Monash CMRS symposium

“Materiality and the Senses in the Medieval and Premodern World,” Eighth Annual CMRS Postgraduate (Hybrid) Symposium, 14 April.

We are pleased to announce that registration for the Eighth Annual CMRS Postgraduate Symposium that will take place on 14 April is now open. Our theme this year is “Materiality and the Senses in the Medieval and Premodern World”.

Materials, and the sensory perception of them, were integral to medieval and early modern life. From the mundane to the sacred, “things” were shaped by their creators and users, but, in turn, they also shaped the ways in which creators and users moved through their worlds. In this symposium, our speakers will explore premodern theories of materiality and discuss how the senses acted as mediators of objects, events, and spaces. As outlets for religious experience, medical care, economic prosperity, and self-expression, “things” had significance beyond their shape and size, their colour and feel, their origins and lifespan. They could be dynamic political tools or intimate personal treasures, but it was through sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste that people navigated objects’ physicality and presence.

Our keynote speaker for the event will be Dr Carol J. Williams and we also have a fantastic range of speakers presenting throughout the day. This is a hybrid event and will be occurring on our Clayton Campus as well as on zoom. Free registration can be found here and closes on the 4 April. Virtual registration can still occur after that by emailing the CMRS at cmrs-postgraduatecommittee@monash.edu.


CFP: Australasian Association for Byzantine Studies

Byzantium: Empire of the Sea

Papers are invited for the 21st Conference of the Australasian Association for Byzantine Studies, University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, June 2-5.

Conference Program (subject to revision):
June 2 – Opening Reception at Milns Museum & Empires of the Sea Exhibition Launch, 5 pm
June 3 – Fryer Library Greek Papers of Lady Diamantina Roma Bowen & Lord Bowen
June 4 – AABS Papers, Keynote Lecture by Professor Georgia Frank (Colgate) & Dinner
June 5 – AABS Biennial General Meeting & AABS Papers

Call for Papers:
Send abstracts of 150-200 words maximum, for 20 minute papers. Submissions should include name, institution or affiliation, and, if relevant, a short letter of application for a $500 AABS Student Bursary to attend the conference from Australia or New Zealand.
Deadline for submission April 1, 2023, e-mail for submission conference@aabs.org.au

Byzantium was an empire on, and of, the ancient Mediterranean and Black seas. Romans of this ‘late’ empire inherited a political, military and cultural system of waterborne trade and interconnections centred on the harbour city of Byzantium. Constantine’s new capital city of Constantinople swiftly replaced Rome as the Mediterranean entrepot of goods from east and west, building on the foundations of Byzantium, once the ideal Greek emporium. We seek papers engaging with this topic on any level of analysis, from history to hagiography, the city to the empire, and from letters, art and iconography to harbour architecture or fishermen’s saints. Papers could consider (among other topics) Severan Byzantium, the Greek colony or Istanbul; maritime aspects of the Roman empire centred on Constantinople from the 4th to the 15th centuries; or Byzantium’s legacy in the Black Sea, on the Aegean islands, in the Italian maritime republics, or along the rivers, bays and coasts to her northeast, south or west.

Paper topics might include:
Naval warfare, the Roman Navy, Greek Fire, galleys, sieges of Constantinople
Harbours of Byzantium, trade goods, merchants, ship-building, maps, cartography
Seafaring traditions, St Nicholas, the Panagia, fishermen, pagan/Christian festivals
Metaphors in sermons, hymns, novels, poetry etc. drawn from the sea
Islands, e.g. Proconnesus for marble, Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Kythera
Relations with the Kievan Rus, the Varangian Guard, Vikings, Slavs, rivers of the north
Relations with Arabs, Jews, Egyptians, Church of the East, Turks, etc.
Relations with Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Italians, immigrants, explorers
Products of the sea like fish, shellfish, shells, dyes, seabirds (and attitudes to them)
Positive and negative associations of the sea in Greek literature, fantastical seabeasts
Pirates, slaves, hostages, Crusaders, Military orders travel, letter carriers, the Post

Convenor: Dr Amelia R. Brown (UQ)

CFP: ANZSA 2023 Conference in Sydney, 7-9 December 2023

Call for Papers

‘Shakespeare Beyond All Limits’ 

7–9 December 2023 

At The University of Sydney and the State Library of NSW

http://conference.anzsa.org/

The Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA) is delighted to announce its next conference will be ‘Shakespeare beyond all Limits’, hosted by The University of Sydney from 7–9 December 2023. We are now inviting proposals for scholarly papers and panels.

