The Medieval Academy Blog

Call for Papers
Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts Sponsored Session
at the 51^st International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 12-15, 2016

We seek proposals for the following session:

Networks of Transmission: Histories and and Practices of Collecting Medieval Manuscripts and Documents

This session will focus on the mapping of those networks of sale and purchase through which medieval manuscripts have been pursued and on the collectors and collecting that have catalyzed this transmission across the centuries. This session – like The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts itself – is rooted in the belief that studying manuscripts’ provenance can have dynamic and profound effects not only on our understanding of these medieval materials as objects to be bought and sold but also on their texts through mapping their circulation and reception. We particularly welcome proposals that explore diverse topics from the role of digital technologies such as the SDBM in conducting provenance research, the relationship between institutional and private ownership of manuscripts, specific case studies of collecting practices, the transatlantic travels of medieval materials, collectors’ roles in the dispersal of libraries and the fragmentation of manuscripts, collectors and manuscript preservation, and how a manuscript’s provenance history can effect its value and collectability on the rare books market, to how collectors and the act of collecting can shape and influence interpretations of manuscript evidence.

Please send proposals with a one-page abstract and Participant Information Form (www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to Lynn Ransom (lransom@upenn.edu ) by September 1, 2015.

Second International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Thought
April 7-9, 2016

Featuring Plenary Speaker
Dr. Caroline Bruzelius,
Professor of Art History, Duke University

The conference is slated to be held on the beautiful campus of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

Deadline to propose a Special Session:      Aug. 15, 2015
Deadline for abstracts:                                Nov. 15, 2015
Notification of acceptance:                         Dec. 15, 2015

You are invited to send your 250-300-word abstract to Dr. Darci Hill, Conference Director, on any topic dealing with Medieval and/or Renaissance thought. If you would like to propose a special session, you are welcome to do that as well. We welcome papers and performances on any aspect of this time period. Papers dealing with language and linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, history, art, music, and theatre are all equally welcome.

Please send all inquiries and abstracts electronically to:

Dr. Darci Hill,
Conference Director,
Dr.darci.hill@gmail.com
Department of English
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, Texas 77340

Art and Articulation: Illuminating the Mystical, Medieval and Modern

When:  8th-9th January, 2016

Where:  St Hilda’s College, Oxford

Description:
The relationship between word and image, and the ways in which medieval art (be it visual, textual, or both) operates as a means of expressing the inexpressible, will be explored in a two-day conference held 8th-9th January 2016 at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, under the auspices of the Mystical Theology Network. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together theologians, art historians, and literary scholars to examine the ways in which various forms of artistic expression are used to articulate the mystical or that which cannot easily be spoken. The conference will investigate the role of art and its connection to forms of mystical knowing through various strands. From visual art, through optics, apophasis and ekphrasis to mystical theology, this multidisciplinary approach to illumination will shed new light on the role of art in mystical contemplation.

Keynote Speakers:

Barbara Baert (KU Leuven), Inigo Bocken (Titus Brandsma Instituut for the Study of Spirituality), Sheila Gallagher (Boston College), Vincent Gillespie (University of Oxford), Catherine Karkov (University of Leeds), Michael Kuczynski (Tulane University), Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago), William Prosser (Regent’s Park College, Oxford).

Call for Papers:

We welcome submissions for 20-minute papers and proposals for sessions of three 20-minute papers.

Topics may include, but are by no means confined to:

• The interplay between mysticism and art, both visual and textual.
• Art (visual, textual or both) as a means of communicating that which is hard to articulate.
• Apophasis.
• Theorisations of art and beauty and how these relate to notions of mysticism.
• Transformative visions and the therapeutic effect of ‘seeing as’.
• Medieval and modern ideas on optics, seeing and contemplation/mysticism.
• The intersection between visual and textual art.
• The role of illuminations and annotations in medieval manuscripts.
• Ekphrasis.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to the conference organisers at artandarticulation@gmail.com by 1st September 2015.

artandarticulationconference.wordpress.com

Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference 26 – 28^th August, 2016

We are pleased to announce that the 23^rd biennial conference of SASMARS will be held at Mont Fleur in Stellenbosch, South Africa on 26 – 28^th August 2016.

“Texts and Transformations: Medieval and Early Modern Cultures”

Medieval and Early Modern societies weathered various socio-cultural transformations, ranging from economic developments to religious conflicts, across a range of different geographies and in urban and rural spaces.  How did poetry, theatre, prose, visual art, architecture, and other forms of art respond to such changes?  How do we historically understand and assess various kinds of social transitions?

