Monthly Archives: November 2019

CFP Generosity and Avarice in Medieval Europe

Generosity and Avarice in Medieval Europe: University of Nottingham, 23-24 April 2020

From the depictions of generosity and avarice in art and literature, to the interactions amongst neighbours within local communities, to the diplomatic work undertaken within and between polities, the relationship between these distinct but intertwined themes have been grappled with by medieval contemporaries and modern scholars alike. This conference aims to bring together medievalists of all fields and disciplines interested in the understanding and practice of generosity, avarice, and the relationship between the two in Europe between c. 400 and c. 1550. The committee welcomes suggestions for sessions beyond those outlined here and encourages as broad an interpretation of the theme as possible. Topics to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:

· Patronage
· Education
· Ideas of social responsibility
· Gender roles
· Materialities
· Spirituality
· Economy and finance
· Morality
· Diplomatic relations
· Family roles
· Sexuality
· Visual and literary depictions of generosity and avarice

We welcome contributions from scholars at any stage of study or career. For individual papers of twenty minutes in length, please submit a proposal of c. 250-words. If you plan to submit a panel proposal, please include no more than three speakers and submit a c. 300-word overview of the panel with proposed speakers/respondents (and chair, if applicable) and provisional paper titles.

Please submit all proposals via email to ahxjlca@nottingham.ac.uk by Friday 13th December 2019.

Find us on twitter @Generosity2020 or visit the conference website https://generosityandavarice.wordpress.com/ for more information and updates.

New member publication: Making the Medieval Relevant

Congratulations to current ANZAMEMS president Chris Jones on the publication of a new collection, Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving our Understanding of the Present (De Gruyter, 2019) co-edited with Conor Kostick and Klaus Oschema. The volume also includes a contribution from ANZAMEMS member and Parergon Reviews Editor Hélène Sirantoine.  

When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society.

This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance.

Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middle Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader
considerations.

Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.

Making the Medieval Relevant is available for open-access download here: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/489086. Open access is supported by funding from the British Academy, the Mediävistenverband e.V., the University of Canterbury (NZ) and the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany).  The book will be discussed on the Pat Kenny show on Irish radio network Newstalk, which will later be released as a podcast.

ANZAMEMS members wishing to promote their research through the ANZAMEMS newsletter are invited to email the editor, Lisa Rolston.

Call for History of Emotions Manuscript Proposals

Announcing a new series on the history of emotions, published by Bloomsbury and edited by Peter Stearns and Susan Matt.

Editorial Board: Rob Boddice, Pia Campeggiani, Angelika Messner, Javier Moscoso, Charles Zika

We are seeking proposals for monographs which explore emotions in history. We seek to create a truly international series, with works on feelings from across the globe, from the ancient world to the present. We really hope to use the series to promote varied and imaginative work in this growing scholarly field. If interested, please send a short précis to pstearns@gmu.edu or smatt@weber.edu.

New member publication: New Saints in Late-Mediaeval Venice

Congratulations to ANZAMEMS member Karen McCluskey on the publication of her new book, New Saints in Late-Mediaeval Venice, 1200–1500: a typological study (Routledge, 2019).

This book focuses on the comparatively unknown cults of new saints in late-mediaeval Venice. These new saints were near-contemporary citizens who were venerated by their compatriots without official sanction from the papacy. In doing so, the book uncovers a sub-culture of religious expression that has been overlooked in previous scholarship.

The study highlights a myriad of hagiographical materials, both visual and textual, created to honour these new saints by members of four different Venetian communities: The Republican government; the monastic orders, mostly Benedictine; the mendicant orders; and local parishes. By scrutinising the hagiographic portraits described in painted vita panels, written vitae, passiones, votive images, sermons and sepulchre monuments, as well as archival and historical resources, the book identifies a specifically Venetian typology of sanctity tied to the idiosyncrasies of the city’s site and history.

By focusing explicitly on local typological traits, the book produces an intimate and complex portrait of Venetian society and offers a framework for exploring the lived religious experience of late-mediaeval societies beyond the lagoon. As a result, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Venice, lived religion, hagiography, mediaeval history and visual culture.

For more information including table of contents please see https://www.routledge.com/New-Saints-in-Late-Mediaeval-Venice-12001500-A-Typological-Study/McCluskey/p/book/9781138478008

ANZAMEMS members wishing to promote their research through the ANZAMEMS newsletter are invited to email the editor, Lisa Rolston. 

