Monthly Archives: September 2016

Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies: 10 Fellowships for Experienced Researchers – Call For Applications

The Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt (Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt) is a highly ranked international research centre. It is unique in its organizational structure by combining the functions of an institute for advanced study and a graduate school. Its ‘Weberian’ research programme combines historical, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives with an interest in normative issues in the social sciences. It has a focus on contemporary social challenges, especially those arising in connection with (religious) plurality, cultural diversity and social processes of acceleration and growth. The core disciplines at the Max Weber Kolleg are sociology, economics, religious studies, law, philosophy, history and theology.

Within its fellowship programme “MWK-FELLOWS” the Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt offers (up to) 10 Fellowships for Experienced Researchers

The fellowships will be awarded to experienced researchers who are conducting advanced interdisciplinary research in cultural and social studies. The current call invites applications for fellowships for the academic year 2017/18. The fellowships will be awarded for 12 months (01 September 2017 – 31 August 2018) with the possibility of extension for another year. All experienced researchers regardless of seniority are invited to apply. This call is also open for researchers who are currently working outside academia but are interested in re-entering an academic environment of work.

For full information and to apply, please visit: http://www.hsozkult.de/grant/id/stipendien-13615

Deadline for applications: 1 October, 2016.

Borders and Margins: Forty-Third Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium – Call For Papers

The Forty-Third Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
Theme: Borders and Margins
The University of the South, Sewanee, TN
March 10-11, 2017
Conference Website

  • Brinley Rhys Memorial Lecture: Elaine Treharne, Stanford University
  • Edward King Plenary Lecture: Marina Rustow, Princeton University
  • ‌School of Theology Lecture: Marilyn McCord Adams, Rutgers University‌

Call for Papers (due October 14, 2016):

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium invites papers engaging with the space of the margin and the border in all aspects of medieval cultures. This includes the form and arrangement of manuscripts, the framing of visual art, the production of textiles and other materials, the contestation of political boundaries, non-normative sexualities and genders, demarcation of religious identity, conceptions of race, differences of species, frontiers of exploration and travel, and peripheral social groups, and other ways of conceptualizing our theme. Papers should be twenty minutes in length, and commentary is traditionally provided for each paper presented. We invite papers from all disciplines, and encourage contributions from medievalists working on any geographic area. Participants in the Colloquium are limited to holders of a Ph.D. and those currently in a Ph.D. program.

Scholars are welcome to submit to a specific panel or to the general call (applications to panels which are not accepted by the panel’s organizers will be returned to the general call pool). Panel sub-themes can be found here: http://medievalcolloquium.sewanee.edu/#subthemes; click on titles to see the detailed call for papers. Please submit an abstract (approx. 250 words) and brief c.v., via our website, no later than 14 October, 2016. If you wish to propose a session, please submit abstracts and vitae for all participants in the session. Completed papers, including notes, will be due no later than 10 February, 2017.

Call for Complete Panels (due October 14, 2016):

You may also propose a complete panel of either two or three papers; please submit all abstracts together, and attach all relevant CVs. Complete panel proposals will be due at the same time as our general call, October 14, 2016.

Call for Seminar Participants (due October 14, 2016):

The CFP for our seminar, “The Borders and Margins of the Encyclopedia” directed by Emily Steiner (University of Pennsylvania), can be found here.

Tara Auty, PMRG/CMEMS Free Lunchtime Lecture @ UWA

“Medea’s Pathological Passions: Seneca’s Dramatic Inversion of Stoicism”, Tara Auty (UWA)

Date: 20 September, 2016
Time: 1:00pm
Venue: Arts Lecture Room 6 (G.62, ground floor, Arts Building), University of Western Australia

This is a free event. You don’t need to RSVP – just come along.

Traditionally, Seneca’s Medea has been problematised when considered against his prose works. However, recent scholarship has shown that, far from showcasing the failure of Stoicism, Medea inverts the ideals advanced in Seneca’s prose works in order to prove the effectiveness of Stoic philosophy by that very inversion. This paper will demonstrate that Medea is not a character whose reason succumbs to her passions, but rather, that her passions in fact arise from a from a system of reasoning that is internally coherent. The development and sustenance of her passions from and through her reason can thus be read as evidence of one of the most basic tenets of Stoicism, that emotions are based on value judgements. Her practise of constancy – advocated by Seneca to foster consistent character – consolidates her motives and solidifies her drive, so that she develops from being a character temporarily experiencing certain emotions to a character defined by the permanency of those emotions.

