Truth and Truthiness: Belief, Authenticity, Rhetoric, and Spin in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

December 1, 2018
The 26th Biennial Conference of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program of Barnard College

Plenary Speakers:

Lorna Hutson (University of Oxford)
Dyan Elliott (Northwestern University)

The capacity of language both to communicate truth and to manipulate perceptions of it was as vexed a problem for the Middle Ages and Renaissance as it is today. From Augustine to Erasmus, enthusiasm for the study of rhetoric was accompanied by profound concern about its capacity to mask the difference between authenticity and deceit, revelation and heresy, truth and truthiness. Even the claim of authenticity or transparency could become, some thinkers argued, a deliberate form of manipulation or “spin.” In our current era when public figures aim to create effects of immediacy and authenticity, this conference looks at the history of debates about rhetoric and, more generally, about the presentation of transparency and truthfulness. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this conference considers the role of the verbal arts in the history of literature, law, politics, theology, and historiography, but also broadens the scope of rhetoric to include such topics as the rhetoric of the visual arts and the language of the new science to produce effects of objective access to “things themselves.”

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a 2-page CV by April 30, 2018 to Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 94th ANNUAL MEETING
OF THE MEDIEVAL ACADEMY
OF AMERICA

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

March 7-9, 2019
The 94th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place in Philadelphia on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America, Bryn Mawr College, Delaware Valley Medieval Association, Haverford College, St. Joseph’s University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Villanova University.

The Global Turn in Medieval Studies

Medievalists across various disciplines are taking a more geographically and methodologically global approach to the study of the Middle Ages. While the Organizing Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies, this year’s conference spotlights the “global turn” in medieval studies. To this end, we encourage session and paper proposals that treat the Middle Ages as a broad historical and cultural phenomenon, encompassing the full extent of Europe as well as the Middle East, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, and beyond.  We also invite proposals that explore departures from traditional teleological discourses rooted in national interests, ones that apply disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods to study a broad array of subjects.

We especially encourage proposals that provoke explorations of the following “big questions”:

1) Periodization and the drawing of geographic borders in medieval studies can be helpful, but can also limit our ability to make connections, see patterns, or entertain dialogue among specialists in individual sub-fields. What do we mean when we speak of the “Middle Ages” in geographic, temporal, or disciplinary terms? What do we mean when we use contemporary geographical concepts, such as Europe or Asia? What do we mean when we say “Global Middle Ages”? What is in and what is out?

2) If we are to turn away from national models, what is an alternative?  For instance, how can methodologies that highlight networks further our understanding of the “Global Middle Ages”? How might they contribute, for example, to understanding mechanisms of knowledge sharing and the development and use of religious, economic, and political systems?

3) Across all cultures in the medieval world, philosophers, theologians, scholars, healers, poets, artists, and musicians sought to understand the natural world and to apply that understanding to concrete ends. How do we make sense of their efforts? How might traditional paradigms of what we call “science,” philosophical inquiry, literary, and artistic practice be challenged?

4) Medieval studies has been at the forefront of the “digital turn” over the past few decades. How have digital approaches to scholarship altered the landscape for better or worse? In a global context, have new technologies broken barriers or created new ones? How do we create and evaluate digital scholarship in medieval studies vis à vis traditional methods?

Within the framework of these “big questions”, the organizing committee proposes the following threads:

*    Uses of the Medieval
*    Expanding Geographies of the Medieval
*    Re-thinking Periodization: Beyond Eurocentrism and Postcolonialism
*    Medieval Foundations of Contemporary Politics
*    Alexander the Great and World Thinking
*    Medieval Cosmologies
*    The Trojan Myth and Genealogies
*    What is Medieval/European/Literature?
*    Transmission and Technologies of Knowledge
*    Doing Science at Court
*    The Locations of Learning
*    Myths and Legends of Languages and Letters
*    Dante, Local and Global: Towards 2021
*    Deconstructing “National” Legal Traditions
*    Gender Matters
*    Ars/Arts: Intersections Across Disciplines and Borders
*    Global Manuscript Markets and Movements
*    Digitizing the Global Middle Ages: Practices, Sustainability, and Ethics
*    Approaches to Historiography
*    Interfaith Encounters, Real and Imagined
*    Religious and Cultural Ethics across Cultures: Conversation or Confrontation?
*    Saints and Sages
*    Words and Music

Proposals
Individuals may propose a:
*    single paper for a listed thread
*    full session on a listed thread
*    single paper not designated for a specific thread
*    full session on a topic outside the listed threads
*    poster, paper, full session, or workshop that explores the role and uses of digital technologies

Sessions are 90 minutes long, and typically consist of three 20-minute papers. Proposals should be geared to that length. The committee is interested in other formats as well: poster sessions, roundtables, workshops, etc. The Program Committee may suggest a different format for some sessions after the proposals have been reviewed. 

Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration will be given to individuals whose field would not traditionally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.
In order to be considered, proposals must be complete and include the following:

(1) A cover sheet containing the proposer’s name, statement of Medieval Academy membership (or statement that the individual’s specialty would not traditionally involve membership in the Academy), professional status, email address, postal address, home or cell and office telephone numbers, fax number (if available), and paper title;

(2) A second sheet containing the proposer’s name, session for which the proposal should be considered, title, 250-word abstract, and audio-visual equipment requirements.

(3) Additional sheets as necessary containing all of the above information, plus a session abstract, when a full panel for a session is being proposed.

Submissions: Proposals should be submitted as attached PDFs to the MAA Program Committee by email to MAA2019@TheMedievalAcademy.org

The deadline is 15 June 2018.

Please do not send proposals directly to the Organizing Committee members.

