Category Archives: conference

CFP: Fourth Triennial Australian Literary Studies Convention

July 2-5, 2024
Western Sydney University, Parramatta South Campus
www.australianliteraryconvention.com

Chaos and Order

This triennial event brings together major associations for the study of literature in Australia and welcomes scholars and postgraduate students working on any aspect or field of literary studies. We seek papers on the theme of ‘Chaos and Order’. Literary scholarship and literary practice can both be understood as ordering processes: a work of creative writing is an attempt to build meaning by drawing on, and framing, the chaos of experience. So too, whether the research be qualitative or quantitative in method, literary scholarship considers how meaning might traced and interpreted within literary works, forms, periods and literary fields, applying modes of order to them through this critical reception.

While literary study involves the broad expanses of time and space that comprise the histories of oral and written literature, such works are studied now because they continue to speak to us, in what is a challenging present moment. Order might be applied to make sense of chaos, but equally too much order, or newly applied kinds of
order have the potential to create chaos. Just as ‘order’ might be understood in positive or negative terms, ‘chaos’ does not have to be understood in solely negative terms: it might be understood, rather, as that which allows the potential for new kinds of creation.

We are open to all interpretations of ‘Chaos and Order’ and all methodologies applied to the study or practice of literature.

We invite papers and panels, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • How literature (from any period or tradition) helps us understand chaos and order.
  • What literature can do (be it political, ideological, affective, existential, ethical, imaginative, social, personal) in relation to the chaos and orders of the present.
  • How literature is imbricated in, produces, or resists systems of order or power (reproduces or contests dominant ideologies; literature and Empire; literature and propaganda; literature and social change/transformation for example)
  • How the opportunity to write and/or publish has been and is now determined by systems of order (gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, cultural capital, markets).
  • How book history and print culture has responded to (or influenced) periods of chaos.
  • How particular methodologies might offer new ways of seeing old problems.
  • How particular methods might collaborate or generate chaos through conflict.
  • How pedagogical systems might solve or cause problems (both within universities and between primary, secondary and tertiary forms of education).

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2024.

Please send an abstract of 150 words and biographical note of 100 words to Anthony Uhlmann a.uhlmann@westernsydney.edu.au

Jointly held by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the Australasian Universities Languages and Literature Association, the Australasian Association for Literature, the Australian University Heads of English, the Australasian Victorian Studies Association, The Australasian Children’s Literature Association, The Australasian Modernist Studies Network

Registration Open: Medieval Academy of America 2024

The 99th annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America takes place this year on March 14–16, 2024, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

Please visit medieval.nd.edu/maa2024, where you will see a link for registration. Here you will also find direct links to conference hotels offering discounted rates and a general overview of conference activities. The discounted hotel rates for attendees remain in effect only through February 13, 2024, and online registration closes February 16, 2024, so I urge you to register soon. Full details concerning the program as well as transportation and related matters may also be found on the site. The conference will be entirely in person, though the plenary lectures and some other events will also be live-streamed.

The themes for this year’s meeting are “Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Bodies in Motion,” and “Communities of Knowledge.” Plenary addresses will be delivered by Robin Fleming (Boston College) and Samantha Leggett (University of Edinburgh), “Conscious Uncoupling: Migration without ‘The Migration Period’. Chronology, mobility, diet, and health in a small corner of early medieval Hampshire”; Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford), “AudioVision in the Arts of the Liturgy at Conques”; and Jack Tannous (Princeton), “From Tatian to Hunayn: Communities (and Continuities) of Knowledge between Late Antiquity and Islam.”

Sixty concurrent sessions will represent a range of threads, including “Digitally Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Sacred Interiors,” “Islamic Epistemology,” “Mapping Real and Imaginary Travel,” “Mobile Bodies,” and “Border Crossings,” and cover topics addressing material culture, literary studies, cosmology, architecture, liturgy, and pandemics, to name a few. Roundtables and workshops will highlight union organizing in higher education, writing for a public audience, and publishing on the Middle Ages.

Beyond the conference and its sessions, other attractions are available to you before and during the meeting. On Wednesday, March 13, workshops on digital medieval studies and fragmentology will be offered. Notre Dame Library’s Rare Books & Special Collections will showcase an exhibit entitled “Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge,” while the campus Digital Visualization Theater will host a 360-degree visual and aural presentation on the cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen. Visit the newly-opened Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and while there enjoy a special exhibit of early woodcuts and engravings, including Albrecht Dürer’s famous Apocalypse series. The Morris Inn will host an Irish Céilí dance on Saturday evening.