Tara Auty is a PhD candidate in Classics and Ancient History at The University of Western Australia (UWA), working under the umbrella of the Languages and Emotion research cluster, contributing to both the Meanings and Change programs of ARC CHE. Her current research project for her PhD, due in 2018, is a study of the effect of community emotions in response to the Fall of Constantinople on the production of neo-Latin epic in the Quattrocento. This project benefits from, and contributes to, fields as varied as scholarship on Latin Humanism, the study of Classical Latin epic, early Modern Italian history, and the cultural history of the emotions.

Cultures of Performance: Medieval English Theatre Society Annual Meeting 2017 – Call For Papers

Cultures of Performance: a Celebration of the Work of Philip Butterworth
Medieval English Theatre Society Annual Meeting
University of Glasgow
25 March, 2017

Conference Website

The 2017 meeting honours Philip Butterworth, recently retired from Leeds University, and formerly of Bretton Hall College. Philip has been a loyal contributor to Medieval English Theatre, and was one of those present at the first meeting in Lancaster in 1978. His numerous influential publications on the performance of early drama, as well as his many productions, suggest that the time is right to celebrate that contribution.

The topic for the meeting is Cultures of Performance and we invite proposals for 20 minute papers on topics including (but not limited to):

  • Changing conceptions of dramatic genre
  • Para-theatrical traditions
  • Performance and performers – acting and actors
  • Staging and stage spaces
  • Spectacle and stage-effects
  • Voice and speech
  • Modern performance of early dramatic texts and shows
  • Preparation and rehearsal

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to Pamela King (Pamela.King@glasgow.ac.uk) by Wednesday 14 December. 2016.

Postdoctoral Editorial Fellow at Speculum – Call For Applications

Applications are now being accepted for a two-year Postdoctoral Editorial Fellowship at Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America.

The Speculum fellowship represents a significant fulfillment of one aspect of the Medieval Academy’s continuing efforts to recognize and support extraordinary medievalists in the early stages of their careers. We believe that after the fellowship tenure, the Speculum fellow will be a more experienced scholar and editor and will be an exceptionally attractive candidate for academic positions, as well as for significant publishing and editorial opportunities.

This two-year full-time post at Speculum offers qualified individuals the opportunity to develop as scholars and editors. The term of the award is subject to the Fellow’s acceptable performance of the duties required, as determined by the Editor of Speculum. Fellows will receive:

  • $43,000 annual stipend
  • Health benefits
  • Special Borrower’s privileges at Widener Library, Harvard University
  • Limited travel funds

Fellows are expected to:

  • Continue to develop research program 1 day/ week.
  • Assume responsibilities for a particular set of editorial tasks at Speculum. These tasks will include, but are not limited to: liaising with book review editors; contacting reviewers; checking citations for accepted articles; proofreading reviews, Brief Notices, Books Received, and Tables of Contents, and entering corrections; proofing full issues of Speculum
  • Participate in the cultural life of medieval studies in the Boston area.
  • Reside in the Boston area during the fellowship period.

Eligible candidates must meet the following requirements and demonstrate the following qualifications:

  • PhD in some field of medieval studies completed before the end of spring term, 2017, but no earlier than January 1, 2011
  • Attention to detail and evidence of a high level of scholarly precision, particularly with regards to bibliographic detail
  • Strong work ethic
  • Facility with languages
  • Demonstrated ability to manage large amounts of digital information

The deadline for applications is 15 October, 2016. Click here for more information and to apply.

Religious Orders and British and Irish Catholicism – Call For Papers

Religious Orders and British and Irish Catholicism
University of Notre Dame’s London Gateway, London, UK
28–30 June, 2017

Speakers include:

  • Caroline Bowden (QMUL)
  • John McCafferty (UCD)
  • Thomas McCoog (Fordham)
  • Susannah Monta (Notre Dame)
  • Thomas O’Connor (Maynooth)
  • Michael Questier (QMUL)
  • Alison Shell (UCL)

The third biannual Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism conference, jointly hosted by Durham University and the University of Notre Dame, will concentrate on the relationship between religious orders and British and Irish Catholicism. A wealth of recent scholarship has focussed on the activities of both male and female religious following the upheavals of the sixteenth century. This conference will consider the relationship between religious orders and those on the western peripheries of Catholic Europe. These relationships are to be explored in the widest possible framework, including through the religious orders as links between English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Catholics, and the global Church; British and Irish religious in exile; the presence of members of religious orders in Britain and Ireland; memories of pre-Reformation religious orders such as in the landscape; religious orders in the non-Catholic imagination; the views of Britain and Ireland held by religious orders and their international membership. The time frame being considered is broad, from c.1530 to 1800.

