Call for Papers – Epic in the Latin West (4th-15th Centuries)

Epic in the Latin West (4th-15th Centuries)
Nuremberg, Wednesday, 25 September 2024 – Saturday, 28 September 2024

Epic, beyond other genres, has been both a guarantor of cultural continuity for millennia and a site of fundamental innovations in literary style and content in Western culture. It has also occasioned heated controversies, because of the complex associations it bears, e.g., with nationalism, colonialism or racism. How do such debates relate to Medieval Latin – or do they?

The conference “Epic in the Latin West (4th–15th Centuries)” proposes to explore the genre in its highly varied developments from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Medieval Latin gave expression to an overwhelming number of epics, many of them still little studied. The centre of gravity will be the Latin of the Middle Ages, but connections with Classics, other vernaculars, and modernity from the Renaissance to the present day are also possible topics. What do these earlier centuries have to say to the twenty-first?

Many avenues might be investigated, such as:

– Epic Heroes and Heroines: adaptation of classical heroes (from Homer, Virgil, Lucan, and others); questions of gender; rise of new heroes (biblical and saintly); effects of Christianity on the nature of heroism.

– Texts and Genres: epic and other genres (e.g. historical writing, hagiography, philosophy, and theology); defining features of epic; orality and literacy, in composition and transmission; stylistics and metrics; verse in relation to prose.

– Reception: intertextuality, concentrating on Latin but also relating to the vernaculars; text transmission and philological aspects; quotation and paraphrase; text and image; text and music; epic and other media (romances, novels, film, and recent media forms, so long as the connection with Medieval Latin is strong).

The conference will take place under the aegis of the International Medieval Latin Committee (president: Prof. Dr. Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard). Mornings will feature plenary lectures (keynote speeches) by internationally recognized specialists, while the afternoon will have papers given in panel sessions (each 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion). The conference languages are German, English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.

This call for papers is open to scholars at all career stages who would like to present in the panel sessions. Interested individuals should send their proposals to kongress-epos2024@fau.de under the key word Vortrag Epos 2024 by 1 March 2024.

Please send, in addition to your C.V., the title of your contribution and an abstract in English (max. 300 words). The papers themselves may be delivered in any of the conference languages named above. In selecting papers, the organizers are looking to create a spectrum that is thematically and methodologically as broad as possible.

For more information about the conference and accompanying program, see our homepage:

https://www.mittellatein.phil.fau.de/epos-2024-2/

Prospective presenters and audience members may register there.

For 10 young scholars, travel bursaries in the amount of 400€ each will be available on a competitive basis through the generosity of the HWB Mittellatein Foundation. Please send your application before 30 June 2024, including a full C.V. and a short statement describing your interest in Medieval Latin to: Dr. iur. Felix Berschin, Kennwort „HWB Mittellatein“, Max-Reger-Str. 41, 69121 Heidelberg (Germany)

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IAS – School of Historical Studies Membership Announcement

The Institute is an independent private institution founded in 1930 to create a community of scholars focused on intellectual inquiry, free from teaching and other university obligations. Scholars from around the world come to the Institute to pursue their research. Candidates of any nationality may apply for a single term or a full academic year. Scholars may apply for a stipend, but those with sabbatical funding, other grants, retirement funding, or other means are also invited to apply for a non-stipendiary membership. Open to all fields of historical research, the School of Historical Studies’ principal interests is the history of western, near eastern and Asian civilizations, with particular emphasis on Greek and Roman civilization, the history of Europe (medieval, early modern, and modern), the Islamic world, East Asian studies, art history, the history of science, and late modern history. Support is available each year for one scholar in music studies. A Ph.D. (or equivalent) and influential publications are required.

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New course at Rare Book School: “Using Digitized Manuscripts”

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is pleased to offer a new course this summer that may be of interest to MAA members: “Using Digitized Manuscripts” taught by Dot Porter. Over the past 20 years, the number of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that have been digitized has expanded dramatically. What opportunities does this widespread digitization make possible? In this class, students will learn about the process of digitization, focusing on photography and touching on other methods for making manuscripts available through digitization. We will learn and experiment with various tools for working with digitized manuscripts. Finally, we will discuss both the promise and the limitations of digitization.

Over the course of the week, students will have the opportunity to apply new knowledge to a digitized manuscript of their choice and share their progress and results with the class. The course will combine lectures, tours, readings, hands-on project development, and group discussion.

Students should come to class with a digitized manuscript they wish to work with and should have access to images and a description of the manuscript. Applicants’ personal statements should include a description of the manuscript and a discussion of what kind of project they are interested in undertaking with the manuscript.

This course will run 24-28 July. If you would like additional information or are interested in applying, please visit: https://rarebookschool.org/courses/manuscripts/m105v/

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Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 7th Forum Medieval Art

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 7th Forum Medieval Art/Forum Kunst des Mittelalters, Jena, September 25–28, 2024. The biannual colloquium is organized by the Deutsche Verein für Kunstwissenschaft e.V.

The theme for the 7th Forum Medieval Art is Light: Art, Metaphysics and Science in the Middle Ages.

