The Medieval Academy Blog

WORDS – Medieval Textuality and its Material Display
Paris, June 30th – July 2nd 2016

Keynote Speakers:
Eric Palazzo (Université de Poitiers)
Geoffrey Koziol (University of California, Berkeley)

For its 13th Annual Symposium to be held in Paris, the International Medieval Society invites abstracts on the theme of Words in the Middle Ages. The digital humanities, while altering the landscape of Medieval Studies as a whole, have most importantly overhauled the concept, appearance, and analysis of words and texts. Between the increasing use of paperless media forms and the rise in the number of digital collections, medievalists are seeking to adapt to these new means of producing knowledge about the Middle Ages. At the same time, scholars in this field are also trying to outline the methodological and historical issues that affect the study of words, which now simultaneously exist in the form of primary sources, codices, rolls, charters and inscriptions, digitally reproduced images, and the statistical and lexicographical data made possible by storage platforms and analytical tools.

In parallel with the digital humanities, the 13th Annual IMS Symposium on WORDS aims to return to words themselves and to probe the intellectual, technical and aesthetic principles that underpin their use and social function in medieval graphical practices. By analysing the material and symbolic properties of a particular medium; the conditions in which texts become signs; and scribal expertise, this symposium will address questions that initially seem simple yet which define the very foundations of medieval written culture. What is a word? What are its components? How does it appear in a given medium? What is the relationship between word and text, word and letter, word and medium, word and reader? In a Middle Ages forever torn between economic and extravagant language, what is the status of the word and what kind of elements – visual or acoustic, linguistic or extralinguistic – does it contain?

This IMS Symposium will thus explore (but is not limited to) four broad themes with a particular focus on medieval France, Francia and post-Roman Gaul:

1)    Words and wording: medieval discourse on texts and writing; texts that reflect upon the act of writing (the poetic arts, prologues, colophons and signatures); the relationship between the writer (scribe, copyist, notary, stonecutter) and words, between copy and creation.

2)    Words in and of themselves: the word between alphabetical symbol/grapheme and other symbols; images and sounds of words (nomina sacra, punctuation, poetic features); musical notation (naming/interpretation of neumes, litterae significativae); variations of meaning e.g. between mots and paroles; hierarchies of writing and of content.

3)    Words and matter: the word and its format; the concept of the pagina, its definition, margins and limits, from manuscripts to inscriptions; the material turn and palaeography; writing and object, from book to amulet; the word beyond the text (images, heraldry, emblems, numismatics); impressions and the first printed texts, beyond the act of writing.

4)    Beyond words: content-less words (pseudo-writing, pseudo-alphabets, pseudo-texts); word, name and identity; etymologies; word games and wordplay; the middle-ground between word and text (calligrams, anagrams, epigrams); the relationship between words and music (verse, prose etc. as expressed in melodies).

Through these broad themes, we aim to encourage the participation of researchers with varying backgrounds and fields of expertise: historians, specialists in the auxiliary sciences (palaeographers, epigraphists, codicologists, numismatists) art historians, musicologists, philologists, literary specialists…By bringing together a wide variety of papers that both survey and explore this field, the IMS Symposium intends to bring a fresh perspective to the word in medieval culture.

Proposals of no more than 300 words (in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be e-mailed to communications.ims.paris@gmail.com by 30th January 2016. Each should be accompanied by full contact information, a CV, and a list of the audio-visual equipment that you require.

Please be aware that the IMS-Paris submissions review process is highly competitive and is carried out on a strictly anonymous basis. The selection committee will email applicants in February to notify them of its decision. Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris website. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel costs and conference registration fee (35 euros, reduced for students, free for IMS-Paris members).

The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (French/English) organisation that fosters exchanges between French and foreign scholars. For the past ten years, the IMS has served as a centre for medievalists who travel to France to conduct research, work, or study. For more information about the IMS-Paris and past symposia programmes, please visit our website: www.ims-paris.org.