ANZAMEMS 2024: Registration Open

Registration is now open for the ANZAMEMS conference, hosted 8-10 February in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand and online.

Registrations fees are quoted in $NZD. An early bird registration offer is available until 22 December, after which standard registration charges will apply.

For details regarding travel and accommodation, please see the conference website.

A seminar for postgraduates and early career researchers will take place at the University of Canterbury on Sunday 11 February. Further details to follow shortly.

We look forward to seeing you in Christchurch.

Inaugural SHAPE Futures EMCR Annual Convention

ANZAMEMS members are invited to attend the inaugural SHAPE Futures EMCR Annual Convention, to be held this year at the University of Melbourne on the 15 November.

At the 2023 convention, panellists will discuss the ARC Review, the University Accord and other policy processes currently in train, focussing on the impact of, and opportunities for, EMCRs to inform sectoral changes, and how, through advocacy networks like SHAPE Futures, EMCRs can contribute to ‘shaping’ the future of Higher Education in Australia.

To attend this event free of charge, delegates are asked to sign up to the SHAPE Futures network so that they can continue to work alongside EMCRs in SHAPE disciplines to advocate for them into the future. Registration links for both SHAPE Futures and the Convention are available through the below flyer. 

Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
March 14–16, 2024

The 99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place in South Bend, Indiana, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The meeting is hosted by Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University, South Bend. The conference will be entirely in person, though the plenary lectures and some other events will also be live-streamed.

The themes for this year’s meeting are “Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Bodies in Motion,” and “Communities of Knowledge.” Plenary addresses will be delivered by Robin Fleming (Boston College), Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford), and Jack Tannous (Princeton).

Sixty concurrent sessions will represent a range of threads, including “Digitally Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Sacred Interiors,” “Islamic Epistemology,” “Mapping Real and Imaginary Travel,” “Mobile Bodies,” and “Border Crossings,” and cover topics addressing material culture, literary studies, cosmology, architecture, liturgy, and pandemics, to name a few. Roundtables and workshops will highlight union organizing in higher education, writing for a public audience, and publishing on the Middle Ages.

Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute has one of the preeminent library collections for medieval studies in North America. You are welcome to visit the Medieval Institute during your stay on campus. You can find it on the 7th floor of the University’s Theodore M. Hesburgh Library.

Beyond the conference and its sessions, other attractions are available to you before and during the meeting. On Wednesday, March 13, workshops on sacred chant, digital medieval studies, and fragmentology will be offered. Notre Dame Library’s Special Collections will showcase an exhibit entitled “Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge,” while the campus Digital Visualization Theater will host a 360-degree visual and aural presentation on the cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen. Visit the newly-opened Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and while there enjoy a special exhibit of early woodcuts and engravings, including Albrecht Dürer’s famous Apocalypse series. The Morris Inn will host an Irish Céilí dance on Saturday evening.

Read the announcement for more details.

Conference: Inventing the Human

Registration for the conference on ‘Inventing the Human’ (29 Nov – 2 Dec), hosted by the University of Melbourne, is now open. This exciting 4-day event will include provocative keynote speeches, an exhibition, roundtable discussions and more than 80 papers contributed by scholars from around the world. 

Please register online as soon as you can to take advantage of the Early Bird prices.

Early Bird before 16 October 2023:

General/Waged AU$160.00+GST
Student/Unwaged AU$80.00+GST

After 16 October 2023:

General/Waged AU$220+GST
Student/Unwaged AU$110+GST.

A draft of the conference program is now available here or by clicking ‘Program’ on the left menu bar of the conference website. 

In-person attendees will have the opportunity to view Dominion, the exhibition accompanying the conference, which features works by leading contemporary artists including Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Safdar Ahmed, Richard Bell, Penny Byrne, Michael Riley and Hadieh Shafie.

ANZAMEMS Conference Revised CFP, Extended Deadline

ANZAMEMS Conference 2024
Ōtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand
8 – 11 February 2024

Legacies & Relevance

In addition to encouraging papers related to the theme, the ANZAMEMS conference welcomes paper and panel proposals on all aspects of medieval and early modern studies, including medievalism.

Submissions for individual papers and panels should be made by 15 October via the conference website: https://www.anzamems2024.co.nz/

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Tarren Andrews, Yale University
Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University

Tarren is a Bitterroot Salish scholar and documented descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Her forthcoming book brings Indigenous studies questions and methods to Old English law and literature with the aim of understanding how Anglophone settler colonial ideologies developed in the early medieval North Atlantic, long before the first contacts between Europe and North America. 

