The Medieval Academy Blog

The Center for Mediterranean Studies of the University Bochum, announces a call for the conference “Future of the Mediterranean – Mediterranean Futures,” to be held 30 September to 2 October 2013 in Bochum, Germany.

IThe future is terra incognita which can provide the surface onto which we project our dreams and yearnings or our nightmares. Today the Mediterranean region is commonly associated with conflict and crisis: the Middle East conflict has continued to smoulder for decades, the economic crisis has shaken countries on the northern and southern shores to their foundations, while responses to pressing environmental issues and dwindling resources have yet to be found. Despite all this, the upheaval in the countries of the Arab world shows that the dream of a better life can still move people to turn against existing power structures and stakeholders or even lead to rebellion. Thus the vision of a better future has become a resource which is driving societal, political and social changes in spite of all resistance.

Political, social, economic or cultural transformations provide a forum for a variety of notionsof what constitutes “progress” or “modern”. The future becomes a contested and controversial resource and may be construed according to religious beliefs, social class or prevailing perception of history, may be romanticised or may be discarded completely as a concept: Thus depictions of the future are always statements on a society’s “reality”.

We at the Center for Mediterranean Studies are now seeking contributors from all disciplines, who would be prepared to present their work or research results at the conference in one of the categories listed below. Thus we are looking for contributions which deal with historical and current visions of the future, from the oracle of Delphi to modern rating agencies. Furthermore we wish to examine the stakeholders and the structures which define, influence or manipulate visions of the future and the changes in and dynamics of local visions of the future, which contrast with those visions of nations, superpowers and dynasties.

If you are interested in contributing please send your details by e-mail to Meike.Meerpohl@ruhr-uni-bochum.de by 15 December 2012. Please enclose a synopsis in English (approximately 300 words) for a lecture of 20 minutes duration and a short CV.

Mid-America Medieval Association [MAMA] 2013 Conference
22-23 February 2013
University of Missouri—Kansas City
Remembering and Honoring Shona Kelly Wray

Plenary Address:  Professor Stanley Chojnacki (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill): “Wives and Goods in the Venetian Palazzo”

This year’s MAMA Conference will focus on the intellectual and scholarly legacy of Shona Kelly Wray (1963-2012), our beloved colleague, friend, and mentor.  Paper and session proposals in any area of medieval studies will be welcome, but we hope to pay particular attention to the following topics:

Women, gender, families
Interdisciplinary studies
Italian history, literature, culture
Legal history and analysis
Paleography, manuscript studies, diplomatics, codicology
The medieval university
|The Black Death, medicine, disease

In addition, the organizers will be hosting a roundtable discussion, “Teaching with Shona” that will focus on pedagogical issues such as using technology in the classroom, interdisciplinary teaching, and teaching interpretation of varied sources.

Submissions should be in the form of abstracts (300 word limit) for both individual papers and sessions, and should include all contact information.  Presenters in session proposals must be listed, with all contact information.

Deadline for submission of paper and session proposals:  Friday, 7 December 2012
Send all submissions via email to:
Linda E. Mitchell         mitchellli@umkc.edu<mailto:mitchellli@umkc.edu>

Graduate Students whose papers have been accepted and who wish to submit them for the Jim Falls Prize must send their papers (no more than 10 pages, and including full citations) NO LATER THAN 1 FEBRUARY to Linda Mitchell at the same email address.

Registration and Program information, including hotel info, will be sent out in mid-January.

International Conference of the Project Script and Signs. A computer-based analysis of high medieval papal charters. A key to Europe’s cultural history of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Erlangen (Germany), 14^th-15 ^th June 2013

Pattern recognition and analyse of historical handwritings

The high medieval papal charters are in the focus of the research project “Script and Signs. A computer-based analysis of high medieval papal charters. A key to Europe’s cultural history”. Sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the context of eHumanities, this project is a cooperation between the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Chair of Medieval History, Prof. Dr. Klaus Herbers; Chair of Pattern Recognition, Prof. Dr. Joachim Hornegger) and the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (Chair of Historical Base Sciences and Historical Studies). The project aims at a detailed and systematic analysis of the development of writing in 11^th and 12^th century papal charters. This new approach benefits from its interdisciplinary character, which combines the new means of pattern recognition with those from traditional historical and paleographic methods.

