Daily Archives: 27 April 2016

Dealing With The Dead: Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe – Call For Papers

Dealing With The Dead: Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Call for abstracts for chapters to be included in an upcoming volume on Death in Medieval and Early Modern art, history, and culture. Special focus on Continental European literature, social and political history, art history, archaeology, and paleography. At this time we are not soliciting papers on England.

For people of all classes in medieval and early modern Europe death was a constant, visible presence. It was part of everyday life and there were reminders everywhere of its inevitability: injury and accidents, illness and disease, public executions, and the tragedies of death in childbirth and infant mortality. Yet, the acknowledgement of the fact of death, despite its undeniable reality, did not necessarily amount to an acceptance of its finality. Whether they were commoners, clergy, aristocrats, or kings, the dead continued to function literally as integrated members of their communities long after they lay in their graves.

From stories of revenants bringing pleas from Purgatory to the living, to the practical uses of the charnel house; from the remains of the executed on public display, to the proclamation of an aristocratic dynasty’s authority over the living via its dead, we are looking for papers that discuss how communities dealt with their dead as continual, albeit non-living members. We are interested in interdisciplinary studies that illustrate unexpected situations and under-researched persons, periods, and events in art, literature, archaeology, and history. We are also interested in papers that argue against stereotypical or outdated presumptions about the relationships between the premodern dead and their fellow community members above ground. How do 21st century scholars deal with the medieval and early modern dead?

Interested authors who will be at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo are welcome to meet with the volume editor and discuss their ideas for a chapter. (See email contact below.)

Papers are open to any discipline of the humanities and also to the disciplines of paleography and archaeology. Please send abstracts of 300 words by May 16, 2016 to Thea Tomaini, University of Southern California, at tmtomaini@gmail.com. Note: deadline for submission of completed chapters (before revision) is September 1, 2016.

Early Modern Women Writers – Call For Papers

Early Modern Women Writers
at the Othello’s Island Conference
CVAR, Nicosia, Cyprus
5 to 9 April, 2017

Full details please visit www.tiny.cc/emww

Early Modern Women Writers is a semi-autonomous conference strand within the annual interdisciplinary conference on medieval, renaissance and early modern studies, held annually since 2013, in Cyprus, called Othello’s Island.

As a whole, Othello’s Island attracts over 100 delegates, whose topics include archaeology, art history, history, and literary studies, to name but a few, with a significant section covering early modern women writers, such as Mary Wroth, Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish.

Our aim with the distinct strand is to consider women writers from this period as individual writers in their own right, in relation to wider society and culture at the time, and in terms of their contemporary and posthumous reputations.

Reference to Cyprus or the Mediterranean region is not obligatory in delegates’ papers, but it is notable that many women writers from this period do make mention of Cyprus and its environs. Consequently, this aspect of their work is frequently a topic of debate.

The Early Modern Women Writers’ strand is fully intergrated into the full Othello’s Island conference, and delegates can mix-and-match attendance at the Early Modern Women Writers strand with other talks at the conference. Those taking part are also welcome to join in with the social events for the wider conference, including group meals and trips to some stunning medieval and renaissance sites.

However, the strand is intended to act as a distinct annual focus for the study of early modern women writers, and we try to ensure at least one full day of talks and discussions on this specific topic (depending on the number of papers received each year).

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR 2017

If you are interested in giving a talk at the conference on the Early Modern Women Writers Strand please submit a proposal for a paper as early as possible. Standard papers are 20 minutes long, followed by 5 or 10 minutes for questions.

The overall theme of the Othello’s Island conference is mediaeval and renaissance art, literature, social and cultural history, but the Early Modern Women Writers Strand has a specific focus on women writers between, approximately, the years 1550 and 1700. There is flexibility in this, but if your paper does not fit in this area you should submit it instead to the main Othello’s Island conference.

Many women writers from this period, including for example Mary Wroth, cite Cyprus in their works, but it is not a requirement that this is the case, of that Cyprus is discussed even if your writer(s) do mention it.

Proposals for papers should comprise a cover sheet showing:

  1. Your title (eg. Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof. etc.) and full name
  2. Your institutional affiliation (if any)
  3. Your postal address, e’mail address and telephone number
  4. The title of your proposed paper

With this you should send a proposal/abstract for your paper of no more than 300 words and a copy of your CV/resume to: mparaskos@mac.com with the subject line OTHELLO WOMEN WRITERS 2017.

All papers must be delivered in English. Attendance of speakers is mandatory. We do not allow Skype or proxy presentations.

The deadline for submissions of proposals is 1 January, 2017. Early submission is strongly advised. We aim to have a decision on the acceptance of papers within four weeks of submission.

If you have any questions please contact Professor James Fitzmaurice at j.fitzmaurice@sheffield.ac.uk