Registration is now open for the Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales conference hosted by Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group on the weekend of 16–17 November this year in hybrid form at The University of Western Australia and online.
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
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.
Registrations fees are quoted in $NZD. An early bird registration offer is available until 22 December, after which standard registration charges will apply.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.