Seventeenth Biennial Meeting of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
University of Glasgow
3-7 August 2015
(post-conference excursion to Iona, 8-9 August 2015)

The conference theme is “The Daily Life of the Anglo-Saxons”. Ordinary Anglo-Saxons are often less visible to us than the key political and religious figures, but their lives shaped and were shaped by the wider events of the early medieval period. The theme encompasses all aspects of life, whether mundane or glamorous, covering activities such as farming and cooking, trade and craftsmanship, child-rearing and education, as well as government and administration, religion and devotional practices, travel and communication, medicine, art and leisure. The theme is a broad one by design to accommodate not only archaeological and historical investigations, but also explorations of the language, literature and place-names of the period. Papers on open topics are also welcome.

Proposals will be evaluated “blind” by members of the ISAS Advisory Board. Decisions regarding which proposals are accepted will be announced by January 2015.

Papers should be no more than 20 minutes in length, and will be grouped into 3-paper sessions of one hour and 30 minutes in length so as to leave time for questions and discussion. Proposals are welcome for individual papers or for complete sessions. Abstracts, whether for papers or for sessions, should be no more than 500 words in length (including bibliography). Abstracts are also required for individual papers within a proposed session.

Proposals are also welcome for project reports, which should be no more than 10 minutes in length and will be grouped into 5-report sessions of one hour so as to leave a short time for factual questions. Abstracts for project reports should be no more than 250 words in length (including bibliography).

All sessions will be held in a room that is fully equipped with audiovisual and computer equipment.

Abstracts can be submitted from 15 June 2014 to 15 October 2014 via the submission site: http://link.library.utoronto.ca/isas/conference/index.cfm

A step-by-step guide for submitting an abstract for a paper or project report may be found here: www.isas.us/conf/ISAS2015-Paper-ProjectReport.pdf

A step-by-step guide for proposing a panel session may be found here: www.isas.us/conf/ISAS2015-PanelSession.pdf

To submit an abstract within the permitted amount of time online, you might wish to prepare it first as a word-processing document, then copy and paste it in. Please note that the deadline of 15 October is necessary to allow time for the reviewing process, and will not be extended.

Please note that in order to present at ISAS Glasgow, it is necessary to be a current member of ISAS. Information on joining ISAS or updating membership can be found at: http://www.isas.us/mem.html.

Questions or problems relating to the submission of proposals may be directed either to the conference host, current ISAS President Carole Hough (carole.hough@glasgow.ac.uk) or to Executive Director Martin Foys (mkfoys@gmail.com).

A New Perspective On Plato and His Philosophical Methods
An International Conference for Young Researchers
Kyoto University, Japan
20–21 March, 2015

Conference Wesbite

Keynote Speakers:

• Sylvain Delcomminette (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
• Yasuhira (Yahei) Kanayama (Nagoya University)

It is generally supposed that Plato’s philosophical methodology changed over the course of his carrier. In the early dialogues we see Socrates’ cross-examination, called elenchus, in search of definitions. The middle dialogues introduce Plato’s more constructive approaches in relation to the theory of Forms, such as the theory of recollection, the method of hypothesis, and ‘dialectic’. His methodological concern seems to be dominated in the later works by ‘collection and division’. In addition, we should not forget the role of myths in his philosophy.

This conference aims to investigate how Plato’s distinctive philosophical methods are related or unrelated to each other, with a close analysis of the characteristics of individual approaches. Can we really say that Plato changed or developed his methods? Or do they essentially share the same basic tenet?

We welcome abstracts from young researchers (within about 10 years after their PhD degrees), including PhD students (but not MPhils), for papers of approximately 4,000 words (30 minutes for presentation and 15 minutes for discussion) which examine one of the topics above, the relationship between them or some other issues seen as important in terms of Plato’s philosophical methods. Papers which discuss later receptions within ancient philosophy are also welcome as long as their main objectives lie in clarifying relevant issues in Plato’s texts.

