Feast or Famine? What Presence did the Bible Really Have in Medieval Spiritual Writings?
The Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages Session
International Medieval Congress 2016
Leeds, UK
4-7 July, 2016

I am an independent scholar with a doctorate from Cardiff University. I have been asked to put together a session for The Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages for IMC Leeds 2016 (4-7 July). The Leeds theme next year is: Food, Feast and Famine. The SSBMA session will look at how the Bible is used – or not – in medieval works with the title: Feast or Famine? What presence did the Bible really have in medieval spiritual writings?

Obviously Langland uses the Bible prolifically but other spiritual writers regularly include the Bible either with explicit quotation or – frequently – through implicit references which they anticipate that their audience will identify. Conversely, Chaucer employs the Bible prodigiously but is currently considered by some to be a secular poet. Bible usage by medieval writers regularly goes unrecognised yet these biblical sources are vitally important for any interpretation of medieval works. However, if Bible use is a ‘feast’, did medieval writers have greater knowledge of Latin than is currently surmised? What does Bible use tell modern scholars about medieval literacy and education? Are there other significant implications arising from this apparently profuse Bible use? I am looking for papers that seek to identify and analyse exactly how great a presence – or absence – the Bible has in medieval spiritual works.

Although the session submission deadline is 30 September, I would need to receive any abstracts (100 words for a 20-minute paper at Leeds) by 21 August at the latest because, if I do not accept the proposal, it would give people time to submit for the General Sessions deadline at Leeds (31 August). I also need a moderator. Please reply to gail.blick@btinternet.com.

Shakespearean Transformations: Death, Life, and Afterlives
7th Biennial British Shakespeare Association Conference
University of Hull
8-11 September, 2016

Conference Website

Keynote speakers:

• Susan Bassnett (University of Warwick)
• Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex)
• Michael Neill (University of Auckland)
• Claudia Olk (Free University of Berlin)
• Barrie Rutter (Northern Broadsides)
• Tiffany Stern (University of Oxford)
• Richard Wilson (Kingston University)

‘Remember me!’ commands the ghost of Hamlet’s father at a moment in English history when the very purpose of remembrance of the dead was being transformed. How does the past haunt the present in Shakespeare? What do Shakespeare’s works reveal about the processes of mourning and remembrance? Shakespeare breathed new life into ‘old tales’: how do his acts of literary resuscitation transform the material he revived and what it signifies? This major international conference will investigate the ways in which Shakespeare remembered the past and we remember Shakespeare.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death offers us a timely opportunity to reflect upon the continuation of his life and art diachronically, spatially from the Globe across the globe, and materially on stage, page, canvas, music score, and screen. How does Shakespeare continue to haunt us? The second strand of the conference focuses on Shakespeare’s literary, dramatic, and transcultural afterlives. The conference thus also seeks to explore the various ways in which Shakespeare’s ghost has been invoked, summoned up, or warded off over the past four centuries.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Shakespearean transformations: borrowing/adaptation/appropriation/intertextuality
• Shakespeare and death
• Speaking to/of and impersonating the dead in Shakespeare
• Shakespeare, religion, and reformations of ritual
• Shakespeare and memory/remembrance
• Shakespeare and time: temporality/anachronism/archaism
• Shakespeare and early modern conceptions of ‘life’
• Emotion and embodiment in Shakespeare
• Performing Shakespeare: now and then
• Transcultural Shakespeare
• Critical and theoretical conceptions of/engagements through Shakespeare
• Textual resurrections: editing Shakespeare
• Rethinking Shakespearean biography
• Enlivening Shakespeare teaching
• Shakespeare in a digital age

The conference will be held in the official run-up to Hull’s year as the UK’s City of Culture in 2017. The programme will include plenary lectures, papers, seminars, workshops, and performances at Hull Truck and the Gulbenkian Centre. There will also be special workshops and sessions directed towards pedagogy.

We welcome proposals for papers (20 minutes), panels (90 minutes), or seminars/workshops (90 minutes) on any aspect of the conference theme, broadly interpreted. Abstracts (no more than 200 words) should be sent to bsa2016@hull.ac.uk by 15 December 2015.

Participants must be members of the British Shakespeare Association at the time of the conference. Details of how to join can be found here: www.britishshakespeare.ws