The Mary Jaharis Center invites session proposals that fit within the Light theme and are relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is May 29, 2023.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and session chair) up to $500 maximum for participants traveling from locations in Germany, up to $800 maximum for participants traveling from the EU, and up to $1400 maximum for participants traveling from outside Europe. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement. The Mary Jaharis Center regrets that it cannot reimburse participants who have last-minute cancellations and are unable to attend the conference.

For a complete description of the theme, further details, and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/7th-forum-medieval-art.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

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MAA News – From the Executive Director: ACLS Annual Meeting

I was very pleased to have attended the Annual Meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies in Philadelphia on April 27-29 together with the MAA’s new ACLS Delegate Afrodesia McCannon (New York Univ.). Many MAA members may not realize that in addition to offering grants and fellowships, the ACLS provides critical support, counsel, and training for staff, governance, and volunteer leadership of its seventy-nine constituent learned societies. The Medieval Academy of America was among the earliest members of ACLS, joining in 1927. As our delegate, Prof. McCannon is a voting member of the ACLS Council and is tasked with delivering an annual report on ACLS meetings and programming to the MAA Council and members. This report is delivered during our own Annual Meeting and is published in the July issue of Speculum each year.

This year’s ACLS Annual Meeting included panels, lectures, and discussions focusing on the complexities of open-access publishing, ongoing threats to the humanities, legislative attacks on academic free speech, and issues facing students, teachers, and staff at HBCUs nationwide. All of these topics are of import to the MAA as we think about the direction of our own publishing programs, the future of Medieval Studies, and efforts to make our field and our organization a welcoming and safe space for BIPOC medievalists and their work. On Friday evening, the 2023 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture was delivered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who spoke about the journey from his childhood in rural West Virginia to his role as producer and host of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots.”

On Saturday morning, I was elected to the Executive Committee of the Conference of Executive Officers (CEO), where I had been serving a one-year replacement term. I look forward to serving a full three-year term working with Executive Directors from other ACLS societies to set priorities and agendas for the CEO’s biannual meetings. The CEO has been an incredibly valuable resource for me throughout my tenure as ED, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to be part of its leadership.

– Lisa

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MAA News – 2024 Annual Meeting Call for Papers

99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America
University of Notre Dame
14-16 March 2024

The 99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana). The meeting is hosted by The Medieval Institute, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University, South Bend.

The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration can be given to individuals whose specialty would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.

Conference themes include Mapping the Middle Ages; Bodies in Motion; and Communities of Knowledge. In addition, we welcome innovative proposals that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries or that use various disciplinary approaches to examine an individual topic. We encourage papers on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe and the networks and exchanges between East and West.

See this page for more information and the full Call for Papers:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2024AnnualMeeting

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MAA News – MAA@Kzoo

Now that the International Congress on Medieval Studies is back to meeting in person (May 11-13), the Medieval Academy of America will be returning to Kalamazoo as well:

1) The Friday morning plenary, sponsored by the Academy, will be delivered by Thelma Thomas (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University): “Clothing the Angelic Life: The Desert Fathers on the Necessity of Clothing for Monks, Angels, and Adam” (Friday, May 12, 8:30 AM, Bernhard Ballroom). Two related sessions organized by Prof. Thomas will take place on Thursday at 3:30 PM (Session 133, Schneider 2335, hybrid format) and Friday at 1:30 PM (Session 253, virtual format).

2) On Thursday at 1:30 and 3:30 PM, the Graduate Student Committee is sponsoring a two-part workshop on “Careers Beyond the Academy” (Sessions 81 and 131). Both sessions will take place in Schneider Hall 1330 and in hybrid format.

3) The Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) is sponsoring two roundtables: Making Medieval I: The Experiential Pedagogy of Literature and the Arts (Friday, 10 AM, Session 189, Schneider Hall 2345 (hybrid)) and Making Medieval II: The Experiential Pedagogy of Bodies and Things (Friday, 1:30 PM, Session 208, Fetzer Center 1040/1050).

4) The annual CARA Luncheon is back! The luncheon will take place on Friday May 12 at noon (Bernhard, President’s Dining Room). This annual event is a forum for sharing ideas and best practices for supporting and growing medieval studies on campus and beyond We hope you will attend as a representative of your institution, center, program, or department. There is no fee to attend, but pre-registration is required and space is limited to fifty attendees. Click here for more information and to register.

5) Finally, we invite you to visit our staffed table in the exhibit hall on Thursday or Friday to introduce yourself, transact any Medieval Academy business you may have, or pick up some chocolate to keep you going during those long afternoon sessions. As in the past, we will be giving away fifty free one-year memberships to new members, so spread the word!

See you at the ‘Zoo!

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MAA News – Upcoming Race & Gender Working Group Webinars

May 5, 2023 at 12pm-1:30pm EST

Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, CUNY: Borough of Manhattan Community College and Graduate Center, “Shifting Concepts of Race: Italy through the Earlier Middle Ages”

Responder: Dr. Sarah Davis-Secord, University of New Mexico

May 19, 2023 at 12pm-1:30pm EST

Sierra Lomuto, Rowan University, “Mongols in Medieval Europe: Exoticism and the Legend of Prester John”

Responder: Dr. Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico

Click here for more information and to register.