CFP Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum

41st Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:
Scent and Fragrance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Keene State College
Keene, NH, USA
Friday and Saturday April 17-18, 2020

Call for Papers and Sessions
We are delighted to announce that the 41st Medieval and Renaissance Forum: Scent and Fragrance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will take place on Friday, April 17 and Saturday April 18, 2020 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. 

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) or panel proposals that discuss smell and fragrance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Papers and sessions, however, need not be confined to this theme but may cover other aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history, and music.

This year’s keynote speaker is Deirdre Larkin, Managing Horticulturist at The Cloisters Museum and Gardens from 2007 to 2013, who will speak on “Every Fragrant Herb: The Medieval Garden and the Gardens of The Cloisters.”

Deirdre Larkin is a horticulturist and historian of plants and gardens. She holds an MA in the history of religions from Princeton University and received her horticultural training at the New York Botanical Garden. She was associated with the Gardens of The Cloisters for more than twenty years and was responsible for all aspects of their development, design, and interpretation. Ms. Larkin was the originator of and principal contributor to the Medieval Garden Enclosed blog, published on the MMA website from 2008 through 2013. Ms. Larkin lectures frequently for museums, historical societies, and horticultural organizations. In 2017, she was a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Humanities Institute of the New York Botanical Garden, where she researched the fortunes and reputations of medieval European plants now naturalized in North America. Her gardens in upstate New York serve as a laboratory for further investigations in the field.

Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome. Please indicate your status (undergraduate, graduate, or faculty), affiliation (if relevant), and full contact information (including email address) on your proposal.

We welcome undergraduate sessions, but ask that students obtain a faculty member’s approval and sponsorship.  

Please submit abstracts, audio/visual needs, and full contact information to Dr. Robert G. Sullivan, Assistant Forum Director at sullivan@german.umass.edu.

Abstract deadline: January 15, 2020

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2020

As always, we look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene in April!

Western Civilisation in the Twenty-First Century

Registration is now open for ‘Western Civilisation in the Twenty-First Century’, to be held on 20-21 February 2020 at the University of Adelaide.

This symposium provides a moment to reflect on the concept of Western Civilisation today, not just as a topic of historical interest but an idea that continues to hold a significant political function. What role do the histories that we write and teach play in the production of discourses of ‘western civilisation’ or resistance to it? What role do historians have in shaping ideas about the past in the present? And what responsibility do we have towards ‘western civilisation’ as a discourse? What is the future of ‘Western Civilisation’, both as taught in universities and in the public sphere?

This event is being supported by ANZAMEMS. Registration is free and ANZAMEMS is funding travel bursaries to facilitate attendance for postgraduates, early career scholars and those without institutional support.

To register, please follow the registration link from the conference homepage: https://westernciv2020.wordpress.com/

For further information on bursaries and to apply, see https://westernciv2020.wordpress.com/bursaries/

For information on the conference venue and nearby accommodation, see https://westernciv2020.wordpress.com/location/

CFP Viator: Looking Ahead: Global Encounters in the North Atlantic, ca. 350–1300

A special dossier in Viator

Co-edited by Nahir Otaño Gracia, Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, and Erica Weaver

In the last few years, several urgent interventions have begun to reshape medieval studies as a more capacious and inclusive field. Scholars such as Geraldine Heng, Monica Green, and Michael Gomez have expanded our understanding of the multifaceted interactions between and among Africa, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere, while Adam Miyashiro and Mary Rambaran-Olm have urged us to reassess the North Atlantic in particular. Traditionally, scholars have tended to work within national borders or to focus on how North Atlantic cultures changed the rest of the globe rather than how they were themselves changed by global interactions, with drastic consequences for our field––especially for our earliest periods.

In order to continue these important conversations and to expand what our scholarship can look like going forward, this special essay cluster seeks to provide a platform for early-career scholars to propose new critical directions for the study of the early medieval North Atlantic, broadly encompassing ca. 350–1300. We thus invite short, rigorous interventions (2000–3500 words each), in the model of the popular conference genre of “lightning talks.” In particular, we seek imaginative new work that expands the contours of early medieval studies and challenges, or transgresses, its standard disciplinary, temporal, and linguistic boundaries. Following the example set by the IONA: Islands of the North Atlantic conferences, we reject the unproductive disciplinary divides that have separated the study of England, Wales, Ireland, Francia, Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, Africa, and even the Mediterranean both from each other and from points further afield along the Atlantic rim and beyond. We also aim to break down the divisions that have artificially separated Late Antiquity and the early and high Middle Ages. We are intentionally leaving this call for papers very broad, because we come from the perspective that the global does not exclude the local, and vice-versa. Moreover, the insular can be archipelagic. We welcome essays that bring together North Atlantic and Mediterranean Studies, or that read what has been seen as national literature from a transnational perspective.