Topics for this conference can include but are not limited to:

• Adaptions of classical texts and artworks
• Translation of texts and ideas
• Contemporary readings of old texts
• Cross-cultural interactions and influences
• Historical transitions and periodisation
• Religious reform
• Urban renewal and development
• Medieval and Early Modern studies in contemporary education
• Appropriations of Medieval and Early Modern culture
• Cultural responses to economic change
• Representations of political dissent and rebellion
• Utopias and dystopias
• Gender, sexuality, and social change

Deadline:  A conference proposal and a short biography to derrick.higginbotham@uct.ac.za by 30 November 2015.  Any inquires can be directed to the same email address.

The CFP has been posted to our website at http://sasmarsnewsletter.blogspot.com/

Please send other items for the newsletter to me by 12 July.

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 23rd International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 4–7, 2016. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

The thematic strand for the 2016 IMC is “Food, Feast & Famine.” See the IMC Call for Papers (https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2016_call.html) for additional information about the theme and suggested areas of discussion.

Session proposals should be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website site (http://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/23rd-international-medieval-congress/). The deadline for submission is August 31, 2015. Proposals should include:

-Title
-100-word session abstract
-Session moderator and academic affiliation
-Information about the three papers to be presented in the session. For each paper: name of presenter and academic affiliation, proposed paper title, and 100-word abstract
-CV

Successful applicants will be notified by mid-September if their proposal has been selected for submission to the International Medieval Congress. The Mary Jaharis Center will submit the session proposal to the International Medieval Congress and will keep the potential organizer informed about the status of the proposal.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $500 maximum for EU residents and up to $1000 maximum for those coming from outside Europe. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

The session organizer may act as the moderator or present a paper. Participants may only present papers in one session.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.​

 Forty-First Annual Conference Southeastern Medieval Association
Little Rock, AR October 22-24, 2015
“Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock”

Call for Papers

You are cordially invited to participate in the 2015 meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association. This year’s meeting will take place at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock, Arkansas on Thursday, October 22, 2015 through Saturday, October 24, 2015, and is sponsored by the University of Central Arkansas.

The theme of this year’s meeting is “Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock,” in celebration of a host of anniversaries celebrated this year (the Fourth Lateran Council, the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth, the burning of Jan Hus, the signing of the Magna Carta). We welcome submissions and encourage panels related to these anniversaries or on other medieval topics.

Further, recognizing the pivotal role that Little Rock, this year’s conference location, played in the American civil rights movement, we would like to encourage for this conference an emphasis on the “Other” Middle Ages, and encourage panels on East Asia, South Asia, and Islam at the time of the European Middle Ages, as well as panels on the “Other” within medieval Christendom (e.g., Jews and other non-Christians, Norse encounters with “Skraelingas,” or the treatment of the disabled, diseased, sexually “deviant,” or “mad” in Christian society).

In addition, this year’s meeting will include several sessions devoted to undergraduate research. Please encourage students who have done especially good work to submit abstracts. Please submit proposals for sessions and individual papers using the link at http://goo.gl/forms/KDyCGVPqoN  no later than July 1, 2015.

Plenary Speakers:

Dr. Peter S. Hawkins of the Yale Divinity School (author of Dante’s Testaments: Essays on Scriptural Imagination and Dante: A Brief History among others) will give a plenary address called “Dante’s ‘Other’: Thinking outside the Christian Box.”

Dr. Thomas A. Fudge of the University of New England (author of Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe and The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure, among others) will give a plenary address on Hus and his martyrdom.

Dr. Stephen Owen of Harvard University (author of The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860) and The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry among others) will give a plenary address on Tang poetry and culture.

October 9-10, 2015
It Was a Very Good Year: The Impact of 1215 on the Medieval World
Keynote Speaker: Professor Richard Helmholz, University of Chicago

The year 1215 will be known forever among medieval historians for two groundbreaking events, the Fourth Lateran Council of Pope Innocent III and the creation of Magna Carta by the barons rebelling against King John of England. In light of recent events in the state of Indiana and elsewhere, MMHC fields this question:  Was the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and the creation of the Holy Inquisition responsible for the transformation of western culture into a “Persecuting Society”? This is a question that has excited vigorous debate since the publication of R. I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society. MMHC welcomes papers on this topic from both graduate students and professionals, with the intention of developing sessions on both Friday (the grad session) and Saturday (the general session) of the conference.

MMHC welcomes papers on any topic of medieval history, especially proposals for papers on topics relevant to the theme of the impact of 1215.

Please send abstract (300 words maximum) via email attachment to Linda Mitchell, Program Chair, mitchellli@umkc.edu. Deadline for paper proposals: June 30, 2015.

Graduate students presenting on the Friday sessions receive a modest travel stipend of $150. Indicate your affiliation, degree program, and academic status when submitting paper proposal.

For information about the conference or local arrangements, please email local host, Steve Stofferahn (Steven.Stofferahn@indstate.edu) and/or program chair, Linda Mitchell (mitchellli@umkc.edu).

http://mmhc.slu.edu/2015.html