Tag: cfp

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 4

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03/11/2024

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events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

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The days are getting colder and the nights are drawing in: fear not, for the medieval events roll ever on and on. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here, and do check the Oxford Medieval Studies blog for reports of recent medieval events; also worthwhile checking out is the History of the Book blog with a report e.g. last week on a palaeography class with Laure Miolo and Alison Ray (including a “bat book”!). Do send in your own suggestions for blog posts to Miles Pattenden!

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology. Lyn Blackmore (Museum of London Archaeology) will be speaking on ‘The Seventh-Century Bed Burial at Harpole: Aspects of Recent work’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Teresa Barucci (Magdalen) will be speaking on ‘Identity and Geographical Origin at the Late Medieval University of Paris: An Analysis of Manuscript Decoration’.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30pm in the English Faculty Graduate Common Room.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Francis Leneghan (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘A Perilous Task? The Making of the Old English Heptateuch (Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 509)’
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • The Germanic Reading Group – 4pm online. This week, the focus will be on extracts from Physiologus, the elephant. Contact Howard Jones if you would like the zoom link and handout.
  • Medieval Poetry Reading Group – 4.30pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radliffe Humanities Building. The theme this week is Light without Sun or Moon: The Poetry of Kabīr.
  • Early Modern Graduate Forum – 5.15pm in Seminar Room B at the English Faculty. Jacob Ridley (DPhil candidate, Univ) will be talking on the topic of  ‘Androcracy and Personification from Everyman to Spenser’. Wine and soft drinks provided.
  • Medieval Church and Culture – 5.00pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Helen Flatley (Somerville) will be speaking on ‘Ties that Bind: Partnership, Surety and Social Bonds between Christians, Muslims and Jews in Toledo, 1085-c.1300’.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is Angelology and Demonology.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Arkadiy Avdokhin (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Gone with the Wind: Ambition, Scatology, and Violence in Acclamations for Albinos at Aphrodisias’.
  • VRF in the Creative Arts: Inks & Paints of the Abbasids – 5.15pm in the Eliot Theatre, Merton College. This talk will take us through the pigments and dyes that made up the Islamic scribe’s colour palette. Joumana Medlej will describe their preparation and behaviour from a practitioner’s perspective, and share process photos from her re-creation of ink recipes from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, along with insights into inkmaking practices gleaned from these texts. 

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon Room, Exeter Collge. The text this week is Caesar (Plutarch, Life of Caesar 63–66).
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5pm online. Elizabeth Boyle (Maynooth) will be speaking on ‘Psychology and the Individual in Medieval Ireland’.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm in the Arumugam Building, St Catz. Elena Lichmanova (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Religious Storytelling and the Rise of Marginalia’.

Friday

  • Oxford Medieval Society ‘Shut Up and Write’ – 9.30 to 12 in Blackwell’s Cafe.
  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • Inaugural Lecture of the Gad Rausing Associate Professor of Viking-Age Archaeology, held at St Cross College at 3pm on Friday 8th November. Dr Jane Kershaw will be speaking on ‘The Viking Diaspora: Causes, Networks and Cultural Identity’. Tickets are available here.

Saturday

  • Reading in the Woods: A Day of Learning About Wood in the Library. 11am at the Weston Library and online. More info here.

UPCOMING

  • To register for the ‘Crafting the Book’ one-day workshop, held on 22 November at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, please follow this link.
  • 700 Years of the Thames at The National Archives – The National Archives (London), Thursday November 7 – drop in between 15:00 and 19:00. Tickets here.
  • Tickets are available here for the Society of Medieval Archaeology Student Colloquium (4th-6th November 2024).
  • The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.

OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)

  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

T.K.A

Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Selden. B. 10, fol 5r

Byzantium and its Environment – 27th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society

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25/10/2024

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Call for Papers, opportunities, Uncategorized

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We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 27th Annual Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference on the 1st-2nd March 2025. Papers are invited to tackle the ‘environment’ of the Late Antique and Byzantine world (very broadly defined). For the call for papers, and for details on how to submit an abstract for consideration for the conference, please see below.