Our keynote speakers are:

  • Ewan Fernie (Chair, Professor and Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute; and Culture Lead of the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham, UK), courtesy of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, the Australian Catholic University
  • Urvashi Chakravarty (Assistant Professor, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada)

2023 is the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of one of the most influential books of all time, Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623), known subsequently as the First Folio. This conference, ANZSA’s first since the COVID-19 pandemic, represents an exciting opportunity for Shakespeare researchers, educators and practitioners to gather together in person in Sydney for a scholarly exploration of this remarkable book and all things Shakespearean from his time to ours.

The conference theme, ‘Shakespeare beyond all limits,’ derives from Ferdinand’s declaration of his love for Miranda in The Tempest (3.1.71–73): ‘I / Beyond all limit of what else i’th’world, / Do love, prize, honour you.’ In our case, we use the phrase to signify the astonishing reach and impact of Shakespeare through the ages and invite scholars to share their insights on the texts and contexts, limits and liberties, uses and problems, and appropriations and transformations associated with his name and works.

Day 1 of the conference will be held at the State Library of New South Wales (Sydney) and include papers with a particular focus on the First Folio and Shakespeare book history. The State Library holds Australia’s only copy of the First Folio (1623), as well as a copy of the Second (1632), Third (1664) and Fourth Folios (1685). We invite scholars researching these editions or others to submit papers for the conference to be included in the program for Day 1. The State Library First Folio is viewable on the State Library NSW (Shakespeare’s First Folio) website and all four State Library Folios are viewable on Internet Shakespeare Editions (Facsimile Viewer). For Day 1, in addition to papers on the Library’s Folios, we are interested in presentations on early-twentieth-century activities around the Shakespeare Tercentenary in Australia (1923) and the printing and publishing of the Folios. Day 1 will also include a postgraduate and early career researcher masterclass and, in the evening, a Public Lecture at the Library, by Professor Fernie.

Days 2 and 3 of the conference will be held on the main campus of the University of Sydney and include papers on our broad theme of ‘beyond all limits.’ On Day 3 (Saturday) we will also include papers with a particular focus on Education and so we enthusiastically encourage teachers and educators at schools and universities to submit abstracts on educational topics.

Please send proposals (250 words max.) for papers (20 mins) and panels (3-4 papers of 15-20 mins each), with a speaker biography (100 words max.) to: 

huw.griffiths@sydney.edu.au or liam.semler@sydney.edu.au 

by 30 June 2023. Huw and Liam are happy to answer any queries about the conference.

Please check the ANZSA website for Conference updates.

ANZAMEMS Reading Group: Session 1 ‘Compassion’ Summary

The first session of the ANZAMEMS PGR/ECR Reading Group took place on Zoom on Tuesday 28 February. The topic was ‘compassion’, and the readings were Diana Barnes’s introductory article on ‘Cultures of Compassion’ from the latest (39/2, 2022) issue of Parergon, and Katherine Ibbett’s chapter on ‘The Compassion Machine’ in her 2017 Compassion’s Edge: Fellow-Feeling and its Limits in Early Modern France. There were twelve attendees, and we enjoyed a great discussion on the two readings.

There was discussion over whether understanding and reason must precede feelings of compassion, or whether compassion was a pre-rational response to others’ pain. The readings brought in the idea that compassion was fellow-feeling for those suffering undeservedly, implying that a judgement must be made as to whether a sufferer was deserving or not. This linked to whether there was a boundary between the self and object of compassion. Selfishness was a common theme which kept appearing in our discussion. Wrath and despair were noted as opposites of compassion.

A major theme in the readings was the rational or self-managing versus the excessive or spontaneous. Barnes quoted Milton, showing unmediated compassion as divine rather than human, while humanity’s compassion was deemed rational. Our discussion teased beyond the Christian roots of the concept of compassion, noting the links to Stoicism in the Barnes reading, and Aristotelian links in Ibbett. Comparison was also drawn to the Buddhist notion of the selfishness of suffering which will benefit the self.

We then turned to the Reformation and differences in compassion in Catholicism and Protestant thought. There was particular discussion on how suffering can be seen as good or as bad. It could signal a lack of predestination, or a purging to bring the sufferer closer to God (such as in purgatory or the Crusades). This led to the question of whether others can feel joy for another’s suffering. Does joy arise from the sufferer or observer? Does a sufferer need an observer to gain compassion (a performance of suffering)? Good points were made about viewers of drama and readers of texts being communal audiences rather than sole observers. This idea of the ‘collective’ linked to notions of the ‘contagion’ of compassion, spreading from person to person.

Finally, there was consideration of the gendered aspect of compassion. Ibbett devoted a small section of her chapter to compassion as a female trait. We then linked this back to the idea of those ‘deserving’ of compassion (by being undeserving of their suffering), showing that female characters are often judged less favourably. This was attributed in part to their reactions or revenge for their suffering being deemed unacceptable for women.