IMS-Paris Graduate Student Prize:
The IMS-Paris is pleased to offer one prize for the best paper proposal by a graduate student. Applications should consist of:

1) a symposium paper abstract/proposal
2) an outline of a current research project (PhD. dissertation research)
3) the names and contact information of two academic referees

The prize-winner will be selected by the board and a committee of honorary members, and will be notified upon acceptance to the Symposium. An award of 350 euros to support international travel/accommodation (within France, 150 euros) will be paid at the Symposium.

Digital Britain: New Approaches to the Early Middle Ages

Location: Harvard University
Date: March 25–26, 2016
digitalbritain2016@gmail.com

Medievalists already have an impressive track record in using the Digital Humanities in their teaching and research. It is now a common practice for an undergraduate to scrutinize high-resolution images of a thousand year-old manuscript while she transcribes the texts it preserves. A researcher can pinpoint when and where certain words were used, or identify the scribe who copied a particular manuscript, or map out the paths of literary borrowings thanks to online reference tools.

Now that we are well into the digital turn, this symposium seeks to take stock not only of methodology but also of avenues for future work. How should we keep rethinking traditional fields like paleography or source study? What can new media say to the old (and vice-versa)? And, in attending to a multimodal Middle Ages, how—and what—should we read? Traditional methods in literary analysis have already been challenged by Franco Moretti’s “distant reading” and Matthew L. Jockers’s “macroanalysis.” What is the appropriate scale for medieval literature? Is the sentence a viable unit for the Middle Ages? And how big is big data? We invite proposals that focus on research and on pedagogy. Papers might engage with a wide range of languages, including Old English, Anglo-Latin, Old Irish, Old Norse, Early Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Middle Welsh; research topics, including quantitative formalism, corpus linguistics, social network analysis, TEI, manuscript studies, and maps; and new classroom technology, including annotation tools, online textbooks and courses, databases, and exercises. We particularly welcome proposals that challenge ideas of canonicity, or that situate Britain within a broader global sphere.

The conference will be hosted by Harvard University’s English Department and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies, with support from the Morton Bloomfield Fund and the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities. We are pleased to announce that Martin Foys (University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Timothy Stinson (North Carolina State University) will be delivering the plenary addresses.

Potential presenters should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to Erica Weaver, Joey McMullen, and Samantha Berstler at digitalbritain2016@gmail.com by January 15, 2016. Presentations should be no longer than twenty minutes.

For more information, please visit www.digitalbritain.weebly.com

Call for Papers
RMMRA 2016
“The Past, Present, and Future of Medieval and Renaissance Texts”
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, June 16–18, 2016

The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association invites paper and panel proposals for its 2016 conference, to take place on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, June 16–18, 2016. The conference theme, “The Past, Present, and Future of Medieval and Renaissance Texts,” invites proposals that address any aspect of textual culture, including how medieval and Renaissance authors composed their texts; how texts were affected by their manuscript or early printed context; how works of art could function as visual texts; how texts were received by their intended and unintended audiences; how texts have been transmitted across the centuries; how editorial practice and literary theory have helped form modern approaches to medieval and Renaissance texts; and how advances in digital technology are shaping future directions in the presentation and analysis of texts. As always, while paper and panel proposals that address the conference theme will receive special consideration, proposals in any area of Medieval and Renaissance Studies will be welcome.

The conference will feature two keynote presentations by leading scholars: Sian Echard (University of British Columbia), “‘Examin’d with Original’: Facsimiles of Medieval Manuscripts in the Post-Medieval World”; and Adam Zucker (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), “‘Duller Parts’: Comic Stupidity and Difficult Texts.”

Paper and panel proposals should be directed to the RMMRA Program Committee via email to Timothy Graham (tgraham@unm.edu). Proposals are due by February 15, 2016. A proposal should include:

• Name of presenter
• Participant category (faculty/graduate student/independent scholar)
• Institutional affiliation
• Preferred mailing address
• Email address
• An abstract of the proposed paper/panel in about 250 words
• Audiovisual requirements and any other specific requests

The Program Committee will notify participants if their proposals have been accepted by March 5, 2016. Note that all presenters at the conference must be active members of RMMRA who have paid their annual subscription of $25 by the time of the conference.