The Medieval Academy Blog

Truth and Truthiness: Belief, Authenticity, Rhetoric, and Spin in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
December 1, 2018
The 26th Biennial Conference of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program of Barnard College

Plenary Speakers:

Lorna Hutson (University of Oxford)
Dyan Elliott (Northwestern University)

The capacity of language both to communicate truth and to manipulate perceptions of it was as vexed a problem for the Middle Ages and Renaissance as it is today. From Augustine to Erasmus, enthusiasm for the study of rhetoric was accompanied by profound concern about its capacity to mask the difference between authenticity and deceit, revelation and heresy, truth and truthiness. Even the claim of authenticity or transparency could become, some thinkers argued, a deliberate form of manipulation or “spin.” In our current era when public figures aim to create effects of immediacy and authenticity, this conference looks at the history of debates about rhetoric and, more generally, about the presentation of transparency and truthfulness. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this conference considers the role of the verbal arts in the history of literature, law, politics, theology, and historiography, but also broadens the scope of rhetoric to include such topics as the rhetoric of the visual arts and the language of the new science to produce effects of objective access to “things themselves.”

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a 2-page CV by April 30, 2018 to Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu.

Comitatus: A journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, published annually under the auspices of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, invites the submission of articles by graduate students and recent PhDs in any field of medieval and Renaissance studies. We particularly welcome articles that integrate or synthesize disciplines.

Submission Deadline for Volume 49 (2018):  1 February 2018. The editorial board will make its final selections by May 2018.

Please send submissions as e-mail attachments to  Dr. Heather Sottong, Publications Manager, Comitatus

hsottong@humnet.ucla.edu.

UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies
http://cmrs.ucla.edu/publications/journals/comitatus/

Winckelmann’s Victims.
The Classics: Norms, Exclusions and Prejudices.

Call for Papers

Ghent University (Belgium), 20-22 September 2018

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Michelle Warren (University of Dartmouth) – Mark Vessey (University of British Columbia) – Irene Zwiep (University of Amsterdam)

“Der einzige Weg für uns, groß, ja, wenn
 es möglich ist, unnachahmlich zu werden, is
die Nachahmung der Alten.”
Johannes Winckelmann

Classics played a major and fundamental role in the cultural history of Western Europe. Few would call this into question. Since the Carolingian period, notably ‘classical’ literature has served as a constant source and model of creativity and inspiration, by which the literary identity of Europe has been negotiated and (re-)defined. The tendency to return to the classics and resuscitate them remains sensible until today, as classical themes and stories are central to multiple contemporary literary works, both in ‘popular’ and ‘high’ culture. Think for instance of Rick Riordan’s fantastic tales about Percy Jackson or Colm Tóibín’s refined novels retelling the Oresteia.

At the same time, this orientation and fascination towards the classics throughout literary history has often —implicitly or explicitly— gone hand in hand with the cultivation of a certain normativity, regarding aesthetics, content, decency, theory, … Classical works, and the ideals that were projected on them, have frequently been considered as the standard against which the quality of a literary work should be measured. Whether a text was evaluated as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depended on the extent to which it could meet the ‘classical’ requirements. Probably the most famous example of someone advocating such a classical norm was the German art critic Johannes Winckelmann (1717-1768), whose death will be commemorated in 2018. His Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums may be considered as the embodiment of the idea that the classics should be the norm for aesthetic or even any evaluation, such as, in Western Europe, it has recurrently cropped up, to a greater or lesser degree, from the Early Middle Ages until modern times.

Almost inevitably, this normativity has implied, shaped and fed prejudices and thoughts of exclusion towards literary features and aesthetic characteristics that seemed to deviate from classical ideals. Throughout literary history, examples occur of literary works, styles and genres that were generally appreciated within their time or context of origin, yet whose quality was retrospectively called into question because they were said not to be in accordance with the classical norm as it prevailed at the moment of judgement. Sometimes, this has even applied to whole periods. The persistence of similar assessments up until today is telling for the impact classical normativity still exercises. Besides, literary texts, though clearly not created to conform to the ‘classical’ standard, have been ‘classicized’ during judgement, being forced by a critic to fit into a classical framework and celebrated for its so-called imitation of antiquity. Even the Classics themselves often had and have to obey to this process of ‘classicization’. Therefore, with a sense for drama, one could say that all these works, literary forms, periods, etc. have seriously ‘suffered’ from the prejudices born from classics-based normativity, being the ‘victims’ of Winckelmann-like ideas concerning ‘classical’ standards.

This conference aims to consider classical normativity with its including prejudices and exclusions as a case-study for cultural self-fashioning by way of European literature. It seeks to explore how the normative status ascribed to the classics and the ensuing prejudices have, from the Early Middle Ages to modern times, influenced and shaped thoughts and views of the literary identity of Western Europe. Therefore, we propose the following questions:

• What are the processes behind this normativity of the Classics? Is it possible to discern a conceptual continuum behind the time and again revival of the Classics as the norm for ‘good’ literature? Or, rather, are there clear conceptual and concrete divergences between succeeding periods of such ‘classical’ normativity?
• What are the links (conceptual, historical, aesthetic, political, …) between the normativity of the Classics and the excluded ones, both in synchronic and diachronic terms? How does literary normativity of the Classics imply literary prejudices and exclusions?
• How has normativity of the Classics with its prejudices and exclusions imposed an identity on European literature (and literary culture)?
• What does this normativity of the Classics with its prejudices and exclusions mean for the conceptualization of European literary history?

