The Medieval Academy Blog

“What Lies Beneath” — The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) Conference 2024

We are pleased to announce that the 26th Biennial SASMARS Conference will be held from  1 to 4 August 2024 at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Papers may cover any time period within the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and deal with any area of interest or discipline that could be relevant to the topic “What Lies Beneath”.

Ideas to consider could include, but need not be limited to:

• Beneath the heavens
• Beneath the earth
• Beneath the waves
• Beneath the skin
• Beneath the belt
• Beneath the story
• Beneath the language
• Beneath perceptions and emotions
• Underworlds and Otherworlds
• Invisible worlds

We are delighted to have as plenary speaker Prof. Andrew Breeze of the University of Navarra, Spain.

Proposals:
Proposals should consist of a title and abstract of up to 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, contact details, and a biography of no more than 100 words. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes when read and will be followed by Q and A.

Deadline:
Please submit proposals to Carin Marais (marais.carin@gmail.com) by 31 January 2024. Any enquiries can be sent to the same email address.

Please note that the conference will be held in person and that conference fees include accommodation at Mont Fleur for three nights, all main meals and mid-morning and mid-afternoon tea and snacks. A shuttle service will be available for transport between Cape Town International Airport and Mont Fleur at a small fee.

Is that a Word or Not? The Odd Words found in Beowulf.
A Re-Examination of the Old English Dictionary,
Using Spaces and Letter Runes,
Reflects the Before and After of Epiphany.

When: June 10-12, 2024 (Monday-Wednesday)
What: The 49th Annual St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies (In-Person Only)
Where: St. Louis University at St. Louis, Missouri

Conference Website: https://www.smrs-slu.org/

Up for a challenge? An Open Call to all Old English Scholars—

Join us in June at “The Odd Words in Beowulf” Roundtable in St. Louis at the “Symposium on Medieval Studies.” The ivory halls will heat up with a groundbreaking discussion that fundamentally will change our current understanding of Beowulf.

Why are there so many odd words in Beowulf? Those one-time example words, found nowhere else in the Old English corpus. Each roundtable will examine five example words found in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/asd/index-introduction) that give just one citation line for each word.

Those first five words are: lārena (269), unhār (357), werhðo (589), mān-fordǣdlan (563) and icge (1107) or another one-time word of your choosing from Beowulf. No duplications, so first-come, first-served.

Re-examine your word choice(s) in context.

Are the spaces in the right places? The Beowulf manuscript is infamous for inconsistent or missing spaces.

Are there words inside of a word?

Are there letter rune(s) inside the word?

[Letter runes are the letter(s) for the phonetic beginning letter of the runic word from the Elder Futhark and/or the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc alphabets, e.g.: i is for īs/ice, etc.]

Is there a scribal error and/or a variant?

In 250-words, break down your odd word into its actual words. Provide a bilingual translation of that line along with the lines before and after. At the Roundtable, explain your methods and your epiphany in 10-minutes. [Letter Rune Charts provided to all Presenters.]

For questions or guidance, contact Jim Buckingham at wibuck50@gmail.com

Send your 250-word abstract and a 50-word bio to Jim Buckingham at wibuck50@gmail.com

Before the Deadline: December 31, 2023

“SHIFTING PARADIGMS: WOMEN, RHETORIC, AND POWER, C.700–C.1300 CE

LONDON GLOBAL GATEWAY, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME IN ENGLAND (1-4 SUFFOLK STREET, SW1Y 4HG, LONDON, UK)

22–23 FEBRUARY 2024

This conference aims to recalibrate how we study women in western Europe, the Islamic worlds, and Byzantium across the Middle Ages, revealing the manifold ways women shaped and were shaped by overlapping discourses of power. The intention is to contest and challenge singular perspectives on power as the ability to enact change, while also reassessing present concentration on gendered analysis as the primary way of understanding women’s actions in the past. For the conference, we invite papers that broadly explore the question ‘What was power for medieval women?’ through the lens of exemplarity and exempla, that is the framing of individuals in the past as models for the behaviour of men and women in the present. Proposals from postgraduate students and early career scholars will be prioritised.

We are especially eager to receive proposals from those working on Byzantium, the Islamic worlds, or Jewish women, as well as papers that look across geographical, chronological, or disciplinary boundaries. This will be an exploratory conference, so work-in-progress papers are very much encouraged!

Confirmed speakers include: Dr Christina Laffin (University of British Colombia, Canada), Prof Julia Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Prof Nadia El Cheikh (American University of Beirut), Dr Charles Insley (University of Manchester), and Dr Anna Kelley (University of St Andrews).

Please submit a title, abstract of c. 250 words, and short biography (including indication of career stage) to shifting.paradigms.conf@gmail.com by 8 January 2023.

Ideally, speakers will be able to attend the conference in-person, although we will consider online papers. Please indicate your preference in your email. There will be bursaries available for postgraduate speakers to contribute towards accommodation and travel.”