Monthly Archives: September 2016

Old Norse and Emotions Study Day @ University of Sydney

Old Norse and Emotions Study Day

Date: 27 October 2016
Venue: Roger’s Reading Room, John Woolley Building A20, Science Road, The University of Sydney
Workshop organiser and enquiries: Kimberley-Joy Knight (kimberley.knight@sydney.edu.au)
Registration: The workshop is free of charge but attendees are kindly requested to register for the event for catering purposes. Kimberley-Joy Knight (kimberley.knight@sydney.edu.au)

The sources for Medieval Scandinavia have often been regarded as cold and unable to provide insights into the emotional lives of the people who lived during this time. As W. I Miller (1992) observed: “People’s initial impression of sagas is that the saga world is coldly unemotional – not only the sensibilities of characters in them, but the sensibilities of the narrative style as well.’ However, scholars including Miller and Bjørn Bandlien, Carolyne Larrington and Kirsten Wolf have demonstrated the important role that emotions play and that the sources for Medieval Scandinavia are not as emotionally barren as they might first appear.

The Old Norse and Emotions study day, to be held at the University of Sydney on 27th October, will explore how we can use sources from Medieval Scandinavia for the history of emotions. The workshop will explore questions such as:

  • How can we uncover the emotional lives of medieval Scandinavians?
  • What are the interpretative difficulties with the sources?
  • How do the conventions of the saga narrative filter depictions of emotional life?
  • How do we map the linguistic terrain of saga emotions?
  • Can archaeology shed light on medieval emotions?
  • How can we use runic inscriptions to inform our understanding of emotions?

The workshop will have three main strands each led by scholar connected to the Centre for the History of Emotions:

  1. Emotions in Old Norse Literature (Professor Carolyne Larrington, distinguished visiting fellow)
  2. Emotions in Old Norse Historical Sources (Dr Kimberley-Joy Knight, postdoctoral research fellow The University of Sydney CHE)
  3. Emotions in Scandinavian Material Culture (Dr Shane McLeod, CHE Associate Investigator and Honorary Staff Member at the University of Tasmania, and Dr Kimberley-Joy Knight, postdoctoral research fellow The University of Sydney CHE)

A short reading pack, which will form the basis of the discussion, will be sent out in advance of the workshop.

For more info about each speaker, please visit: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/old-norse-and-emotions-study-day

Newberry Fellowships 2017 – Call For Applications

The Newberry Library’s long-standing fellowship program was created to provide outstanding scholars with the time, space, and community required to pursue innovative and ground-breaking scholarship. In addition to our intriguing and often rare materials, we promise fellows access to a lively, interdisciplinary community of researchers; individual consultations with staff curators, reference librarians, and other scholars; and an array of both scholarly and public programs–all of which will contribute to your ability to advance scholarship in your field, develop new interpretations, and expand our understanding of the past in ways that can help us better understand the present.

We invite interested individuals who wish to utilize the Newberry’s collection to apply for our many fellowship opportunities:

  • Long-Term Fellowships are available for 4 to 12 months; applications must be submitted by 11:59 PM CST on November 15. These fellowships are generally available without regard to an applicant’s place of residence and are intended to support significant works of scholarship that draw on the strengths of the Newberry’s collection.
  • Short-Term Fellowships are available for 1 to 2 months; applications must be submitted by 11:59 PM CST on December 15. These fellowships are intended to assist researchers who need to examine specific items in the Newberry’s collection. These “travel-to-collection” grants are mainly restricted to individuals who live outside of the Chicago metropolitan area.

For full details and to apply, please visit: http://www.newberry.org/fellowships

Professor Constant Mews, New Norcia Institute for Benedictine Studies Annual Institute Lecture 2016

New Norcia Institute for Benedictine Studies Annual Institute Lecture 2016:

“Longing for Ecstasy: Monastic Theologies and their Influence”, Professor Constant Mews (Monash University)

Date: Saturday 1 October, 2016
Time: 10:00am-3:00pm
Venue: Institute for Benedictine Studies, New Norcia
Cost: $60 ($35 concession) Includes morning tea and lunch. You can now book and pay on-line at http://www.newnorcia.wa.edu.au/products; or contact either Carmel Posa sgs (carmel.posa@newnorcia.wa.edu.au, phone: 08 9654 8371) or Jill O’Brien sgs (jill.obrien@newnorcia.wa.edu.au, phone: 08 9654 8371).

