‘Skin In Medieval And Early Modern Worlds’
Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group/UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Annual Conference
13 October, 2018
The University of Western Australia
Keynote Speaker: Dr Lisa Beaven (La Trobe University), ‘Skin and Stone: Metamorphosis and the Villa Culture of Seventeenth-Century Rome’.
Skin as a material served a vital role in premodern economies. It was an essential ingredient in clothing and tools, and it formed the primary material for the manuscripts on which knowledge and ideas were recorded and preserved. Beyond the many uses for the skins of animals, the idea of skin interested artists, scholars, and theologians. As a boundary or surface, skin presented a range of symbolic possibilities. Images of skin, such as its piercing, often acted as metaphors for the uncovering of secrets or the interpretation of allegory. Premodern observers, likewise, often believed that the appearance and colour of an individual’s skin indicated truths about their inner nature. Diseases of the skin, such as leprosy, attracted legislation and intellectual speculation, drawing together the immaterial world of ideas regarding skin and the treatment of actual human skins.
We are interested in papers that address the many premodern uses of skin, as well representations of and ideas about skin. This conference is multidisciplinary and wide-ranging; we welcome papers from the fields of book culture and manuscript studies, history, material culture, medicine, disability studies, race studies, crime and punishment, art, literature, and theology.
The conference organisers invite proposals for 20-minute papers.
Please send a paper title, 250-word abstract, and a short (no more than 100-word) biography to pmrg.cmems.conference@gmail.com by 31 May 2018.
Bursary
One $500 travel bursary is available on a competitive basis for an ECR (no more than 5 years from the award of their PhD) who does not have substantive academic employment and whose conference paper is accepted. The bursary will be awarded on the basis of merit and the paper’s relevance to the symposium topic. Should you wish to apply for the travel bursary, please send a short CV (no more than 1 page), along with your paper title, abstract, and biography by 31 May 2018.