Two interesting texts were suggested in the discussion:

Charles Zika’s chapter ‘Compassion in Punishment: The Visual Evidence in Sixteenth-Century Depictions of Calvary’, in Cultural Shifts and Ritual Transformations in Reformation Europe, ed. by Victoria Christman and Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer (Brill, 2020), doi:10.1163/9789004436022_013

Anne McCullough’s dissertation ‘Coerced witness: Suffering and resistance in medieval literature’ (Emory University, 2005), https://www.proquest.com/docview/305387287

The next session of the reading group will be on Tuesday 21 March, 2pm AEDT, on the subject of Household Accounts as Primary Sources.

Please contact the convenors with any queries: Emma Rayner (ANU),
emma.rayner@anu.edu.au, and Emily Chambers (University of Nottingham),
emily.chambers@nottingham.ac.uk.

Applications now open for the 2024 National Library of Australia Fellowships, Creative Arts Fellowships and National Folk Fellowship

Applications for the 2024 National Library Fellowships, Creative Arts Fellowships and National Folk Fellowship programs are now open. These three programs offer opportunities to academic researchers, writers and creative artists, with the Fellowships funding between 4 to 12 weeks of intensive, on-site research into the unique collections held by the National Library of Australia.

Full details of the guidelines, closing dates and a link to application forms for each Fellowship are available on the Library’s website at https://www.nla.gov.au/about/fellowships-scholarships-and-grants/fellowships-and-scholarshipsonline.

Out Now in Open Access: ‘The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition’ by Edward Pettit

About the Book
I especially welcome the fact that this prose translation is aimed at understanding the text, rather than preserving a certain style. This is a most valuable contribution to the field and of great value to both students and scholars.

Henrik Williams
Professor of Runology, formerly of Scandinavian Languages, at Uppsala University

This book is an edition and translation of one of the most important and celebrated sources of Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and heroic legend, namely the medieval poems now known collectively as the Poetic Edda or Elder Edda.

Included are thirty-six texts, which are mostly preserved in medieval manuscripts, especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic codex traditionally known as the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. The poems cover diverse subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the dealings of gods such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki with giants and each other, and the more intimate, personal tragedies of the hero Sigurðr, his wife Guðrún and the valkyrie Brynhildr.

Each poem is provided with an introduction, synopsis and suggestions for further reading. The Old Norse texts are furnished with a textual apparatus recording the manuscript readings behind this edition’s emendations, as well as select variant readings. The accompanying translations, informed by the latest scholarship, are concisely annotated to make them as accessible as possible.

As the first open-access, single-volume parallel Old Norse edition and English translation of the Poetic Edda, this book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Old Norse literature. It will also interest those researching other fields of medieval literature (especially Old English and Middle High German), and appeal to a wider general audience drawn to the myths and legends of the Viking Age and subsequent centuries.


Access this Title
This book is freely available to read and download in PDF and HTML formats at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0308. Remember that if you belong to an institution part of our library membership programme, you are entitled to discounts on physical copies and free digital editions.

SHAPE Futures Network Survey

Launched in September 2022, the SHAPE Futures is an early- and mid-career network for the disciplines of the humanities, creative arts and social sciences. Our purpose is to ensure the humanities, arts and social sciences thrive and excel in Australia, by fostering an inclusive and diverse community that supports, empowers and promotes Australian early and mid-career researchers, within and beyond academia.

We would like to encourage those who might consider themselves to be early or mid-career researchers (typically up to 15 years post-PhD, excluding career interruptions) to join the Network; there is no cost to join. Our website provides information on ways that the network can support EMCRs, including advocacy, networking opportunities, and increased visibility of opportunities, resources, and avenues of support. A crucial part of our work is our EMCR cohort survey, which will help build our understanding of the needs of this diverse group, informing our strategies for representation, advocacy, opportunities and network-building. The survey closes in mid-March.

If you would like further information on SHAPE Futures, please contact us on info@shapefutures.com.

CFP Royal Spectacle and Court Performance: Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives

Royalty has often been accompanied by spectacle, ritual, and excess. Monarchs have exploited public space to exert authority, express anger or encourage love, deploying high-profile and fantastic rituals or displays to communicate with their publics. Clothing, accessories, gifts, food, and other materials have been used to build friendships, negotiate social hierarchies, or to convey displeasure. Art, statuary, monuments and buildings, as well as the more ephemeral prints, ribbons, or household goods, have been used as propaganda and to further a performance of power. Art and material goods were often part of elaborate performances at court, on stage, in the press, or on the street, where spectacle was embodied and communicated as identity, power and privilege. Such activities were replete with emotion, as courtiers sought to build or
negotiate relationships, encourage awe or affection, and promote appreciation of systems of monarchical power and divine right. This workshop explores royal spectacles and court performances in the medieval and early modern world and now calls for papers that speak to this theme.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
Displays of monarchical power or identity
Court performances and interactions
Fashion diplomacy and dress
Gift-giving, hospitality and generosity
Abundance and excess
Ephemeral displays
Print power and the monarch in the public sphere
The audiences for monarchical displays and court performances
Displays of emotion and the capacity of performance to promote feeling
Drama, theatre, and literary court performances
Medieval and Early Modern spectacles in the modern era
Gender, race, class as spectacle

