Monthly Archives: May 2018

CFP: ‘Arabism’ in Western Medieval Studies at MAA 2019

We invite paper proposals for a panel on ‘Arabism’ in Western Medieval Studies at the Medieval Academy of America 2019 annual meeting, University of Pennsylvania, 7-9 March 2019.

Panel Conveners:
Sherif Abdelkarim, English, UVa and Rebecca Hill, English, UCLA

Outside of Near Eastern Studies disciplines, the extended focus on Arabic as a language and literary tradition, or the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as a region of interest, has generally been called ‘Arabism’: but what is Arabism, and how has it evolved in medieval studies, particularly in the 21st century? What types of projects have led medieval scholars, otherwise firmly rooted in the West—geographically, culturally, intellectually—to undertake mastery of the Arabic language or else make substantial use of MENA primary sources? How can we measure the impact of Arabism on Western medievalism? This panel on Arabism in medieval studies seeks to explore the origins, evolution, and future of this sub-specialty, particularly how it resists or upends Orientalism, with varying success.

Paper topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Studies in the transmission of knowledge: how authorized knowledge (e.g. the studies of Qur’ān recitations, Ḥadīth science, jurisprudence, and even the Arabic language) has been passed and preserved across continents and centuries.
  • Adaptations: Classical Arabic “medievalisms” on the colonial, postcolonial, and globalized stage, allowing us to trace the legacies and various applications of and claims to “golden ages”
  • Single-author, single character studies, or moveable characters
  • Humor across intercultural lines
  • The long history of the European Other and cosmopolitanisms
  • Chronicles and crusade narratives
  • Diplomacy, with a focus on court wazirs, diplomats, officials, dignitaries, missions
  • Plague, with a focus on pandemics
  • Polemics
  • Non-modern cities

We welcome proposals from scholars in all language and literature departments, history, philosophy, religion, archaeology, art—and even from Near Eastern Studies departments for a view of Arabism from the inside!

Please send proposals of approximately 300 words to rebecca.hill@ucla.edu by 1 June 2018 for consideration.

CFP: Seminar at IONA on (Re)constructing History Through Landscape and Practice

Call for papers for seminar at IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic – transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 11-13, 2019).

Seminar:  (Re)constructing history through landscape and practice
Organisers:  Dr Pamela O’Neill and Associate Professor Jay Johnston (University of Sydney)

This seminar will draw together academics and practitioners to investigate how we experience, represent and ultimately construct history.  It will consider the creative processes that are triggered when the subject is physically immersed in the landscape: archaeologists who seek to authentically reproduce artefacts and sites, historians and toponymists who travel hypothesised early routeways, folklorists who seek to replicate encounters with the otherworld, artists who create through physical immersion in landscape, religious practitioners who (re)enact pilgrimage, heritage bodies who curate historic sites, writers who publish or blog their travel experiences. This seminar aims to explore multiple questions regarding the relationship between discursive academic and creative modes of enquiry including:  

  • In what ways do we create historical, artistic and other narratives in response to immersion in landscape? 
  • In what ways do such narratives differ from those created in a disengaged, physically separate context traditionally espoused by scholarship? 
  • Of what value are such narratives to historians and other scholars working in the traditional mode? 
  • What does a close physical experience of landscape add to scholarly understanding? 
  • What could be the ultimate effect of a physically immersive model of scholarship being integrated into the academic endeavour?  
  • How do these modalities of research and exploration relate to Critical Practice (practice-based methodology)?
  • What could such scholarship contribute to the understandings and experiences of the general public?

We invite expressions of interest from all who are keen to take part.  

Please include a very short biographical statement (100 words), a brief explanation of your interest in the seminar and a suggestion for a presentation you could contribute (200 words). 

Expressions of interest should be sent to pamaladh@gmail.com AND jay.johnston@sydney.edu.au by 31 July 2018.

 

Call for Expressions of Interest: ANZAMEMS 2021 Conference

ANZAMEMS welcomes Expression of Interests for its 2021 Conference. By convention, the next host would normally be a venue in Australia. Up to $20,000 in conference funding is provided to the successful host institution(s).

