world teemed with copies of every variety: holy Christian figures looked to Christ as the ultimate imago; scribes copied the written word in biblical and historical texts; illuminators worked with pre-established models; goldsmiths sculpted simulacral figures of saints and sacred objects; political and ecclesiastical figures modeled their ritual behavior to connect themselves to the historical and biblical pasts; preachers drew from large collections of exempla to integrate into their sermons. As much as we can say that all of these cultural phenomena involved copying and, often, mimesis, it is also clear that the medieval culture of the copy was multivalent and flexible.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers that address any aspect of these and related concepts in any field of medieval studies. We welcome papers that integrate new theoretical approaches to this material, and we especially encourage work that pays close attention to things copied and the copies themselves. By Sunday, June 1, 2014, please email abstracts of no longer than 250 words along with a current cv to the conference organizers at: nemc2014@middlebury.edu.
