The Medieval Academy Blog

Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages
26-28 April 2016
Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages 2016, an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies (SAIMS). Entering into its eighth year, this conference welcomes participation from postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers interested in one or both of our focal themes of gender studies or more general ideas of transgression in the mediaeval period.

This year’s conference will have two keynote presentations by Dr Stuart Airlie (University of Glasgow) and Professor Caroline Humfress (University of St Andrews). Other speakers include Dr Huw Grange, Dr Rachel Moss and Dr Liana Saif.

We invite proposals for papers of approximately 20 minutes that engage with the themes of gender and/or transgression from various disciplinary standpoints, such as historical, linguistic, literary, archaeological, art historical, or others. This year, the conference will prioritise comparative approaches to the themes of gender and transgression across different time periods and, in particular, different regions. Thus, we strongly encourage abstracts which focus not only on western Christendom, but also the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. We also welcome proposals which contain a strong comparative element.

Possible topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

• Emotional history
• Legal Studies: women in the courtroom, gendered crimes, law breaking and law making
• Orthodoxy and Heresy: transgressing orthodox thought, portrayals of religious ‘outsiders’, monasticism, lay religion, mysticism
• Moral transgression
• Homosexuality and sexual deviancy
• Masculinity and/or femininity in the Middle Ages: ideas of gender norms and their application within current historiography
• New approaches and theories: social network theory, use of the digital humanities

Those wishing to participate should please submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to genderandtransgression@st-andrews.ac.uk by 12 February 2016. Please attach your abstract to your email as a Microsoft Word or PDF file and include your name, home institution and stage of your postgraduate or postdoctoral career.

Registration for the conference will be £15. This will cover tea, coffee, lunch and two wine receptions. All delegates are also warmly invited to the conference meal on Thursday 28 April. Further details can be found at http://genderandtransgression.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk as they become available.

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Science at Court, 1285-1450
An interdisciplinary conference at Newnham College
3-4 June, 2016

Call for Papers

http://www.scienceatcourt.org/about/

 From the anonymous Middle English Court of Sapience to Nicole Oresme’s Livre du ciel et du monde to the lavishly illustrated copies of Pliny’s Natural History produced for the Visconti family, medieval scientific discourse was often inflected by – and constructed around – literary, musical, and artistic forms present at court.  This conference invites abstracts on what it means to “do science at court” in the late medieval period, particularly in the context of literature, music, and the arts.

How do tradition, law, and power dictate the boundaries of science? How do ethics or political science affect natural philosophy? How do didactic poems or works of counsel, conduct, and governance blur the boundaries between science and mimesis?  What is the relationship between empiricism and narrative or visual forms? How does music do mathematical and political work?

Science at Court welcomes proposals on any aspect of art at court in the context of late medieval science.

Due to the generous support of Newnham College, travel subsidies will be available for attendees who may have difficulty obtaining funds.

Please send abstracts to tlb33@cam.ac.uk  by 31 January, 2016.

The 10th International Conference of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies

21-22 October 2016

National Pingtung University, Taiwan

Encounters: Friends, Foes, and Companions

Human civilization often entails various kinds of encounters. One of the most fundamental is interpersonal contact from which friendship, animosity, and companionship are born. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, friendship is defined in terms of ethical virtues, while in patristic writings friendship refers to a shared sense of being children of the one Father and brothers in Christ. From the Renaissance down to the modern era, there have been engaging discussions about forbidden friendships. In contrast, hostile feelings, especially jealousy and hatred, have long been favorite topics for writers such as Shakespeare who draws from the book of Proverbs in Julius Caesar and Othello to represent how the kisses of an enemy may be profuse.

On a broader scale, encounters can also be examined with reference to the contacts among different cultures and subsequent ideological transmission, conflict, hybridity, assimilation, and transformation. Ever since Classical Antiquity, communication between the East and the West has triggered a series of crucial cultural exchanges and interfaith interactions that can be inexhaustible subject matters for profound deliberation and academic research.

In addition to investigations into encounters in human societies, surveys of cross-species and eco-critical perspectives are welcomed so as to stimulate dialogue on environmental problems from both the viewpoints of the exploiters and the exploited. This discourse may help elucidate how human beings envision environments as their companions or adversaries and how human preconceptions determine the literary representation of human-animal and human-environment relationships. Therefore, aside from conventional approaches, this conference also aims to look at how the works of pre-modern environmental advocates square with the more popular drama, poetry, and even political discourse of the time and how these matters form an important part of literary, cultural, social, and environmental histories.

Within the purview of human contacts with the physical world, we would also welcome studies concerning engagement with nonphysical entities–the demonic and the heavenly—to shed light on the supernatural or transcendental perception of human encounters via different religious beliefs.

Within this four-stratum framework, this conference aims to proffer a forum for investigating human encounters that engender affection and enmity.

Topics for consideration may include (but are not limited to):

Philosophy of friendship in various cultures

Friendship from Classical Antiquity to the Renaissance

Forbidden friendship & homosexuality

Male friendship and female friendship

Friendship and patronage

Friendship and betrayal

Affiliation and politics

Human-nonhuman relationships

Humanism vs. anthropocentrism

Environmental encounters

Pre-modern environmental imagination

Representation of landscape and dreamscapes

Environmental impact on human psychology

Utopian imagination and new world order

Cross-species encounters

Bestiary and animal studies

Cross-boundary encounters

Wars and cultural encounters

Commerce and cultural encounters

Cosmography and the human world

Cosmology east and west

Pilgrimages and healing environments

Exorcism vs. healing practices

Interfaith encounters

Religious notions of friendship and relationship

TACMRS cordially invites papers that reach beyond the traditional chronological and disciplinary borders of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies. Please submit abstracts of 250 words and a one-page CV to Sandra Yu or Phoebe Yang at 2016tacmrs.nptu@gmail.com with a subject line stating “Submission for the 10^th TACMRS Conference” by 3 February 2016.

For more information, please visit the 2016 TACMRS Conference website: http://www.english.nptu.edu.tw