Monthly Archives: July 2022

Middle English Ekphrasis: Aesthetics and Socioeconomics in Late Medieval Poetry

Middle English Ekphrasis: Aesthetics and Socioeconomics in Late Medieval Poetry
An online seminar hosted by The University of Western Australia

Date: Wednesday 21 September 2022
Time: 4:00pm AWST / 6:00pm AEST
Venue: Online via Zoom, hosted by The University of Western Australia
Enquiries and to register: marina.gerzic@uwa.edu.au. Please register by Friday 16 September.

Ekphrasis has attracted a long history of scholarship as a pronounced form of aesthetic display in literary texts. Where major touchstones of scholarship on ekphrasis (Heffernan, 1993; Krieger, 1992) had previously been drawn to classical and modern materials, more recent work has begun to take stock of the peculiarity of medieval ekphrasis (Johnston, Knapp and Rouse, 2015). This paper explores some related avenues of enquiry about the nature, significance, and functions of ekphrasis in major Middle English poetry (Chaucer and Alliterative poetry, especially St Erkenwald and the Piers Plowman tradition). Surveying the vocabulary of cultural production available to late medieval poets, the paper suggests that much work on ekphrasis is theoretically antithetical to an understanding of patronage and artistic production in an age before ‘the Arts’ became defined. Instead, I focus on key passages of Middle English poetry to show how the trope of ekphrasis could be used to distinct effect in different texts: binding cultural production (both poetic and plastic) to the socio-economics of patronage; as a hostile, satirical form of verbal display; and as a mystery, a deliberate enigma, in the examples of St Erkenwald and John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes.

Chair
Dr Jane Vaughan (The University of Western Australia)

Speaker
Mike Rodman Jones is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nottingham (UK), and works on medieval and early modern literature. His second monograph is forthcoming in the Studies in Renaissance Literature Series with Boydell and Brewer. He spoke at the “Feeling (for) the Premodern” Symposium at The University of Western Australia in 2016; the paper was published in Exemplaria 30:3 (2018). Email: Mike.rodmanjones@nottingham.ac.uk.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medievial and Early Modern Studies, Inc (ANZAMEMS), the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group, Inc, and the ARC Centre for Excellence for the History of Emotions.

For more information please see the event website.

Sydney University (SSSHARC) Medieval Event

SSSHARC Gilbert Fellow Professor Mariken Teeuwen discusses how digital methods reveal hidden evidence in the marginalia of early medieval manuscripts.

Details
4pm – 6pm
Wednesday 27 July 2022
Nelson Meers Foundation Auditorium
Chau Chak Wing Museum
University of Sydney

‘Practices of Annotating in Medieval Manuscripts’
This lecture will discuss how evidence in the margins of early medieval manuscripts has remained hidden for all but a very select group of researchers, and how it, now that more and more manuscripts are digitized and published in virtual libraries, has become a freely accessible source to peek into the mind of the medieval teacher/student/reader/user of books.

Professor Mariken Teeuwen (Leiden University / Huygens Institute, Netherlands) is a scholar of early medieval textuality whose work has centred on traditions of commentary, marginalia and annotation largely in the Carolingian era, dealing with such figures as Martianus Capella, and John Scottus Eriugena. She currently leads eCodicesNL, a project sponsored by the Dutch Royal Academy comprising a digital repository of medieval manuscripts in Dutch collections.

Chair: A/Professor Mark Byron (English, University of Sydney)

RSVP: this is an in-person event (so please register) but we hope to record the lecture for those who are unable to attend.

Online registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/practices-of-annotating-in-medieval-manuscripts-tickets-383816083237

For more information please contact sssharc.research@sydney.edu.au or mark.byron@sydney.edu.au

Call for Papers: Masculinities and Law in Premodern Europe

Call for Papers: Masculinities and Law in Premodern Europe
Online conference, 15-17 November 2022 (three half-days)

From the twelfth century onwards, a new class of legally trained professionals was enabling profound political and social change as part of increasingly specialised judicial systems. Feminist scholarship has stressed the role of gender in this transformation, with attention to women’s experiences of justice and to the regulation of ‘vices’ such as prostitution and sodomy. However, gender is often overlooked in standard legal histories and accounts of the early legal professions.

