The Medieval Academy Blog

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.

Paper or session proposals are invited for the 43rd Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, organized by the Vatican Film Library and to be held at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, 14–15 October 2016. The guest speaker will be Madeline H. Caviness (Mary Richardson Professor Emeritus, Tufts University), speaking on “Medieval German Law and the Jews: The Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books.”

Proposals should address the material aspects of late antique, medieval, or Renaissance manuscripts. Papers are twenty minutes in length and a full session normally consists of three papers. Submissions of papers may address an original topic or one of the session themes already proposed. Submissions of original session themes are welcome from those who wish to be organizers.

SESSIONS PROPOSED

Patterns of Exchange: Manifestations of Cross-Cultural Practice and Production in Medieval and Renaissance Hebrew Manuscripts

Every year we try to have a panel that parallels the topic explored by the keynote speaker. To complement Madeline Caviness’s “Medieval German Law and the Jews: The Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books,” we welcome papers that will explore/discuss medieval and Renaissance Hebrew manuscripts that reflect cultural interactions between Christian and Jewish communities in diverse geographical locations.

Manuscripts for Travelers: Directions, Descriptions, and Maps

This session focuses on manuscripts of travel and accounts of places and geographies intended for practical use: perhaps as guidance for a journey; descriptions of topography and marvels, or as travel accounts of pilgrimage, mission, exploration, and commercial or diplomatic expeditions. They could constitute itineraries, guidebooks, narratives, surveys, chorographies, or practical maps such as city plans, local maps, or portolan charts. We invite papers that examine any of these aspects of manuscripts associated with travel, with particular attention to their production, illustration and decoration, use, transmission, or preservation.

Pages with Extended Pedigree: Second-Hand Manuscripts and Their Owners

The names of famous manuscripts come quickly to mind, especially because of their association with wealthy and celebrated figures: the Bedford Hours; the Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry; the Bible of Borso d’Este, for example. Less well-known are their subsequent owners, who may have been equally notable but have been eclipsed by the aura surrounding the first. This panel seeks papers that examine the cumulative ownership history of extraordinary manuscripts, before they entered their present holding institutions.

Open Panel

Here is your chance to propose and assemble, or propose and contribute to a panel that speaks to a manuscript theme that you have long been wishing to see explored, or investigated from a particular standpoint. We are open to proposals on all manuscript genres, from any geographical locale, on all aspects of manuscript study: transmission and reception, codicology, local practices of production, collecting, library history, cultural influence, and scholarly use.

Please submit a paper or session title and an abstract of not more than 200 words by 15 March 2016 via our online submission form. Those whose proposals are accepted are reminded that registration fees and travel and accommodation expenses for the conference are the responsibility of speakers and/or their institutions. For more information, contact Erica Lauriello, Library Associate Sr for Special Collections Administration, at 314-977-3090 or vfl@slu.edu . Conference information and the online submission form are posted at http://lib.slu.edu/special-collections/programs/conference.