The ANZAMEMS Conference Policy can be downloaded here (Version effective February 2017).

A copy of the Association’s Equity and Inclusivity Guidelines for ANZAMEMS Conference and Event Planners can be downloaded here (Version effective 16 February 2018).

For further information, please contact:
Dr Chris Jones
President, Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval & Early Modern Studies
Email: chris.jones@canterbury.ac.nz

Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript

The Dorothy Hewett Award was established in 2015 by UWA Publishing. The aim of the Dorothy Hewett Award is to support literary talent and to celebrate the life and writing of an Australian radical writer. The award is an annual fixture designed to be a catalyst for writers beginning or furthering their professional writing careers. The award is funded by The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, and supported by our media partner is The Saturday Paper. 

The Dorothy Hewett Award is open to all writers who have completed a manuscript and are seeking publication. From this year, the award has been expanded to all manuscripts of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry written by Australian citizens and permanent residents. This means we no longer require the writer or manuscript to have a connection with Western Australia. The winner will receive a cash prize of $10,000, courtesy of Copyright Agency, and will be offered a publishing contract by UWA Publishing.

The 2019 Award is open for submissions from midday WST Tuesday 15 May 2018. Further information and an online submission form can be found at https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/pages/the-dorothy-hewett-award-for-an-unpublished-manuscript

Dorothy Hewett (1923-2002) is considered one of Australia’s leading writers whose work captures and disrupts ideas of normalcy in twentieth century Australian culture. As a staunch feminist and, for a long time, a communist, Hewett gave voice to the marginalised. In 1986, Hewett was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to literature. Hewett won the Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award in 1994 and 1995 for her collections Peninsula and Collected Poems: 1940-1995.

The judges’ for the 2019 award are Terri-ann White, Director UWA Publishing; Elfie Shiosaki, Lecturer in the School of Indigenous Studies at The University of Western Australia; and James Ley, author and contributing editor of Sydney Review of Books. 

Celtic Learning study days: Bede and The Book of Kells

Two upcoming study days from the Australian School of Celtic Learning www.celticlearning.com.au

Saturday 19 May: The Venerable Bede study day

The Venerable Bede wrote his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People early in the eighth century. This, together with his other writings, is one of our main sources of information about the English and Celtic regions in the seventh and eighth centuries. In this study day, we will look at the world Bede lived in, from Anglo-Saxon and Celtic perspectives. We will explore his interests and writings in history, biography and science. We will discover more about the people he knew and the people he wrote about.

Schedule
9.30-11.00 – Celtic/Anglo-Saxon churches
11.30-1.00 – Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
1.30-3.00 – Bede’s Lives of saints
3.30-5.00 – Bede’s scientific works

Venue
Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney

Cost
AU$95     $65 student/unwaged
includes morning and afternoon teas, light lunch and booklet
Venerable Bede study day registration form

Saturday 2 June: The Book of Kells study day

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels in Latin, dating from around 750 CE. It is one of Ireland’s greatest treasures. In this lavishly illustrated study day, we will look at the background of the Book: where was it made, in what circumstances, and what happened to it? We will then examine the decoration of the Book, considering the different artistic influences on it, its place in the Insular manuscript tradition, the pigments and how they were made.

Schedule
9.30-11.00 – St Columba and the church
11.30-1.00 – Iona and Kells
1.30-3.00 – the Book of Kells
3.30-5.00 – artistic influences on the Book

Venue
Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney

Cost
AU$95     $65 student/unwaged
includes morning and afternoon teas, light lunch and booklet
Book of Kells study day registration form

CFP for RSA 2019 Seminar: “Sex, Gender, and Race in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Worlds: A Comparative View”

The Renaissance Society of America Meeting in 2019, which will take place in Toronto, 17-19 March, is launching new seminar sessions.  Seminars will be a discussion of 3-6 pre-circulated papers (approx. 4000 words) dealing with the period 1300-1700 from any discipline.  Seminars are open to attendees although the assumption is that everyone will read the papers in advance. 

