Æthelred II and Cnut the Great: Millennial Conference to Commemorate the Siege of London in 1016
University College London
6-9 July, 2016

London a thousand years ago: a lively port, the centre of trade, cross-roads for armies going north and south, seat of political government and dispute, all against the backdrop of a war between Æthelred II and Cnut with its culmination in the Siege of London of 1016. In just over a year the academics and interested public of London will commemorate this siege and its times with a three-day international conference.

Please come and join us! There will be other Cnutonica for this year but none other in the city where the war came to an end. Our conference will begin with a welcome on the afternoon of Wednesday 6 July 2016. Lectures will be scheduled to begin on the following day in Senate House, Birkbeck College and UCL in single session. There will be four plenaries, by

• Prof Simon Keynes of the University of Cambridge in the area of Anglo-Scandinavian history
• Prof Andrew Reynolds of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, on the archaeology of London relating to the Vikings and the siege of 1016
• Prof Andy Orchard of the University of Oxford, on the contemporary Beowulf manuscript, BL MS Cotton Vitellius A.XV and Old English literature
• Prof Emerita Roberta Frank of Yale University on Skaldic poetry and the Norse literary achievement

Papers are invited in the fields of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature, history and archaeology in and around the Siege of London in 1016. Possible subjects might include, but are not limited to:

• Old English literature of the Benedictine Reform
• Old English poetry (including Beowulf)
• Anglo-Saxon palaeography of the tenth and eleventh centuries
• Skaldic poetry at the court of Cnut
• Æthelred II and the Danish Wars
• Cnut and early medieval historiography
• Material culture in the later Viking Age
• Cnut and coinage of the British Isles
• The archaeology of London
• Anglo-Scandinavian cultural exchange
• Knýtlinga saga and Icelandic and Norwegian sagas
• The Danish empire
• Cnut and the Baltic
• Cnut and Rome
• Queens Emma and Ælfgifu
• Cnut’s Laws
• The Beowulf manuscript in the context of Cnut’s reign

Please send abstracts of about 300 words to Richard North (richard.north@ucl.ac.uk). All papers will be considered on the understanding that speakers have a maximum of half an hour. We plan to arrange a manuscript exhibition, to be able to reserve student accommodation for attendees, and to invite speakers and other contributors to submit papers for a volume of Conference Proceedings for publication in the following year.

The Interdisciplinarity of Pilgrimage Studies
An Interdisciplinary Conference Sponsored by the Institute for Pilgrimage Studies and the International Consortium for Pilgrimage Studies
College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA
October 16-18, 2015

“Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.”

Abraham Cowley (English Poet 1618-1667)

The Institute of Pilgrimage Studies in conjunction with the International Consortium for Pilgrimage Studies invites abstracts for the 4th annual Symposium October 16-18, 2015 at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Encouraged themes:

• Pilgrimage in the College Curriculum
• Pilgrimage and Popular Culture
• Sociology of Pilgrimage
• Jewish Pilgrimage
• The Body & Pilgrimage
• Tourism & Pilgrimage
• Space, Place and Lived Experience of Pilgrimage

We encourage submission of papers involving research and creative activity on journeys to a sacred center or travel for transformation from a broad range of disciplines and perspectives including religious studies, anthropology, literature, art history, kinesiology, classical studies, history, sociology, theater and dance. Faculty who design curricula to channel a pilgrimage trip into a fully mentored academic experience are especially welcome, including their student participants. Individual presentations will last no more than 20 minutes, with time for discussion between papers.

Contributors who assemble three-to-four participants as an integrated session will receive com­ple­ment­ary registration for the Symposium if they attend as presider of that session.
Abstracts of 500 words from faculty, independent researchers, graduate and undergraduate students may be submitted on our website (http://www.wm.edu/sites/pilgrimage/annualsymposium/abstractsubmissionform2015/index.php) until May 1st, 2015. Faculty and independent researchers should submit a short CV with their abstract; students should provide a recommendation from a faculty mentor. Students may propose to either present papers or participate in a poster session. Notification of acceptance will be sent by May 15th, 2015. Please check the website or contact Prof. Brennan Harris (mbharr@wm.edu) for further information.

Art, Anatomy, and Medicine since 1700
Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina
31 March — 1 April, 2016

The symposium organizer seeks proposals for papers that address visual, theoretical, cultural, historical and/or contemporary connections, relationships, conflicts and/or collaborations among the visual arts, anatomy/dissection, and medicine from the eighteenth century to the present. Participants may be historians of art, medicine, science or technology, art educators, medical professionals, artists (who may propose to contextualize their own work), etc. Successful papers may also be invited for publication in an edited volume of the same theme.