One of the objectives of this conference is to facilitate conversations between Japanese and foreign young researchers on Plato. We are expecting 14 speakers in total, of which about 6 will be Japanese and 8 from abroad. Thanks to a generous financial support by Kyoto University, we can provide each speaker with travel and accommodation expenses of 150,000 yen (approx. 1,500 US dollars), except people from East and Southeast Asia, who will be given 70,000 yen, and those living in Japan, who will be paid up to 30,000 yen. Please note that in order to help an audience with better understanding, we produce proceedings which will be given to participants in the conference, for internal use, so it is obligatory to submit your full papers if you are selected for presentations. The language used for the conference is English.

Submission deadline: 14 November 2014.
Word limit for Abstract: 500 words.
Please put ‘Abstract Submission (Your surname)’ as the subject of your email.
Please include your name, departmental affiliation and position, email address, and title of your paper in the body of the email.
Abstracts should be prepared for blind review.
Please ensure that your abstract is free from identifying personal details.
The notification of the results will be given by the end of November 2014.
Please submit abstracts as .doc or .pdf by email to platosmethod@gmail.com as an attachment (If you do not latinize but write Greek, please use ‘Unicode’ fonts).
Successful speakers will be requested to submit their full papers of approx. 4,000 words excluding footnotes and bibliography by 14th February 2015.

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/platosmethod2015/home

Any enquiry should be sent to iwata.naoya.25r@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp. Please do not submit your abstract to this address.

Young Shakespeare
2015 French Shakespeare Society Annual Conference (SFS)
Paris
March 19-21, 2015.

Owing to a facetious calendar, the fortieth anniversary of the Société Française Shakespeare will be lodged between two world celebrations in honour of the poet who has become the most frequently performed playwright on the French stage. Quite a young institution, compared with the time-honoured Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft whose 150 years of existence were celebrated in Weimar in 2014, the SFS takes the opportunity of this festive chain of events to set the commemoration issues to school.

Let us begin with Shakespeare’s own youth. The period labelled, for lack of illuminating documents, “the dark years” or “the lost years” (1582-1590) has given rise to fanciful tales or highly speculative theories. Unless new elements emerge, our priority in 2015 will be to revisit those years when Shakespeare wrote his first plays, for a relatively young Tudor theatre, and his two narrative poems. If Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew take up the tradition of Senecan revenge tragedies or rewrite earlier versions like the anonymous Taming of A Shrew designed for the Queen’s Men, other works like The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labours Lost, the first Henriad and Richard III may well be considered matrixes for the great themes of Shakespeare’s mature years. In these early works, the young playwright shows tremendous nerve in confronting seniors who must despise the upstart crow and plagiarist stigmatized in Greene’s onslaught. The challenger, not yet thirty when he takes the stage by storm, represents a clear break with a generation who watch with a jaundiced eye the daring inventions and triumphant hits of this rising star.

With this in mind, one may ask what exactly was innovative, revolutionary even, in these youthful productions, and what might be learnt from them by today’s young audiences, scholars, performers and readers. Should a comedy like A Midsummer Night’s Dream be classified as “youthful”? Can the impertinent wit displayed in Love’s Labours Lost still break some of our political or erotic taboos? Does Richard III hold in its seeds the forthcoming tragedies? Is Henry VI a suitable springboard for young conquering energies?

The themes subsumed under the title “Young Shakespeare” lead to the more general question whether the budding playwright can constitute a worthwhile example of youthful talent through his dramatic stage entrance, upsetting of set practices, questioning of traditional authorities, values and established order, conquering of a central position in the midst of a more learned and experienced generation of writers. How far can today’s young actors, directors, academics in literature and history, find inspiration for their own works in the “Young Shakespeare” experience?

A precedent is provided by the young generation of artists and writers, two centuries ago, led by Hugo, Musset, Gautier, Dumas, Vigny, Delacroix et Berlioz who identified themselves as “Romantics”, or synonymously as “men who admire Shakespeare and are not afraid to say so”: a momentous performance of Hamlet at the Odéon in September 1827 by Kemble’s company of actors started a passion for the English poet, and a rebellion against classical standards, that produced an incomparable list of masterpieces.