Please see below for the seminar description that Janine Peterson (History) and Patricia Ferrer-Medina (Spanish) are convening on “Sex, Gender, and Race in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Worlds: A Comparative View”. For further information, please contact  Janine.Peterson@marist.edu

This seminar will explore how Europeans constructed the identities of non-European and non-Christian peoples in the early modern Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.  We invite papers that examine how Europeans racialized, sexualized, or in any way “othered” Jews and Muslims in Southern Europe, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the peoples of North/West Africa that they encountered in Africa in addition to those encountered as slaves when traveling to the Caribbean and Central America.  Renaissance and early modern European views of different peoples was closely connected to, and constructed by, prevailing ideas about gender and sexuality as well as notions of civilization and nature.  This panel aims to explore these conceptions comparatively by fusing European Renaissance studies to date with new Atlantic world and transatlantic scholarship.  We welcome papers that bridge the geographical and disciplinary divisions inherent in much of the literature to date of the period from 1300-1700.

Any RSA member may submit an abstract for consideration for a seminar through the standard submissions website (opening 1 July 2018). These abstracts will count as the one allotted paper submission per member for the annual conference cycle, and will be vetted by the seminar organizers. Any abstract not selected for a seminar will then be rolled over for consideration by the conference program committee, during its review of regular submissions.  The deadline for submission is 15 August.  You will be notified about acceptance by 31 August.  If not accepted, your submission will be sent to general submission pool with notification about possible inclusion on another panel in September.

CFP: 2019 MLA International Symposium, Lisbon 23-25 July

The (re)emergence of populism(s), the increase in hate speech, and the resurgence of ethnic and religious violence and xenophobia—in what Pankaj Mishra has called “the age of anger”—all evince a complex web of relations and gestures toward the Other, which call the project of modernity into question.

In the face of this resurgent social, political, and religious instability, as well as the impending threat of ecological catastrophes, it seems urgent to recuperate the “lost voices” of humanity. These lost voices belong to two different groups: those that have been buried or forgotten throughout time and those that have been marginalized or othered on the grounds of their perceived foreignness. All these voices contribute to a culture of debate and dissension against and within emerging paradigms centered on intolerance and conformity, oftentimes propelled by technological developments that elide difference and naturalize absolutist ideas about the uses and misuses of power.

Re-membering (in both senses of recalling and assembling) lost voices is a way of acknowledging and bringing them to the forefront of cultural discussions as an act of resistance and as a creative impulse. In the words of the poet Tolentino Mendonça, it entails the opportunity to be filled with awe.

Inspired by Proust’s search in À la recherche du temps perdu, and with the goal of re-membering marginal voices, the 2019 MLA International Symposium calls for paper and session proposals that place the humanities at the center of world affairs and encourage debate about the circumstances and potentialities of being in awe of the other that inhabits the self and others. This “being in awe” may produce new forms of conviviality in a world devastated by hatred, poverty, bigotry, and environmental dead ends.

Thus, in the hope that a new version of George Steiner’s “humane literacy” can come into existence, we invite humanities scholars to search for “lost voices.”

Proposals may address diverse historical periods, disciplines, texts, and practices that represent, interact with, and interrogate a wide range of models of thought.

The conference will feature the following formats:

  • panel sessions and discussions
  • paper sessions composed of 3–5 individual papers
  • roundtable conversations including 3–6 participants

We invite proposals for any of the above formats. Sessions will be ninety minutes long, including time for discussion. The conference languages will be English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish.

Paper proposals should include the paper title, a brief abstract, and the speaker’s institutional affiliation (if any).

Proposals for panels and roundtables should contain the above items as well as a session chair, abstract, and title.

Please use the MLA International Symposium’s submissions portal to submit your paper, session, or roundtable proposal(s). All submissions must be received by 21 September 2018, and participants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process by 3 December 2018.