Professor Mews will consider the way monastic writing in the twelfth-century drew attention to the Song of Songs in a personal way. To under-stand and appreciate what these monastic writers had to say, we need to take seriously how much they valued what the Song had to say about long-ing for the experience of ecstasy.

Constant Mews is Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at the School of Historical Studies, Monash University, Melbourne. Professor Mews has published widely on intellectual and religious history within the twelfth century, with particular reference to Abelard and Heloise, and to Hildegard of Bingen.

New Book Series: Ludic Cultures, 1100–1700 – Call For Proposals

General Editors: Bret Rothstein (Chair), Indiana University; Alessandro Arcangeli, University of Verona; and Christina Normore, Northwestern University.

Ludic Cultures treats medieval and early modern play in all its innumerable eccentricities, from toys and games to dramatic performances, courtly intrigues, and the like. Inspired by the broad definition first advanced by Johan Huizinga, but mindful of the constraints later proposed by Roger Caillois and Bernard Suits, this series publishes monographs and essay collections that address play as a complex phenomenon governed by a distinctly lusory attitude, but potentially expressing in virtually any facet of life. In this respect, the series promotes the documentation of cultural practices that have thus far eluded traditional disciplinary models. Our goal is to make visible modes of thought and action that until recently seemed impossible to trace, while contributing to a growing interest in playfulness both past and present.

For questions or to submit a proposal, please contact the Acquisitions Editor, Erika Gaffney (Erika.Gaffney@arc-humanities.org). Links to series information can be found at: www.mip-archumanitiespress.org/series/mip/ludic-cultures or http://gameculturessociety.org/new-book-series-ludic-cultures-1100-1700.

Dr Stephanie Tarbin, Institute of Advanced Studies @ UWA Free Public Lecture

“Histories of gender, families and children: what do we still want to know?”, Dr Stephanie Tarbin (School of Humanities and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence of the History of Emotions, UWA)

Date: 11 October, 2016
Time: 6:00pm-7:00pm
Venue: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia
RSVP: This is a free events, but RSVPs are requested: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/tarbin

The lives of medieval people are far in the past and were often unrecorded. Nonetheless, in recent decades, gender and social historians have made enormous contributions to our understanding of the quotidian experiences and mentalities of the children, women and men of the pre-modern period. Reading conventional sources ‘against the grain’ has enabled feminist scholars to explore women’s agency and self-perception, while combining legal records with personal accounts allows us to better understand how children acted in and viewed their social worlds. The recent ‘emotional turn’ in history has re-posed long debated questions about affective relations within families and households, offering fresh frameworks for assessing the emotional lives of ordinary people.

Stephanie Tarbin has research interests in the gender and social history of late-medieval and early modern England. She has published essays on moral regulation, masculinity, women’s friendships and children’s experiences, which is the focus of her most recent research. With Susan Broomhall, she is co-editor of Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2008).

Creative Devices for Asking Good Questions of Humans, Animals and Things – Workshop @ Curtin University (WA)

Creative devices for asking good questions of humans, animals and things: A CCAT Postgraduate Workshop with Vinciane Despret (Université de Liège, Belgium)

Date: Friday 25 November, 2016
Time: 10:00am
Venue: Curtin University

This workshop will focus on the task of devising good research questions. It will be particularly suited to postgraduate students working in animal studies, philosophy of science, cultural theory, art practice, or the history of emotions. Space is limited to 10 participants. If you are interested please send a maximum 1 page research proposal (suitable for discussion among the group) by Friday 30 September, 2016 to Matthew.Chrulew@curtin.edu.au.

