The Medieval Academy Blog

CFP: Early Medieval Education
ICMS, Kalamazoo 9-12 May 2019

Scenes of instruction and learning fill early medieval literature and art–Boethius at Philosophia’s knees, Alcuin and Charlemagne discussing rhetoric, Lioba recalling Eadburga’s poetic instruction. Education, as Irina Dumitrescu pointed out in her monograph, Experience of Education in Anglo-Saxon Literature (2018), is the common factor shared by the scribes, authors, and other producers of the medieval texts remaining to us. What was early medieval education and how did those students and teachers experience, remember, and act on their learning? This panel will explore the role of early medieval education as a driving force behind literary, intellectual, and cultural production and exchange. This panel welcomes scholarship from across medieval studies disciplines and geographical foci. It aims to engage global, theoretical, and material methodologies, to discover both broad and localized instances and impacts of early medieval education. Diverse approaches, including historical, art historical, archaeological, literary, and musicological, are welcome. The following are some examples of topics that papers in this session might address:

• Early medieval pedagogies: the evidence in art, glosses, correspondence, and                    material remains
• Methods of scriptural interpretation: how was exegesis learned and taught?
• Learning and materiality: the intellectual alongside the embodied
• Learning communities and networks across time and place
• Teacher-student relationships and early medieval classrooms

Organizers: Sophia D’Ignazio (Cornell University) and Ryan Lawrence (Cornell University)

Please send any queries and proposals (250 words) for 20-minute papers to: Sophia D’Ignazio, sd769@cornell.edu, by September 15, 2018.

Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Chaucer and Europe
Friday 28^th– Saturday 29^th June 2019

Hosted by the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Keynote addresses by Professor Laura Kendrick (University of Versailles) and Professor David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania).

Call for Papers:

The Biennial London Chaucer Conference 2019 seeks proposals for 20-minute papers, or for panels (consisting of three 20-minute papers), on any topic related to this year’s conference theme: ‘Chaucer and Europe’. Papers should primarily address issues relating to Europe and its influences, ideas, and traditions in the age of Chaucer and his contemporaries, or in later works which engage with Chaucer’s literary afterlife. The conference aims to explore not only how the works of such great European writers as Dante, Boccaccio, Machaut, and Froissart influenced Chaucer and his contemporaries, but also how European literary traditions, forms, and styles informed the literature produced in England during the later Middle Ages. The conference also welcomes papers which explore, or engage creatively, with ideas of place, travel, and commerce in Europe, as well as issues of identity (regional, national, and international), otherness, and borders and boundaries. Interdisciplinary topics and approaches are most welcome as the conference hopes to bring together scholars and postgraduate students working in a range of disciplines and departments.

Possible topics might include:

The influence of European works and writers on Chaucer and/or his contemporaries

European literary traditions (including genres, forms, styles, and themes)

European settings, geographies, and landscapes

Europe and the global

Place and identity

National and international identities

Transport, mobility, and migration

Pilgrimage, war, and crusading

Translation, languages, and multilingualism

Borders and boundaries

Modern ideas of Medieval Europe

Proposals for single 20-minute papers should include a 250-word abstract (as well as name and affiliation). Proposals for three-paper panels should take the form of three separate abstracts as well as a brief discussion of the rationale behind the session (the name of the three speakers and, if possible, an appointed chair, should also be included). Proposals should be sent to Alastair Bennett, Hetta Howes and Natalie Jones, at londonchaucer2019@gmail.com by January 31st 2019.

Messy Bodies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Body in Pre-Modern Culture

54th ICMS | May 9-12, 2019

Following our end-of-the-year symposium, the Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Interdisciplinary Network welcomes papers for our two sessions on Messy Bodies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Body in Pre-Modern Culture.

Messy bodies are all of our bodies. Once we take a good look at them, it becomes clear that the instantly legible body is nothing more than a construct. Bodies resist categorization, they push against their own boundaries, they complicate our understanding of medieval and Renaissance subjectivity and individuality; ultimately, they show how we—modern scholars—still need to consider what constitutes the often racialized or gendered body. They remind us that no “body” may be taken as a given, requiring (even while confounding) construction in discourse, images, and other media.

On the one hand, we are particularly interested in the ways in which the psychological, emotional, and sensorial potentials of the human body express themselves semiotically and semantically. On the other, we want to explore what constitutes human or non-human bodies, following discussions on materiality, animal studies, and critical theory.
We envision our double session as a forum for discussion that engages with premodern bodies as physical and symbolic entities that both stand for and disrupt prescriptive discourses on bodily and social functions, including sexuality, and political participation. Following our mission to foster collaboration across disciplines, we welcome submissions from all fields, from any and all areas of the globe.
Submissions may focus on topics including, but not limited, to:

• humoral and medical theories and practices queer and trans* bodies
• critical race theory
• disability studies
• object-bodies and objectified-bodies
• post-humanisms (including considerations of ontology, networks, animal studies, and
• cybernetics)
• pre-, early-, and post-modern theories of embodiment, subjectivity, and agency violence to the body
• dynamics of mind, body, and soul
• modern responses to pre-modern bodies (in film, art, literature)

Please submit a 200-word abstract with a short bio (.pdf or .docx preferred) to nyumargin@gmail.com with “Kalamazoo submission” in the subject line, by September 15. Questions can also be addressed to the same e-mail. Abstracts not accepted to our sessions will be forwarded to the IMCS for consideration in general sessions.

This session at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies examines the many valences of wounds in late medieval Christianity, focusing on themes surrounding wounds and wounding both visible (corporeal and/or material) and invisible (rhetorical and allegorical). The image of the wounded body held a central place in late medieval Christian practice and material culture; the wounds of the crucified Christ were tangible reminders of his Passion and served as foci of veneration, while stigmatic saints and maimed martyrs were marked as holy by means of bodily trauma. Papers may also consider the Christian response to physical injury, in the form of saintly intervention through healing miracles and medical intervention through the establishment of hospitals and provision of care by religious orders.

Moving beyond the ample possibilities for discussion stemming from the theme of “visible” wounds in medieval Christianity, this session also encourages a broad examination of “invisible” wounds within the late medieval Christian context. Examples might range from the accusations of metaphorical violence levied against the mendicant orders by antifraternal critics, to the conceptualization of the Western Schism as a wound to the Church. By exploring wounds both “visible” and “invisible,” this session elicits the perspectives of scholars of history, art history, literature, and theology and seeks to expand conceptions of wounds and injury within a late medieval Christian framework.

Please send a brief proposal (300 words max) and a participant information form (currently available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to Hannah Wood at Hannah.wood@mail.utoronto.ca and Johanna Pollick at j.pollick.1@research.gla.ac.uk by 15th September 2018.

As per ICMS rules, any abstracts not accepted for our session will be forwarded for consideration for General Sessions.

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 26th International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 1–4, 2019. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

The thematic strand for the 2019 IMC is “Materialities.” See the IMC Call for Papers (https://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2019_call.html) for additional information about the theme and suggested areas of discussion.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/26th-international-medieval-congress). The deadline for submission is September 1, 2018. 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. 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.

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

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $600 maximum for European residents and up to $1200 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.

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