This conference aims to draw on the history of masculinities; studies of women, gender and the law; legal history; and feminist legal scholarship to examine masculinities, law and the legal professions in the premodern European world, c.1100-c.1700. The scope is broad, encompassing canon, civil, common, and customary law; and Christian, Jewish, and Muslim legal traditions.

Possible themes include (but are not limited to):
How did men as law-finders and lawmakers construct and perform gender identity?
Authority, legitimacy and gender in premodern judicial thought
Becoming a ‘man of law’: education and disciplinary practices in universities and elsewhere
Masculine institutions: Lawyers’ guilds, the Inns of Court, the French Basoche etc.
Contesting masculinities in the courtroom: lawyers, litigants, jurors and others
Gender in the operation of legal processes and practices
Gendering the spaces of the law
Legal approaches to ‘deviant’ or disruptive masculinities; sexual misconduct and violence
Lawyers, books, literacy, Latinity – gendering access to and production of legal knowledge
Representations of lawyers and judges in drama, literature, art, memorial culture etc.
Historiographical, methodological and theoretical concerns

We invite proposals for individual 20-minute papers or panels/roundtables. Submissions are welcome from scholars at all career stages, including graduate students and independent researchers.

For individual papers: Submit a 250-word abstract and title, and a brief bio.
For panels/roundtables: Submit a single 500-word abstract and title for the session, and brief presenter bios.

Please send proposals to masculinitiesandlaw@gmail.com by 31 August 2022.

Follow us on Twitter @Mascs_and_Law or for further information, please contact conference convener Dr Amanda McVitty, Massey University e.a.mcvitty@massey.ac.nz

CFP: Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Annual Conference

The ASCP provides a broad intellectual forum for scholars working within or in communication with continental philosophy and European philosophical traditions. We welcome papers from philosophers, non-philosophers and anti-philosophers working in any discipline, from diverse backgrounds at any stage of their career.

Details about the 2022 annual conference:
University of Melbourne
28 – 30 November

Keynote Speakers:
Claire Colebrook (Penn State)
Guilia Sissa (UCLA), co-sponsored by the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association
Jessica Whyte (UNSW)

Deadline for submissions: 15 August.


For more details as well as submission guidelines, please go to www.ascp.org.au/conference

The 2022 ASCP conference this year will be part of the Congress of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. www.chass.org.au/congress

Conference Queries: 2022ascp@gmail.com

You can find us on
Web: http://www.ascp.org.au/
Facebook: https://bit.ly/ascpfbgroup
Twitter: https://bit.ly/ascptweets

Constant Mews Prize article “The Tree of Life in Medieval Iconography” open access!

Pippa Salonius’s excellent article, “The Tree of Life in Medieval Iconography” in The Tree of Life, ed. Douglas Estes, Themes in Biblical Narrative, 27 (Brill 2020) was awarded the Constant Mews Prize by ANZAMEMS in 2022.

This article has been made open access for a limited time and is free to download until the end of July!

To view and download the article (free until the end of July!) please visit https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004423756/BP000013.xml

Religious Disbelief and the Emotions CfP

This conference seeks applications for papers of 15-20 minutes concerning the interactions between religious disbeliefs and the emotions in any location or time period up to 1800 C.E.

The conference is hosted by Macquarie University and the Macquarie Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. The conference will be online-only, via Zoom. It is scheduled for 23 and 24 January 2023 at times of day that, it is hoped, will be amenable as much as possible to participants from various locations. Sessions will be recorded and published online for any conference participants to attend concurrently.

Throughout history, religious disbelievers have expressed themselves, sometimes in stark terms with strong emotions. Their beliefs may interact with or stem from emotions responding to hegemonic religious narratives and thought worlds. This conference seeks to bring together experts from a large variety of fields of historical and literary inquiry to help us better understand the extent to which interplays between religious disbeliefs and the emotions vary or remain similar in different time periods, locations, individuals, religious and cultural milieux, textual (or material) genres, and so on.

The time frame for the conference is as follows:
-July 2022: publication of CfP
-31 October 2022: deadline for proposals
-15 November 2022: notification of outcomes to proposals
-23-24 January 2023: online conference
-30 April 2023: deadline for submission of written papers

Please email proposals to kegan.brewer@mq.edu.au. Proposals should be 200-300 words, and include a brief bio of 100-200 words. Any questions about the conference can also be directed to the same email address. Thank you!

