Monthly Archives: July 2020

CARMEN: The Worldwide Medieval Network – (Virtual) Annual General Meeting 2020

The annual CARMEN open meeting brings together scholars and professionals from across the world in participatory and interactive formats: project development workshops; training and networking; the ‘Forum’ showcase for projects, institutions and research centres; and, just as importantly, opportunities for socializing.

This year’s annual meeting, originally planned to take place in Dublin at Trinity College on 1-2 September 2020, will do all of these things; due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, it will do them online! We are introducing a series of virtual-friendly modifications to the CARMEN formats you are familiar with (or want to familiarize yourself with), and will be welcoming your input on how we can improve this format for a possible hybrid future, enabling people to participate in CARMEN’s international networks in new ways.

The CARMEN annual meeting always has a thematic strand: this year’s is Environment. A Plenary Round Table will take place during the meeting and will be accompanied on Twitter. We now invite proposals for the workshops, which will take place on 1 and 2 September between 2 and 4 pm GMT +1 in webinar format. The organiser of each workshop will be responsible for online hosting, and will provide a link together with a short description; advance registration (by 31 July 2020) will be necessary. Click here for more information.

Please register to join in the meeting here via Eventbrite.

NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute Fellowships

The NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute invites scholars who wish to contribute to the vibrant research culture of NYUAD’s Saadiyat campus to apply for a residential fellowship, starting September 2021.

The Institute welcomes applications from scholars working in all areas of the Humanities related to the study of the Arab world, its rich literature and history, its cultural and artistic heritage, and its manifold connections with other cultures. This includes, among others, Islamic Intellectual History and Culture, any areas of particular relevance to the MENA region, as well as projects thematically connected to existing research projects and initiatives at NYUAD’s divisions of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences (see https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/research.html).

Both distinguished scholars with an established reputation and promising scholars who are at the beginning of their career can apply for a research fellowship. The program awards one-year senior fellowships and one- / two-year postdoctoral fellowships.

Each fellow receives a competitive stipend commensurate with experience, housing, health insurance, work/office space on campus, full access to NYUAD’s library facilities (with close connections to NYU’s main library in New York), research allowance, an opportunity to host a small workshop funded by the Research Institute, and support for travel to and from Abu Dhabi.

We expect successful candidates to commence their appointment on September 1, 2021, pending final approval.

The fellowship program is hosted by the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute. For more information, please visit:
https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/research/centers-labs-and-projects/humanities-research-fellowship-program.html

Applications are due October 1, 2020.

For questions, please reach out to:
Alexandra Sandu (Assistant Program Director): alexandra.sandu@nyu.edu

Laura Bassi Scholarship

The Laura Bassi Scholarship, which awards a total of $8,000 thrice per annum, was established by Editing Press in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed. The scholarships are open to every discipline and the next round of funding will be awarded in August 2020:

Summer 2020
Application deadline: 25 July 2020
Results: 15 August 2020

All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of their employment. Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV through the application portal by the relevant deadline. Further details, previous winners, and the application portal can be found at: https://editing.press/bassi

PhD Opportunity in Early Modern Women’s Writing: Australian National University

Professor Rosalind Smith is looking for a PhD student to work with her at ANU on the future fellowship project Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer. The PhD candidate will work under Professor Smith’s supervision in a small team with two ECR research assistants (Dr Julie Robarts and Jake Arthur), and the scholarship includes a $5k per annum top up and funding to visit archives, go to conferences and build international networks.

For more information and to apply see here.

National Library of Australia Summer Scholarships

Have you started your PhD and require access to the National Library of Australia’s world-class collections? Summer Scholarships support Australian PhD students to spend six weeks at the National Library, from 11 January to 19 February 2021, researching the collections.

Scholars receive a stipend of $6000 to cover travel, accommodation and living costs, access to the Fellows room with office facilities, as well as special and supported access to collections.

Up to five scholarships are available:
Two Norman McCann Scholarships* for research into Australian history, Australian literature, librarianship, archives administration, or museum studies
The Seymour Scholarship* for biographical research
The Carol Moya Mills Scholarship for a scholar from regional or rural Australia
The National Library of Australia Scholarship*, with preference given to Indigenous scholars
*some age limits apply

Applications now close 5pm (AEST), Friday 28 August 2020. Read the Scholarship guidelines and apply here.

