Twentieth International Medieval Congress
University of Leeds
1-4 July 2013

Congress Website

The twentieth International Medieval Congress will take place in Leeds, from 1-4 July 2013. The IMC seeks to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Paper and session proposals on any topic related to the European Middle Ages are welcome. However, every year, the IMC chooses a specific special thematic strand which – for 2013 – is ‘Pleasure’.

Pleasure is a universal human experience, but its components, evaluation, and meaning, and the contexts in which it is, or is not, a legitimate feeling and form of behaviour vary according to cultures and among individuals. Pleasure can be brought on by sensory stimulation, by aesthetic appreciation, by practising an activity, by sharing a common experience with others – or even all of these together (as in the case of the experience of sexual love). The crucial importance of pleasure in medieval living, as well as its multiple facets, constitute the reasons why the IMC has chosen for its special thematic focus for 2013:

Pleasure

Medieval Christianity had a specific cultural attitude towards pleasure, with a strong focus on the division of this world and the afterlife. Pleasure was often either spiritual or corporeal, although sometimes seen as both (as in the mystical/ecstatic experience). Earthly pleasures were first and foremost associated with sin and damnation, and even posed a threat to health, while spiritual pleasures contributed towards salvation and a more harmonious life. The attitude towards pleasure was ambiguous: with the threat of the devil on one side, and the enticement of heaven on the other, pleasure was linked to both joy and pain. Questions around pleasure were posed in philosophical and theological debates throughout the Middle Ages. Pleasure was nonetheless an experience commonly and eagerly sought for – in all its forms and by all social groups, in and outside Christendom. Aristocratic life is particularly represented as a culture of pleasure in both iconography and literature. The balance between celestial and terrestrial values was renegotiated in the late medieval period, so that pleasure became an aspiration for all.

Areas of discussion could include:

• Diverging cultural attitudes toward pleasure
• Pleasure in non-Christian contexts
• Earthly pleasure versus spiritual pleasure
• Visual and narrative representations of pleasure
• Social and corporeal manifestations of pleasure
• Pleasurable activities
• Individual and collective experiences of pleasure
• Prohibition and condemnation of pleasure
• Chastity, celibacy, fasting, and abstinence
• Love / sexuality / pleasures of the flesh – and their specific cultural expressions
• Medical theories and approaches to pleasure
• Mysticism, spirituality, and pleasure
• Creating and/or experiencing pleasure
• Entertainment and leisure
• Humour and fun
• Material culture and evidence of pleasure
• Pleasure and luxury / cultural goods / worldliness

Paper proposals must be submitted by 31 August 2012; session proposals must be submitted by 30 September 2012.

For abstract submission guidelines, details about travel bursaries, and all related application forms, please visit the IMC 2013 website.

Seventh Marlowe International Conference
American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse
Staunton, VA
24 June-28 June, 2013

The Marlowe Society of America calls for papers for its Seventh International Marlowe Conference from 24 June to 28 June 2013 at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, VA. The conference will feature keynote presentations by Susan P. Cerasano (Colgate University), Laurie Maguire (Magdalen College, University of Oxford), Leah Marcus (Vanderbilt University) and Garrett Sullivan (Pennsylvania State University). Professional productions by the American Shakespeare Center will complement special events, workshops, screenings, and productions designed specially for conference attendees.

Abstracts should be submitted to Program Chair Jeremy Lopez (jeremy.lopez@utoronot.ca). Abstract length: 500 words MAX. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 September, 2012.

Please check the Marlowe Society of America website for updates: www.marlowesmightyline.org.

The Monk, the Priest, the Nun
University of Pennsylvania
22-23 March, 2013

The Center for Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania invites submissions for papers to be read at the interdisciplinary international conference.

