The Medieval Academy Blog

We are pleased to announce a call for papers to Gender and Transgression 2012, a two-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers hosted by the St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Now in its fourth year, the conference aims to create a lively and welcoming forum for students and academic staff to build contacts, present research, and participate in creative discussion on the topics of gender and transgression in the Middle Ages. We hope to explore further how these concepts can be used to formulate new approaches to source material, drawing out fresh perspectives on both the familiar and unfamiliar.

We invite staff and students from departments of History, Modern and Mediaeval Languages, Theology, English, and Art History, in addition to scholars working in any other relevant subject area, to submit abstracts for papers of approximately 20 minutes that engage with the themes of gender and/or transgression in the mediaeval period. This year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Elizabeth van Houts (Honorary Professor of Medieval European History, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge), who will speak on gender and marriage in the Middle Ages, with special reference to the Anglo-Norman period.

Possible topics for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

• How may the terms “gender” and/or “transgression” be used as categories of analysis for the study of the Middle Ages, and how might they have been significant in mediaeval legal, literary or historical contexts?

• Can transgression be seen as a constructive force in the Middle Ages?

• How do gender and transgression participate in mediaeval conceptions of union?

• “Speaking up”: transgressing in the written and spoken word

• How are gender and transgression relevant categories for historians working in traditional economic, political, or legal fields of history?

All delegates are invited to attend an evening meal after the first day’s sessions, the cost of which will be covered for conference speakers. A buffet lunch and refreshments will be provided for all delegates during the second day, which will conclude with an informal roundtable discussion and wine reception. Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words to the organising committee at genderandtransgression@st-andrews.ac.uk. The deadline for submission is Friday 23rd December 2011, followed by the registration deadline of Monday 2nd April 2012. Conference registration may be completed closer to the time of the conference through the St Andrews University online shop at https://onlineshop.st- andrews.ac.uk/. Registration fees are £10 for academic staff and £5 for students and unwaged.

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies Special Call For Papers for Issue on Medieval Space and Place

SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 7, Issue 1: 1 March 2012

www.hortulus.net

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is a refereed journal devoted to the literature, history, and culture of the medieval world. Published electronically twice a year, its mission is to present a forum in which graduate students from around the globe may share their ideas. Article submissions on the selected theme are welcome in any discipline and period of Medieval Studies. We are also interested in book reviews on recent works: interested reviewers should send a query, indicating the book they would like to review.

Our upcoming issue will be devoted to representations and interpretations of spatial order, and place as a socially constructed category, in the art, chronicles, letters, literature, and music of the Middle Ages. Place and space theories have manifested themselves in Medieval Studies recently in a number of ways, from analysis of specific spaces and places, such as gardens, forests, cities, and the court, to spatially theorized topics such as travel narratives, nationalism, and the open- or closedness  of specific medieval cultural areas.  Over an array of subjects, the spatial turn challenges scholars to re-think how humans create the world around them, through both physical and mental processes. Articles should explore the meaning of space/place in the past by situating it in its precise historical context.

Possible article topics include, but are not limited to:

*Medieval representations of spatial order
*The sense of place in the construction of social identities
*Mapping and spatial imagination
*Topographies of meaningful places
*Beyond the binary of center/periphery
*Spatial policies of separation: ethnicity, religion, or gender
*Travel and the sense of place
*Creating landscape
*The idea of place in medieval religious culture
*Pilgrimage
*Workplaces
*Intimate space, public place
*Liminality and proximity as social categories

The 2011 issue of Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies will be published in May of 2012. All graduate students are welcome to submit their articles and book reviews or send their queries via email to submit@hortulus.net before March 1, 2012.

North Atlantic Connections: Texts and Interpretations of the Medieval North: 10th Annual Comitatus Conference on Medieval Studies

Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN

Feb. 24–25, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Marianne E. Kalinke, CAS Professor Emerita of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of The Arthur of the North: Arthurian Literature in the Norse and Rus’ Realms

Call for Papers:

We invite submissions of abstracts for papers on any topic that addresses cultural transmission and interaction in the medieval North Atlantic, from Nova Scotia to Scandinavia, from Iceland to Normandy. Presenters are welcome to discuss any period of the Middle Ages. Possible themes include:

·  North Atlantic political interactions.
·  Medieval Irish and Viking activity in North America.
·  Influence of intercultural violence on urban architecture.
·  Impact of cultural cross-pollination on daily life.
·  Literature, music, drama, and the visual arts.
·  Cultural interaction as a catalyst for social change.
·  Insular monastic evangelism.
·  The Viking role in the emergence of nationalism.
·  Spread of the British Arthur across the North.
·  Legal ramifications of North Atlantic cultural interaction.
·  The legacy of such medieval interactions on later eras.

Please submit an abstract of approximately 200 words to Erin Kissick

(echall@purdue.edu) by December 15, 2011.

Reality and Illusion: Seeing through the ‘Byzantine Mirage’
The Oxford Byzantine Society’s 2012 International Graduate Conference
17-18 February 2012, the History Faculty, University of Oxford
Call for Papers

Byzantium is famed as a place where the seemingly insubstantial could hold great weight: where the operation of wills and natures was a matter of life and death, where images could save or damn, where the pomp of court held an empire together, and great processions heralded the invisible presence of the divine. Is this reputation justified, or just another Byzantine myth? And how were boundaries between the real and the illusory understood?

