Regions and Regional Identity in the Middle Ages 
The Medieval Academy of America
Annual Meeting, 2013
4-6 April, 2013
Knoxville, Tennessee

Hosted by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Tennessee Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium

The annual meeting of the Medieval Academy will be held 4-6 April 2013, in down town Knoxville, hosted by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Tennessee Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium.

The program will include three plenary speakers and at least one plenary session:

• Presidential Address: Maryanne Kowaleski (Joseph Fitzpatrick S. J. Distinguished Professor, Fordham University)
• First Plenary Speaker: Christopher De Hamel (Gaylord Donnelley Fellow Librarian, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)
• Fellows’ Speaker: Jan Ziolkowski (Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard University and Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)
• CARA Plenary Session on Digitized Manuscripts and Intellectual Property – Sponsored by the Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop – Organizer, Abigail Firey (University of Kentucky)

The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal, excepting those who presented papers at the annual meetings of the Medieval Academy in 2011 and 2012; others may submit proposals as well, but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration can be given to individuals whose speciality would not normally involve membership in the Academy.

Sessions usually consist of three 25-minute papers, and proposals should be geared to that length. The Program Committee may choose a different format for some sessions after the proposals have been reviewed. Session organizers may wish to propose different formats for their sessions, subject to Program Committee approval.

Because of our location in Appalachia, one of the nation’s most distinctive regional cultures, we have selected as our theme for the MAA meeting, “Regions and Regional Identity in the Middle Ages.” Sessions will address a variety of topics, many of them well outside the conference theme, but we hope to stress the importance of a sense of place, family, and locality in as many presentations as possible. We are seeking, therefore, innovative proposals for papers and sessions, and we hope to see significant cross-disciplinary participation as well. For both the commissioned and the open sessions, we are looking for the broadest possible range of proposals of topics and of time periods, within and across all the disciplines.

Papers will be evaluated for promise of quality and significance of topic. Session organizers make an initial selection of papers and submit a plan to the Program Committee, which makes final decisions by 15 September 2012. Notification of acceptance or rejection will take place shortly thereafter.

Proposals should be submitted to Jay Rubenstein, preferably by e-mail to jrubens1@utk.edu, or, on paper in two copies, to:

Jay Rubenstein
University of Tennessee
Department of History
6th Floor, Dunford Hall
Knoxville, TN 37996

The deadline is 1 June 2012. Please do not send proposals to session organizers or to the Academy office.

The proposal must have two parts:

1. A cover sheet containing the proposer’s name, statement of current status of Academy membership, professional status, postal address, home and office telephone numbers, fax number (if available), e-mail address (if available), and paper title
2. A second sheet containing the proposer’s name, session for which the paper should be considered, paper title, 250-word abstract, and audio-visual equipment requirements. If the proposer will be at a different address when decisions are announced in September, that address should be included.

The complete Call for Papers with additional information, submission procedures, selections guidelines, and organizers is available here: http://www.medievalacademy.org/annualmeetings/annualmeetingcurrent.htm

The 59th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America
4–6 April 2013
San Diego

Call for Papers Submission Deadline: 15 June 2012

The Program Committee welcomes submissions for individual papers or panels on any aspect of Renaissance studies, or the era ca. 1300–1650.

You need not be a member of RSA to submit a proposal, but if your paper is accepted you must become a member and register for the conference. Proposals will be evaluated by the Program Committee for their original scholarly contribution to an aspect of the field.

For more details including how to submit an abstract for consideration, please visit the RSA conference website: https://rsa.site-ym.com/?page=2013SanDiego

Bonds, Lies, and Circumstances: Discourses of Truth-Telling in the Renaissance
An International and Interdisciplinary Conference
21- 23 March, 2013
School of English, University of St Andrews

“If a lie had no more faces but one, as truth had, we should be in farre better termes than we are: For whatsoever a lier should say, we would take it in a contrarie sense. But the opposite of truth has many shapes, and an undefinite field.” Michel de Montaigne, ‘Of Lyers’ (Florio translation -1603)

Can we say that truth has ‘no more faces than one’? Montaigne implies that human relationships with truth are straightforward, whereas our attitudes towards falsehood are complicated by its multiplicity. But how stable is the notion of ‘truth’? Does truth – like falsehood – appear in many forms, and if so, can we ever take it at face value?