In recent decades, the global community has taken more and more of an active and serious interest in the environment and climate system in which we live. Scholars of Byzantium and Late Antiquity have likewise begun to apply environmental lenses to their research, and have come away with a number of new and exciting perspectives. From scientific analysis of the climatic shifts that occurred throughout the period on both macro and micro scales, to revisionist views of already well-trodden events, these new perspectives are greatly contributing to our field.

The framework of ‘the environment’ here can be applied very broadly, touching on any aspect of the natural world, with novel and imaginative approaches to the notion being strongly encouraged. Some suggestions by the Oxford University Byzantine Society for how this topic might be treated include:

  • The Analytical – Pollen analysis, dendrochronology, ice cores, and everything in-between; the historical significance of this data and what it can tell us
  • The Political and Economic – Climate’s impact on internal and external politics, adaptions in trade and policy, effects on particular military campaigns
  • The Cultural – Changes in attitudes and output as a result of shifting climates, nature’s representation and role in literature
  • The Societal – Movement of people and changes to the social order as a result of climatic change; variations in the impact of climate change depending on class or occupation, regional adaptations to specific micro-climates
  • The Religious – Responses to unusual weather events and interpretations of changing climates by different religious communities; religious attitudes towards nature and man’s place in it
  • The Artistic and Architectural – Environmentally-focused artwork and its uses; the use of landscapes both natural and man-made; changes in design or materials in response to changing climates
  • The Archaeological – Changing use of the land during periods of climatic shift; abandonment and re-settlement due to changing weather or specific events
  • The Historiographical – How environmental factors have evolved over time in scholarship

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short academic biography written in the third person, to the Oxford University Byzantine Society at byzantine.society@gmail.com by Friday 29th November 2024.

Papers should be twenty minutes in length and may be delivered in English or French. As with previous conferences, selected papers will be published in an edited volume, peer-reviewed by specialists in the field. Submissions should aim to be as close to the theme as possible in their abstract and paper, especially if they wish to be considered for inclusion in the edited volume. Nevertheless, all submissions are warmly invited.

The conference will have a hybrid format, with papers delivered at the Oxford University History Faculty and livestreamed online for a remote audience. Accepted speakers should expect and plan to participate in person.

(Photo Credit: © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Photography by Neil Greentree.)

Call for Papers – ‘Epiros: The Other Western Rome’

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30/07/2024

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Around Oxford, Call for Papers

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Friday 8th – Saturday 9th November 2024, Virtual Workshop

For close to two and a half centuries, the state of Epiros represented a crucial node for an alternative socio-political network of the Balkans. Founded by the illegitimate son of the union of three imperial Byzantine dynasties, at its largest extent Epiros assumed the title of ‘Empire of the Romans’ and campaigned to the very walls of Constantinople. Defeated but not destroyed in 1230, Epiros persisted in its autonomy through the strength of its ties. Bound by either marriages or confession to Italians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Vlachs and Albanians, and more, Epiros continued to exist as an alternate, moved Byzantium that understood its reunification of the former provinces of the Byzantine Balkans to be a retaking and preservation of ‘the West’, a term with which it also self-identified. Transitioning in the fourteenth century to Albanian and later Italian rule, Epiros’ role as a centre of multi-ethnic exchange and independence created a legacy that exists today.

This workshop seeks to gather leading research across multiple fields to discuss the places and peoples which were either part of or engaged with this Epirote Western Rome. Following two successful panels at Kalamazoo and Leeds International Medieval Congresses, supported by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, this hybrid workshop calls upon scholars to present from multiple specialisms. One of the reasons Epiros and its neighbours in the period of the Principality, Empire, and Despotate have remained so poorly studied has been the reliance upon century-old editions and a reluctance to publish in translation. Therefore, we envision not only a proceedings volume from this workshop but additionally the creation of a ‘sourcebook’ for Epirote Western Rome and its surrounding states which presents both papers and the key materials for its study in English translation with critical edition as necessary.

