Every five years, the World Shakespeare Congress regenerates understandings of Shakespeare across the world, bringing together scholars whose geo-cultural vantage points for working with Shakespeare both overlap and differ. A historical nodal point in global economies for Shakespeare, Singapore will form a digital meeting point for the international aims of the first online Congress.
The 11th World Shakespeare Congress will be held online from the National University of Singapore, 18-24 July 2021. The Congress theme of circuits draws attention to the passage of Shakespeare’s work between places and periods, agencies and institutions, positionalities and networks of production, languages and mediums. The theme is particularly suited to the online medium of the Congress, that gathers together such passages of Shakespeare’s work not by the movements of persons between places, but by creatively connecting and expanding our circuits in multimedia and live conversations.
For more information see the conference website.
‘Our Aelred’ conference
‘Our Aelred’: Man, monk and saint
Date(s): 11 – 12 Jan 2021
Presented by: English Heritage and the British Archaeological Association
Venue: Zoom
Join English Heritage and the British Archaeological Association for this major online conference focused on Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx between 1147 and 1167.
Called ‘our Aelred’ by his monks, the abbot was one of the most important monastic leaders of the Middle Ages and remains an inspirational figure to this day.
Bringing together leading scholars and heritage professionals, this conference provides a unique opportunity to examine Aelred’s impact on the architectural development of Rievaulx, his role in the Cistercian settlement of northern England and his activities as an author.
Speakers will address the abbot’s impact in the wider monastic world and Aelred’s legacy, including his veneration as a saint and how his extraordinary life and achievements can be interpreted for 21st-century visitors to Rievaulx.
The event also features a round-table discussion focused on debates about Aelred’s sexuality.
The conference has been scheduled to coincide with Aelred’s feast day on 12 January.
For more information and to register, see the conference website.
Parergon 37.2 now available
Parergon 37.2 Special Issue, Representing Queens, guest-edited by Stephanie Russo, has now been published and is available on Project Muse.
Members should receive hard copies of the issue in the coming weeks, and it will be available on other online platforms shortly.
BodoArXiv: New preprint repository for medieval studies
Named after a Carolingian peasant made famous by historian Eileen Power (1889-1940), BodoArXiv gathers scholarship in medieval studies across the disciplines. It provides an open, non-profit repository for works at different stages of gestation, including works that may later find themselves in article form and/or behind a paywall. Anyone can access and download any item on BodoArXiv freely and immediately, in adherence to the basic tenets of the Open Access movement.
For more information please see the below letter or BodoArXiv’s FAQ page. Questions about the repository can be directed to Guy Geltner or Daniel Smail.
CFP Piecing together the past: fragments of medieval and early modern books in Australia and New Zealand
Piecing together the past: fragments of medieval and early modern books in Australia and New Zealand
Editors: Anna Welch (State Library Victoria) and Nicholas Sparks (The University of Sydney)
In the medieval and early modern period, old books were routinely cut up and reused to make new books: the materials involved – whether prepared animal skin or paper – were simply too valuable to discard. Manuscript and printed leaves from dismembered books were reused in the bindings of newer books, either as structural support, fly leaves, or as the outer surface of the binding itself. Parchment could be scraped back to create a new but never entirely blank writing surface. In both types of reuse, layers of palimpsest texts and provenance stories offer scholars a chance to recover otherwise unknown voices and histories. Conceptually, fragments also support new approaches to the interrelated histories of reading and authorship, and to considerations of the reception of books as material objects, both in the past and in the modern era.
The pragmatism of this practice of recycling combined with modern advances in technology and digital connectivity – and the scholarly impetus to study unique physical cultural material in the age of mass digitization – have given rise to a new field of study: fragmentology. Digital humanities initiatives have facilitated entirely new ways to reconstruct fragmentary elements of our medieval and early modern past, and have shown again the potency of collaborative, multidisciplinary research. Fragments present challenges and opportunities for study precisely because of their liminal nature: they sit between manuscript culture and the era of print, and challenge the delineation between traditional the academic categories of palaeography and codicology, conservation, the history of binding, art history, bibliography, provenance research and the history of the book trade.
We are seeking proposals for a collected volume focused on medieval and early modern fragments (both in manuscript and print) in Australian and New Zealand collections: the first volume of its kind for the region. Abstracts are welcomed for scholarly articles of up to 8000 words (including notes) that present new research on any aspect pertaining to fragments. Papers that explore fragments via novel, interesting approaches, such as book history, bibliography, palaeography and codicology, art history, literary history, digital humanities, and curatorial practice, are especially welcomed.
