The Medieval Academy Blog

Gender and Medieval Studies Conference 2013
Corsham Court, Bath Spa University

Gender in Material Culture
4th-6th January 2013

Keynote Speakers
Prof. Catherine Karkov, University of Leeds
Dr Simon Yarrow, University of Birmingham

From saintly relics to grave goods, and from domestic furnishings to
the built environment, medieval people inhabited a material world
saturated with symbolism. Gender had a profound influence on
production and consumption in this material culture. Birth charms and
objects of Marian devotion were crafted most often with women in mind,
whilst gender shaped the internal spaces of male and female religious
houses. The material environment could evoke intense emotions from
onlookers, whether fostering reverence in religious rituals, or
inspiring awe during royal processions. How did gender influence
encounters with these objects and the built environment? Seldom purely
functional, these items could incorporate complex meanings, enabling
acts of display at every level of society, in fashionable circles at
European courts or amongst civic guilds sponsoring lavish pageants.
Did gender influence aesthetic choices, and how did status shape the
way that people engaged with their physical surroundings? In literary
texts and in art, the depiction of clothing and objects can be used to
negotiate symbolic space as well as class, gender, sexuality and
ethnicity. Texts and images also circulated as material objects
themselves, with patterns of transmission across the British Isles,
the Anglo-Norman world, and between East and West. The exchange of
such objects both accompanied and enacted cross-fertilisation in
linguistic, political and cultural spheres.

The Conference will consider the gendered nature of social, religious
and economic uses of ‘things’, exploring the way that objects and
material culture were produced, consumed and displayed. Papers will
address questions of gender from a range of interdisciplinary
perspectives, embracing literature, history, art history, and
archaeology.

Themes will include:
·               adornment, clothing and self-fashioning
·               the material culture of devotion
·               objects and materialism
·               the material culture of children, adolescents and life cycle
·               emotion, intimacy and love-gifts
·               entertainment and games
·               memory and commemoration
·               pleasure, pain, and bodily discipline
·               production and consumption
·               monastic material culture
·               material culture in literary texts

Please e-mail proposals of approximately 300 words for 20 minute
papers to the GMS committee at gms.bathspa.2013@gmail.com by 14
September 2012. Please also include your name, research area,
institution and level of study in your abstract. The Kate Westoby
Travel Fund provides limited financial support for postgraduates and
independent researchers who wish to attend the meeting.

Workshop “Using Large-Scale Text Collections for Research: Status and Needs”, 21 November 2012, The Hague, cf. http://blogdurmblf.blogspot.fr/2012/08/appel-contribution-using-large-scale.html (a pre-conference workshop to : http://www.textualscholarship.eu/conference-2012.html ).

Putting England in Its Place:
Cultural Production and Cultural Relations in the High Middle Ages

33rd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, Manhattan
March 9-10 2013

The rich culture of England’s mid-eleventh to thirteenth centuries is central to some disciplinary narratives for the High Middle Ages (for example, the political history of its ruling dynasties, analyses of visual and material culture and of Latin historiography), but omitted from others (the period is often assumed, for instance, to have little to do with the history of English literature). This interdisciplinary conference aims to look in a fresh and integrated way at cultural production and cultural relations within England and between England and other locales in order to explore what kind of place England as a region, a changing political entity, and a culture or set of cultures might occupy in our accounts of the High Middle Ages. We welcome papers dealing with England`s cultures (local, regional, general) in themselves and in their many connections (diplomatic, economic, artistic, etc…) with further areas of the British Isles and other medieval regions. We also invite ‘flash’ presentations on “Canterbury in the High Middle Ages” and on “Space and Place, Real and Imagined,” i.e. on a particular kind of space (e.g. marketplace, church, castle), place (a specific locale or region), or the representation of such sites from the High Middle Ages. Flash presentations should be 5-7 minutes long.

The Deadline for Submissions is September 5, 2012

Please send an abstract and cover letter with contact information to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu or by fax to (718) 817-3987.
See also the conference website at http://www.fordham.edu/mvst/conference13/England/

The Medieval Association of the Pacific is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the 2013 MAP conference, hosted by the University of San Diego, in San Diego, CA on March 21-23, 2013. The Program Committee invites proposals for individual 20-minute papers in any area of medieval studies, as well as organized sessions of three 20-minute papers. Submissions can be made through the MAP web site: http://www.csun.edu/english/map/, and the deadline is 15 October 2012.