Potential topics for study include but are not limited to: History, Archaeology, Epistolography, Art History, Ethnic/Identity Studies, Spatial and Topography Studies, Numismatics, Network Studies, Sigillography, Ecclesiastical Studies, Manuscript Studies, Environmental History, Philology and Vernacular Studies. Papers should be twenty minutes long, allowing ten minutes for questions, and shall be delivered in English. Please email abstracts of 300 words to Nathan Websdale by Saturday 17th August 2024.

Organisers: Nathan Websdale (Oxford), Evangelos Zarkadas (Rhode Island).

Header image: Michael I Komnenos Doukas Angelos. Silver Aspron Trachy (3.54 g), ca. 1210. Mint of Arta. Nimbate bust of Christ Emmanuel facing, raising hand in benediction and holding Gospels. Reverse: + MIXAHΛ ΔECΠE, Michael standing facing, holding scepter and akakia; above to right, manus Dei. DOC 1; SB 2227 Extremely rare.

In association with the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR) and Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

CFP: Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024: Exchanging Words

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13/02/2024

13:32

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Call for Papers

The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group is delighted to announce the date and the theme for their 2024 conference: The conference will be held in person on June 18th 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library.

The aim of this conference is to explore the concept of exchange, whether it be textual or material, to, for and between women in the global Middle Ages. As a research group based upon the concept of exchanging ideas, we wish to explore medieval women’s own networks of exchange and transmission, and the influence of this upon both the literature and culture of the period as well as the present day.

We therefore welcome papers exploring any aspect of connections, correspondence and communication in the field of medieval women’s writing, from any discipline, be it literary, historical or otherwise. There are no limitations on geographical or language focus, as long as the topic falls within the medieval period.  

Examples of areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:

  • Letters to, from, between and about women
  • Female epistolary networks
  • The epistolary genre, rhetoric, and ars dictaminis
  • Manuscripts, manuscript networks and transmission
  • Gifts between women
  • Female patronage of the arts and architecture 
  • Knowledge exchange by women
  • Applying theoretical approaches (e.g. feminist or queer theory) to medieval texts
  • The material culture of women’s writing

Papers should aim to be 20 minutes, to be delivered in English.

Please submit your abstracts (250-300 words) along with a brief bio (max. 100 words) to Katherine Smith (katherine.smith@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) and Marlene Schilling (marlene.schilling@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk). The deadline for the submission is March 31st 2024 and notifications will be made in mid April 2024. The final program will be published by the end of April 2024.

Please direct any questions to any of the conference organizers Katherine Smith, Marlene Schilling, Carolin Gluchowski or Santhia Velasco Kittlaus

The research group and the conference are generously funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their “Critical-Thinking Communities” Initiative. 

CFP: The Fifteenth Century Conference

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20/11/2023

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Call for Papers

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St John’s College, Oxford, 5th-7th September 2024

Proposals are now invited for The Fifteenth Century Conference 2024. This annual meeting brings together established scholars and new researchers in the field, acting as a showcase for current research and a forum for encouraging new directions of enquiry. We invite proposals for research papers on any subject relating to the history of the long fifteenth century in the British Isles, Ireland, or in the French territories of the English monarchy. Proposals on all kinds of history are welcome, as are interdisciplinary ones.

Papers should be 40-45 minutes in length, to be followed by 15-20 minutes of questions and discussion. They should therefore be based on original research and be suitable for working up for submission to The Fifteenth Century, an edited series closely associated with the Conference. (Please note: there is no obligation to publish and submissions to this series undergo a separate peer-review process. For details see: https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-fifteenth-century/)

Proposals from postgraduates at the later stages of doctoral work and from early-career researchers are particularly encouraged. All speakers will be expected to deliver their papers in person and to pay the standard registration and other fees. This cost-sharing helps to make the conference as affordable as possible for everyone. However, there are two £250 bursaries for postgraduate speakers at the conference offered by the Richard III Society.

