Ceræ invites abstract submissions on the theme of Dreams, Visions, and Utopias for the journals second annual conference to be held online on 26-27 April 2025.
The deadline for abstract submissions for the conference is 28 February 2025.
The Ecclesiastical History Society welcomes paper proposals for its conference, themed ‘Creed, Councils and Canons’, to be held in Edinburgh on 15-17 July 2025.
Proposals should be submitted by 15 April 2025. For further details, see the conference website and below flyer.
Ceræ invites article submissions on the theme of Dreams, Visions, and Utopias for volume 12 of the journal.
The journal is interested in receiving submissions related to both the idealistic and the critical, considering the variety of ways that medieval and early modern constructions of dreams, visions, and utopias have expanded and/or delimited the future.
There is no geographic or disciplinary limitation for submissions, which can consider any aspect of the medieval or early modern world or its reception. Non-themed submissions will also be considered.
The deadline for themed submissions is 30 April 2025.
The research project Moved Apart is pleased to announce that its second conference Early Modern Global Separation will take place at Lund University on 20-22 August 2025.
This conference seeks proposals that contribute to further our knowledge of how separation was communicated in different parts of the world (Africa, America, Asia, Europe) in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The deadline for submitting a proposal is 3 March 2025 and you will be notified of the results by the end of March 2025.
Note that there may be opportunities for financial support for early career scholars. Please flag this in your proposal.
The University of Oslo has recently launched the Great Viking Survey, a wide-ranging study to explore how people across the world perceive and engage with the vikings as history and heritage, and to map the many ways in which contemporary media and academia shape these views. This online survey invites anyone, anywhere, over 18, to share their thoughts on the iconic viking warrior figure, as well as the enduring legacy and memory of the vikings in the modern world. In doing so, researchers will be able to shine an unprecedented light on the means and mechanisms that allow images and myths of the vikings to be shaped and spread in the public sphere.
The survey is part of the Making a Warrior-project, a pan-Nordic network of scholars examining the concept of viking ‘warriorhood’ and its representations past and present. By determining how ideas and images of vikings are shared among different communities and demographics, the project is able inform future outreach and cultural heritage initiatives that respond to public interest, while fostering a nuanced appreciation of the Viking Age.
The Great Viking Survey is now live at vikingsurvey.org, and remains open until mid-May 2025.
The associated press release from the University of Oslo can be found here.
The Norman Conquest brought about great change in England: new customs, a new language, and new political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. It also saw the emergence of an Anglo-Norman intellectual culture, with an innate curiosity in the past. For the pre-eminent twelfth-century English historians – such as Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon – the pre-Conquest past was of abiding interest. While they recognised the disruptions of the Conquest, this was accompanied by an awareness that it was but one part of a longer story, stretching back to sub-Roman Britain. This concept of a continuum of English history that traversed the events of 1066 would prove enduring, being transmitted into and by the works of successive generations of medieval English historians.
This collection sheds new light on the perceptions and uses of the pre-Conquest past in post-Conquest historiography, drawing on a variety of approaches, from historical and literary studies, to codicology, historiography, memory theory and life writing. Its essays are arranged around two main interlinked themes: post-Conquest historiographical practice and how identities – institutional, regional and personal – could be constructed in reference to this past. Alongside their analyses of the works of Eadmer, William and Henry, contributors offer engaging studies of the works of such authors as Aelred of Rievaulx, Orderic Vitalis, Gervase of Canterbury, John of Worcester, Richard of Devizes, and Walter Map, as well as numerous anonymous hagiographies and histories.
Introduction: The Pre-Conquest Past in Post-Conquest England – Matthew Firth
Part I – Writing the Past 1. The Authorship of Late-Eleventh-Century Annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – Daniel Anlezark 2. Making All Things New: Eadmer of Canterbury and the Pre-Conquest Church – Eleanor Parker 3. Usable Pasts in Angevin England: Gervase of Canterbury and Richard of Devizes – Michael Staunton 4. ‘A Little Handbook of Chronology’: Contexts and Purpose of Libellus de primo Saxonum aduentu – Stanislav Mereminskii 5. The Libellus de gestis regum Anglorum, a Cistercian Excerpt of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum from Late-Twelfth-Century Normandy – Elisabeth van Houts 6. What’s in a Tomb? Language and Landscape in Robert Mannyng’s Story of Inglande – Jacqueline M. Burek
Part II – Writing Identity 7. ‘Terre ipse loqueretur’: Pre-Conquest Space in Post-Conquest Monastic Institutions – Cynthia Turner Camp 8. ‘I will give myself to the work of reading history’: Lessons from the past in the Relatio de Standardo of Aelred of Rievaulx – Connor C. Wilson 9. King Offa of Mercia: Damnatio Memoriae or Vir Mirabilis? Transmission and Adaptation in Post-Conquest England – Julian Calcagno 10. ‘Cesare splendidior’: Anglo-Norman Memories of Æthelflæd of Mercia – Matthew Firth 11. Eadric Silvaticus: Walter Map’s Parable on the Colonisation of Wales – Kimberly Lifton
The book is currently available at 20% off with the discount code AUP20.
Processes of making in early modern Europe were both tacit and embodied. Whether making pottery, food, or textiles, the processes of manual production rested on an intersensory connection between mind, body, and object. This volume focuses on the body of the maker to ask how processes of making, experimenting, experiencing, and reconstructing illuminate early modern assumptions and understandings around manual labour and material life. Answers can be gleaned through both recapturing past skills and knowledge of making and by reconstructing past bodies and bodily experiences using recreative and experimental approaches.
In drawing attention to the body, this collection underlines the importance of embodied knowledge and sensory experiences associated with the making practices of historically marginalised groups, such as craftspeople, women, domestic servants, and those who were colonised, to confront biases in the written archive. The history of making is found not only in technological and economic innovations which drove ‘progress’ but also in the hands, minds, and creations of makers themselves.