The Medieval Academy Blog

Call for Proposals: Early Global Insularities
Viator Special Cluster
Editors: Sara Torres and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia

Early Modern literatures are suffused with references to fantastical, miraculous, and topographical islands, from the isle of Avalon in Arthurian legend, to Dante’s Purgatorio, to the pilgrimage site of St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg, Ireland. Some texts imagine islands as archipelagos and networks—linked coastal zones where merchants, missionaries, and migrants mingle in local ports. Islands can be replicable, itinerant, or phantasmagorical (St. Brendan’s Isle), tied to the temporalities of liturgy or climate. They can, like the Fortunate Isles, float tantalizingly at the edges of cartographic knowledge and cultural epistemes, beckoning us beyond the thresholds of human knowledge. Other texts, such as Thomas More’s Utopia, focus on the spatial autonomy of islands, emphasizing their disjunctive status as unique in culture or in social organization, exceptionalist in outlook or in ideology. Such sites, conspicuously separate from surrounding polities and politics, draw attention to cultural difference or utopian possibility, and can facilitate the nostalgic affect that transforms a kingdom such as England into a “sceptered isle”—fantasies that can be used to exclude other communities or reinforce endogenous practices. At the heart of the idea of islands is an exploration of the nature and extent of our relationship as individuals to society at large, and of cultures to one another.

Islands occupy a sometimes ambiguous place in center-periphery models, and it’s our hope that by “centering” insularity as a topography, a literary conceit, and a disciplinary trope, we can explore both the range of “islands” in medieval and medievalist texts as well as the possibilities of working in an archipelagic scholarly community. In a time of climate crisis, the precarity of islands and archipelagoes (so often the sites of colonial violence) brings a sense of urgency to our reappraisal of the historical ideation of insularity and the relationship of the local to the global.

We invite proposals on topics broadly related to our theme of “Insularity and Early Globalities” and especially encourage contributions from early career scholars and scholars whose work spans multiple geographical regions and linguistic traditions.

Possible topics include:

• Mythical islands in medieval, medievalist, or early modern literature
• Iberian insolarios, coastal contact zones, and archipelagic regions
• Mediterranean studies, Blue studies, and ecological commentaries on coasts or islands
• Reflections on how geographical thought shapes premodern and early modern theories of race
• Islands, periodization, and disruptive temporalities
• Decolonizing approaches to early global insularities
• Disciplinary insularity and its discontents
• Reflections on teaching premodern or early modern literature from scholars working within “insular” institutional or geographical spaces

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to sara.torres@converse.edu and nahir@unm.edu with “Viator Proposal” in the subject line by 15 July 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 31 August 2022. Contributors will have the opportunity to workshop essays-in-progress in November 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 20 January 2023. Tentative publication date 2024.

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 11–13, 2023. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

The 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies will include traditional in-person sessions, virtual sessions, and new blended-format sessions that make it possible for speakers to present and audiences to attend both in-person and online.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/58th-icms). The deadline for submission is May 16, 2022.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $600 maximum for scholars based in North America and up to $1200 maximum for those coming from outside North America. 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. For scholars participating remotely, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse participants for conference registration.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/58th-icms.

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

Medieval Studies is a particularly fruitful field of study, especially in combination with other areas, Translation Studies being no exception. Indeed, the combination of these two areas is of extreme importance, providing a better understanding of medieval texts, as well as a broader understanding of the meaning, value, and consequences of translation within this timeframe. Despite its importance, medieval translation remains poorly researched and promoted in academia. In an effort to fill this gap, submissions are invited for a special issue of the open-access journal, Translation Matters, on the subject of Translation in and from the Middle Ages.
We welcome articles dealing one of the following topics:

• The phenomenon of translation during the Middle Ages:
  • Theoretical articles exploring the concept of translatio in the Middle Ages, as well as the theory behind the practice of translation in the medieval period
  • Case studies dealing with the translation or transmission of different texts, genres or concepts between two or more medieval vernaculars or between Latin (or another lingua franca or lingua sacra) and a vernacular
  • Medieval matters and cycles involving translational processes
• The translation of medieval texts into contemporary languages:
  • Theoretical articles exploring methodologies, strategies and problems of the translation of medieval texts into contemporary languages
  • Case studies on the translation of specific texts or concepts
  • Contemporary reception and neo-medievalism: theory and practices.

Articles, in English or in Portuguese, should be 6000-8000 words in length, including references and footnotes, and be formatted in accordance with the guidelines given on the journal’s website. Papers should be uploaded onto the site by 31st October 2022. http://ojs.letras.up.pt/index.php/tm/index.