The possibilities offered by pattern recognition help to reconstruct the process of changes in writing in a detailed way, whereas until now the development from the “papal curia” to the “papal minuscule” and finally to “Gothic writing” has been stated only roughly in a general way. Other characteristics of a charter, such as the “Benevalete” and “Rota”, will also be examined in the project. The results will not only be analyzed paleographically and diplomatically, but will also be placed in a cultural and historical context.

The analysis will begin with the papacy of Leo IX (1048-1054), who changed the layout of papal charters in a significant way, and will end in the year 1198 with pope Innocent’s III papacy.

Apart from descriptive observations about when and how changes in writing were taking place, further questions will be worked on in the project. Why did these changes happen? Can they be related to single persons or events? Moreover, new knowledge about the papal chancery – the most efficient chancery in the High Middle Ages – will be expected by the automatically supported attribution to specific scribal hands.

TOPIC AND FORMAT OF THE LECTURE

This conference’s main focus will be on the technical aspects of the project. Based on the traditional paleography questions of automatic pattern recognition, digital paleography and the writer’s identification as well as the general analysis of papal charters will be discussed.

Three to four orators per section are supposed to speak for 20 minutes with a a 20-minute discussion following each presentation.

Scholars having their main focus on paleography or/and automatic pattern recognition are kindly invited to submit a paper. These propositions should be sent to Viktoria.Trenkle@gesch.phil.uni-erlangen.de including an abstract of the proposed paper (maximum 300 words) as well as a short academic curriculum of the presenter.

Deadline:  2012-11-23

THE TOPICS IN SUMMMARY
I.            “Traditional” Paleography – methods, results, desiderata
II.            Handwriting Recognition
III.            Digital Paleography
IV.            Identification of diffrent scribal hands
V.            General Document Analysis

Contact persons:
Thorsten Schlauwitz/ Viktoria Trenkle
Kochstr. 4  BK 9
91054 Erlangen
Fon: 09131/8525904
Mail: Thorsten.Schlauwitz@gesch.phil.uni-erlangen.de
Viktoria.Trenkle@gesch.phil.uni-erlangen.de
URL: http://www5.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/puhma

Catastrophe, Calamity and Chaos in the Pre-Modern World
A Virtual Symposium on February 9, 2013, 8:30 – 10:30 AM Pacific Standard Time
Call for Presentations

The Pre-Modern Institute (formerly the Medieval and Modern Institute) at the University of Alberta, in collaboration with Athabasca University and PreMiss (the Pre-Modern Institute Student Society), is soliciting proposals for participation in a virtual (fully on-line) symposium on “Catastrophe, Calamity and Chaos in the Pre-Modern World.” The symposium time-slot (8:30 – 10:30 AM PST) permits active participation from across a large number of time zones, and is specifically designed to enable conversations among specialists who otherwise would not encounter one another. Participants will discuss previously-circulated presentations, available in advance through a symposium website.

The organizers encourage presentations concerning any area of the globe during pre-modern times, roughly understood as the period before c. 1750 CE, but allowing for flexibility where regional specialists periodize differently.

The symposium will stimulate comparative discussion of the dynamics of catastrophic, calamitous and chaotic events such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, floods, plagues, epidemics, expulsions, forced migrations, genocides, and terrorism. Presentations may address the causes of the events, the events themselves, the results of the events, the depiction of the events (in textual or visual media), or the subsequent memory and commemoration of the events.

Presentations may be in any format, including but not limited to text files (e.g. in Microsoft Word), power point presentations, pdfs of poster presentations, MP3 audio files, or YouTube videos. Participation in discussion, through Elluminate for Moodle, will be possible via text, voice, and/or video both in a “main” room and in topical/thematic breakout rooms. All rooms will be moderated. A link enabling access to the discussion forum will be sent to registered participants.

The organizers plan to publish fleshed-out versions of a selection of the presentations as an edited collection.

Please send 150 word (text) abstracts and a brief biography or CV by November 30, 2012 to memi@ualberta.ca. Questions concerning format should be addressed to Felice Lifshitz (felice.lifshitz@ualberta.ca) or Shandip Saha (shandips@athabascau.ca).