In the spirit of emerging from our own linguistic silos and in Viator’s usual practice, we thus welcome work from scholars writing in English, Spanish, and French. Additionally, we particularly invite work from graduate students, postdocs, independent scholars, and members of the precariat as well as contributions that are explicitly feminist, queer, anti-racist, and decolonial. We would like to be as inclusive as possible, so please contact us if you have any questions.

Short abstracts of around 200 words are due by December 2 to ViatorIssue@gmail.com, with essays to be submitted by January 15.

Folger Institute Research Fellowships 2020-21

www.folger.edu/institute/fellowships

The Folger Shakespeare Library is embarking on a major renovation project to commence in early 2020. While this work is underway, the Folger Institute is committed to continuing its support of collections-based research, and to providing scholars with the resources they need to pursue and advance their work. The renovation offers the Institute the opportunity to create new kinds of awards, to make fellowships more adaptable, and to forge new relationships with archives, collections, libraries, and museums around the world.

Fellowship awards will be $3,500 to support four continuous weeks of work. The deadline for applications is January 1, 2020. Fellowships may be undertaken between July 2020 and May 2021.

Applicants should make a strong case for their proposed topic’s importance, its relevance to a field of study broadly supported by the Folger Library’s collections and programs, and the originality and sophistication of its approach. They should also describe the proposed location(s) of their work, with a justification of why and how this agenda will advance their project. Here are some scenarios an applicant might propose:

• A researcher is planning a trip to multiple archives in order to consult a range of rare materials, all in one trip.
• A researcher requests access to select electronic resources while writing from home.
• A researcher needs the dedicated time to work with a local collection.
• A researcher wishes to conduct research at a repository which is non-traditional, under-funded, or under-utilized.

The Folger has also arranged for a select number of archives, collections, libraries, and museums, without research fellowship endowments of their own, to host Folger fellows at their institutions. Each of these awards comes with an assurance of availability of collections items, space to work, and a contact person for reference consultations. Learn more about hosting partnerships at Jamestown Rediscovery, The John Rylands Research Institute, the Kislak Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the Wellcome Collection.

Apply now online. Deadline for research fellowships is January 1, 2020.

Parergon Reviews Editor

Dr Hélène Sirantoine, the Reviews Editor of Parergon, has signalled her intention to step down from the role at the next ANZAMEMS AGM (tentatively scheduled for April 2020) and so we are seeking a new Reviews Editor. Members interested in further details about this position vacancy should contact Parergon Editor Professor Susan Broomhall (editor@parergon.org) or Dr Hélène Sirantoine (reviews@parergon.org)

CFP Field of Cloth of Gold Conference 2020

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Field of Cloth of Gold and as part of the AHRC funded Network “Henry VIII on Tour: Tudor Palaces and Royal Progresses”, Historic Royal Palaces will be hosting a two-day conference on 29-30 June 2020 at Hampton Court Palace.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
• Simon Thurley
• Mary Hill Cole, Mary Baldwin University
• Glenn Richardson, St Mary’s University
• Tracy Borman, Historic Royal Palaces (Introduction)

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes reflecting the conference theme. In particular, we encourage papers that examine not only that most spectacular of royal progresses, the 1520 Field of Cloth of Gold expedition itself, but the phenomenon of royal progresses more generally, including the logistics of royal travel and the politics of progress. We would also like to explore broader aspects of the Tudor court on progress, including the social, religious, chivalric and cultural implications of royal progresses (e.g. the hunting, jousting, music, drama, art and architecture associated with the royal palaces and other progress venues). Papers addressing a comparative European or international aspect of the theme are welcomed as, too, are contributions that consider the theme from the point of view of heritage management, heritage science and curatorial practice. We encourage proposals from scholars at all stages of their career, including early career researchers and PhD students (for whom a discounted registration rate will be available).

Please send abstracts of 250 words to Dr Laura Tompkins, Research Manager, HRP (Laura.Tompkins@hrp.org.uk) by 12 January 2020.

This information is also available on the HRP website.

Organising Committee: Anthony Musson (HRP), Tom Betteridge (Brunel), John Cooper (York), Suzannah Lipscomb (Roehampton), Alden Gregory (HRP)