Daily Archives: 30 October 2015

Medieval Academy Travel Grants – Call For Applications

The Medieval Academy provides a limited number of travel grants to help Academy members who hold doctorates but are not in full-time faculty positions, or are adjuncts without access to institutional funding, attend conferences to present their work.

Awards to support travel in North America are $500; for overseas travel the awards are $750.

APPLICATION DEADLINES

(1) 1 May for meetings to be held between 1 September and 15 February.

(2) 1 November for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August.

Although time constraints may require an initial application before a paper has been accepted, travel grants will not normally be awarded without evidence that the paper actually will be given (such as a photocopy of the relevant part of the program).

Major national and international meetings will be given priority. Grants will be limited to one per applicant in a three-year period. Applicants must hold the Ph.D. degree and must be current members of the Medieval Academy.

For more information, please visit: https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Travel_Grants.

Professor Charles Zika, Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Melbourne Node) Free Public Lecture

“The Kerry Stokes Schembart Book: Festivity, Fashion and Family in the Late Medieval Nuremberg Carnival”, Professor Charles Zika (ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, The School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at The University of Melbourne)

Date: Tuesday, 10 November
Time: 6:15pm
Venue: Theatre A, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne
More info: http://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/5416-the-kerry-stokes-schembart-book-festivity-fashion-and-family-in

Schembart was the name given to the carnival parade held in the city of Nuremberg on the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the church season of Lent. In the late middle ages Nuremberg was a wealthy economic and cultural centre in the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire, and its carnival was one of the most extravagant. It is also the best known, because of the Schembart books created by its leading families between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

This lecture will focus on the richly illustrated Schembart book in the Kerry Stokes collection, with reference to some of the other eighty manuscripts that survive. These record the sixty-five carnival parades held between 1449 and 1539, the year when they were permanently banned. They depict the different costumes of the so-called Runners who danced their way through the city, the floats that were pulled to the town square and ritually destroyed, and other pranksters and revelers dressed in exotic costumes. These manuscripts testify to the central role of carnival in the city’s festive life, the use of fashion and display in supporting the status of its leading families, and their emotional investment in ensuring that memories of carnival survived.

Charles Zika is Professorial Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, and Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.