Call for Submissions: Metropolitan Museum Journal

Call for Submissions: Metropolitan Museum Journal

The Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed Metropolitan Museum Journal invites submissions of original research on works of art in the Museum’s collection.

The Journal publishes Articles and Research Notes. All texts must take works of art in the collection as the point of departure. Articles contribute extensive and thoroughly argued scholarship, whereas research notes are often smaller in scope, focusing on a specific aspect of new research or presenting a significant finding from technical analysis. The maximum length for articles is 8,000 words (including endnotes) and 10–12 images, and for research notes 4,000 words with 4–6 images.

The process of peer review is double-anonymous. Manuscripts are reviewed by the Journal Editorial Board, composed of members of the curatorial, conserva­tion, and scientific departments, as well as external scholars.

Articles and Research Notes in the Journal appear both in print and online, and are accessible via MetPublications and the Journal’s home page on the University of Chicago Press site.

The deadline for submissions for Volume 58 (2023) is September 15, 2022.

Submission guidelines: www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/met/instruct

Please send materials to: journalsubmissions@metmuseum.org

Inspiration from the Collection: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection

View the Journal: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/loi/met

University of Canterbury PhD Scholarships

The UC Aho Hīnātore | UC Accelerator Scholarship consists of a 12-week research project for which the recipients receive a stipend of $6,000 followed by a 3 year doctoral scholarship covering fees and paying a stipend of $28,000 per annum. Up to 70 scholarships are available for 2022/2023 and are awarded by Te Kaunihera | Council of the University.

For full details: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/get-started/scholarships/types/uc-aho-hntore–uc-accelerator-scholarship/

There are a number of eligibility conditions that all applicants will need to meet. The 12-week research project must include a minimum of $1,500 co-funding from an external partner or Department/Faculty/School funds. Funding for a limited number of suitable candidates to work on a project relating to the King James Bible is potentially available. Any interested applicants for this project should contact Dr Chris Jones (chris.jones@canterbury.ac.nz).

Faculty Research Coordinator position available at Macquarie University

For further information on the role and how to apply please see the Macquarie website.

The Faculty Research Coordinator supports the development and delivery of Researcher Development across the Faculty.

The Faculty Research Coordinator will need to liaise effectively with key staff across the Faculty and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research portfolio and other central portfolios as well as other faculties.

The Faculty Research Coordinator reports to the Faculty Research Manager. The position works closely with other members of the Faculty and central support units, to provide timely and professional support to a range of projects related to the Faculty’s research.

There are 3 positions available, with one position being vacant in each of the following facility’s:

Macquarie Business School (MQBS)

Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences (FMHHS)

Faculty of Arts

Key Accountabilities:

Manage and support projects relating to researcher development, in collaboration with other members of the Faculty Research Office and Research Services.

Undertake background research, environmental scans, and produce high-quality content (including internal publications, promotional materials, online collateral etc.) in order to support team projects.

Coordinate the Faculty Researcher Development program, both the content and the interface with portals linked to staff development at MQ.

Develop an understanding of current and emerging trends in researcher development, nationally and globally.

Plan and deliver opportunities to connect and convene with stakeholders, including engagement forums, training workshops, and communities of practice.

Support operational and other planning and reporting initiatives, in collaboration with the Faculty Research Manager.

Collaborate with the Faculty Research Manager to develop and implement the Faculty Early Career Research (ECR) strategy and provide ongoing expert advice, guidance and support to the

Faculty’s Early Career Researcher Network to assist in the development of their research activities.

Analyse data and report on all aspects of Faculty research activities, using data extracted from internal and external research management systems to help guide the development of strategic initiatives, track Faculty research performance, and promote Faculty achievements.

Undertake Faculty research-based projects as requested by the Associate Dean, Research and Faculty Research Manager

In collaboration with the Faculty Research Manager, consolidate the Faculty’s research submissions including ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia) and the Engagement and Impact Assessments and make recommendations for improving faculty procedures.

Represent the Faculty on various network groups on behalf of the Faculty Research Manager as required.

Under the direction of the Faculty Research Manager develop and implement workshops for School staff to increase awareness of research initiatives. Provide coordination of staff in support of workshop coordination.

As requested by the SRM, act as the key liaison between the School, Research Services and relevant other offices across the University regarding internal and external research applications, collaborative research proposals and processes.