Please send proposals for papers to Laura Flannigan (laura.flannigan@sjc.ox.ac.uk) and Rowena Archer (rowena.archer@history.ox.ac.uk) by 31 January 2024. Proposals should include a title and an abstract of the paper totalling no more than 300 words, outlining the research basis, methodology, and significance for the field. Please also provide a short biography including any institutional affiliations and, in the case of postgraduate students, the name of your PhD supervisor. All proposals will be reviewed by the Fifteenth Century Conference advisory board.

CfP: Transgression in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

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27/10/2023

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Uncategorized

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26th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society:
Transgression in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

24th-25th February 2024, Oxford

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 26th Annual Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference on the 24th – 25th February, 2024. Papers are invited to approach the theme of ‘Transgression’ within the Late Antique and Byzantine world (very broadly defined). For the call for papers, and for details on how to submit an abstract for consideration for the conference, please see below.

‘Seduced by love for you, I went mad, Aquilina … she, smouldering, not any less love-struck than me, would wander throughout the house … love alone became her heart’s obsession … Her tutor chased me. Her grim mother guarded her … they scrutinised our eyes and nods, and colouring that tends to signal thoughts … soon both of us began to seek out times and places to converse with eyebrows and our eyes, to dupe the guards, to put a foot down gingerly, and in the night to run without a sound. Our fiery hearts ignite a doubled frenzied passion, and so an anguish mixed with love rages … Boethius, offering aid, pacifies her parents’ hearts with “gifts” and lures soft touches to my goal with cash. Blind love of money overcomes parental love; they both begin to love their daughter’s guilt. They give us room for secret sins … yet wickedness, when permitted, becomes worthless, and lust for the deed languishes … so a sanctioned license stole my zeal for sinning, and even longing for such things departed. The two of us split up, miserable and dissatisfied in equal measure …’

Maximianus, Elegies, 3 (adapted tr. Juster)

The Late Antique and Byzantine world was a medley of various modes of transgression: orthodoxy and heresy; borders and breakthroughs; laws and outlaws; taxes and tax evaders; praise and polemic; sacred and profane; idealism and pragmatism; rule and riot. Whether amidst the ‘purple’, the pulpits, or the populace, transgression formed an almost unavoidable aspect of daily life for individuals across the empire and its neighbouring regions. The framework of ‘Transgression’ then is very widely applicable, with novel and imaginative approaches to the notion being strongly encouraged. In tandem with seeking as broad a range of relevant papers as possible within Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, some suggestions by the Oxford University Byzantine Society for how this topic might be treated include:

·      The Literary – deviance from established genres, styles or tropes; bold exploration of new artistic territory; penned subversiveness against higher authorities (whether discreetly or openly broadcasted); dissemination of literature beyond expected limits.

·      The Political – usurpers, revolts, breakaway regions, court intrigue, plots and coups; contravention of aristocratic or political hierarchies and their expectations; royal ceremonial and its changes, or imperial self-promotion and propaganda seeking to rupture or distort the truth.

·      The Geopolitical – stepping beyond or breaking through boundaries and borders, including invasions, expeditions, trade (whether in commodities or ideas), movements of peoples and tribes, or even the establishment of settlements and colonies.

·      The Religious and Spiritual – ‘Heresy’, sectarianism, paganism, esotericism, magic, and more; and, in reverse, all discussion of ‘Orthodoxy’, which so defined itself in opposition to that which it considered transgressive; monastic orders and practices (anchoritic and coenobitic) and their associated canons, themselves intertwined and explicative of what was deemed prohibited; holy fools and other individuals perceived as deviant from typical holy men.

·      The Social and Sartorial – gender-based expectations in public and private; the contravention (or enforcement) of status or class boundaries; proscribed or vagrant habits of dress, jewellery, fabrics, etc.