What types of products and productions aimed at young people today draw their titles, characters or elements of plots from Shakespeare? Cartoons, mangas, musicals? The Animated Tales commissioned in 1992 by BBC Wales to the Russian Christmas Films Studio, twelve half-hour episodes each dedicated to a play, with scripts by Leon Garfield? Other form of “popular” entertainment? Did films like Romeo + Juliet, Shakespeare in Love or Joss Whedon’s recent Much Ado about Nothing, through their success with young audiences, play a pioneering role in this regard?

Whatever the answers, one should stress the fact that Shakespeare, far from being reserved to a learned elite, is first and foremost a popular author addressing all publics, juveniles especially, and yet not mask the rich complexity of his works. Because his idiom and his world are now in part lost to us, a welcome move would be to give the plays a larger part in the teaching programs of grammar schools, as is already the practice in some drama classes, and make sure that instead of slipping unnoticed into the ranks of old classics, this allegedly difficult writer keeps entire the stamina and originality of his power to inspire, as an author who calls for constant reassessment of supposedly set values.

It will be the aim of this conference to study and highlight this rejuvenating aspect of the Shakespeare heritage, a resolute stance for more than lessons of youth, a “trust in youth” challenge.

Please send your proposals to contact@societefrancaiseshakespeare.org before September 15, 2014.

Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry and Speculation in Europe, 1100-1450
New College, Oxford
13-14 April, 2015

Keynote speakers: Prof. Vincent Gillespie (Oxford), Prof. John Marenbon (Cambridge)

In the high and late Middle Ages, fictional frameworks could be used as imaginative spaces in which to test or play with ideas without necessarily asserting their truth. The aim of this conference is to consider how intellectual problems were approached — if not necessarily resolved — through the kinds of hypothetical enquiry found in poetry and other kinds of fictive texts. We hope to encourage an exploration of the relationship between poetry and speculation and the medieval understanding of speculatio, and we use the anachronistic term ‘thought experiment’ to provoke particular debate around two related questions:

1. To what extent can hypothetical and speculative texts be understood as ‘experiments’, as frames within which ideas can be tested rather than necessarily asserted?
2. How far can speculation be understood not merely as an intellective process, but also as something affective and sensitive? In this respect we draw on both meanings of the medieval Latin experientia: not just ‘experiment’, but also ‘experience’.

We welcome papers that consider why a writer might choose a fictional or hypothetical frame to discuss theoretical questions, how a text’s truth content is affected and shaped by its fictive nature, or what kind of affective or intellectual work is required to read a speculative text. We hope that this conference will explore what happens to theoretical truth-claims in a wide range of hypothetical texts — allegorical dream-visions (such as the Romance of the Rose or Piers Plowman) as much as philosophical dialogues (such as those of Peter Abelard and Ramon Llull).

This conference aims to bring together scholars working across the spectrum of medieval languages and academic disciplines, including (but not limited to) literary studies, intellectual history, philosophy, and theology.

Papers may wish to consider some of the following questions:

• Kinds of Meaning. How do fictional frames generate meaning, and how is this influenced by genre, mode, or context?
• Space. What rules govern the imagined spaces of medieval thought experiments, and what issues do spaces raise?
• Truth and lies. How are philosophical fictions used, abused, or condemned? When is it acceptable to lie in order to arrive at truth?
• Imagination and intellect. What kinds of knowledge are accessible via different mental faculties?
• Speculatio, speculum. specula. How is the act of speculation represented or described in medieval texts, and how does this relate to the senses, in particular to sight?

Please submit abstracts for papers of up to 20 minutes in length to medievalthoughtexperiments@gmail.com by 10 November 2014.

The registration fee for this conference will be £60, with an optional dinner in New College on the Monday evening at an additional cost (to be confirmed).

Please note that there will be a small number of travel bursaries available for graduate students and early career researchers giving papers at the conference (up to a value of £200). When you submit your abstract, please state if you would like to be considered for a travel bursary.

Enquiries can be directed to the organisers at: medievalthoughtexperiments@gmail.com.