Selection Procedure: Paper and panel proposals will be reviewed for their quality and for the significance and relevance of their topics. The Organizing Committee will evaluate proposals during the summer of 2018 and the Committee will inform all successful and unsuccessful proposers by 10 September 2018.

Organizing Committee Members:
Lynn Ransom & Julia Verkholantsev, University of Pennsylvania (co-chairs)
Daud Ali, University of Pennsylvania
Chris Atwood, University of Pennsylvania
Kevin Brownlee, University of Pennsylvania
Mary Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania
Linda Chance, University of Pennsylvania
Paul M. Cobb, University of Pennsylvania
Catherine Conybeare, Bryn Mawr College
Talya Fishman, University of Pennsylvania
Fr. Allan Fitzgerald, Villanova University
Scott Francis, University of Pennsylvania
Nicholas Herman, University of Pennsylvania
Tom Izbicki, Rutgers University & Delaware Valley Medieval Association
Ada Kuskowski, University of Pennsylvania
Ann Matter, University of Pennsylvania
Maud McInerney, Haverford College
Paul Patterson, St. Joseph’s University
Montserrat Piera, Temple University
Dot Porter, University of Pennsylvania
Jerry Singerman, University of Pennsylvania Press
Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania
Eva del Soldato, University of Pennsylvania
Elly Truitt, Bryn Mawr College
David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania (ex officio as MAA president)

Diplomacy and Gender in the Early Modern World (1400-1800)

11 Jun 2018 to 12 Jun 2018
 University of Oxford

Organiser: Ruggero Sciuto

Keynote Speaker: Lucien Bély (Université Paris-Sorbonne)

Gender may not always be the first topic that comes to mind when discussing international relations, but it has a heavy bearing on diplomatic issues. It surfaces regularly in the news, whether in the 2015-2016 controversy over the Vatican’s refusal to accept a homosexual ambassador from France, or in 2017 with the first group photo of NATO spouses to include a male leader’s husband. Scholars have not left this field of research unexplored, and a recent collection of essays edited by Jennifer A. Cassidy examines in depth the gender dynamics of twentieth-century diplomacy. But what was the situation like in the early modern world?

While ambassadorial positions were monopolised by men, women could and did perform diplomatic roles, both officially and unofficially. From heads of state like Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great to salon hostesses receiving diplomats from abroad, from the Paix des Dames signed by two royal women in 1529 to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s journey to Constantinople, women appear regularly in diplomatic contexts. Nor were gender performances always normative during this period, as shown by the eighteenth-century transgender ambassador, the Chevalier d’Eon. Literary and artistic masterpieces celebrating the signing of peace treaties, moreover, often give a prominent role to the female figure, thus questioning the assumption that the world of diplomatic negotiations was entirely male-centred. After all, certain ideas that are normally linked to masculinity, such as aggressiveness, are not easily reconciled with the practice of diplomacy. In early modern scholarship, Lucien Bély, James Daybell, Katrin Keller, Florian Kühnel, and Svante Norrhem have pioneered a gender-conscious approach to studying early modern international exchanges.

The TORCH Network on Diplomacy in the Early Modern Period proposes to continue this line of inquiry re-examining the interplay between gender and diplomacy in the early modern world at a two-day symposium in Oxford on 11-12 June 2018. We invite papers on topics including (but not limited to):

• Methodologies for studying gender and diplomacy;
• The role of women in diplomatic ceremonial;
• Performances of masculinity within diplomatic contexts;
• Representations of gender in artistic and literary work connected with diplomacy;
• Material culture and gender in diplomatic exchange, such as gifts and ceremonial objects;
• Ambassadorial family networks and correspondences;
• Female-dominated areas (e.g. salons, harems, etc.) as spaces of diplomacy;
• Differences/similarities between the approaches of male/female sovereigns to foreign affairs;
• The body of the queen/king and its diplomatic value.
   

Presentations on any geographical area are most welcome. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to earlymoderndiplomacy@torch.ox.ac.uk by 1 April 2018. Successful applicants will be notified by 20 April 2018.

A small registration fee (standard = £25; students = £10) will be charged to help towards the costs of lunch and refreshments. Travel expenses will not be reimbursed.

Submission date for papers: 
01 Apr 2018

Forty-fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

Submission online by:       February 15, 2018, Thursday, 11:59 EST

Notification email by:        March 15, 2018, Thursday

The Forty-fourth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference (BSC) will be held in San Antonio, Texas, from Thursday evening, October 4th through Sunday afternoon, October 7th. For information on BSANA, please consult the BSANA website, http://www.bsana.net; for details on the conference, please consult the 2018 BSC website, https://www.bsc2018.com/, which will be further updated as new information becomes available. The Local Arrangements Chair for 2018 is Dr. Annie Labatt of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The BSC is the annual forum for the presentation and discussion of papers on every aspect of Byzantine Studies, and is open to all, regardless of nationality or academic status. It is also the occasion of the annual meeting of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA), conducted by its officers:

President:  Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Literature (Princeton University, NJ) (ebourbou@Princeton.EDU)

Vice President: Jennifer Ball, Art History (City University of New York, NY) (jennball312@gmail.com)

Secretary: Marica Cassis, Archaeology (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada) (bsanasec@yahoo.com)

Treasurer: Betsy Williams, Dumbarton Oaks (williamse@doaks.org)

We welcome proposals on any aspect of Byzantine studies.

Deadline for abstracts:

Wednesday, 15 February 2018, 11:59 pm EST

Proposals are submitted as individual abstracts. Proposals consist of:

Your contact information; a proposedtitle; and, if part of a panel proposal, proposed panel information.
A single PDF copy of the 500-word or less, blind abstract (title only, no name),formatted and submitted according to the detailed instructions below.