The 17th Biennial Medieval Insular Romance Conference will be hosted at Durham University between 21 and 23 April 2020. Proposals for the 2020 Medieval Insular Romance conference are now warmly encouraged.

The 2020 conference will feature a plenary lecture by Professor Siân Echard (University of British Columbia) on ‘Romancing the Margins: Material Transformations of Medieval Histories’. Papers may address any aspect of romance composed in any of the languages of medieval Britain and Ireland; insular romance’s engagement with continental texts and traditions; or its post- medieval afterlives. (Please note, however, that the focus of this conference series has traditionally been on non-Arthurian, non-Chaucerian romances that have tended to receive less exposure elsewhere.) Papers addressing interactions between languages, and transformations into/away from romance works, are especially welcome, in line with Professor Echard’s plenary focus.

Proposals for 20-minute papers, complete sessions, or roundtables can be sent to Venetia Bridges (venetia.r.bridges@durham.ac.uk). Proposals should include: name, affiliation, email address, title of paper or roundtable, and an abstract of no more than 250 words.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 29 November 2019.
Any general questions regarding the conference can be addressed to Venetia Bridges at venetia.r.bridges@durham.ac.uk.

The web address for the conference is https://medievalinsularromanceconference2020.wordpress.com.

A PDF of the call for papers can be downloaded here.

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The Australasian Postgraduate Philosophy Conference (APPC) is an annual conference that provides an opportunity for postgraduate philosophy students from Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore to present their work, debate their ideas, receive feedback from peers and form collaborations across institutions.

In 2019 APPC will be hosted by Victoria University of Wellington from Friday the 6th of December to Sunday the 8th of December. The conference environment is laid-back and an excellent introduction to conferences for new graduate students.

The call for papers is now open; and will close on 31 October 2019. Please let your students know about this conference and encourage them to come and present their work.

The conference website is https://www.appc2019.com/

31st SEDERI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Hells and Heavens of Early Modern England
La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), 6–8 May, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the 31st SEDERI (Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies) Conference will be held in La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), on 6-8 May 2020. The Conference theme—Hells and Heavens of Early Modern England—draws on the ambivalent connotations of our venue in Renaissance England: Tenerife, considered the most blessed of the Fortunate Islands, but also the one of the awesome, “heaven-daring” peak. Thus, we expect to re-examine all possible literal and figural representations of hells and heavens, from places to states, including conditions of supreme suffering or bliss. Moreover, the Conference also aims at scrutinising divides and liminal sites in which antithetical agents associated with decadence and innovation emerged, coexisted, collided, overlapped, blended and reshaped transformative factors in early modern English society, its language, literature and culture.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and round tables (in English) on the following and related topics:

• Representations of sites, transitions and states of evil, expiation and bliss
• Textual and graphic depictions of in/visible entities and worlds
• De-/Regeneration and innovation of language, poetics, and culture
•  New learning, theologies and alternative beliefs, mythographies, epistemologies, and political doctrines. Bacon’s Novum Organum fourth centenary
• Shifting ethical values and moral dilemmas. Genesis of and resistance to ambition, disobedience, pride, crime, injustice, betrayal, and violence
• Bodily adventures. Trans/gendered and transgressive bodies. Encountering otherness, deviancy, abjection, and monstrosity
• Physical/spiritual medicines, remedies, consolations, and healings
• Renaissance ecologies and pre-industrial environmental degradation
• Lights and shadows of diplomacy (esp. Anglo-Iberian relationships)
• Wheels of wealth and wreck. Economy, business, and trade
• Un-/Fortunate travellers, displaced, exiles, pilgrims, and intercultural dialogues. The Mayflower fourth-centenary
• Laughter, subversion and the grotesque
• Damnation/redemption of words (censorship, lost texts, libraries, archives, dictionaries, anthologies, translations, data-bases, digital resources, intermediality and transmediality, transmission of texts, and editing)

Proposals must be sent as an e-mail attachment (preferably, doc or docx) to sederi31@ull.edu.es before 19 January 2020, and must contain the following information:

• The full title of your paper
• A 200-word abstract
• Any technical requirements for the presentation (Please, save your power point as doc, docx or Mac. If you are using a Mac, please indicate, and bring your own adapter cable)
• Your name and institutional affiliation
• Your postal and e-mail addresses
• Your SEDERI membership status (member, non-member, application submitted)
• A short biographical note (100 words)

Plenary Speakers

• Louise H. Curth (University of Winchester
• Nandini Das (University of Oxford)
• Tanya Pollard (City University of New York, CUNY)

Conference website: http://eventos.ull.es/go/sederi31

SEDERI Website: http://www.sederi.org/

Proposals are invited for the symposium Numbers and the Self, to be held Friday 1 May 2020 at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.