Wallace Cleaves, University of California, Riverside
Associate Dean and Director of the University Writing Program at UC Riverside, Director of the California Center for Native Nations

Wallace’s work, teaching, and research centre around the fields of composition, medieval literature, and Indigenous methodologies. He is a member of the Gabrieleno/Tongva Native American tribe, the Indigenous peoples of the Los Angeles area, and is the co-founder and president of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy which received the first land return for the Tongva people. He is co-author of the 13th edition of St. Martin’s Guide to Writing.

Natasha Hodgson, Nottingham Trent University
Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Research in History, Heritage, and Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University

Natasha’s research and teaching focus mainly on the medieval period, with a special interest in the crusades, gender, and social and cultural history. She is the author of Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Boydell, 2017), co-editor of Crusading and Masculinities (2019) and most recently edited Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History (2021) for Routledge.

CONFERENCE THEME: Legacies and Relevance – Exploring the Medieval & Early Modern World Beyond Europe

How does pre-modern European History “add value” in Australasia? Is its study the vestige of an outdated colonial legacy? Or is it something else? Where does it stand in a world of toppled statues and questioned legacies? In the face of a previous Australian government overtly committed to defunding the Arts and a New Zealand government with similar aims (but a less confrontational way of putting it), and universities in both countries cutting staff, should we now re-focus the curricula of universities across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand on what matters? But what does matter? And who should decide?

In the wake of a global pandemic, which has re-written “business as usual,” is it time for a reformation or for holding fast? This conference will showcase the best of scholarship across a range of disciplines pursued by medieval and Early Modern scholars, but will also seek to ask complex and challenging questions about the future of our discipline. Can the study of medieval and Early Modern Europe help to meet the needs of our times? What is the role of the medieval or Early Modern scholar in Australasian society? Indeed, what was it? In considering these issues, we encourage the exploration of questionable as well as positive legacies, and offer a forum to consider the possible future(s) of our discipline.

ANZAMEMS SEMINAR: A seminar for PG and ECRs will take place at the University of Otago, Dunedin on 13 February. Further details to follow via the conference website.

For all academics enquiries, please contact the conference co-convenors:

Chris Jones (chris.jones@canterbury.ac.nz)
Madi Williams (madi.williams@canterbury.ac.nz)

For all practical enquiries (submission, accommodation, etc.), please contact the conference manager:

Mandy Train (mandy@conference.nz)

Parergon Performance Pop-up – ANZAMEMS Conference

Call for participants for the Parergon Performance Pop-up! 

The “Parergon Performance Pop-up!” is a series of staged readings curated around the theme Women and Agency. This event is directed by the Parergon early career committee and will be performed live at the 2024 ANZAMEMS conference in Christchurch, New Zealand.  

A series of readers will perform 3–5-minute segments of medieval or early modern poetry, prose or drama that engages with the theme. As this is a staged reading, performers are not expected to costume or memorise their segments. Performers are welcome to propose duologues if they are able to rehearse with their partner in advance of the conference. 

Participants with performance or public speaking experience who would like to participate in this event are invited to contact Anna-Rose (a.k.shack@uva.nl) to register their interest and receive further information. We look forward to hearing from you! 

Parergon Next Gen Plenary Panel, ANZAMEMS Conference 2024

The editors of Parergon, in conjunction with our Early Career Committee members, are hosting an inaugural Next Generation Plenary Panel at the upcoming ANZAMEMS conference, 8-11 February 2024.

This is an exciting opportunity to showcase the work of new scholars in early modern and medieval studies, and selection to present on the panel will be a prestigious addition to any graduate student or early career researcher’s curriculum vitae.

We are soliciting abstracts from scholars who are developing new methodologies, researching new materials and looking at traditional issues in new ways.

Next Gen Plenary papers will be selected via an anonymous screening process following submission through the conference portal: https://www.anzamems2024.co.nz.

Please indicate at the end of your abstract that you would like to be considered for the Next Gen Plenary Panel. If you have already submitted an abstract, please contact Marina Gerzic to inform her that you would like it to be considered for this panel (info@anzamems.org).

Abstracts will be anonymised by the conference organisers and assessed by a panel made up of the editors of Parergon and a representative from the Parergon ECC committee. The George Yule Prize winner may be invited to be part of the panel.

Next Gen plenary speakers must be either graduate students undertaking a PhD, or scholars who have received their PhD in the last 10 years. All panellists must be current members of ANZAMEMS.

Submissions are due September 15, 2023.