Category: opportunities

1 Comment on CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: Indian Ocean Figures that Sailed Away

07/01/2022

18:59

events, Hilary 21

A range of archaeological finds of South Asian manufacture from sites in the Horn of Africa, and in the Italian and Arabian peninsulas—some long known and some newly excavated—can expand our knowledge of the Indian Ocean cultural milieu. ISAW is pleased to announce an online seminar series in Spring 2022 to reconvene an international conversation on these figures that sailed out of India to points west during the early first millennium CE. The series is open to advanced research students, scholars, and academics; please note that this event is not intended for the general public.

By hosting the conversation online, we hope to include regional specialists knowledgeable about and from different parts of the world. Advanced registration is required, and the number of participants will be limited to facilitate discussion, which will be led by participants who have written about the specific object or its context. We will closely consider the Pompeii Yakshi, formerly “Lakshmi” (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli), the Khor Rori Yakshi (Smithsonian, National Museum of Asian Art), a stone head from Berenike, a stone torso from Adulis, several ivory combs from, e.g., Dibba, as well as representations of ships.

The reception history of these objects both in antiquity and in museums has led to the association of only certain meanings with these objects in their afterlife. By looking again at these objects, we can distinguish other meanings: they hint at the identities of people who moved such objects overseas during the first millennium CE, thereby shedding light on the hybridity of both artifacts and their cultural context(s). This material record offers a complementary reading to literary accounts and historiographies of Indian Ocean trade routes.

The online “lunchtime” roundtable series will include a total of five 1-hour Friday ‘lunchtime’ (in New York) talks, conducted via zoom, from February 25th to April 25th, 2022 (see schedule below). We will reconsider individual figurines as types and as part of a collection of interrogated objects with very specific afterlives. Through our discussions, formerly occluded layers of reception will offer insight on larger questions of the first millennium Indian Ocean, its people, its cultures, its complexities, and its hybridities, Through such close looking at these and similar objects and their contexts, the series and culminating public lecture seek to integrate archaeological finds with ongoing studies of Indian Ocean travel, trade, and the broader cultural milieu of the Indian Ocean World with a special focus on religious attitudes, merchant identities, and material culture. We plan to develop an edited volume based on the discussions as well as initiate longer-term scholarly communities with this event.

If your area of research interest overlaps with this project, we invite you to join us by filling out this registration form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSem_X_vTtos7S1emfl69G2FrIFV3q_i4kUiTp9igePzx6tgLw/viewform?usp=sf_link). Please include a short abstract describing your research interests and key conference papers and/or publications. We will be in touch with a confirmation and more details during the first week of February.

For any additional information, or if you have any questions, please email: indianoceanfigurines@gmail.com.

Dates and Sessions:

February 25, 2022: 11am EST “Comparanda as context?” — The Pompeii Figurine and Indian Yakshis
March 4, 2022: 11am EST“Cultural milieu as context”? — The Khor Rori Bronze, a Dancing Yakshi
March 11, 2022: 11am EST“What other contexts?” — Liquescent Bodies and Coiffed Heads
March 25, 2022: 11am EDT“What do images of ships tell us?” — (Re)presenting Shipping
April 1, 2022: 11am EDT “How did we receive these objects into our mental world?” — Curation and Conclusions

Organizers:

Divya Kumar-Dumas, PhD, Visiting Research Scholar, ISAW

Valentina A. Grasso, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor, ISAW

Lylaah Bhalerao, PhD Student, ISAW

Priya Barchi, PhD Student, ISAW

Spriha Gupta, PhD Student, IFA NYU

Call for Papers: Reimagining the Medieval Double Monastery in Interdisciplinary Perspective

1 Comment on Call for Papers: Reimagining the Medieval Double Monastery in Interdisciplinary Perspective

05/01/2022

13:09

To be held at the Monastery of Admont in Steiermark, Austria, 14-16 October 2022.

The conference will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars with broad interest in dual-sex monasticism in the Middle Ages. The conference aims to put research on double monasteries on a new footing and to provide new perspectives in this not yet fully explored world.

The conference will be organized thematically, and we welcome abstracts for papers that focus on:

Theoretical Discourses and Ideological Justifications for Dual-Sex Monasticism: Theology, History, and Literature
Interaction, Interference, and Reciprocal Influence between the Sexes: Customaries, Rules, Liturgy, and Music
Coexistence, Collaboration, and Challenges between the Sexes: Archaeology, Architecture, and Art

The conference will mark the twentieth anniversary of Admont I — Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Admont and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (2002). Like Admont I, Admont II will emphasize collegiality and the informal exchange of ideas among colleagues of various disciplines, ranks, and career paths.