Legal, emotional, and spiritual concerns — all vital to truth-telling discourses — are intimately bound in the Renaissance. This conference offers a forum for the exploration of their intersections. The study of legal culture has become increasingly central to the analysis of early modern literary texts, and legal paradigms are inescapable when scholars turn their attention, as many have recently done, to the equivocal power of language to bind people together. We find the legal value of such bonds – in the form of oaths, promises and contracts – going hand in hand with interpersonal relationships and their emotional and spiritual dimensions.

Our objective is to foster debate about the marriage between two clearly connected fields: Law and Literature; and the study of early modern emotion. How do these fields work together? We form bonds; we tell lies; we search for and construct truths: but under what circumstances?

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

• The connections between law, emotion, and obligation, and how the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries engage with these dynamics.
• The formation and evaluation of bonds in the early modern world.
• How public/private spaces affect attitudes towards truth-telling.
• The relationship between faith, truth, and honesty in the Renaissance.
• How belief and trust are generated.
• The binding power of language and rhetoric.
• Transmissions of knowledge, belief, and emotion.

Confirmed keynote speakers are:

• John Kerrigan (Cambridge), on Bonds
• Andrew Hadfield (Sussex), on Lies
• Lorna Hutson (St Andrews), on Circumstances

Proposals for 20-minute papers should include an abstract (of no more than 200 words), 3 keywords, and 3 citations, and should be emailed to earlymodern@st-andrews.ac.uk. We are happy to consider proposals for panels; in the event that we are unable to accommodate the panel, papers will be considered on an individual basis.

All abstracts must be received by July 31st 2012.

We welcome proposals from researchers at all stages of their careers, working in departments of Art History, Comparative Literature, English, History, Languages, Law, Theology, and other relevant subject areas. General questions can be directed to the conference organizers – Rachel Holmes and Toria Johnson – at earlymodern@st-andrews.ac.uk.

“Revolutionizing Early Modern Studies”?
The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership in 2012
University of Oxford
17-18 September 2012

Conference Website

To mark a decade of the Text Creation Partnership (TCP)’s work at the Bodleian Libraries, producing searchable, full-text transcriptions of works in Early English Books Online (EEBO), we invite proposals for research papers and posters reflecting the various ways in which TCP texts are being used. Is EEBO-TCP revolutionizing research and teaching in early modern studies? What features would be desirable but are not yet available? What improvements could be made in the decade to come?

The TCP is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the University of Michigan and ProQuest. It is funded internationally by a consortium of partner institutions, and in the UK through JISC Collections. TCP editions power full-text searching of ProQuest’s EEBO database, and contribute to many other projects’ work. To date, the TCP has produced over 40,000 full-text XML editions of books printed between 1473 and 1700. Phase I produced over 25,000 texts, and Phase II, currently underway, will complete the corpus of about 70,000 unique titles in English.

Keynote speakers: Dr John Lavagnino, King’s College London; Dr Emma
Smith, University of Oxford.

For people interested in using TCP texts for research, one-to-one text clinic sessions are available.

We welcome proposals for papers and posters on:

• Research based on EEBO-TCP
• Methodologies in teaching
• Text editing
• Emerging trends influenced by EEBO-TCP’s availability
• Potential for future research

Proposals for 20-minute papers should be a maximum of 500 words, and for posters, 250 words. Deadline for proposals is 7 May 2012. Invitations to present will be sent by 1 June 2012.

If you would like your paper to appear as part of the conference proceedings (registration required) in the Oxford University Research Archive, the deadline for submission of final papers is 29 August 2012. We welcome proposals from graduate and post-doctoral students as well as established scholars. If you would like to be considered for a financially assisted place at the conference, please indicate this when you submit your proposal.

For further details, see: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/eebotcp/eebotcp2012.

For proposal submission, details of the conference venue, and registration, please visit the University Stores. For any queries, and to book a text clinic session, please email Pip Willcox, pip [dot] willcox [at] bodleian [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.