Please send us your expressions of interest, including a title, 250-word abstract, and short biography, by Tuesday 26 January 2021. We will be seeking a contract with an academic press that guarantees a fully refereed process for publication. We will confirm acceptance of your abstract before making our proposal to relevant presses by 28 February 2021, with a view to a publication going to print in 2022.
For more information please see the below flyer.
Deadline reminder: ANZAMEMS-ARC Humanities Award for Original Research
Applications for the first ANZAMEMS-ARC Humanities Award for Original Research, which is aimed at Early Career Researchers and independent scholars, are open and will close on 29 January 2021. The winner of the Award will receive a book contract with ARC Humanities Press and a grant of $10,000 AUD to cover the costs of gold open access. Where relevant, they will benefit from ARC Humanities expert advice on converting a PhD thesis to a monograph.
For more details and application forms see here.
CFP International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England
Flinders University, Adelaide | 21 June 2021
The twelfth biennial conference of the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England will be held in four different locations in June 2021: Winchester, UK; Montreal, Canada; Leiden, Netherlands; and Adelaide, Australia. The conference will take place either in a hybrid fashion (online and in-situ) or fully online. This means that it will always be possible for you to attend and/or deliver your paper online; if circumstances allow it, you will be able to attend one (or more) days on location.
The Flinders hub in Adelaide particularly welcomes papers that fall under the following four themes:
1. Interpretation, transmission, adaptation and reception
2. Emotions
3. Trade, travel, maritime power and the sea
4. Science and Medicine
Details for the conference as a whole can be found here. For the Adelaide venue, including the full CFP and application portal, see here.
CFP Old Age Care in Times of Crisis, Past & Present
Old Age Care in Times of Crisis, Past & Present
Symposium 8-9 April 2021
Birkbeck & London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London
Rarely in recent history has a global event such as the current pandemic brought care for older people into sharper focus. Now, as in the past, many struggle physically and/or mentally, due to a range of bio-psycho-social factors. The provision of care for older people has involved a host of actors from international agencies and NGOs, national and local governments, charities, campaigners, medical and care professionals, and, of course, families and community networks. What has happened to these endeavours, and to old age care as a whole, in times of crisis? Does crisis bring change – for better or worse – in the practices, ideas, cultures, laws, and structures surrounding care for older people?
In a two-day, cross-disciplinary symposium, we will consider how social care, medical treatment, and the rights of older people have been affected by major events such as war, pandemic, plague, famine, economic depression and austerity, industrialisation, political extremism, enslavement, colonialism, or environmental damage/collapse.
Reflections on old age care in times of crisis are welcome from any discipline across the humanities and social sciences at the symposium which will be held over two afternoons BST on 8 and 9 April 2021. For more information and to submit a proposal by 7 December, please visit the symposium blog.
Alastair J. Durie Essay Prize
The Economic & Social History Society for Scotland is pleased to publicise a new essay prize for postgraduates and early career researchers.
Entries should be between 8-10,000 words long and can address any aspect of the Scots’ economic, cultural, or social history. Winning essays will be awarded £250 and be considered for publication in the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies. The deadline for entries is 30 January 2021.
You can find out more here: http://eshss.org.uk/documents/AJDPrize2021.pdf
Parergon Early Career Committee Call for Nominations
Parergon, the journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.), seeks nominations for interested early career scholars within ANZAMEMS to participate as members of the 2021 Early Career Committee (ECC). The aim of this committee is to recognise and support early career researcher contributions to ANZAMEMS, and specifically, Parergon.
The ECC meets quarterly, and offers an opportunity to provide advice to the Editorial team and gain a deeper understanding of the detailed intellectual and practical processes of production of a prestigious, peer-reviewed scholarly journal.
Additionally, participation in the ECC will provide valuable service experience for those
interested in pursuing academic and publishing career pathways. Membership of the ECC is not a paid position.
A maximum of 6 places are currently available for the 2021 ECC Committee. Terms are for a calendar year, with a possible maximal renewal of an additional, immediate year.
Nominations are sought from late-stage doctoral students through to those five years post PhD or equivalent), who are current members of ANZAMEMS.
Applications should consist of a cv, and a covering email outlining disciplinary expertise to the Editor of Parergon, susan.broomhall@uwa.edu.au.
Doctoral students wishing to apply should also provide an email from their supervisor
indicating support for their application.
Nominations close on Friday 11 December 2020. Successful candidates will be notified in late December.
Selection criteria
-Candidates are expected to be available to make 4 meetings a year by skype/zoom link.
-No prior experience is necessary
-The Editorial team will seek to achieve a broad disciplinary spread among the committee.