Keynote: Deborah Lupton, UNSW

In 1846, the Danish philosopher and social critic Søren Kierkegaard reflected on The Present Age in Europe, where the passions of revolution had been dissolved into measuring systems and ‘everyone is given clever rules and calculators in order to aid one’s thinking’. This ‘quantifying siren song’, as Kierkegaard described it, was alluring in its seeming production of equality for a modern age –it produced a levelling of society, as the individual was collapsed into data. But for him, it came with a loss of ‘passion’, a stagnation in innovation, and an inability to enable significant social, economic or political change. Kierkegaard’s critique resonates with those of contemporary neoliberal regimes and the focus on ‘metrics’ and ‘counting’ as a useful measure of the human and its capacity. Recently, sociologists have also pointed to the ‘quantified self’, new ways of interpreting the human condition produced in relation to self-tracking technologies and metrics. Numbers increasingly surround us and make us, leading us to ask that if writing produces the self – what happens when we count it?

This symposium, funded by an ARC Discovery Project ‘Precarious Accounts’, explores the relationship between numbers and the self as a critical question in the era of big data. Much of contemporary science and social science rests on our reliance that there is a relationship between the human and the number – that our bodies, behaviours and actions, if conceptualised well, can be turned into statistics and used to predict and explain. Because of this numbers can bring us comfort and relief, as well as anxiety and fear. Numbers discipline, with both positive and negative results. They produce certain types of meaning that shapes our social environment. Yet, as Foucault reminded us, numbers never record neutral facts but enable systems of power. This workshop engages with these issues. Topics for discussion may include:

• Numbers as discipline
• Numbers and embodiment
• Numbers and emotions – from anxiety to joy
• Numbers and self-expression, art and creative practices
• Numbers as a philosophy of self
• Measuring the abstract and intangible
• Numbers, self and society – changing the world?

Proposals for papers, panels or creative responses to this topic are now called for.

Please send a 250-300 word abstract of what is proposed, the time needed, and short bios of the participants to Katie Barclay at katie.barclay@adelaide.edu.au by 15 November 2019. All disciplinary perspectives and career stages welcome.

Proposals are invited for The Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Meeting at Congress 2020, to be held 1-3 June 2020 at University of Western Ontario.

Papers for the CSM Annual Meeting can address any topic on medieval studies. Proposals for sessions of three papers are also invited. Presentations may be in either English or French. Bilingual sessions are particularly welcome.

Proposals should include a one-page abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae. Papers should be no more than 20 minutes’ reading time. Proposals for complete sessions should include this information in addition to a title and a brief explanation of the session and its format. Please indicate if the proposed session would be suitable as a joint session with another learned society. See https://www.congress2020.ca/.

Please submit proposals for individual papers by 15 December, 2019 and proposals for sessions by 15 January, 2020 by email to Kathy Cawsey, either by regular email (kathy.cawsey@dal.ca) or via our website’s email system (www.canadianmedievalists.org). You must be a member of the CSM by the time of your presentation.

Les communications à ce congrès annuel de la SCM peuvent traiter de tout sujet relatif aux études médiévales. L’invitation est également lancée pour des propositions de sessions comprenant trois communications. Les communications peuvent être données en français ou en anglais. Les sessions bilingues sont particulièrement bienvenues.

Les propositions de communications devront inclure un résumé et un curriculum vitae d’une page chacun. La durée de lecture maximale des communications devra être de 20 minutes. Les propositions de sessions devront inclure, outre les informations ci-dessus, un titre et une courte explication du contenu de la session et de son format. Veuillez indiquer si la session proposée pourrait être organisée conjointement avec une autre société savante (https://www.congress2020.ca/).

Veuillez soumettre vos propositions au plus tard le 15 décembre 2019 pour des communications individuelles et le 15 janvier 2020 pour des sessions, par courriel à Kathy Cawsey (kathy.cawsey@dal.ca) ou par le formulaire de contact de notre site, www.canadianmedievalists.org. Vous devrez être un membre en règle de la SCM au moment de votre communication.

