Demons and Illness: Theory and Practice from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period 
Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter
22-24 April, 2013

Conference Website

In many near eastern traditions, demons appear as a cause of illness: most famously in the stories of possessed people cured by Christ. These traditions influenced perceptions of illness in Judaism, Christianity and Islam in later centuries but the ways in which these cultures viewed demons and illness have received comparatively little attention. For example, who were these demons? How did they cause illness? Why did they want to? How did demons fit into other explanations for illness? How could demonic illnesses be cured and how did this relate to other kinds of cure? How far did medical or philosophical theory affect how people responded to demonic illnesses in practice?

This conference will take a comparative approach, taking a wide geographical and chronological sweep but confining itself to this relatively specific set of questions. Because Jewish, Christian and Islamic ideas about demons and illness drew on a similar heritage of ancient religious texts from New Testament times to the early modern period there is real scope to draw meaningful comparisons between the different periods and cultures. What were the common assumptions made by different societies? When and why did they differ? What was the relationship between theory and practice? We would welcome papers which address these issues for any period between antiquity and the early modern period, and which discuss Christian, Jewish or Islamic traditions.

Please send abstracts by 15th September 2012 to the conference organizers, Catherine Rider and Siam Bhayro, Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter.

Thirteenth Biennial Early Book Society (EBS) conference
St Andrews University
July 4 to July 7, 2013

The Thirteenth Biennial EBS conference, hosted by Margaret Connolly and Julian Luxford, will be held at St Andrews University from July 4 to July 7, 2013, with an optional trip to Edinburgh collections and other sites of interest in the area scheduled for July 8. Special exhibitions put on for the Early Book Society conference will feature collections at St Andrews and also at the National Library of Scotland which houses the Bohun Psalter, the Murthly Hours, the Auchinleck manuscript and one of two extant illustrated MSS of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life. The latter exhibition will be organized by Kenneth Dunn, Curator of MSS, at the NLS.

The theme of the conference may be as narrowly or broadly interpreted as necessary; “networks” could allude to an affinity, friendships, communities, secular or religious or both, for example, while “influence” could be orthodox, heretical, royal, individual and so on. “Networks” might allude further to collectors or cataloguers of medieval MSS or of related libraries. Lectures or proposed sessions that consider the transition from script to print, bibliographic issues, or the movement between English and Scottish texts (or vice versa) and audiences are particularly encouraged, though papers on any aspect of the history of manuscripts and printed books from 1350-1550, including the copying and circulation of models and exemplars, style, illustration, and/or the influence of readers and patrons, artists, scribes, printers, are welcome.

The conference is open to all EBS members. Details of how to join can be found on the EBS website: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/EBS.

Please indicate in your proposal whether a slide projector, OHP, or computer equipment is needed.

Please send copies of your proposal to both main organizers by the November 15 deadline. These are:

Martha Driver (marthadriver@hotmail.com)
EBS, English Department,
41 Park Row, Rm 1503,
New York, New York 10038-1598, US
or faxed to 212-346-1754 (office)

AND

Margaret Connolly (mc29@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Lauderdale, Cupar Road, Ceres,
Fife, Scotland
KY15 5LP UK.

Charming Intentions: Occultism, Magic and the History of Art
Graduate Conference
Department of History of Art
University of Cambridge
3-4 December 2012

Conference Website

This two-day graduate conference will investigate the intersections between visual culture and the occult tradition, ranging from the material culture of ‘primitive’ animism, through medieval and Renaissance depictions of witchcraft and demonology, to the contemporary fascination with the supernatural in popular culture.

The conference aims to provide a stimulating arena for the presentation of innovative research in this field as well as to offer a vibrant and thought-provoking forum for scholarly discussion and exchange.

We welcome papers from current and recent graduate students from all disciplines, provided their research engages with material, visual or symbolic aspects of magic and occultism.

Acceptable topics include, but are by no means limited to, the following areas:

• The sacred and the profane;
• The material culture of magic, ritual and sacrifice;
• Objects of totemic, apotropaeic or fetishistic character;
• Aspects of mysticism in Jewish, Christian and Islamic art and architecture;
• Satanism, witchcraft and demonology;
• Sacred geometry, numerology and cosmology;
• The arcane sciences (including astrology, alchemy, gnosticism, the Hermetic tradition, the Quabalah and the tarot game);
• Art-theoretical discussions of the spiritual, the sublime, the marvellous, the numinous and the uncanny;
• Artistic investigations of myth, fantasy and utopia;
• Visual aspects of occult movements such as Rosicrucionism, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Mesmerism, Spiritism and New Age Spirituality;
• The supernatural and the spiritual in modern and contemporary art;
• Occultism and magic in contemporary popular culture.

N.B.: Presentations should not exceed a maximum of 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A session. The sessions will be chaired by senior scholars within the University of Cambridge’s History of Art Department. We also hope to publish selected conference papers in a book of proceedings.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to charming.intentions@gmail.com alongside a CV of 1-2 pages. Deadline for submission is the 30th of September 2012. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed and successful applicants will be notified about acceptance of their papers before the 15th of October 2012. Early applications are strongly encouraged.