Broad topics may include (but are certainly not limited to):

• The role of anatomy in artists’ training (past, present and/or future)
• Artists’ roles in the creation/dissemination of anatomical knowledge
• Artistic representation of anatomical and medical professionals
• Anatomical and medical models: from écorché figures to nano-imagery
• Anatomy as art, art as anatomy
• Anatomical displays, exhibitions (e.g. Body Worlds), and collections: from curious to educational to controversial
• Corpses, dissection and grave-robbing in art, literature and medical history
• Imaging bodily surface and anatomical depth: from sculpture to M.R.I.s and beyond
• Beyond human, superhuman, inhuman(e)?: technological ‘improvements’, additions and extensions of human anatomy from prosthetics/implants to Google glasses
• Zombies and vampires, and the creative/fantastic defiance of or resistance to anatomical, medical and worldly reality
• The evolutionary human in art and science: looking backward and looking ahead
• Parts vs. whole: the functions of specificity and generality in aesthetics and visual medical information

Please send cover letter, abstract (no more than 3 pages, double-spaced typed), and CV to:

Dr. Andrew Graciano, Associate Professor of Art History and Associate Director
School of Visual Art & Design
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208

Or by email to: graciano@mailbox.sc.edu.

Proposals due by 1 July 2015.

Visual Print Culture in Europe, 1500–1850: Techniques, Genres, Imagery, and Markets
University of Warwick at Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Venice
5–6 December, 2015

Under Napoleon’s Empire we find London acting as a hub for printing caricatures of Napoleon in a range of languages, and with a number of distinctive styles. The print Die Universalmonarchie claims, for example, to have been published by Boydell & Co. in London in 1815, but the Boydells were based at Cheapside, not—as the print states—at Pall Mall (once the location of the late Josiah Boydell’s famous Shakespeare Gallery). The publication information would seem to be spurious, and the British Museum suggests that it was likely published in Paris. Is this print, then, German, French, or even possibly English? Who exactly is its market? How far is its imagery tailored to a particular ‘national’ audience and in what ways might it be distinctively comprehensible to such an audience? Besides London, what other European hubs were important, at what moments and why?

Visual Print Culture in Europe 1500–1850 aims to draw together scholars with a range of disciplinary skills to discuss the methods, representational forms, and distribution of and audience for visual print media in Europe between 1500 and 1850. Its seeks to de-nationalize the study of visual print culture, and to explore the extent to which interactions between engravers and printers, artists and consumers in Europe, and a range of common representational practices produced a genuinely European visual print culture—with local modulations, but nonetheless with a common core.

Papers can draw on a range of disciplinary backgrounds in exploring the exchange of techniques and processes, the analysis of imagery, and the identification of markets, and in analysing the conditions under which particular generic forms crossed or failed to cross national boundaries. Although the emphasis is on European visual print culture, the impact of that culture on, and its interaction with, the wider world is also of interest. The conference language will be English. The conference may be able to provide some financial assistance to those whose home institutions are unable to support their attendance, especially postgraduate students.

The conference organisers—acting under the European History Research Centre—are Mark Philp (History, EHRC Director, Warwick mark.philp@warwick.ac.uk), Kate Astbury (French Studies, Warwick), Mark Knights (History, Warwick), and David Taylor (English, Warwick). Proposals for papers should be submitted to t.smith.2@warwick.ac.uk by June 1, 2015, but please feel free to contact Mark Philp in advance with any queries.

The Magna Carta After 800 Years
Sydney, Australia
28–29 November, 2015

Keynote Speakers: Mr. Julian Burnside QC & Dr. Augusto Zimmermann

The issue of the Great Charter of the Liberties of England (more commonly known as the Magna Carta) by King John in 1215 marked a legal and political watershed. It sought to bring a political settlement to a civil war between Crown, Church and lords, and eventually laid the foundations for lawmaking in England, the Commonwealth and the Americas. Through the centuries since, and despite many modifications, the Magna Carta has been invoked by many as a check on power, a symbol of order, and a sign of freedom.

The Centre for the Study of Western Tradition at Campion College is organising a conference to mark the 800th anniversary of the first Magna Carta. It will explore if and how, 800 years after its initial declaration, the Magna Carta can still be of relevance and provide guidance to socio-political life. Such questions have become particularly acute in light of intensifying globalisation, legal plurality, indications of increasing executive powers, the growing pressures on the modern separation of church and state, economic and financial cajoling of legal and political institutions and so on. Do these and other developments render the Magna Carta a mere artefact of its time, or are there universal principles embodied in the Charter that can be drawn out and made applicable for 21st century socioeconomic conditions?

We welcome abstracts for this conference on the following (other topic areas are also welcome):

• New historical research pertaining to the Magna Carta
• Adaptations to the Magna Carta in historical and for contemporary contexts
• Global political developments and principles of the Magna Carta
• The Magna Carta and Legal Principles in the 21st Century
• Church, State and the Magna Carta then and now
• Interpreting the Magna Carta
• Economic Aspects of the Magna Carta
• Philosophical Aspects of the Magna Carta

Please send your proposal via email with a 250 word abstract, your name, institutional affiliation and contact details to the director, Dr. Matthew Tan (m.tan@campion.edu.au), by 1 June, 2015. Please also direct all enquiries to this address.