“Transition(s): concept, methods and case studies (14th–17th centuries)”
International PhD Students’ Meetings: Part 1
Liège, Belgium
30-31 January, 2018

The Research Unit Transitions. Middle Ages and First Modernity (University of Liège) associated with the research laboratory TRAME (Texts, Representations, Archaeology and Memory from Antiquity to the Renaissance) of the University of Picardie Jules Verne and with the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance of the University François Rabelais (Tours) on the occasion of International PhD Students’ Meetings in three parts. Implemented by PhD students of these three institutions, the aim of the meetings is to enable exchange and discussion between PhD students, junior researchers and skilled colleagues. The first of these three meetings will be held in Liège on Tuesday January 30th and Wednesday January 31st, 2018.

From the Middle Ages until the upheavals brought about by Galilean science, Europe underwent a period of unceasing questioning which challenged the political balance and its legitimacy, shook the foundations of confessional unity, and expanded the limits of knowledge and of creation. In an attempt to transcend the inherited divisions of the long historiographical tradition, the Research Unit Transitions. Middle Ages and First Modernity (http://web.philo.ulg.ac.be/transitions/fr/) explores these constant transformations in the Western and in the Mediterranean Basin. Open to Medievalists and Modernists, the Research Unit promotes confrontation between research practices, original collaboration, and the sharing of results in a transdisciplinary way. Furthermore, it attempts to show several factors which contributed to the construction of the social and cultural frameworks by which we define ourselves even today.

In January 2018, the Liège meetings will focus on the theme “Transition(s): concept, methods and case studies (14th–17th centuries)”. Nowadays, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research on the whole tend to delete categories and traditional historical periodization in favor of transversal approach of objects, phenomena, genders, forms and ideas. The concept of “Transition” is linked to the idea of “passage” and it may be defined as “the passage from one state to another” a “degree or an intermediate state” (Trésor de la langue française). From their own research objects, participants will be asked to think on this concept, its acceptability and its relevance toward those of “Mutation”, “Change”, “Transformation”, “Modification”, “Revolution” and “Metamorphosis”. Thereby, it aims to renew the debate on the methods and theoretical ways which mark all disciplinary fields presented in those meetings.

How does one develop a methodology and an analytic grid allowing the study of objects, practices and behaviours positioned between two elements, between two historical periods, between two trends, between two styles, between two manners to do, to see, to write, to think and to believe? Also, how does one get out of this idea of “between two”? Do Transition have breaks, innovations, transfers, exchanges or flow aspects? Do these objects really depict the passage from a practice, a period, from one style to another, or is it actually because the Researcher sees them as doing so? Is the concept of “Transition” a new category, a new pragmatic approach, but nevertheless fruitful? Is this concept involved in advances in our disciplines, and why?

This methodological approach may be considered by concrete questions about the linguistic, cultural, historical, artistic transitions which happened between the 14th and the 17th centuries in Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, whether through actors and their works (objects, texts), ideas, and / or the areas within which they lived.

Lectures will be the subject of transdisciplinary discussions. They should not last more twenty minutes and they will be given in either French, English or Italian. Each lecture will then be followed by a short debate with the audience.

The organising committee expects the PhD students’ proposals for Friday the 15 September, 2017 at the latest. They should be addressed to the RU Transitions (journeesdoctorales.transitions@gmail.com) as an attached document that includes the personal data of the PhD student and those of the research director(s), as well as the title of the thesis, the title of the lecture, the year of registration as a PhD student and, finally, a fifteen-line summary of the proposed lecture. Proposals are to be written in French, English or Italian. Candidates will be informed of the approval or the rejection of their proposal by the 15th of October 2017.

Each PhD student is invited to contact his own institution about the possibility of valorising his or her participation in the study days within the framework of their doctoral training (attestation, ECTS credits, etc.). At the end of the seminar, the organizers will provide a document certifying the active participation of the PhD student in the meeting. Furthermore, in view of its limited financial resources, RU Transitions will not be able to bear the cost of mobility and accommodation for Participants.

Organising Committee : Emilie Corswarem, Sébastien Damoiseaux, Frédéric Degroote, Aurore Drécourt, Adelaïde Lambert, Anne-Sophie Laruelle, Julie Piront

Scientific Committee : Emilie Corswarem, Annick Delfosse, Laure Fagnart, Marie-Elisabeth Henneau, Nicola Morato, Julie Piront

Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Where Histories Meet
New Zealand Historical Association Conference 2017
Auckland, New Zealand
28 November – 1 December, 2017

NZHA is delighted to open its call for papers for this year’s biennial conference: Tāmaki Herenga Waka: Where Histories Meet.

We welcome submissions from teachers, students, scholars and practitioners of history along two main two main thematic lines:

• Aotearoa – New Zealand, encouraging presentations on any aspect of New Zealand history, including reflection on its past and future; and
• Tāmaki Makaurau – Auckland, interested in Auckland broadly defined, and urban spaces more generally, its many histories and many peoples.

Related specific themes include: tangata whenua, Pasifika, and Asian histories; academic history, including its current state and status; public histories; transnational histories; gender; and teaching history.

Abstract submissions closes on Friday, 28 July 2017.

We request that all conference presenters register and pay to attend by Tuesday, 31 October 2017.

For more information about the conference and to submit your abstract online, please visit the conference website: http://historiesmeet.org.