The conference is interdisciplinary and welcomes papers from researchers in fields including History, Literary Studies, Theology, Philosophy, Musicology and Art History.

We invite proposals for 20 minute communications on any related theme from any field. Panel proposals consisting of three speakers are also encouraged.

Please send proposals (c. 200 words) by email to Cormac Begadon (cormac.begadon@durham.ac.uk) by 27 January, 2017 at the latest.

For questions relating to booking and travel, please contact Hannah Thomas (hannah.thomas2@durham.ac.uk).

For general queries relating to the conference, please contact James Kelly (james.kelly3@durham.ac.uk).

Christopher Dawson Centre Annual Summer School in Latin: Late Medieval, Renaissance and Neo-Latin

Christopher Dawson Centre
Annual Summer School in Latin: Late Medieval, Renaissance and Neo-Latin
Jane Franklin Hall, 4 Elboden St, South Hobart
23-27 January, 2017

Latin is arguably the mother tongue of Europe. Its literature is immensely rich. In a sense it never died; original work continued to be written in Latin up to modern times. This course will offer a general introduction to literary and technical Latin written from the Late Medieval and Renaissance periods to the present day. We shall also look at passages of older material that remained highly influential in the later period (e.g. Scripture, Vitruvius, Pliny the Elder). There will be a strong emphasis on reading inscriptions and on palaeography, including an opportunity to handle original manuscripts.

Some prior knowledge of Latin is desirable, but beginners with experience of learning a foreign language might consider purchasing a self-instruction primer and working on the basics between now and the start of the course. Participants will never be embarrassed if their Latin is imperfect: the teaching method leaves the entire task of translation and exposition to the Lecturer. This approach has been useful to relative beginners as well as those who are more experienced.

Any Latin Primer designed for self-instruction can be used, but F. Kinchin Smith’s Teach Yourself Latin (out of print, but cheap copies are easily available from internet sites such as www.abebooks.com) is particularly good.

The Lecturer is Dr David Daintree who founded the Annual Latin Summer School in 1993.

The Programme

There will be four lectures a day on each of the five days, from Monday 23 to Friday 27, starting at 9.00 am. There will be only one lecture after lunch each day, to free up the afternoons for private study.

At this stage a daily programme has not been finalized. Dr Daintree would be happy to include material by request from participants.

The cost of the course is $350. Meals and accommodation are not included. Jane Franklin Hall may be able to offer inexpensive self-catering accommodation on site, but participants would need to arrange that directly with the college at office@jane.edu.au. Proceeds from this course go to the Christopher Dawson Centre (http://www.dawsoncentre.org).

To enrol and for further information contact dccdain@gmail.com.

Professor Annalise Acorn, University of Sydney Free Public Lecture

“Punishment as Help and Blaming Emotions,” Professor Annalise Acorn (Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, Canada)

Date: 26 September, 2016 (preceding the ‘Emotions in Legal Practices: Historical and Modern Attitudes Compared’ conference on 27–28 September 2016).
Time: 6:00pm–7:30pm
Venue: Law School Foyer, Level 2, New Law School, Eastern Avenue, The University of Sydney
Cost: Free and open to all with online registrations required: http://whatson.sydney.edu.au/events/published/sydney-ideas-professor-annalise-acorn
Enquiries: Sydney Ideas (sydney.ideas@sydney.edu.au) ARC Centre for the History of Emotions (jacquie.bennett@adelaide.edu.au)

In this paper I argue that criminal punishment, devoid of all emotions of blame, is inhuman in relation to the offender and contrary to a morally robust justification for the criminal law. Increasingly, progressive philosophers of punishment, such as Hannah Pickard, Nicola Lacey and Martha Nussbaum, claim that emotions such as anger and resentment have no place in criminal punishment. Lacey and Pickard in particular argue that punishment should be carried out through an ethic of forgiveness.