·      The Linguistic – transmission of language elements across regional borders or cultures, including loan words, dialectic and stylistic influences, as well as other topics concerning lingual crossover and interaction.

·      The Artistic and Architectural – the practice of spolia; the spread and mix of architectural styles from differing regions and cultures; cross-confessionalism evident from the layout or architecture of religious edifices; variant depictions of Christ and other holy figures; iconoclasm.

·      The Legal – whether it be examination of imperial law codes and their effectiveness or more localised disputes testified to by preserved papyri, all discussion concerning legal affairs naturally involves assessing transgressive behaviour and how it was viewed and handled.

·      It could even be that your paper’s relevance to ‘Transgression’ consists in its breaking out from scholarly consensus in a notable way!

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short academic biography written in the third person, to the Oxford University Byzantine Society at byzantine.society@gmail.com by Monday 27th November 2023. Papers should be twenty minutes in length and may be delivered in English or French. As with previous conferences, selected papers will be published in an edited volume, peer-reviewed by specialists in the field. Submissions should aim to be as close to the theme as possible in their abstract and paper, especially if they wish to be considered for inclusion in the edited volume. Nevertheless, all submissions are warmly invited.

The conference will have a hybrid format, with papers delivered at the Oxford University History Faculty and livestreamed for a remote audience. Accepted speakers should expect to participate in person.

CFP: Conflicts, Connections and Communities in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

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20/10/2023

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Call for Papers, opportunities

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23 November 2023 [Australian Central Daylight Time]
Online via Microsoft Teams


Keynote speakers: Prof. Daniel Anlezark (University of Sydney) and Dr Courtnay Konshuh (University of Calgary)


The complex series of interrelated Old English annals known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC) constitutes one of the richest surviving examples of historical writing from early medieval England. Compiled in several extant manuscripts at different centres of monastic, episcopal, and royal activity, these annals shed crucial light on changing dynamics of power, on important cultural developments, on linguistic evolution, and on the crystallisation of communal identities in England between the late ninth and mid-twelfth centuries. In recent decades, increased linguistic, palaeographical, historical, and literary scrutiny of the annals has laid secure foundations for fine-grained work on the ASC as cultural artefacts that were reworked, redeployed, and reinterpreted in many different contexts throughout the middle ages (and beyond).
This online symposium, hosted by researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, seeks to build on this scholarship by foregrounding new approaches to the ASC. In particular, we invite scholars from various disciplines and different career stages to submit proposals for 20-minute papers (to be presented in English) relating in some way to themes of conflict, connection, and/or community in the ASC and their wider context.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Representations of war and/or violence in the ASC
  • Discrepancies within and/or between separate versions of the ASC
  • Cross-cultural encounters and interactions in the ASC
  • Relationships between manuscripts of the ASC and related texts
  • Representations of particular communities and/or their relationships in the ASC
  • The creation and use of copies of the ASC within specific communities in early medieval England
  • The dissemination of the ASC and related texts

Please send paper proposals, including a title, 150–200-word abstract, and short biography, to Dr James Kane (james.kane@flinders.edu.au) and A/Prof. Erin Sebo (erin.sebo@flinders.edu.au).

Medieval Germany Workshop 2024, German Historical Institute London

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26/09/2023

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Call for Papers

Organised by the German Historical Institute London in co-operation with the German Historical Institute Washington and the German History Society, to be held in London.