Vinciane Despret is Associate Professor in the philosophy department of the University of Liège. Her work is in the history and philosophy of human psychology and animal ethology. Her books translated into English are: Our Emotional Makeup: Ethnopsychology and Selfhood (2004), Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf (with Isabelle Stengers, 2014), and What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (2016). Her titles in French include Naissance d’une théorie éthologique (1996), Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau (2002), Hans, le cheval qui savait compter (2004), Être bête (2007), Bêtes et Hommes (2007), Penser comme un rat (2009), and most recently, Au bonheur des morts: Récits de ceux qui restent (2015). A recent issue of Angelaki was devoted to her work.

Professor Carolyne Larrington, Public Lecture @ The University of Sydney

“Game of Thrones! History, Medievalism and How It Might End”, Professor Carolyne Larrington (University of Oxford)

Date: Wednesday 26 October, 2016
Time: 5:30pm–6:30pm
Venue: Woolley Common Room (First Floor, John Woolley Building A20), The University of Sydney
Enquiries: Craig Lyons (craig.lyons@sydney.edu.au)

In this lecture I’ll talk about watching and writing about HBO’s Game of Thrones as a medieval scholar. I’ll also explain some of the medieval history and literature from which George R. R. Martin chiselled the building blocks for the construction of his imaginary world. Game of Thrones has now become the most frequently streamed or downloaded show in TV history. I’ll suggest some reasons for its enormous international success as the medieval fantasy epic for the twenty-first century, and will undertake a little speculation on how the show might end.

Carolyne Larrington is Professor of Medieval European Literature at the University of Oxford, and teaches medieval English literature as a Fellow of St John’s College. She has published widely on Old Icelandic literature, including the leading translation into English of the Old Norse Poetic Edda (2nd edn, Oxford World’s Classics, 2014). She also researches medieval European literature: two recent publications are Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (York Medieval Press, 2015) and an edited collection of essays (with Frank Brandsma and Corinne Saunders), Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature (D. S. Brewer, 2015). She also writes on the medieval in the modern world: two recent books are The Land of the Green Man (2015) on folklore and landscape in Great Britain, and Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (2015), both published by I. B. Tauris. She is currently researching emotion in secular medieval European literatures, and planning a second book about Game of Thrones.

Book and Place: University of Otago, Center for the Book Annual Research Symposium (2016) – Registration Now Open

Book and Place
2016 Centre for the Book Annual Research Symposium
Centre for the Book, University of Otago, Dunedin
27-28 October, 2016

This year’s event will open with a public lecture on Thursday night (27 October, 2016), followed by a day of stimulating papers (Friday 28 October 2016). Thursday night’s lecture at the Dunedin Public Library will be given by Neville Peat, author of numerous books about Southern New Zealand (http://www.nevillepeatsnewzealand.com). Come listen to this well-known author reflect on his sense of book and place as he describes, in words and pictures, some of New Zealand’s most remote and precious areas and landmarks, and his ideas for an autobiography that explores an array of New Zealand islands spanning 8,500 kms of latitude, from the tropical to the frozen.

Friday will consist of panels of 20-min papers, with a plenary lecture by Dr. Ingrid Horrocks of Massey University after morning tea. Ingrid is one of the editors of the forthcoming Victoria University Press title, Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as an online anthology about a particular place, Pukeahu (http://pukeahuanthology.org). The day will open with reflections by Professor Tony Ballantyne. The full program is available to download here: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/cfb/2016/09/08/2016-symposium-book-and-place-program-and-registration-info/2016-symposium-program/

We are also delighted that Nicky Page will be joining us. As Director to Dunedin’s City of Literature program, Nicky will have lots of thoughts about our topic and will also look forward to hearing the insights of others.

Thanks to support from the Department of English and Linguistics, the Division of the Humanities, and the Centre for Research on Colonial Cultures, we are delighted that there will be no charge for the symposium, though participants will need to bring or buy their own lunch. We will provide a reception following the evening lecture, and morning and afternoon tea.