I argue that these rejections of the emotions of blame in punishment, though they claim to be new and improved, are grounded in the ancient and Aristotelian idea that punishment to be different from revenge must be for the benefit of the wrongdoer. This conceptualisation of punishment as help has also long been connected to a view of wrongdoing as illness and punishment as cure. I argue that Lacey and Pickard’s view is a distinctively twenty-first-century therapeutic version of these age-old ideas. I argue that the impulse to punish an offender with the expression of affective blame is not at all inconsistent with the intention to help the offender. Further, I question the assumption that being on the receiving end of affective blame is necessarily unhelpful to a wrongdoer. From there I argue that an ethic that eschews affective blame in favour of detached forgiveness deprives human relations of the Strawsonian good of unreserved mutuality and moral engagement. While such unreserved moral mutuality may be difficult within the relation between the state and the criminal wrongdoer, a criminal sentence intended convey no affective blame would be morally unintelligible to both the offender and society.

Professor Annalise Acorn is Professor of Law at the University of Alberta. In 2014–2015 she was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford where she worked on a book on resentment and responsibility. She is the author of Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice (2004).

Professor Acorn’s main area of research interest is the theory of the emotions in the context of conflict and justice. She has published numerous articles in journals such as The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Valparaiso Law Review, and the UCLA Women’s Law Journal. In 1998–1999 she was the president of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers. In the same year she was a McCalla Research Professor.

This event is co-presented by Sydney Ideas and the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions for the conference ‘Emotions in Legal Practices’.

XXVth Congress of the International Arthurian Society – Call For Papers

XXVth Congress of the International Arthurian Society
Würzburg University, Germany
July 24-29, 2017

Würzburg is a city rich in tradition, famous for its picturesque medieval city centre and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Würzburger Residenz. Idyllically located between vineyards in the valley of the Main River, the city is a perfect starting point for various excursions into the surrounding area of Franconia.

We highly welcome contributions covering the following topics:

a. Voice(s), Sounds and the Rhetoric of Performance
b. Postmedieval Arthur: Print and Other Media
c. Translation, Adaption and the Movement of texts
d. Current State of Arthurian Editions: Problems and Perspectives
e. Sacred and Profane in Arthurian Romance
f. Critical Modes and Arthurian Literature: Past, Present and Future

If you would like to organize a paper session or panel discussion concerning one of those topics or if you wish to present a 25-minute paper, please use the form below to direct your proposal (max. 250 words) including a short CV to artuskongress2017@uni-wuerzburg.de by October 1, 2016.

Speakers must be members of the Society at the time of the conference.

Sessions comprise three papers of 25 minutes each (90 minutes in total). If you wish to submit a session proposal, please fill in the form located at the congress website (https://www.romanistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/artuskongress2017/home) with your contact details, details of the other members you wish to participate in your session and the papers’ abstracts.

In case you would like to propose a panel discussion, please fill in your contact details and those of at least two other participating members of the Arthurian Society giving short initial speeches.

For paper proposals please use the form located at the congress website (https://www.romanistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/artuskongress2017/home) as well.

Note: For the sessions arrangement it would be of great help if you listed the languages you understand (English, French, German).

Travel grants are available for undergraduates and graduate students presenting a paper. Please contact the president of IAS Prof. Dr. Cora Dietl (cora.dietl@germanistik.uni-giessen.de) for further information.

Newcastle University: Humanities Research Institute Post-doctoral Research Fellow – Call For Applications

Newcastle University – Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences – HASS Faculty Office
Humanities Research Institute Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne
Salary: £28,982 to £30,738 per annum, with progression to £37,768.
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Contract / Temporary

Newcastle University wish to appoint to appoint an outstanding postdoctoral researcher for a three-year research fellowship hosted by the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute (NUHRI). The successful candidate will pursue a personal research project, contribute to the work of NUHRI more generally, and enhance the profile of humanities research both within and outside Newcastle University.

The NUHRI Fellowships are intended primarily to enable early career researchers to undertake a research project of their own design that will lead to an original and significant piece of publishable work. Applications will be considered from candidates working in all areas of the humanities (broadly defined). Projects that are multi- or interdisciplinary in nature are particularly welcome.

The post is full-time for three years, beginning in October 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Applicants must have been awarded a doctoral degree since 1 January, 2012, or be in expectation that the award will be made by 31 October, 2016. Applicants should not already have held a permanent academic appointment.

For more information please contact Professor Matthew Grenby, Director of NUHRI: m.o.grenby@ncl.ac.uk

For full applications details and to apply, please visit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AUI079/b43842r-newcastle-university-humanities-research-institute-post-doctoral-research-fellow.

Applications close on 26 September, 2016.