The organisers invite paper proposals for the 2020 Leeds International Congress Leeds on the theme of ‘Beyond ‘Virgin’ Lands: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Gendered Landscapes’.

Interactions with the medieval landscape often appear as innately masculine. From Brutus’ foundation of the eponymous Britain to patrilineages derived from castle names to metaphorically feminine (virginal and untamed) lands awaiting male domination. Yet, as recent research shows, the apparent prevalence of these ‘fantasies’ in medieval sources is due in part to modern assumptions. In fact, historical women built castles and were patrons of monasteries, the legendary Syrian princess Albina gave her name to Albion before Brutus ever landed, female saints impressed their footprints permanently into rock and the menstrual blood of Queen Medh carved furrows into the Irish landscape. In symbolic, nominal, architectural, horticultural and legal ways, to name a few, medieval women shaped, curated and cared for the medieval landscape. Then as now, the landscape is a cultural construct: the ways we understand it have much to do with the gendered preconceptions and approaches we bring to our study and the sources and interactions we privilege.

These interdisciplinary panel(s) will explore the ways women, other gendered identities and non-human agents, both historical and representational, took control of and shaped geographical landscapes at a variety of scales. We are particularly interested in papers that move beyond artificial borders between male/female, nature/culture, domestic/political and other oppositional understandings. Questions may include but are not limited to:

•  How did women’s political, communal and private interests influence the ways medieval
  people understood their contemporary landscapes? To what extent did legends and
  landmarks left by women shape future notions of the land’s identity?
• In what ways did women’s devotional practices draw on landscapes at both micro and
  macro levels? What haptic, emotional, affective experiences can we understand from
  today?
• What impact do masculine and paternalistic narratives have within the current
  discourses on medieval landscapes, particularly in heritage studies?
• What can we as scholars do to understand the diversity of class, gender, religious, racial
  and cultural positions always at play within the medieval landscape? How does eco-
  criticism and new materialism help in this study?

We hope these will be truly interdisciplinary discussions and welcome papers from all fields, including anthropology, archaeology, heritage studies, history, art history, literature and religion on any medieval period and geographical region.

Please submit an abstract of 150-200 words to Emma Bérat emmaberat84@gmail.com and Karen Dempsey k.dempsey@reading.ac.uk by 15 September 2019.

The organisers invite paper proposals for panels at the 2020 Leeds International Medieval Congress on the theme ‘Queens on the Threshold’.

Often, we see medieval queens in movement: between families, between lands, between status, between the lines.
This strand seeks to think with and through the theme of ‘borders’, to consider how medieval queenship (understood in broad terms) operates and is set in motion by queens themselves and those around them. We hope this strand will engage with the multiple movements of queens in texts, images, and artefacts.

We welcome submissions from all periods and geographical areas.

Potential topics include but not are limited to:

• liminal events (inauguration ceremonies, weddings, funerals, succession crises);
• physical and geographical crossing of limits (international alliances, networks of communication and gift-exchange);
• visual signs of ‘foreignness’ (heraldry, fashion, religious symbols);
• failed crossings (unsuccessful marriage agreements, repudiation or divorce, early death);
  unstable personas or models (the virago, the concubine).

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words (.pdf or .docx preferred) and short bio to Florence H. R. Scott and Juliana Amorim Goskes (queenlythreshold@gmail.com) by 15 September, 2019. Questions can also be addressed to the same e-mail.

The Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol, and the Medieval and Early Modern Centre, University of Sydney, will be sponsoring a series of three panels at IMC Leeds 2020.

The aim of the panels is to explore aspects of identity in multilingual and multicultural border zones, and how border identities are imagined and represented in different literary and historical genres of medieval writing. Each panel will focus on a key genre in which formations of identity in border contexts are central to the textual strategies of the genre. A wide range of critical approaches is encouraged, including, but not limited to, eco-criticism, cultural geography, gender theory, book history, historiography, literary criticism, linguistics, postcolonial theory.

We welcome submissions for 20-minute papers from all disciplines, and relating to all languages/nations of the medieval world. Proposals from postgraduates and early-career scholars are particularly welcome.

Abstracts of up to 200 words can be sent to: Helen Fulton (helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk) or Jan Shaw (jan.shaw@sydney.edu.au) by Monday 9 September 2019. Please include your name and full contact details, including institutional address, and any AV equipment you are likely to need.

Download the full Call for Papers below.

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