Participants are welcome to present in English or German. Each session will comprise two thirty-minute presentations, comments from an invited respondent, and an informal discussion.

Organizers: Alison I. Beach (University of St Andrews), Cristina Andenna (University of Graz), Father Prior Maximilian Schiefermüller (Librarian and Archivist, Stift Admont), and Karin Schamberger (Assistant Librarian, Stift Admont)

Submissions should include a brief abstract (max. 300 words) and a curriculum vitae. Please use the following link to upload this material by March 31, 2022: https://form.jotform.com/213412914963355

Call for Papers: Gender Identities in Early and Premodern Text Culture

Around Oxford, opportunities

13/12/2021

11:57

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The Early Text Cultures research group based at the University of Oxford invites abstracts for its research seminar in Hilary Term, running from January to March 2022, which will be on ‘Gender Identities in Early and Premodern Text Cultures.’

As is often recognised, the dominant voices in the premodern world have been men’s voices. Yet textual sources––from the literary to the administrative––are critical to recovering the heterogeneity that in many cases characterised ancient and premodern societies. Women were inspiring muses; but they also expressed themselves in poetry and participated in cultural productions. In some cases, there is ample evidence that they held leading roles in politics and the economy. We invite papers from graduate and early career researchers that give a stage to these voices, as they speak to us from premodern textual cultures. We also welcome proposals that consider the varying intersections between gender and identity, as well as on how gender representation interacted with that of other (potentially) marginalised social groups. Topics include, among others:

· Authors and/or texts that represent genders;

· How the presence of women’s authorship (factual or attributed) affects the reception of texts;

· The role of texts in presenting alternatives to a patriarchal, aristocratic world;

· How texts may have acted as instruments to shape normative social views, or to uproot them;

· The nexus between gender, marginality and oppression;

· The relationship between language and gender;

· How texts were read and performed to express genders and social identities.

Presenters will speak alongside another contributor treating a different early or premodern text culture. They are encouraged to engage with theoretical perspectives and to draw out productive points of comparison with the research of their fellow speaker. These papers will serve as starting points for a discussion with the other participants in each session, which will promote an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to the material under consideration. 

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to earlytextcultures@humanities.ox.ac.uk by Friday 7 January. The seminar will be held in a hybrid form, with Zoom connection complementing a limited on-site presence in Oxford. Speakers and auditors may choose whether to attend in person or online. Persons of all backgrounds are extremely welcome, and women and non-binary academics are highly encouraged to submit papers and attend the seminar.

CFP: Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

13/12/2021

11:54

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The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its thirty-second annual graduate student colloquium (MSSC), which will focus on the theme of ‘Consuming the Middle Ages’. The conference will take place on the 23rd of April, to be held virtually over Zoom. The colloquium will be preceded by a small lecture series.

We invite 20-minute papers that investigate consuming the Middle Ages as defined within a range of different disciplines and perspectives. Consuming can denote both physical consumption as well as the act of consuming and making sense of the medieval past through scholarly productions, creative media, and cultural phenomena and practices. How were medieval feasts organized and what socio-cultural function did food and the act of consuming it serve? What are possible connections between the life cycle stages of consumed goods (e.g., from cultivation to processing, to consuming, to disposal, etc.) and climate, migration, economics, etc.? What material and immaterial substances were subject to consumption and what religious or cultural roles did they play? How do postmedieval writers and thinkers configure the medieval? What are the ramifications of consuming the past and is this the nature of periodization? How are the traces, artifacts, or influences from the medieval past consumed by later or contemporary individuals, communities, and cultures? Papers may respond to (but are not limited to) one of these questions.

Preference will be given to papers from underrepresented backgrounds and disciplines. We strongly encourage submissions that expand these themes and categories of inquiry beyond Christian, Western European contexts. We invite submissions in all disciplines allied to Medieval Studies, including Asian Studies, Africana Studies, Critical Race Studies, Indigenous Studies, Near Eastern Studies, literature, history, the history of art, archaeology, philosophy, classics, theology, and others. Abstracts on all topics will be considered, though priority will be given to those which address our thematic strand.

Please send abstracts by January 30, 2021, to Sarah LaVoy at sfl39@cornell.edu.

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2022

Around Oxford, opportunities

13/12/2021

11:52

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The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference committee is thrilled to announce that the theme for 2022 will be Medicine and Healing. We look forward to hearing talks from our keynote speakers, Professor Emilie Savage-Smith and Dr Hannah Bower. The conference will be held in person (with limited measures in place for online papers) at Ertegun House, Oxford, on 21 and 22 April. We are pleased to call for papers which relate to all aspects of medicine and healing in Medicine and the medieval world.