Highlights from the Parergon Archives: Words as Weapons

We asked members of Parergon‘s Early Career Committee to tell us about a Parergon article that stood out for them and why they found it valuable for their research. In this post, Francesca Battista discusses Kathleen Neal’s ‘Words as Weapons in the Correspondence of Edward I with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’, Parergon 30.1 (2013), pp. 51-71 [DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2013.0051]

The one-day workshop on Letter Writing in the Middle Ages, held at the Bush House, King’s College London in 2019 and organized by Simon Thomas Parsons, Thomas W. Smith and Anaïs Waag, not only offered a great opportunity to be engaged in interesting debates on medieval epistolary culture, but it also allowed me to meet brilliant scholars and hear about their meaningful work. A stimulating exchange of ideas after the conference with one of the attendees, Amanda McVitty, and the paper presented by Kathleen Neal, introduced me to valuable scholarship on dictamen and related areas of study from Australia and New Zealand, which was unknown to me. Neal’s article that I am going to discuss in this post is part of this story. Her research method represents a great source of inspiration for the dictaminal research I am conducting.

The influence of ars dictaminis on the shaping of chancery style in England was long ago recognized by Kantorowicz, Denholm-Young, and more recently pointed out by Camargo, Richardson, and Grévin, among others. However, the investigation of the ways in which from the thirteenth century dictamen started to be used as a royal political communication tool is still not fully explored.

Neal’s article provides a relevant contribution to the field of investigation, offering a compelling reading of the letters exchanged between Edward I of England and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, during the time period between the Anglo-Welsh wars (1276-77, 1282-83). This correspondence is read drawing attention to its dictaminal shape and interconnected political intent. Furthermore, it also illustrates a method based on the study of the epistolary drafting process for interpreting royal letters, not as “relics of a well-developed medieval bureaucracy,” but rather “as episodes of strategic communication” (p. 52).

The article concentrates on a single letter which is offered as an example of how Edward I’s letters functioned as rhetorical political artifacts in connection to the Anglo-Welsh struggle. It is a royal reply of 1280 to one or two of Llywelyn’s letters which were concerned, above all, with the issue of the possession of Arwystli region. The Treaty of Aberconwy of 1277, which marked the capitulation of Llywelyn to Edward I, left open the Welsh dispute over this land. As a result, rights to it were claimed equally by the Prince of Wales and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, ally of the king. In his letters addressed to the king, Llewelyn complains because the king was not able to settle this dispute in his Parliament. Such criticism resulted in an indirect aggression to the heart of Edward I’s monarchy.

Neal brilliantly shows how Edward’s reply appears to be a rhetorical means of legitimization of the manner of power execution in the hands of the superior party. Accordingly, for example, in the salutatio the address terms of “beloved and faithful”, which were used in line with the Anglo-Norman epistolary practices rather than on the basis of those of the Welsh chancery, stress the Prince of Wales’ subordination to the king and also show who “was willing to conduct their discussion” (p. 61).

Likewise, the hypertrophic narratio would suggest “that a hostile reception was anticipated” and indicates “how important it was in royal and Chancery circles that an English construction of the situation be articulated” (p. 61). It could be also argued that the length of the narratio is an especially significant aspect to be considered as a clear transgression of dictaminal norms. Handbooks of letter writing prescribed that narration had to be brief and concise, and English artes dictandi were not an exception. One of the most relevant merits of this article is its attentive examination of the editorial work involved in the production of this letter. Edward’s letter survives as a draft and all the draft’s changes and deletions represent a conscious use of language which is itself political. Notably, despite the fact that their consideration is necessary for a complete reading of the letter, they had been neglected in previous research. An edition and a translation of the letter, along with the annotation of the deletions and additions in the apparatus, are for the first time provided in the appendix of this article.

In conclusion, as shown by Neal, royal letters extant in the form of draft or not, can be regarded as a fruitful place for the investigation of the monarchy’s dictaminal construction of power. This applies to 13th century Britain, as in the specific case of this paper, but it could be extended to a European level to other royal chanceries. For the richness of its investigation, this article represents a wide range of scholarly interests. It can be especially recommended to historians of medieval Britain and Europe, specialists of dictamen, scholars of political communication and kingship, and researchers of medieval textuality and scribal activity.

Parergon can be accessed via Project MUSE (from Volume 1 (1983)), Australian Public Affairs – Full Text (from 1994), and Humanities Full Text (from 2008). For more information on the current issue and on submitting manuscripts for consideration, please visit https://parergon.org/