The Medieval Academy Blog

Dear colleagues and students,

We warmly invite you to the Studientag zum englischen Mittelalter (SEM XIV) which will take place at the Universtiy of Göttingen on March 8-10, 2012.

As usual, the SEM offers a platform for advanced students to present their papers in the field of English Medieval Studies to a forum of students and scholars. Topics may include any area concerning the research and teaching of the language and literature of the Middle Ages in England. Following the procedure of previous years, all papers will be forwarded to all participants before the conference, and will then be presented in a short summary by senior scholars who will then offer their help and comments and lead the discussion. The SEM offers a unique opportunity for up-and-coming medievalists to take the first steps on the academic stage in an open and friendly environment, to test and improve their ideas, and to become part of an inspiring network of scholars. Take the chance!

Everyone interested in submitting a paper should inform us about their intentions (please include a short abstract or a few sentences about the topic, and a working title if possible) until December 10, 2011.

Contributions should be in the form of an .rtf, or .doc, or a .pdf-file of about the length of twenty pages. Please send it to mediaeve@gwdg.de until February 10, 2012.

If you are planning to attend the conference we would be grateful if you could let us know before the end of 2011 so that we can make the necessary preparations. If you wish to volunteer for the presentation of a student paper please respond to wrudolf@gwdg.de.

Please forward this Call for Papers to all those you think may be interested in participating, and especially to those students working on an M.A. or PhD. We are happy about every contribution.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and hope to see as many of you as possible at the SEM next year.

Human / Animal
9th Annual Symposium of the International Medieval Society – Paris
CALL FOR PAPERS

Dates: Thursday 28 – Saturday 30 June 2012
Location: Paris, France
Deadline for submissions: 15 January 2012

The International Medieval Society in Paris (IMS-Paris) is soliciting abstracts for individual papers and proposals for complete sessions for its 2012 symposium organized around the theme of human/animal in medieval France.

Animals – both real and fantastical – were frequently central to medieval culture, thought and artistic production. This symposium addresses a particular aspect of this centrality: the relationship between humans and animals and the way this was imagined, defined and re-defined across the historical and cultural spectrum of the Middle Ages. The distinction between human and animal that modern culture often takes for granted is far from clear-cut in medieval contexts and was subject to historical and cultural change. Historians have suggested that the concept of the animal and the extent to which it represented a form of life distinguishable from that of human beings underwent considerable alteration in the twelfth century. This may be seen in shifts in the terms used to describe animals; developments in the ways animals were represented in literature and art; and the evolution of key texts such as the Physiologus and its variants, the bestiaries. Within this context, the boundaries between humans and animals – which might be established through elements as diverse as the possession of language, a capacity for laughter, or legal responsibility – were subject to change and negotiation. The conference aims to interrogate the questions that the fluctuating relationship between human and animal in the Middle Ages raises from an historically inclusive, cross-disciplinary perspective by focusing on a number of key questions:

– How was the relationship between human and animal conceptualised, represented and discussed in medieval cultural traditions (philosophical, literary, artistic, architectural, musical or other)?
– What significance does the relationship and/or distinction between humans and animals have in the social and legal contexts in which they interacted?
– To what extent were human and animal thought of as separable or confusable categories? How is this related to behavioural, linguistic, physical, cultural, or other factors?
– In what ways does thinking about animals in the Middle Ages serve to define a notion of the human? Is it possible to conceive of the animal in a way that does not reflect on the human?

Participants are free to interpret these questions broadly, in line with their particular areas of specialism. Priority will be given to papers that address French and Francophone topics. Please send a proposal of 400 words or less (written in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be e-mailed to contact@ims-paris.org no later than 15 January 2012.
In addition to the proposal, please submit full contact information, a CV and a tentative assessment of any audiovisual equipment required for your presentation.

The IMS-Paris will review submissions and respond via e-mail by 6 February 2012. Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris web site. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel costs and conference registration fee (35 euros, reduced for students, free for IMS-Paris members).

The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary and bilingual (French/English) organization founded to serve as a centre for medievalists who research, work, study, or travel to France. For more information about the IMS-Paris, please see our website: www.ims-paris.org.

3^rd Biennial Oxford/Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium
5-7 July 2012
University of Oxford

The Oxford/Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium (OCICS) is a biennial conference devoted to the interdisciplinary study of historical texts in the medieval and Early Modern periods. It provides a forum for discussions of chronicles and related texts written across a range of languages, periods and places. It seeks to strengthen the network of chronicle studies worldwide, and aims to encourage collaboration between researchers working in a variety of disciplines from around the globe.

The theme for the 2012 conference, taking place at the University of Oxford from the 5-7 July, is ‘Bonds, Links, and Ties in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles’. Keynote addresses will be given by Prof Pauline Stafford (Liverpool), Dr Elizabeth van Houts (Cambridge), and Dr James Howard-Johnston (Oxford). The conference will take place at Oxford’s Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies.

Registration is £60 (full) or £50 (reduced). This includes lunch and refreshments on all three days. A limited number of bursaries will be available to assist graduate students with travel costs.

Call for Papers
Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers of 20 minutes must be submitted to the organizers via e-mail (at ocics@history.ox.ac.uk) by 31 January 2012.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• genealogies (real or imagined)
• family bonds
• textual links
• breaks and discontinuities
• links between past, present, and future
• ties of religion and faith
• law, order, and disruption
• oaths, promises, and betrayals
• local, regional, and national identities

Please visit our website for more information: www.ocics.co.uk

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.