Examples of areas of interest include but are not limited to:
o Ecocriticism
o Theology; faith as healing
o Humours
o Plague
o Childbirth
o Veterinary medicine
o Mental health
o Magic and amulets; folklore
and belief
o Manuscripts
o Hagiography
o Gendered approaches
o Technologies of healing

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. We intend to provide bursaries to help with speaker travel costs, and we are welcoming applications from graduate students at any university. Please email abstracts of 250 words to
oxgradconf@gmail.com by 15th January.

CFP: Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages VIII, Experiencing Space

1 Comment on CFP: Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages VIII, Experiencing Space

29/11/2021

14:10

Tampere, August 17-19, 2022

The focus of the Passages conference series lies on society and the history of everyday life. This time we are concentrating on the social construction and experiences of space, aiming to understand how it affected social frameworks, built communities and shaped individual lives. The “Spatial Turn” has directed scholars’ interest towards the interconnection between communities, individuals and space, but larger comparisons between eras and cultures are still mainly missing. We aim to approach space as an analytical tool, “experience” offering a novel conceptual method for the study in this field.

We are interested in everyday interactions within and between communities, groups and individuals and their relations with the environment. How did people negotiate the borders between built and “wild” environments, urban and rural space, the public and the private, the secular and the sacred? How were ideas, ideologies and identities reflected in the built environment and how were they shaped by space and perceptions of it? How did bodily practices and emotions create spaces, and how did space shape rituals and produce emotions? What was the role of sensory perceptions when living in and moving through space? How was space imagined and how did spaces, landscapes, buildings and monuments occupy a place in the private and public imagination? How were space and memories/narrations interconnected: how were spatial experiences inscribed in the preserved sources? In which ways did the political and legal, but equally religious spheres play a role in the formation of social spaces? We invite papers that focus on social topography, the lived experience of space, the normative and legal construction of space, the sensory perceptions of spatiality, and participation in constructing and regulating spaces.

We aim at a broad coverage not only chronologically but also geographically and disciplinarily (all branches of Classical, Byzantine and Medieval Studies). Most preferable are those contributions that have a comparative and/or interdisciplinary viewpoint or focusing on a longue durée perspective. We particularly welcome papers, which have a sensitive approach to social differences: gender, status, health, and ethnicity.

***

If interested, please submit an abstract of 300-400 words (setting out thesis and conclusions) and a short biography (50-100 words) for a twenty-minute paper together with your contact details (with academic affiliation, address and e-mail) https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/passages2022cfp. The deadline for abstracts is January 31, 2022 and the notification of paper acceptance will be made in March 2022. Conference papers may be presented in major scientific languages, together with an English summary or translation, if the language of the presentation is not English. The sessions are formed on thematic coherence of the papers and on comparison between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, thus session proposals focusing on one period only will not be accepted. If the Covid-19 situation so requires, the conference has the option of participation via Zoom.

The registration fee is 130 € (post-graduate students: 60 €), online participation for presenters 50 €. For further information, please contact conference secretary saku.pihko@tuni.fi. The registration opens in April 2022.

The conference is organized by Trivium – Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences/Tampere University) in collaboration with the ERC project Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (SpaceLaw.fi, University of Helsinki). This conference has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 771874).

Call for Papers: Speculum Themed Issue: “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages”

22/11/2021

11:18

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call for papers

Editors:

François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France

Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico

Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race’s origins to the sixteenth or even fifteenth centuries, but these scholars were few and far between. The Middle Ages and, with them, medieval studies were set off as a time and discipline innocent of race and racism. This remained generally true until the advent of critical medieval race studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, in 2021, special issues in major journals and no less than six full-length scholarly monographs have treated the imbrications of race with medieval art, literature, religion, and even the periodizing concept of the Middle Ages itself. Many more studies in medieval literature, history, art, religion, and culture have been conceptually informed by race, as have many studies in the modern perceptions and deployments of the Middle Ages. Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies calls for proposals for a themed issue, to be published as one of Speculum’s four quarterly issues, to recognize the intellectual value of the study of race to a comprehensive understanding of the Middle Ages.

We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. For example, essays might consider the roles of race-making and racialization in the Islamic world; how race and identity, together with religion, was negotiated and navigated in border regions such as al-Andalus, Sicily or the Levant (between Latin Christendom and Islam), the Sahara and the Sahel region (between the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa); how the dynamics of race-thinking informed relations between Latin and Greek Christendom and Islam or the Mongol Empire, or between the Muslim/Islamicate world and Christian, Jewish, Hinduist, and traditional-religious societies within it or beyond its reaches; how race intersected with the dynamics of trade and connectivity, religious affiliation and conversion, slavery and emancipation, peace and war. Essays may also take on the roles of race, race-thinking, and identity in the geography and periodization of the Middle Ages: Are historical moments that are quintessential to the history of race also relevant to medieval-and-modern periodizations? Essays may also consider how and why race, race-thinking, and identity have shaped modern concepts, uses, and scholarship of the Middle Ages.

