London and the Americas, 1492-1812
Society of Early Americanists
Kingston University
17-19 July 2014

Conference Website

This thematic interdisciplinary conference of the Society of Early Americanists will examine London’s connections with the Americas in the colonial era. It will focus on the role that Europe’s largest urban center played in the structuring of an Atlantic world inscribed, amidst both war and peace, by networks of trade, travel, religion, kinship, cultural identification, captivity, slavery, and governance. At the same time, participants will consider how the Americas in particular shaped the geography, both actual and metaphorical, of early modern London (that is, the cities of London and Westminster), influencing its practices, hierarchies, infrastructures, modes of representation, arrangements of space, and movements of peoples. The focus will thus be on London as both recipient and source of transmission and interaction, connected imaginatively and actually with American regions under the control of other European powers as well as with its own colonies.

Hosted by the School of Humanities at Kingston University London, the conference will take place on the University’s campus in South West London, a 25-minute train ride from central London and a short bus ride from Heathrow Airport. Housing options will include university dormitories as well as a diverse array of local hotels.

Proposals are welcome for individual papers or complete panels. Innovative panel formats are welcome along with traditional trios of 20-minute papers. Please send 250 word proposals by October 1, 2013, to: sea14london@gmail.com

The University of Virginia’s Medieval-Renaissance Conference
University of Virginia College, Wise, VA
September 19-21, 2013

Keynote Address:
Michael Ryan, University of New Mexico
“Charlatans and Wonders in the Medieval Mediterranean”

The University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts.

Abstracts for papers should be 250 or fewer words. Proposals for panels should include:

1. title of the panel
2. names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists
3. abstracts for papers to be presented (250 or fewer words). 

Deadline for Submissions: June 17, 2013.

Please direct submissions on English Language and Literature and requests for general information to:

Kenneth J. Tiller
Department of Language and Literature
UVA’s College at Wise
Wise, VA 24293
(276) 376-4587
kjt9t@uvawise.edu

Submissions on History or Philosophy:

Donald Leech
Department of History and Philosophy
UVA’s College at Wise
Wise, VA 24293
(276) 376-4573
dl4h@uvawise.edu

Submissions on Art, Music, and Continental Literature:

Amelia J. Harris
Academic Dean
UVA’s College at Wise
Wise, VA 24293
(276) 376-4557
ajh7a@uvawise.edu

Writing Identity
14th International Conference of Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature
Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany
28-31 July, 2014

Conference Website

Identity implies demarcation: both at the personal and at the national level identity presupposes boundaries, of ‘the other’ as opposed to the idea of ‘self’. These boundaries are negotiable and therefore never fixed and stable. They require validation, justification and confirmation as much as being challenged and confronted. The parameters within which identity and identities are imagined, formed, and maintained in medieval and early modern Scottish texts are the topic of this conference. We invite papers focusing on identity and identities in Scottish literature which pertain to the following three strands:

I. Identity in and through Language
The first strand comprises linguistic approaches to identity and language-related aspects of identity formation in medieval and early modern Scotland. Possible topics include the encoding of Scottishness in and through language, linguistic approaches to identity and identity formation, the Scottish idiom as a transmitter of nationalism, the uses and functions of Gaelic, language contact between Scotland, England, and other European countries, loan words and borrowings, as well as (aspects of) multilingualism.

II. Literary Identities
The second strand encompasses the negotiation and depiction of identity/identities in literary texts. How do Scottish poets depict their characters’ (Scottish and other) identities? Are genre and identity linked? When do identities clash, and why? How are human vs. non-human, holy vs. sinful, female vs. male, and religious vs. secular identities presented and negotiated? How and why is identity questioned, weakened, and potentially destabilised? How is ‘the other’ constructed in literary texts? How can identity formation be approached theoretically, for instance in terms of post-colonialism or narrative theory?

III. Cultures of Identity
The third strand is devoted to the wider historical and cultural context of identity and identities in medieval and early modern Scottish literature. What can be said about the historical development of Scottishness? How are nation and nationhood defined and constructed in historical sources? How can (Scottish) identity be placed and read against the changing European landscape? Where are centres of (national and other) identities, and why? How and where is cultural identity taught and proclaimed?

Papers should not be longer than 20 minutes. Please send a 500-word abstract to the conference secretary Martina Dornieden (icmrsll@rub.de).

Deadline for submission is 1 September 2013.
You can also find the call for papers on the conference website: www.rub.de/icmrsll

The Thirteenth York Manuscripts Conference: Cathedral Libraries and Archives of Britain and Ireland
Centre for Medieval Studies and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York
3-5 July, 2014

The York Manuscripts Conference has been held biennially or triennially since 1986 and, with about 50 papers, is amongst the largest conferences in Europe dedicated to manuscript studies. The Thirteenth York Manuscripts Conference, to be held from 3-5 July 2014 will have as its topic the Cathedral Libraries and Archives of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. 