This one-day workshop on the history of medieval Germany (broadly defined) will provide an opportunity for researchers in the field from the UK, continental Europe, and the USA to meet in a relaxed and friendly setting and to learn more about each other’s work. Proposals for short papers of 10–15 minutes are invited from researchers at all career stages with an interest in any aspect of the history of medieval Germany. Participants are encouraged to concentrate on presenting work in progress, highlighting research questions and approaches, and pointing to yet unresolved challenges of their projects. Presentations will be followed by a discussion.
Attendance is free, which includes lunch, but costs for travel and accommodation cannot be reimbursed. Doctoral students from North America (USA and Canada) who wish to present at the workshop, however, can apply for two travel grants provided by the German Historical Institute Washington. Please express your interest in this grant in your application. Support for postgraduate and early career researchers from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland is available on a competitive basis, subject to eligibility requirements: postgraduate members of the German History Society currently registered for a higher degree at a university in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, and those who have completed a PhD within two years of the deadline for application but who have no other institutional sources of funding may apply for up to £150 for travel and accommodation.
Please see the GHS website for further information and application deadlines.
Please send your proposal, which must include a title, an abstract of c.200 words, and a biographical note of no more than c.100 words, to Marcus Meer: m.meer@ghil.ac.uk. Questions about all aspects of the workshop can also be sent to Len Scales: l.e.scales@durham.ac.uk

Students and researchers interested in medieval German history are also very welcome to attend and listen to the presentations. There is no charge for attendance, but pre-booking is essential. If you would like to attend as a guest, please contact Julian Triandafyllou: j.triandafyllou@ghil.ac.uk
The deadline for proposal submissions is 20 December 2023.

CALL FOR PAPERS: GENDER AND SAINTHOOD, C. 1100–1500

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26/09/2023

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Call for Papers

Conference at the University of Oxford and Online, 5–6 April 2024

Gender and sanctity are inextricably intertwined. Medieval saints and holy people exceeded, enshrined, and subverted cultural constructions and expectations of gender, yet were also contained, defined, and controlled by these same practical and discursive ideas. In the later Middle Ages, conceptions of gender and gendered roles changed: the sacralisation of marriage came hand in hand with new ideals of marital sexuality; the mendicant orders and other movements opened up new forms of lay piety and new routes for sanctity; and growing urbanisation and centralisation enabled the tightening of everyday gender roles,
but also a sphere in which different performances of gender could be broadcast to a wider audience. At the same time, the vitae of late antique and early medieval saints continued to circulate, leading to a myriad of co-existing, intertwined, and interacting modes of gender and sanctity. Later medieval holy women had gender non-conforming experiences of Christ, the saints, and the Virgin, and expressed their
own (a)gendered modes of holiness in different ways; the vitae of many saints complicate and expand a binary understanding of gender; male monks and bishops positioned themselves as female in relationship to the Divine – everywhere one turns, questions of gender and exceptional holiness converge.

This conference aims to put two immensely complex cultural categories, those of gender and sanctity, into conversation with one another. Both are multivalent, unstable categories of being, capable of both enforcing and disrupting hegemonic cultural and social structures and extending beyond themselves to unsettle and reinvent wider categories of meaning. Since the 1980s and the field-defining work of Carol Walker Bynum (1982) and Barbara Newman (1987, 1995), medievalists have embraced the importance of viewing sanctity and holiness through a gendered lens. More recent work (Bychowski and Kim, 2019; Spencer-Hall and Gutt, 2021) has expanded the methodological and conceptual toolkit with which we can approach the intersection of gender and sanctity and made clearer the political and ideological stakes of undertaking such research. The medieval world has become a totemic utopia for the modern far-right, where questions of gender, race, and normativity can be considered largely settled, and then deployed as a weapon in modern political discourse. This practice aids in the political project of abolishing or refusing the rights of transgender and nonbinary people. Against this backdrop, it is crucial that medievalists discuss these issues within their own research, and demonstrate the vibrancy, instability, and complexity of medieval categories of identity.
We particularly invite contributions from postgraduate and early career researchers, but proposals from scholars at any career stage are welcome. To apply, please send an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short biography to Edmund van der Molen (edmund.vandermolen@nottingham.ac.uk) and Antonia
Anstatt (antonia.anstatt@history.ox.ac.uk) by 15 October 2023. The conference is expected to take place in a hybrid format; please indicate whether you would like to give your paper online or in person.
We invite paper proposals for 20-minute papers to consider the relationship between sanctity and gender in the medieval period, with both concepts understood as broadly and inclusively as possible.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:
● Saints transcending and disrupting gender (transgender, intersex, agender, non-binary saints and sainthood)
● The use of sanctity and/or gender to challenge hegemonic power structures
● Queer readings of sainthood, hagiography, or cultic practice
● The role of gender in constructing a saint (both paradigmatic and individual)
● Operations of gender and power within canonisation processes
● Material culture and gendered sainthood
● Gendered relationships within a saint’s cult – saint/confessor relationships, saint/devotee relationships, etc
● Non-Western, non-Christian religious and gender categories
● The role of embodiment in sanctity and devotion to the saints
● Sainthood and sexuality