“Courts and Their Records in Scotland, From the Earliest Times to the Present Day”
SRA Conference 2017: The Annual Conference of the Scottish Records Association
New Register House, Edinburgh
10 November 2017

This one day conference will explore the subject of court records in Scotland. We welcome proposals for twenty – minute papers focused on courts, their processes of recording and record production, and legal records in Scotland. Papers can cover any aspect of the topic on any period, although we are seeking broad overall chronological coverage combined with a close focus on the records themselves in individual papers: what survives, where and when does it survive from, the processes behind record keeping and how these factors affect research today.

Proposals from scholars at any stage in their career addressing the following themes are especially welcome:

• The central civil and criminal courts – the Session, the Justiciary Court, Justice Ayres
• Local courts – burgh courts, sheriff courts
• Military Courts, the Admiralty and police courts
• Ecclesiastical courts (pre and post Reformation) and other religious courts
• Legal Registers – deeds, testaments, sasines, and the land registry
• Heraldic courts
• Large-scale projects (completed, ongoing, planned) related to the digitisation or editing of court
  and legal records

Please send abstracts of 200-400 words, with a brief biography and (if applicable) current institutional affiliation and status to sraconference2017@gmail.com by Sunday 20 August, 2017.

The conference fee will be waived for speakers and small bursaries towards travel costs may be available for postgraduate speakers. If you are a postgraduate student and would like to be considered for support please indicate this on your application, although funds are very limited.

The Art of the Poor in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
A conference at The Warburg Institute, London
14–15 June, 2018

Organised by Dr Rembrandt Duits

The art history of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance has generally been written as a story of elites: bankers, noblemen, kings, cardinals, and popes and their artistic interests and commissions. Recent decades have seen attempts to recast the story in terms of material culture and include a wider range of objects than are discussed in the traditional surveys of painting, sculpture and architecture, but the focus has not fundamentally shifted away from the upper strata of society. One otherwise excellent publication following this new approach even states confidently that ‘there was no such thing as poor man’s art in the Renaissance.’

There are, however, countless modest images, decorated objects and buildings across Europe that belie this notion, from lead and tin pilgrims’ badges in the Museum of London to frescoed churches commissioned by village communities during the Venetian period on Crete. These works of art were made for the more than 95% of the population who were economically less privileged: peasants, unskilled and skilled workers in the building and manufacturing industries, small-time artisans. They are works that tend not to enter the major art museums and exhibitions of the western world, or feature prominently in tourist guide books; they can be found in museums of urban history and archaeology and the closest they come to mingling with ‘real’ art is in shows with an anthropological approach, such as ‘the art of devotion.’ If they are discussed in artistic terms at all, these are often negative: ‘coarse’; ‘crude’; ‘primitive’; or ‘provincial’. There is also a common assumption that such objects did not have artistic traditions of their own but were always derived from the shining examples made by famous artists for the rich.

This conference aims to challenge these perceptions. For the first time, ‘the art of the poor’ will be given centre stage. Through a variety of case studies, objects, their functions and manufacturing traditions will be re-evaluated and established aesthetic judgements and tacit assumptions in scholarship re-examined. The conference will seek to give impetus to a new field combining the expertise of urban archaeologists, historians, historical anthropologists, and art historians. This field, different from general studies of material culture in that its principal object is ‘art’, can help us re-assess the very concept of ‘art’ and its function in society, neither of which can be understood properly without taking into account the broadest range of artistic activity. Topics for papers may include, but are not limited to:

• Art forms made for people with lower incomes, e.g. decorations of village and small parish churches, pilgrims’ souvenirs, woodcuts, decorated ceramics, drinking glasses, textiles, costume, modest paintings and sculptures
• The iconography of images for the poor
• The ‘art market’ of the poor, including manufacturing traditions, vending of artefacts, (collective) commissions, second-hand retail
• Relevant aspects of social history, e.g. income levels and purchasing power, records of transactions or possessions, anecdotal evidence from literary sources, visual evidence from paintings, manuscript illuminations and other images
• Relations between the art of the poor and more upmarket artistic manufacture
• The historiography (or lack of it) of the art of the poor
• Relevant finds in urban archaeology, relevant aspects of museum collections

Papers by early career scholars are particularly welcome. The aim is for the conference proceedings to be published. Papers are restricted to 25 mins. Please send a short abstract and a brief CV to rembrandt.duits@sas.ac.uk by 28 July, 2017.

Call for Papers: The Animal in Medieval Romance, at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (2018)

The ‘animal turn’ is one of the newest and most exciting developments in medieval scholarship. Researchers are increasingly interrogating the role of animals in society and culture, the interaction between human and beast, and the formation of human and non-human identities.

The Medieval Romance Society is hosting two inter-related sessions on the role of animals in romances at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies 2018, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. We welcome papers which draw on a broad range of methodologies and address a variety of themes relating to animals.

Session I: The Animal in Medieval Romance I: The Animal as Friend
This session invites papers examining the co-dependent relationships between animals and humans in romances. We encourage a broad interpretation of this theme, including cross-species friendships, sexual and romantic couplings, domestication and farmyard animals, and animals as parental surrogates.

Session II: The Animal in Medieval Romance II: The Animal as Product
This session welcomes papers which examine how animal bodies are exploited in medieval romances. Even after death, animals continue to exert their presence in romance narrative through their earthly remains. The genre’s commodification of bestial bodies also extends beyond texts to the physical product of vellum upon which they are transmitted. Papers might explore themes of butchery, the wearing of skins and furs, the use of bone and ivory, and the production of parchment and manuscript-binding.

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to Tim Wingard at tw659@york.ac.uk by 15th September, 2017. For more information, visit: medievalromanceanimal.wordpress.com.