The editors are open to essays that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages by asking these and other deeply probing questions. Additionally, we are especially interested in essays that consider the globality of the medieval world: those that examine the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to scholarship in history and literature, we invite proposals using the tools and methods of anthropology, archaeology, art history, book history, historical linguistics, religious studies, sociology, and other fields germane to the studies of race, identity, and the Middle Ages.

The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum’s purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: “preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more of the core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged.”

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSAL in the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022.

Call for Papers: New Visions of Julian of Norwich

4 Comments on Call for Papers: New Visions of Julian of Norwich

15/11/2021

10:48

Around Oxford, events, opportunities

call for papers, cfp, conference

Somerville College, Oxford, 15^th and 16^th July 2022
Organisers: Antje Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Dr Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford).

In May 1373, Julian of Norwich (c.1343‒ after 1416) received a series of visions that engage with the mysteries of the divine-human relationship, inspiring the composition of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and, decades later, its revision, A Revelation of Love, now recognised as one of the most important texts in the medieval contemplative tradition and Middle English literature. Both have attracted numerous interpretations as visionary as Julian’s work itself, focusing on the significance of anchoritic enclosure, the radical originality of her vernacular theology, the historical and codicological context, as well as potential textual influences. Recent scholarship has explored Julian’s role in the global Middle Ages, her treatment of health, and her ecological poetics. Her texts have also sparked investigations of the role of materiality and provocative encounters between Julian and queer and trans theory.

This international hybrid conference will be the first academic event to focus solely on Julian’s writing, life, contexts, and influence long after her death. It seeks to consider the plurality of approaches towards her work’s interpretation and forge novel pathways of discussing the anchoress both in her own context and in the many scholarly and popular guises of her cultural afterlife. Aimed at established and early-career researchers alike, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines to map out new and emerging dimensions in Julian scholarship. It will interrogate received assumptions and re-evaluate traditional disciplinary methodologies.

In addition to academic work on Julian’s writing, this conference also seeks to reach out of academe in responding to pastoral and contemplative engagement with her texts, particularly in the light of the pandemic. Two roundtables will bring lived religious practices and critical responses into dialogue. Creative explorations will also help invigorate Julian studies. We look forward to hosting Cindy Oswin’s one-woman play “Cell” about the anchorite as an older woman, and to showing a recording of the 2021 Oxford reconstruction of the medieval rite of enclosure held at St. Mary the Virgin, Iffley.

The opening lecture will be given by Professor Nicholas Watson (Harvard) with responses from Professor Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen) and Professor Barry Windeatt (Cambridge). Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea) will close the conference.

We invite papers from any or multiple disciplines and deploying a wide range of methodologies, focusing on all aspects of Julian’s writing, life, contexts, or afterlife. We especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:

Emerging approaches to Julian’s texts
Illness, health, and disability
Visual and material culture
Queer, genderqueer, and trans theory approaches
Julian’s wider intellectual and cultural contexts; e.g., Revelation and Vision in the movements of church reform across Europe during and after the western schism, or against the backdrop of continental vernacular literature
Interdisciplinary approaches to Julian
Julian and apocalypse
Vision and Revelation as literary landmarks in medieval and post-medieval literature
Conversations with well and lesser-known vernacular visionaries and theologians in the British Isles, on the Continent, and beyond
The history of emotions
Life-writing
Creative engagement with Vision and Revelation: poetic, dramatic, visual arts
Ecological concerns and themes
Issues of materiality, space, and embodiment in Vision and Revelation

We also welcome proposals for contributions to the two roundtables. Potential topics include:

Retrieving Julian’s writings to renew contemplative and spiritual practices
Vision and Revelation and the pandemic moment
Julian as a voice for the voiceless
Julian beyond the academy: contemplative practices, popular imagery, political uses

Please submit abstracts (up to 300 words) for a 15-minute paper or 10-minute round table contribution, accompanied by a short biography, to julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com by 1 February 2022.

In light of the pandemic, this conference will be a hybrid event combining in-person and online papers. We plan to stream the in-person papers live where possible for online attendees.

Reduced registration will be offered for postgraduate students and unwaged delegates. In addition, some travel bursaries for postgrads and unwaged delegates may be available.

This conference is part of “Women Making Memories: Liturgy and the Remembering Female Body in Medieval Holy Women’s Texts”, Dr Perk’s MSCA-IF project at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842443.

CFP: CCASNC 2022 ‘Marvels and Miracles’

09/11/2021

13:00

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