We look forward to seeing you. We can accommodate 70 people in the Marjorie Barclay Theatre of the Otago Museum, so please ensure you register early to secure a place. To register, please send an email providing your name as you wish it to appear on your name tag and your email address to books@otago.ac.nz. You will also need to notify the Public Library that you wish to attend the Thursday evening lecture by going to the Library’s event site to let them know you are coming: http://www.dunedinlibraries.govt.nz/events/literary/adults/centre-for-the-book-stories-in-the-landscape-a-40-year-odyssey.

Petition – Save Humanities at the University of Otago

Spread the word and help save Humanities at the University of Otago:

“Some of you may have heard about the restructure of Humanities at the University of Otago. Owing to a decline in student numbers, the University is claiming the Division of Humanities has a budget shortage that must be balanced by cutting staff. A number of Departments within the Division are being targeted for staff redundancies by the end of the year. See here: https://www.odt.co.nz/…/humanities-division-cuts-focus-reve…

The Tertiary Education Union is running a Heart Humanities campaign to support affected staff and to challenge the time frame and scope of the cuts. Some context to this situation is the National Government’s funding of Maths and Science students at a higher rate than Humanities enrolments and the University’s budget priorities, which include spending millions on campus beautification projects and sponsoring rugby teams!

While we have strong support from within the University from staff and students, we also need public support, and in particular, support from external Universities and scholars. We have set up a petition to collate external support. Please sign & share: http://teu.ac.nz/2016/08/humanities-petition.”

Experimental Histories: Conference and Postgraduate Workshop

Experimental Histories: Performance, Colonialism and Affect
University of Tasmania
3-4 October, 2016

RSVP is ESSENTIAL due to limited places

Convenors: A/Prof Penny Edmonds (UTAS) and A/Prof Katrina Schlunke (USYD) (penny.edmonds@utas.edu.au and katrina.schlunke@sydney.edu.au)

In her perceptive examination of the encounter between history, performance and colonialism, American theorist Diana Taylor argues that performance transmits memories, makes political claims, and manifests a group’s sense of identity? Crucially, Taylor reminds us of the critical political and interventionist work of performance, especially those of Indigenous peoples, and associated artefacts and creative expressions which challenge us to look beyond traditional text-based sources, to ask: If we were to reorient the ways social memory and cultural identity?have traditionally been studied what would we know that we do not know now? Whose stories, memories, and struggles might become visible? (Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Duke U.P., 2003).

This two day symposium is concerned with looking again at how we have come to know the colonial past. To attempt to know the past ‘experimentally’ is to make way for the emerging archive of previously overlooked embodied and affective actions, objects, everyday experiences and performative challenges to the colonial that were ignored or already accounted for. This means making a space for the stories of the bodies, objects, animals, constructed heritage sites and environments that became entangled within colonialism. Such an approach requires a reconsideration of the ways in which the past is presented. This symposium will critically interrogate the ways that the past is re-imagined, interpreted, commemorated and/or subverted through affective performances of heritage and history. We seek to explore new forms of creative expression and writing that are reflective of the affective force of the emotional past, as well as new ways of performing and ‘playing’ the past that produce different pedagogical effects.

Experimental Histories: Postgraduate Workshop

Date: 5 October, 2016
Time: 1:30-4:30pm
Venue: Sandy Bay Campus, University of Tasmania
RSVP: Essential as places are limited. HDR Students only please.
Cost: Free
Convenors: A/Prof Penny Edmonds (UTAS) and A/Prof Katrina Schlunke (USYD) (penny.edmonds@utas.edu.au and katrina.schlunke@sydney.edu.au)

In this workshop we will explore what is meant by an experimental history and how the concept and surrounding ideas might be useful in the organisation of your thesis projects at both a conceptual and writerly level. HDR students will be asked to consider the ways in which a range of diverse approaches to the past including histories of the present, genealogies, new historicism, history from below, popular and public histories, new museology, new materialism, re-enactment, artful histories, fictocriticism, and memory work have thrown up challenges to how we do research but have also provided an exciting new set of research tools. We will consider the particularities of the Australian context and offer a set of discussion points and writing exercises to explore this fascinating terrain.