Daily Archives: 30 August 2018

National Library of Australia’s Asia Study Grants and Summer Scholarships

Applications for the National Library of Australia’s Asia Study Grants and Summer Scholarships are now open and will close on 30 September 2018.

The Asia Study Grants assist scholars in Australia to undertake research relating to Asia through a four week period of intensive access to the NLA’s Asian language and Asia-related collections. 

The Summer Scholarships support younger scholars and a scholar from rural or regional Australia undertaking postgraduate research, who require special access to the Library’s collections. Summer Scholarships are for researchers aged under 35 undertaking PhD studies, plus one open age scholarship.

More information can be found on the NLA’s website. 

CFP: John Gower Society at ICMS Kalamazoo, 2019

The John Gower Society is still seeking submissions for two panels, and for one roundtable (co-sponsored with the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS)), at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) 2019, Kalamazoo, MI.

1) Gower Reads the Classics

2) Revisiting John Gower’s Poetic: Papers in Honor of RF Yeager

3) Practical Approaches to Teaching Gower: A Roundtable

Panel details are provided below. Proposals must be received by 15 September (see guidelines in the ICMS CFP https://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call).

Submit proposals to:

Brian Gastle, Western Carolina University
Dept of English, 305 Coulter Hall, Cullowhee NC 28723
Phone: (828) 227-3922; Fax: (828) 227-7266
Email: bgastle@wcu.edu [Preferred method of submission]

1) Gower Reads the Classics

John Gower’s debts to the Latin classics have been long acknowledged. His intimate familiarity with Ovid’s works has been many times demonstrated. Less well examined are his borrowings from other ancient sources, either in their original form, or received by him through medieval filters: the example of the Ovide Moralisé comes to mind. Gower’s use of the Latin Classics, as Andrew Galloway notes in the recent Routledge Research Companion to John Gower, exemplifies his “participation in a pan-European contemporary fascination with using Antiquity.” This session intends to bring such streams of classical influence into sharper focus by returning attention to Gower’s classical reading: what did he know, where did he find it, how, subsequently, did he turn what he read to use in his work?

2) Revisiting John Gower’s Poetic: Papers in Honor of RF Yeager

Gower studies owes an immense debt to both the scholarship and the leadership of RF Yeager. Having authored, edited, or co-edited over eighteen books and collections, and over three dozen articles and essays, he has mentored countless junior scholars and fostered and shepherded the study of Gower over the past forty years. As President of the International John Gower Society, he has grown membership in the society from the handful that begun the Society over thirty-five years ago to almost 200 members today, and he has organized each of the five Gower Society Congresses which draws scholars from around the world. Simply put, his influence on Gower studies is second to none. Given his 2018 retirement from the University of West Florida, and his transition to Emeritus faculty, the John Gower Society would like to honor Bob Yeager with a session of papers presented in his honor and that reflect his significant influence on the field.

3) Practical Approaches to Teaching Gower: A Roundtable

This roundtable, co-sponsored by the John Gower Society and the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS), seeks short presentations (5-6 minutes) which focus on practical pedagogical issues and strategies involved in teaching John Gower’s works in classes of all levels (from k-12 to graduate). The panel is particularly interested in practical approaches and welcomes lesson plans, assignment descriptions, examples of student projects, and teaching resources. TEAMS Middle English Text Series (METS) publishes and hosts online Gower’s works (in ME and in translation of the shorter Anglo-French and Latin texts), and it is an apt time for such a panel given that more selections of Gower’s works are appearing in anthologies (in both Modern and Middle English), and the MLA recently published its MLA Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. This panel seeks to provide a venue for sharing approaches to, and materials for, teaching Gower in a variety of classroom settings using these newly established and emerging print and online resources.

The John Gower Society is an open and inclusive organization that seeks to foster collegial, productive, and engaged scholarship and teaching related to Gower and his works; it welcomes submissions from all scholars, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, cultural identity, dis/ability, sexual or affectional orientation, or gender identification.

“Fro this day forth I thenke change / And speke of thing is noght so strange, / Which every kinde hath upon honde, / And wherupon the world mot stonde, / And hath don sithen it began, / And schal whil ther is any man; / And that is love, of which I mene.”

 

Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium: Clash of Civilizations?

The Australian Academy of the Humanities 49th Symposium will be held 15-16 November 2018 at the State Library of NSW, Sydney. Annual Fellows’ events and meetings will occur 16-17 November 2018 in Sydney. The theme for the 49th Symposium is Clash of Civilisations? Where are we now?

This event is open to all, and will bring together a large cross-section of Academy Fellows, scholars, early career researchers and members of the broader community, especially those working in education, policy, and community development.

Twenty-five years ago, American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington posited the question ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ suggesting religious and cultural identity would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War era (Foreign Affairs, 1993). He predicted that, as the West began to develop a better understanding of the cultural fundamentals underlying other civilisations, Western civilization and its values would cease to be regarded as ‘universal’. This has certainly proved to be the case.

The Symposium will reassess Huntington’s question, in light of recent global developments and historical inquiries, and consider how the concept of ‘the clash of civilisations’ has been used as an enduring rhetorical device for explaining divisions between groups and across time and place. It will explore modern and ancient cross-cultural encounters and their contemporary implications in the spheres of history, politics, and religion, as well as their cultural expressions in literature, film, and the arts.