Besides these conceptual questions, we also welcome case studies that may illustrate both the concrete impact of classical normativity and concrete examples of prejudice and exclusion as resulting from this normativity. We think of topics such as

• the Classics themselves as victims of retrospective ‘classical’ normativity
• the exclusion of literary periods that are considered non- or even contra-classical (baroque, medieval, …) and the clash with non-European literature
• literary ‘renaissances’ and their implications
• classical normativity and its impact on literatures obedient to political aims (fascism, populism, …)
• literary appeal to the classics as a way of structuring and (re-)formulating society (‘higher’ liberal arts vs. ‘lower’ crafts and proficiencies, literary attitudes towards slavery, …)
• …

We accept papers in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Please send an abstract of ca. 300 words and a five line biography to relics@ugent.be by 15 April 2018.

ORGANISATION: Wim Verbaal, Paolo Felice Sacchi and Tim Noens are members of the research group RELICS (Researchers of European Literary Identities, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools). This research group studies historical literatures and the dynamics that shape a common, European literary identity. It sees this literary identity as particularly negotiated through languages that reached a cosmopolitan status due to fixed schooling systems (Latin, Greek and Arabic), and in their interaction with vernacular literatures. From a diachronic perspective, we aim to seek unity within the ever more diverse, literary Europe, from the first to the eighteenth century, i.e. from the beginning of (institutionally organized) education in the cosmopolitan language to the rise of more national oriented education.

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 44th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 44th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held in San Antonio, TX, October 4–7, 2018. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/44th-annual-annual-byzantine-studies-conference). The deadline for submission is February 5, 2018. Proposals should include:

—Proposed session title

—CV of session organizer

—300-word session summary, which includes a summary of the overall topic, the format for the panel (such as a debate, papers followed by a discussion, or a traditional session of papers), and the reasons for covering the topic as a prearranged, whole session

—Session chair and academic affiliation. Please note: Session chairs cannot present a paper in the session.

—Information about the four papers to be presented in the session. For each paper: name of presenter and academic affiliation, proposed paper title, and 500-word abstract. Please note: Presenters must be members of BSANA in good standing.

Session organizers may present a paper in the session or chair the session. If a co-organzier is proposed for the session, the co-organizer must also give a paper in the session or chair the session.

Applicants will be notified by February 9, 2018. The organizer of the selected session is responsible for submitting the session to the BSC by February 15, 2018. Instructions for submitting the panel proposal are included in the BSC Call for Papers (http://www.bsana.net/conference/2018_BSANA_CFP.pdf).

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse session participants (presenters and chair, if the proposed chair is selected by the BSC program committee) up to $600 maximum for North American residents and up to $1200 maximum for those coming from abroad. Funding is through reimbursement only (check issued in US dollars or wire transfer); 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.

New Feminisms
A Call for Manuscripts for a Special Issue of postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies
Edited by Samantha Katz Seal and Nicole Nolan Sidhu

Every so often, every other medieval studies conference or so, we come together to bury feminism.  That is not to say that we do not praise it first; we eulogize its triumphs, its activism, its publications and practitioners.  But, our praise is offered only in so far as we may declare an end to what has come before; we will laud feminist theory as pivotal, but only if it is past.   As Elizabeth Robertson has noted, feminism is a word that medievalists increasingly do not say, and as Nicole Nolan Sidhu has concluded from an analysis of journal and university statistics, feminist inquiry is now rewarded with neither publication nor career promotion.[1]  Even as the community of medievalists who identify as feminists grows, swelling the ranks of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, the “myth” of feminist medieval studies and its intellectual impact upon the field at large has been increasingly restricted and retrospective.

This special issue of postmedieval calls for manuscripts that fight against such rituals of silence and silencing.  We hope to bring together pieces from all disciplines of medieval studies that testify to the vitality, transformations, and innovations of a 21^st century feminist approach to the Middle Ages.  In particular, we look for scholarship that embraces an intersectional view of feminism, and which are alive to the possibilities for overlap and collaboration with race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and class studies, among others.  We also welcome articles that employ some of the “cutting-edge” theories of contemporary medievalist scholarship (such as ecocriticism, digital projects, disability theory, or affect theory), while also asking authors to reflect on how such analytic methodologies can coexist rather than compete with feminism.  Another possible approach to the cfp would be to consider how a feminist approach to medieval studies might inform contemporary activism or social justice initiatives.  We hope for a range of articles on this wide diversity of topics.

Articles may be collaborative pieces or single-authored and should be between 5000-7000 words (including notes and bibliography).  Deadlines for final versions of articles will be staggered between August 1 of 2018 and January 1, 2019. Please indicate your preferred deadline (August 1, Sept. 1, Oct. 1, etc.) in the abstract. Please email submissions to Samantha Katz Seal (samantha.seal@unh.edu).  Postmedieval welcomes articles that are written in lively prose, use language creatively, avoid jargon, and utilize historicist, materialist, comparatist, and theoretical methods.

[1] Elizabeth Robertson, “Medieval Feminism in Middle English Studies: A Retrospective,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26. 1 (Spring, 2007), 67-79; Nicole Nolan Sidhu, “Love in a Cold Climate: The Future of Feminism and Gender Studies in Middle English Scholarship,” Literature Compass 6.4 (July, 2009), 864-85.