We are delighted to announce this call for papers and invite proposals relating to all aspects of the broad topic ‘signs and scripts’ in the medieval world. Submissions are welcome from all disciplinary perspectives, whether historical, literary, archaeological, linguistic, interdisciplinary, or anything else. There are no limitations on geographical focus or time period, so long as the topic pertains to the medieval period.
Areas of interest may include but are not limited to:
Semiotics and semantics
Ways of (mis)reading
Palaeography and codicology
Spiritual / cosmological signs
Codes and conduct
Behavioural script
Dramatic script; theatre
Monuments; inscriptions
Heraldry; signboards
Graffiti and marginalia
Scripts of the body; tattoos
Textiles
We ask that all presenters attend in person with hybrid participation available for attendees who cannot travel to the event.
Submission Guidelines
Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. A limited number of bursaries are available to help with travel costs, and we welcome applications from graduate students at any university.
Please send abstracts of 250 words to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 17th December, 2023.
The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference is back on April 20-21, 2023 with the theme of ‘Names and Naming’!
The conference takes place fully hybrid, in Oxford and online. Follow us on Twitter @OxMedGradConf and In the meantime, check out the conference website (https://oxgradconf.wixsite.com/omgc), with its extensive digital collection of Oxford medieval medical manuscripts and its blog featuring some excellent articles on past conference themes. If you’d like to contribute a blog post or have any questions about the conference, you can get in touch at oxgradconf@gmail.com.
Tristan Alphey, ‘Nicknames in Early Medieval England and Social Regulation’
Will Hoff, ‘In the name of Robin Hood: a new look at byname evidence for the outlaw tradition’
Sebastian Dows-Miller, ‘Jean from Saint-Quentin: who was he, and does it matter?’
12:00-13:30 Session 2: Patterns & Variations
Madeleine Killacky, ‘Rubricating Names in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’
Birger Mård, ‘Name-phrase variation in the Arboga municipal court records (1450–1569)’
Marina Ilia, ‘Naming Patterns in Venetian Cyprus’
14:30-16:00 Session 3: Reading the Land
Abigail Lloyd, ‘How to find a medieval settlement by the name of a hill? A challenge to the Gelling and Cole hypothesis’
Christophe de Coster, ‘‘Hic Sunt Dracones’: data-driven analysis of the (un)changing nature of toponyms and its implications for toponym-based landscape-reconstructions
Em Horne, ‘An Examination of the value of place-names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of the Lancashire Coast’
16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 1 Dr David Zakarian, ‘The World through the Eyes of Medieval Armenian Scribes’
FRIDAY, APRIL 21
10:00-11:30 Session 4: Genealogies & Histories
Claire Lober, ‘Monuments to Meaning in the Historia and Brut y Brenhinedd’
Deepashree Dutta, ‘The Little Kingdom of Bishnupur: Naming, Self-Fashioning and Making of a Vaishnava Devotional Realm’
Jodie Miller, ‘Naming and Moral Lineage in Les Enfances de Renart