Further information can be found at https://symposium.mla.org/2019-details/

CFP: Graduate Student and Early Career Scholar Panel, Medieval Legal History Workshop at ASLH 2018

The American Society for Legal History invites paper submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars for a panel at a pre-conference workshop. This will take place immediately preceding the ASLH annual meeting (8-11 November 2018, Houston, Texas) on Thursday 8 November. The topic of the workshop is Medieval Legal History, with medieval broadly defined as between late antiquity and early modernity.

Applications for the panel close on 15 June 2018.

The Medieval Legal History Workshop aims to present the work of a number of scholars of medieval law and society who are new to the ASLH’s annual meeting. In this way, we hope to promote scholarship in this area of legal history and to encourage medieval historians to attend the Society’s meeting. The graduate student and early-career scholar panel will be composed of four speakers, who will present short papers of 10-12 minutes, followed by a robust discussion period afterward. Besides this panel, the event will also be composed of two longer-form talks with commentators, and a pre-circulated-paper workshop of three papers with two commentators.

As such, we encourage applications from PhD students, postdocs and VAPs who work on or with law in the late antique and medieval periods in its political, social, and cultural aspects and who have not traditionally attended the society’s meetings. We notably encourage applications from any legal tradition of the period, including (among others) Byzantine, Canon, Chinese, Islamic, or Jewish law. The goal of the panel is to provide graduate students and early career scholars the opportunity to participate in the ASLH community in a more intimate setting, present their own work, and make meaningful contact with other presenters, attendant faculty, and other participants.

Applications to the workshop should include a current curriculum vitae, a title and abstract for the proposed talk. Applicants whose proposals are accepted will receive some support toward conference hotel and travel.

Queries and applications should be sent by email to Ada Kuskowski (akusk@upenn.edu) by June 15th, with the subject line “ASLH 2018 Graduate Student and Early-Career Scholar Panel.”

Further information on the ASLH 2018 annual conference can be found at http://aslh.net/upcoming-conference/

CFP Ways of Knowing: Graduate Conference on Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School

The Science, Religion, and Culture program at Harvard Divinity School announces the 7th annual “Ways of Knowing: Graduate Conference on Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School.”

26-27 October 2018
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, MA

Inaugurated in 2012, this multi-day event is made up of thematic panels that cross areas of science studies, religious traditions, academic disciplines, and theoretical commitments. In addition, the conference features special panels on professionalization, addressing both academic and non-academic careers, and a keynote address. The conference aims at promoting lively interdisciplinary discussion of prevailing assumptions (both within and outside the academy) about the differentiation, organization, authorization, and reproduction of various modes of knowing and doing science and religion.

Last year, more than 100 students and early career scholars representing over 60 graduate programs worldwide gathered to present their research. Following the success of our previous conferences, we invite graduate students and early career scholars to submit paper proposals from of a variety of theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives.

General Call for Papers

We seek papers that explore scientific and religious practices and modes of knowing, especially in relation to this year’s central theme, “Race and Indigeneity”. We welcome the use of all sorts of theoretical tools, including discourse analysis, gender theory, queer theory, race theory, disability theory, postcolonial theory, performance theory, and ritual theory. Papers may focus on any period, region, tradition, group, or person. We welcome papers from variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, sociology, religious studies, Science and Technology Studies, history of science and intellectual history among others.

Possible approaches include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. Explorations of a specific way of knowing, being, and engaging the world in relation to scientific and/or religious traditions and their interactions.
  2. Historical, sociological, and/or anthropological analyses of the cultural processes that support a specific scientific or religious discourse or practice, its authoritative structures, and/or its strategies of inclusion and exclusion.
  3. The cultural and historical discourses, articulations and developments of scientific, technological and medical knowledge, institutions, agents, exchanges, etc.
  4. The cultural and historical discourses, articulations and developments of religious practices, knowledge, institutions, agents and exchanges, etc.
  5. Analyses of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and/or gender with respect to scientific or religious texts, practices, or performances.
  6. Comparative examinations of scientific and religious texts and/or their interpretations, with attention to the historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and/ or intellectual contexts that mediate and delimit different interpretative strategies and practices.
  7. Analyses of the interplay between religion and scientific, moral, and/or legal discourses, practices, and authorities.
  8. Critical analyses of the scholarly production and dissemination of knowledge on science or religion.