CFP: Affiliations: Towards a Theory of Cross-Temporal Comparison

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14/09/2023

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 

24–25 MAY 2024  

Keynote speakers
Seeta Chaganti, Professor of English, University of California, Davis
Mark Currie, Professor of Contemporary Literature, Queen Mary, University of London
Carla Freccero, Distinguished Professor of Literature and History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz 

Funded by
Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre, University of Oxford 

Organised by
Joseph Hankinson, Career Development Lecturer in English, University of Oxford
Gareth Lloyd Evans, Rebecca Marsland Lecturer in Medieval Literatures, University of Oxford 

In recent years, comparison and comparability have generated thorough critical discussion within the fields of cultural and literary studies. But despite the popularity of comparison as a critical methodology, it is nevertheless the case, as Rita Felski notes, that ‘comparison across space—that is to say, across nations, cultures, or regions—has received far more attention in comparative literature than comparison across time.’ To some extent, existing disciplinary distinctions produce this uneven distribution of attention. Period boundaries impose an often arbitrary temporal delimitation of inquiry, which in turn lends weight to reified and institutionalised categories of thought. Consequently, cross-temporal work is, as Felski argues, habitually ‘seen as evidence of dilettantism or insufficient professionalization.’ But, we suggest, that which has been dismissed as dilettantism itself promises reinvigoration and expansion of the possibilities of literary criticism more generally. Xiaofan Amy Li’s work on the ‘three kinds of comparabilities’ associated with the conventions of ‘existing comparative literature’ (the ‘genealogical, temporal, and generic comparabilities’) has provided a vocabulary for understanding the ways comparative thought makes assumptions about how texts might relate across time (2015, 14). Like the ‘world’ of world literature, which can serve, as Karima Laachir, Sara Marzagora, and Francesca Orsini have argued, as ‘dominant explanatory grid’ (2018, 291-2), time in ‘existing comparative literature’ tends to be either reduced to lines of inheritance or treated as a static frame or macro-category that justifies comparability in advance. With this in mind, this conference seeks to provoke discussion of and experimentation with asynchronous encounters, to stage interactions between texts and fields of research routinely kept separate, and to develop collectively a theory of cross-temporal comparison. 

Seeking to bring into discussion a wide variety of perspectives on the theory and practice of ‘cross-temporal comparison’, we invite proposals for papers of relevance to the subject of the conference, which might include considerations of: 

  • Case-studies which stage encounters between texts and contexts from antiquity to the present day, without recourse to lines of influence and inheritance, or a shared cultural context.  
  • Broader conceptual, philosophical, methodological considerations of the theory of cross-temporal comparison.  
  • Examinations of the role that social, political, economic, and cultural contexts play in shaping the ways in which cross-temporal comparisons are made, and how can we account for these factors when making such comparisons.  
  • Explorations of the pedagogical and institutional implications of any thinking-beyond the limits of periodisation. 

The conference will be in-person at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. We welcome (but do not require) joint proposals and innovative styles of presentation. To submit a proposal, please include in one document the following information: proposals for 20-minute papers (300 words), paper title, and participant(s) biography (100 words). 

Please send proposals by email to affiliations.conference@gmail.com

The deadline for submissions is 15 November 2023.