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MAA News – Call for Proposals – Speculations: The Centennial Issue of Speculum

Speculations
The Centennial Issue of Speculum
January 2026

The centenary of a scholarly journal offers the opportunity to recognize, reflect on, and reimagine scholarly methods and objects, including canonicity and the discursive possibilities of scholarship; the boundaries, borders and spaces that define our disciplines; the genres and taxonomies that shape our work.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Speculum, we aim to commemorate the journal by raising questions about the methods and parameters of our study in a prospective rather than retrospective manner. What might the future of medieval studies look like? What might the place of this journal in that future be? The volume focuses on the future of the journal and the field it helps to define by inviting a wide breadth of scholarship that can collectively speculate about how we can take medieval studies into the future. But of course those living in the medieval world broadly considered speculated on their future as well. How was the future conceived in the past and what might those past reflections about the future, and about the condition of futurity generally, have to teach us as we consider recent shifts in our field and a shifting institutional context.

The format of the centennial volume will model the kind of contributions we seek: instead of 4-5 long form articles, we plan to publish 50 short essays (of approximately 3000 words each) in an attempt to represent a broader range of voices, perspectives, methodologies, and areas of study. We welcome traditional essays as well as innovative forms of research and reflection (pedagogical speculations, creative or dialogic writing, speculative history, etc.).

We invite contributions that speculate on the past and future of scholarly work in medieval studies. We particularly welcome essays that address gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and that use comparative and interdisciplinary methods and that address at least one of the following questions:

  • What kinds of methods and theoretical models shape our work and will orient us in the future?
  • How might we call on more inclusive and expansive understandings of the Middle Ages in light of the global turn and critical reappraisals of periodization.
  • What histories do we examine, what histories do we obscure, and what criteria will most productively guide our examination of histories in the future?
  • How have scholarly understandings of medieval historicity and temporality shaped the parameters of our inquiry, and how might we critically engage these accounts?

Proposals of 300 words should be sent to speculations@themedievalacademy.org by December 1, 2023.

Speculations editorial collective
Mohamad Ballan
Peggy McCracken
Cecily Hilsdale
Katherine Jansen
Sierra Lomuto
Cord J. Whitaker

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MAA News – MAA Grants Awarded

The following grants were awarded in recent weeks:

Olivia Remie Constable Awards:

Louisa Foroughi, “Peasant Femininity and the Female Relations of Yeomen in Later Medieval England”

Margaret K. Smith, “Identity and Authority in Medieval Ireland”

Kristen Streahle, “Opportunities Underfoot: Repairing Sanità through Community Organizing and Cultural Heritage Stewardship”

Justin Willson, “The Sacralization of Art in Late Medieval Muscovy”

Dissertation Grants:

Hope Emily Allen Grant: Noa Ania Nikolsky (University of Pennsylvania), “Governing Bodies: The Regimen Sanitatis in Late Medieval Europe”

John Boswell Grant: Gabriela Chitwood (University of Oregon), “Toulouse Cathedral: Understanding Life in and around a Cathedral under Construction”

Helen Maud Cam Grant: Claire Kilgore (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Sensing the Bodily Interior: Visualizing Pregnancy and Reproductive Anatomy in Central Europe, 1300-1550”

Grace Frank Grant: Douglass Hamilton (Fordham University), “The Knight God Forgave: Longinus and the Negotiation of Knightly Piety c. 1000 – c. 1300”

Etienne Gilson Grant: Hallie Voulgaris (Yale University), “Practicing Music Theory with Mind, Body, and Soul in the treatises of Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī”

Frederic C. Lane Grant: Paige Lynch (University of New Mexico), “Associations between Climate Change, Feudalism, and their Biological Consequences for a Medieval Polish Population”

Robert and Janet Lumiansky Grant: Shannah Rose (New York University), “The Codex Ríos and the Reception of Mesoamerican Pictography in Early Modern Rome”

E. K. Rand Grant: Marcel Camprubi (Princeton University), “Lines of Thought: Notation and Music Books in Early Abbasid Baghdad (762-1055)

Charles Tuttle Wood Grant: Adam Matthew Aaron (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), “The Sons of Melisende: Baldwin III, Amalric, and Kingship in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1143-1174 CE”

Belle da Costa Greene Award:

Anwesha Das, “Connecting Threads: Gujarat and its Textile Trade in the Medieval Indian Ocean (11th-15th Century CE)”

Schallek Awards:

Mary M. Alcaro (Rutgers University), “Plague Trauma and the Pestilential Poetics of Late Fourteenth Century British Literature”

Erin Kurian (University of Waterloo), “The Cinque Ports: An Urban Confederation in Decline 1350-1450”

Morgan McMinn (West Virginia University), “Daily Life of the Religious in the Late Medieval Diocese of Lincoln”

Bard Swallow (University of Toronto), “The Role of Latin Poetry in Late Medieval England”

Emily Youree (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Outlaw Discourse: The Affinity of King and Outlaw in Late Middle English Literature”

Congratulations to all of the recipients! We are so pleased to be able support these scholars and their research.

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