Central Theme: Race and Indigeneity

The central theme for this year’s conference is “Race and Indigeneity.” We seek papers that engage the ways in which science and/or religion have shaped and been shaped by the concepts and political realities of race and indigeneity across diverse traditions, disciplines, times, and regions. Papers might focus on Indigenous knowledges and the ways in which they have been construed and taken up as science and/or religion; the role of race in the development and practice of different religious traditions and scientific disciplines; legacies of scientific racism, science and empire, and colonial missionary activity; the relationship between race and indigeneity as they relate to knowledge production. Proposals might also interrogate the role of racial identity or Indigenous sovereignty in competing claims to religious and scientific authority, religious texts or scientific theories that deal with construction of race or the Indigenous, and methodological approaches to the study of science and religion as they relate to race and indigeneity. We welcome a broad range of papers that address the theme of race and indigeneity from a range of methodological approaches and in the context of various traditions, disciplines, historical periods, and geographic regions.

Submission Instructions

Individual Papers: Please submit a 300-word abstract explaining the topic, main argument, and methodology of the project. You will be asked to specify whether you are submitting your proposal to the General Call or to one of the Special Call modules. Individual papers will be organized into panels and should not exceed 20 minutes in delivery.

Pre-Organized Panels: Proposals for panels on a particular topic may also be submitted to either the general or special calls. These should include three to five papers, including a respondent paper. Please submit: 1) a 300-word summary of the focus and purpose of the panel, specifying how each paper contributes to the overarching theme; 2) a 300-word abstract for each paper explaining the topic, main argument, and methodology of the project; 3) the name and contact information of the panel organizer/chair.

Proposals are due by Friday, May 18 through the WOK 2018 Submission Portal:

http://bit.ly/wok18

All inquiries can be directed to Iman Darwish, Conference Coordinator, at wok-src@hds.harvard.edu.

CFP for two panel proposals for ANZAMEMS 2019

Speakers are invited to submit paper proposals for two panels at ANZAMEMS 2019 on “Rereading the Medieval and Early Modern” and “Language and Agency from Medieval to Modern”.

Submissions for these panels close 10 August 2018. Please email your completed proposal to BOTH mgerzic@gmail.com and jennifer.nicholson@sydney.edu.au.​ An overview of each panel is provided below. See the attached PDF for full details.

Rereading the Medieval and Early Modern

For Vladimir Nabokov, the process of re-reading is always constructive: “A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.” For Patricia Meyer Spacks, re-reading — though satisfying for pure literary analysis — can reveal unwelcome truths about the past, and cause disenchantment with works we used to love. While a first reading depends (primarily) on the expectation of pleasure (of a vicarious or hermeneutic kind), re-reading draws on critical self-awareness. According to Michael Riffaterre, only a second and separate retroactive reading can produce “significance” by identifying and reconfiguring the various perspectives of the text. Thomas Leitch argues that re-readings allow for an “appreciation of the story through an analysis of the ways in which it achieves its initial effects.” If we all already know what will happen in medieval and early modern texts, what changes for us when we return to them? Do different words, phrases, symbols, and ideas become important when refocused by class, gender, and race? How do these texts have different meanings when read in different contexts? Are re-readings better readings? This panel aims to examine the process of re-reading the medieval and early modern, in revisitations and adaptations.

Language And Agency From Medieval To Early Modern

Nearly a decade ago, Ardis Butterfield proposed that “we cannot understand Englishness without seeking to understand what was then its superior cultural other of Frenchness”. She also argued for the “strangely elusive” notion of medieval Englishness, where “we find ourselves in a verbal world that is both fragmented and plural, where audiences are not merely ‘English’, but multilingual (in varying degrees), partly local, partly international, and from more than one social, cultural, and intellectual background.”​ How do medieval or early modern texts engage with relationships between language(s) and agency? How might gender or education, religious or otherwise, play a part in writers’ engagement with different kinds of agency? How might language(s) grant or withhold agency? What is different or indeed similar between medieval and early modern engagements with language and agency?

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