The Cathedral Libraries and Archives of Britain and Ireland comprise some of the most remarkable and least explored collections of medieval and early modern manuscripts. While predictably focused on theological, liturgical, and devotional books, they also contain many medical, scientific, and literary sources, as well as legal and administrative documents. In addition to the many collections that are still in situ, others are now being looked after elsewhere, or have been dispersed. The conference will include papers on medieval and early modern manuscripts which are or were once held by the cathedrals of Britain and Ireland, considering their varied contents, illumination, use, and provenance; paper topics might also explore the formation, development, and dissolution of the libraries themselves; connections between different collections; their location and cataloguing within the cathedrals; or the distinction between cathedral libraries and cathedral archives in a historical perspective.

Papers which shed light on lesser known treasures and collections will be especially welcome. We invite papers from researchers in the fields of religion, history, art history, musicology, history of science, literature, codicology, conservation, and other cognate disciplines. Papers delivered at the conference may be considered for inclusion in a volume of selected essays.

The conference is organised in association with the Cathedrals Libraries and Archives Network (CLAN), which seeks to engender, co-ordinate, facilitate and promote research on the Cathedral collections, and to act as an interface between academic communities, church bodies, and the wider public.

Plenary lectures will be given by Nigel Morgan (Cambridge), Christopher Norton (York), Rodney Thomson (Tasmania), and Magnus Williamson (Newcastle).

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to YMC-2014@york.ac.uk. Deadline for submission of proposals is 1 July 2013.

John Gower Society – Third Annual Congress
“John Gower: Language, Cognition, and Performance” University of Rochester, New York
30 June-3 July, 2014

Conference Website

The Congress title, “John Gower: Language, Cognition, and Performance,” defines a wide focus: “Language,” in all its many aspects, and languages, translations, specialized discourses, dialects, idiolects, and influences, as well as manuscript printed, and digital texts—and Digital Humanities, generally, with application to Gower; “Cognition,” including medieval memory and ideational theory, cognitive science, mental (and physical) health and models of therapy, general modes of perception and more specialized (e.g., Gower and suffering, political, salvific and emotive discourses—”Gower and the non- / supra-human world”); “Performance,” anticipating sessions on performance and performance theory, on the staging of ideas, on philosophy (people/characters “staged” by deeds and choices, etc.), narrativity.

Plenary speakers will include:

• Derek Pearsall, Gurney Professor of English Literature emeritus, Harvard University
• Russell A. Peck, John Hall Deane Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Rochester
• Ardis Butterfield, Senior Research Scholar, Yale University

Those who would like to present papers at the Congress should send a one-paragraph abstract (150 words) by July 1, 2013 to the organizer(s) at the following email addresses:

• R.F. Yeager (rfyeager@hotmail.com)
• Russell Peck (russell.peck@rochester.edu)

All proposals are welcome! Please indicate any specific audio-visual/digital needs. Congress organizers will select papers and reply to all submitters by July 15, 2013.

Alternatively, submissions may be sent to anty of the approved sessions listed at the conference website: http://www.wcu.edu/johngower/conference/2014/index.html. Please email the session organiser/s directly.

“Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques” 
Rice University, Houston, TX
October 25-2, 2013

“Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques” aims to create conversations on the impact of monstrosity and examples of the grotesque in discourse related to religion and the sacred. The tendency to populate religious landscapes with non-human entities, literally demonize opponents, perceive monsters as existing in far-reaching geographical borders (e.g., “the East” in Medieval Europe), and decorate sacred sites with grotesques is a trait shared throughout innumerable traditions. Recently the term “monster studies” was coined to cover the recent works dedicated to monsters by such authors as John Block Friedman, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Asa Mittman, who have helped to provide a framework for the study of such phenomena, not only in religious studies but also in literature, art history, and history. Through this framework, monsters and grotesques have been revealed as important markers of marginality, social boundaries, liminality, identity, cultural borders, and the “Other.”

“Holy Monsters, Sacred Grotesques” seeks to inform conversations about the sacred with monstrous discourse. We desire to do so in an interdisciplinary fashion and to encourage scholars in fields outside of religious studies who deal with such materials to join in our conversation. As such, we seek papers not only from religious studies but other disciplines in the humanities (e.g., philosophy, history, gender studies, art history, literature) and social sciences (e.g., political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology), as well.

Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length and should represent an intersection of the sacred (loosely construed) with a theme or object of monstrosity.

Please send a 300-word abstract, along with your name, institution, and year of study (if a graduate student) by May 17, 2013 to:
monsterconference@gmail.com

If you have questions or need additional information, please contact Michael Heyes at heyes@rice.edu.