The conference, held at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore how monks, priests, and nuns dwell in literary texts and the visual arts quite comfortably, from Saint Anthony’s life to Boccaccio’s Decameron, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Diderot’s La religieuse, from Giotto’s frescoes to Salvator Dali’s surrealistic visions. What is their destiny in our desacralized age? Are they the new wanderers, do they live as foreigners in a world of people who no longer not recognize them? From
Lewis to Manzoni, from Bernanos to Chesterton, from Fogazzaro to Parise, priests, monks and nuns still inhabit our literature, art, cinema, as a sort of uncanny presence.

The keynote speaker will be Victoria Kirkham.

Plenary speakers will  include: Armando Maggi, Millicent Marcus, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Roland Martinez, Christine Poggi, Janet Smarr, David Wallace, Elissa Weaver, Rebecca West, and others.

Please send a 250 word proposal and a brief vita (no cv) to italians@sas.upenn.edu by November 15.

Gender in Material Culture
Corsham Court, Bath Spa University
4th-6th January 2013

Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Catherine Karkov, University of Leeds
Dr Simon Yarrow, University of Birmingham

From saintly relics to grave goods, and from domestic furnishings to the built environment, medieval people inhabited a material world saturated with symbolism. Gender had a profound influence on production and consumption in this material culture. Birth charms and objects of Marian devotion were crafted most often with women in mind, whilst gender shaped the internal spaces of male and female religious houses. The material environment could evoke intense emotions from onlookers, whether fostering reverence in religious rituals, or inspiring awe during royal processions. How did gender influence encounters with these objects and the built environment? Seldom purely functional, these items could incorporate complex meanings, enabling acts of display at every level of society, in fashionable circles at European courts or amongst civic guilds sponsoring lavish pageants. Did gender influence aesthetic choices, and how did status shape the way that people engaged with their physical surroundings? In literary texts and in art, the depiction of clothing and objects can be used to negotiate symbolic space as well as class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity. Texts and images also circulated as material objects themselves, with patterns of transmission across the British Isles, the Anglo-Norman world, and between East and West. The exchange of such objects both accompanied and enacted cross-fertilisation in linguistic, political and cultural spheres.

The Conference will consider the gendered nature of social, religious and economic uses of ‘things’, exploring the way that objects and material culture were produced, consumed and displayed. Papers will address questions of gender from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, embracing literature, history, art history, and archaeology.

Themes will include:

• adornment, clothing and self-fashioning
• the material culture of devotion
• objects and materialism
• the material culture of children and adolescents
• the material culture of life cycle
• emotion, intimacy and love-gifts
• entertainment and games
• memory and commemoration
• pleasure, pain, and bodily discipline
• production and consumption
• monastic material culture
• material culture in literary texts

Please e-mail proposals of approximately 300 words for 20 minute papers to the GMS committee by 14 September 2012. Please also include your name, research area, institution and level of study in your abstract.

Putting England in Its Place: Cultural Production and Cultural Relations in the High Middle Ages
33rd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, Manhattan
March 9-10 2013

Conference Website

The rich culture of England’s mid-eleventh to thirteenth centuries is central to some disciplinary narratives for the High Middle Ages (for example, the political history of its ruling dynasties, analyses of visual and material culture and of Latin historiography), but omitted from others (the period is often assumed, for instance, to have little to do with the history of English literature). This interdisciplinary conference aims to look in a fresh and integrated way at cultural production and cultural relations within England and between England and other locales in order to explore what kind of place England as a region, a changing political entity, and a culture or set of cultures might occupy in our accounts of the High Middle Ages. We welcome papers dealing with England’s cultures (local, regional, general) in themselves and in their many connections (diplomatic, economic, artistic, etc…) with further areas of the British Isles and other medieval regions.

Speakers Include:
Oliver Creighton, Julia Crick, Robert W. Hanning, Sarah Rees Jones, Elizabeth Tyler, Carol Symes, Paul R. Hyams, Kathryn A. Smith

Please send an abstract and cover letter with contact information to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu or by fax to (718) 817-3987. The deadline for submissions is: September 5, 2012.