Monthly Archives: September 2020

ACU Medieval and Early Modern Seminar Series

The members of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies program at ACU are delighted to invite you to attend our next virtual seminar on 15 October at 2:00 PM (AEDT/GMT+11): “Blood rain, crucifixions and instruments of the Passion: Christ, visuality and religious identity in sixteenth-century prodigy books,” presented by Jenny Spinks (University of Melbourne)

For more information and an abstract, please visit our seminar webpage. To RSVP, please email: Mems.seminar@acu.edu.au.

Parergon 37.1 preview: Taboo or Magic Practice?

We asked contributors to the current issue of Parergon to give us some additional insights into their research and the inspirations for their articles. In this post, Andrea Maraschi at the University of Bari, Italy, discusses ‘Taboo or Magic Practice? Cannibalism as Identity Marker for Giants and Human Heroes in Medieval Iceland’. DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2020.0056

My name is Andrea, and I am currently teaching Medieval History at the University of Bari, in Italy. My research career started at the University of Bologna with studies on food habits in medieval times, but I soon realized that I did not want to commit to one field of studies only. My passion for medieval society was growing fast, and when in 2014 I won a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Iceland, I began to examine connections between food and magic practice in the medieval North. This article represents one of the first results of the wonderful working experience I had in Reykjavík, and it is focused on the role of cannibalism in Old Norse literature. Now, cannibalism had long intrigued me as an extreme response to hunger and famine in the Middle Ages, and – as such – I used to associate it with desperation and survival instinct. Reading the Old Norse legendary sagas, however, it struck me that cannibalism was described as a marker of Otherness and as a response to survival instinct only in the case of certain peculiar creatures: trolls, that is, caricatured representations of the uncivilized. However, the human protagonists of the sagas practice cannibalism not for the sake of survival, but to absorb magical powers from the eaten: to them, anthropophagy is a prestigious form of knowledge which is handed down from father to son.

Not all scholars agree as to the usefulness of legendary sagas as sources to understand the mentality and culture of saga writers: after all, fornaldarsögur abound with strange creatures and supernatural elements. This nonetheless, in my article I argue that scenes of cannibalism suggest that there is more than mere fantasy at the heart of such stories. Giants symbolized the idea of “barbarian”: they were huge, awkward, they lived in caves or small huts, they did not know politics, they ate human beings. In other words, they were the antithesis of civilization, but of a historically reliable idea of civilization. Indeed, the Old Norse trolls ate horses as well. Horsemeat was a critical bone of contention at the time of the conversion of Iceland, and the Church often associated its consumption with pagan rituals. The Old Norse trolls may be, then, caricatured representations of the pagan “uncivilized” past, from the perspective of the Christian saga authors. However, there also emerges a “civilized” and dignified version of cannibalism which was practiced by the human élite of the sagas, according to the very ancient principles of “sympathetic magic”. This form of anthropophagy is no less interesting in historical and cultural terms: many historical sources from the late medieval North (handbooks of magic, leechbooks, etc.) show that the notions of sympathy (“like produces like”) were applied in the real world, and not only in the fictional world of the sagas.

This analysis of magical and non-magical cannibalism in fornaldarsögur was one of the triggers that induced me to write a book on the application and circulation of the laws of sympathy in the Middle Ages, between magic, religion and science, which is currently in course of publication: Similia similibus curantur. Cannibalismo, grafofagia, e “magia” simpatetica nel Medioevo (500-1500), Spoleto: Cisam, 2020.

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/

CFP From Combat to Commemoration

Veteran Politics and Memory: A Global Perspective

Department of History, University of Warwick
16th and 17th April 2021

From the fields of Gettysburg to the beaches of Normandy, the participation and presence of former soldiers has been an integral part of the memorial culture of many conflicts. As survivors of war, veterans are often portrayed a group imbued with a unique knowledge whose experiences should not be forgotten. Yet while public commemorations have sought to establish consensus about the meaning of the past, veterans’ memories have also been a source of conflict and contestation, engaged in struggles over rights, recognition, and the authority to remember the past and speak for the future.

In a recent article in War & History, Grace Huxford et al. note that the historically unprecedented number of veterans across the world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has ensured not just that veterans ‘occupy a significant place in modern history but that they are also a vital lens through which to analyse the changing relationship between war and society’. Veterans, however, are from being a modern phenomenon –estimates suggest that a larger proportion of the English population fought in the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century than in World War One. Moreover, though veteran studies has become a rich field of interdisciplinary enquiry, studies tend to be embedded in their own geographic and historical contexts: the transtemporal and transnational study of veterans remains in its infancy.

This conference seeks to bring together scholars from across time and space to explore the experience of veterans, and particularly the politics of veteran memory and commemoration, from a global, comparative perspective. We hope to publish the resulting papers in an edited collection that will approach veteran memory from a range of different disciplinary, temporal, and geographic perspectives.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that discuss any aspect of veteran politics and memory, from the ancient world to the present. Complete panel proposals are also very welcome (panels/papers which seek to explore different conflicts/countries/periods are especially encouraged). Possible themes include, but are by no means limited to:

• Commemoration and memory
• Veteran social movements and associations
• Veteran cultural contributions (documentary evidence, art, etc.)
• Political power of veterans
• Veteran trauma, health and emotions
• Veteran protest and dissent
• (Inter)national veteran networks
• Family and intergenerational memory
• Monuments, statues, and re-enactments
• Travel and battlefield tourism
• Museums and heritage

Please submit paper abstracts (max. 300 words) and brief bio(s) to both imogen.peck@warwick.ac.uk and timo.schrader@warwick.ac.uk by 29th November 2020. Participants will be notified of decisions by the end of December 2020.


Sydney Observatory Residency Program

The inaugural Sydney Observatory Residency Program provides a supportive environment for researchers and creatives to undertake a project relating to the Observatory’s disciplines, collection and programs. Residencies are open to established and emerging academic researchers, artists, scientists and creative organisations, with interdisciplinary collaborations between art and science encouraged.

The program offers space in-kind at the Observatory alongside the opportunity for residents to collaborate with curators on projects that engage audiences with the Observatory collection through the development of public programs.

In its over 160 years, the Observatory has led many significant projects, including the creation of the colonies first meteorological records, the chartering of over 430,000 stars in the southern sky and has employed dozens of female ‘computers’ and scientists to measure the stars. Government Astronomers worked and lived in the building until 1982 when Sydney Observatory became part of the Powerhouse.

The Residency Program operates on a seasonal model, with residents undertaking 4–12 week placements and further extends the Powerhouse’s support of contemporary creative and scientific practice and research.

Expressions of interest are now open until 30 September 2020. To apply register your interest here.

PhD Candidate/Assistant or Postdoc Position at the University of Bern, Switzerland

Prof. Annette Kern-Stähler is looking to select a Postdoc or a PhD candidate/assistant (with an MA or equivalent degree) interested in pursuing their Post-doc / PhD in medieval English literature and culture under her supervision while working part-time as teaching-cum-research assistant in the Department of English at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

POSITION: 50% PhD Candidate/Assistantship or 80% Postdoc starting January 2021 (or later, negotiable).

For more details including requirements and how to apply please see the attached. Applications close 30 October 2020.