We are interested in papers which explore functions of reality and illusion in all fields of Late Antique and Byzantine studies, including history, art history, archaeology, theology, literature, and philology. A broad range of approaches to realities and illusions, both historical and historiographical, are welcome.
Possible themes might include:
– local realities, imperial illusions
– theory and practice in Roman law
– hard and soft power on the frontiers
– communities, imagined or otherwise
– magic and religion
– the (un)changing face of orthodoxy
– the invisible gender
– continuity and change in the classical tradition
– images of the real and divine
– presentation of political power
– representations of the self

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a few words about yourself and your academic background, to the Oxford Byzantine Society at byzantine.society@gmail.com by Saturday, 26 November 2011. Final papers should be 20 minutes in length.

Subject to funding, the OBS hopes to offer subsidised accommodation for visiting speakers. More information will be available in early 2012. We regret that we are unable to cover travel expenses to and from Oxford, but encourage all participants to apply to their home institutions for travel grants.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE, www.oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com/international-graduate-conference-2012/

Call for Papers
Vagantes 2012
March 29-31
Indiana University, Bloomington

Vagantes is the largest conference in North America for graduate students studying the Middle Ages, and aims to provide an open dialogue among junior scholars from all fields of medieval studies. This year’s conference will feature keynote speakers Shannon Gayk (Associate Professor of English, Indiana University) and Professor Jordan L. Zweck (Assistant Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison). They will be joined by at least twenty-four student presenters and an audience of approximately 100 people. Vagantes emphasizes interdisciplinary scholarship; each year, presenters from backgrounds as varied as Comparative Literature, Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Anthropology, English, Philosophy, Manuscript Studies, Musicology, and Religious Studies come together to exchange ideas. In this manner, Vagantes fosters a sense of community for junior medievalists of diverse backgrounds, and because the conference does not have a registration fee, this community can flourish within the margins of a graduate student budget.

Abstracts for twenty-minute papers are welcome from graduate students on all
topics considering the Middle Ages. In keeping with the mission of Vagantes to advance interdisciplinary studies, we invite submissions in areas including but not limited to history, literature, art history, philosophy, religious studies, and musicology.

Vagantes is sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America.

Call for Papers: Erotica and the Erotic
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Extended deadline – November 6, 2011

The 18th Annual ACMRS Conference
16 — 18 February 2012 in Tempe, Arizona

ACMRS invites session and paper proposals for its annual interdisciplinary conference to be held 16 – 18 February, 2012 in Tempe, Arizona. We welcome papers that explore any topic related to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and especially those that focus on this year’s theme of erotica and the erotic, both in literal and metaphorical manifestations.

Conference Publication:
Selected papers related to the conference theme will be considered for publication in the conference volume of the Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance series, published by Brepols Publishers (Belgium).

Keynote Speaker:
Professor Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona. Professor Classen’s keynote address is titled “The Erotic and the Quest for Happiness in the Middle Ages. What Everybody Does and Hardly Anyone Truly Achieves.”

Pre-conference Workshop:
Before the conference, ACMRS will host a workshop on manuscript studies to be led by Timothy Graham, Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico. The workshop will be Thursday afternoon, February16, and participation will be limited to 25 participants, who will be determined by the order in which registrations are received. Email acmrs@asu.edu with “conference workshop” as the subject line to be added to the list. The cost of the workshop is $25 and is in addition to the regular conference registration fee.

Deadlines and Fees:
The conference registration fee is $95 ($45 for students) and includes welcoming and farewell receptions, two days of concurrent sessions (Friday and Saturday), and keynote address. Please note that there will be an opening reception Thursday evening, but there will be no sessions that day.

The deadline for proposals is 9:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time on 6 November 2011. Proposals must include audio/visual requirements and any other special requests. Subsequent a/v requests may not be honored without additional charge. In order to streamline the committee review process, submissions will only be accepted at http://link.library.utoronto.ca/acmrs/conference/ until 6 November 2011.

Questions? Call 480-965-9323 or email acmrs@asu.edu.

Please visit our website: http://www.acmrs.org/conferences/annual-acmrs-conference.

Call for Papers: Archival Scribes in the Medieval West :Training, Careers, Connections
(Belgium),
2-4 May 2012

For the last two or three decades, the interest for the written evidence of the past has been growing. Primary sources used by historians have acquired new value and become privileged subject matters of history themselves. This new trend in socio-cultural history has been initiated by the studies on the “Schriftlichkeit” or “literacy” (littératie, as we can read in the most recent French-speaking literature). They have raised the question of the process of writing and the written culture, which seemed to prevail in the Middle Ages – or at least, this is how Medievalists see it. Since then, primary written sources have been considered archeological artefacts. The process of their development and use, both mechanical and intellectual, is a central concern. However, it might now be time to take some distance from the object and focus on the men who shaped and wrote these textual sources. Historiography indeed continues to provide us with a rather fixed image of the medieval scribes : monks at work in the silence of the abbey’s scriptorium ; notaries tirelessly busy doing two things at once ; or chancery clerks, with their mass production of official documents. How much of reality is there in such traditional postcard scenes ? Continue reading →