Deadline for proposals 30 April 2023.
Please email proposals to courtlyperformances@gmail.com

RSCP-Feb-20Download

Macquarie University Research (postdoctoral) Fellowship scheme opening soon

Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) will soon be offering up to 10 full-time Research Fellowship positions commencing in 2024. Fellowships will be awarded on a competitive basis and will be fixed-term for three years. Applicants must have been awarded their PhD on or after 1 March 2020 or submit their thesis on or before 16 August 2023 (or make a convincing case for early career researcher status).

MQRF24 applicants must either reside in Australia and have appropriate work rights (either be an Australian Permanent Resident or Citizen) OR if they are applying from overseas, they must have appropriate work rights for Australia already (returning Australian Permanent Resident/Citizen) and be able to get themselves back to Australia to commence no later than 30 June 2024 or they forfeit their MQRF

The Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature (MCCALL) is interested in the following research areas:

· Media and Communications: screen practice; social media and digital culture; media history; journalism and non-fiction writing; communications; cultural studies.
· Creative Arts: music and related technologies; music production; the singing voice; popular music; ethnomusicology; creative processes; sound; improvisation; performance; dance; circus, industry practices.
· Languages and Cultures: global literatures and cultures; language studies and applied linguistics; the role of languages in cultural identities, and their impact on linguistic and literary products in social life.
· Literature: medievalism; medieval and early modern literature; modernism; historical fiction; popular fiction; literary approaches to film and television; postcolonialism; Australian fiction.

If you have an interest in applying for a Fellowship in the 2024 round through MCCALL, please send the following to Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley and Associate Professor Paul Sheehan [b.foley@mq.edu.au and paul.sheehan@mq.edu.au] the following by 5pm AEDT Wednesday 29 March:

1.    Provisional project title and a brief (400-word) project description
2.    Name of potential sponsor in MCCALL. This can be discussed with Bridget and Paul.
3.    Your PhD conferral date (or thesis submission date if the PhD is not yet awarded).
4.    A copy of your CV as an attachment including a list of publications. Publications should be listed under the headings: books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles and other (including creative works and non-traditional research outputs). Your CV should also briefly detail any career interruptions since the award of your PhD.

If MCCALL is able to sponsor your application, you will be notified by Tuesday, 11 April. You will then also be required to supply a copy of your Australian residency document – passport or visa. Sponsored applicants will be invited to work with their sponsors to develop their formal Expressions of Interest which must be submitted to Research Services by Wednesday, 26 April.

Call for Proposals for a Special Issue of Gender & History: Gendered Segregation and Gendering Segregation

Gender & History is an international journal for research and writing on the history of gender and gender relations, including (but not limited to) masculinity and femininity.

This Special Issue will examine segregation, broadly understood, exploring how segregation has reflected and constructed gender across time and space. This Special Issue welcomes submissions from scholars studying any country or region, and any historical period, including the classical, medieval, early modern, and the modern.

Segregation is the physical, cultural, or legal separation of groups on the basis of self- or external demarcations of difference and can be observed in many different, but by no means all, human societies of the past. Gendering segregation is a fruitful lens to interrogate relations of power and to do so in spatial settings such as homes, communes, schools, religious institutions, workhouses, prisons, leisure facilities, or others. Additionally, analysing the gendering of segregation—within premodern and modern societies and throughout the world—opens routes towards more capacious understandings of important themes of inquiry such as histories of sexuality, labour, science and technology, politics, feminism, and social identities.

This issue examines how and why segregation has been used as a tool for constructing and policing gender boundaries, at the intersection with race, age, status, class, functionality, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nationality or other historical ideas of human identity and categorization. We particularly welcome studies on transgender and/or non-binary aspects of the presence – or absence – of segregation in past societies. This issue understands segregation as both a framework of control through imposing binarity and as an individual strategy. We also welcome investigations of how and why gender segregation has been used as a coping mechanism and a strategy of subversion. We also seek to critically engage with scholarly narratives such as the ‘separate spheres’ paradigm.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Segregation through and of labour
• Segregation and race
• Scientific and legal logics of segregation
• Segregation in the home
• Segregation in education
• Segregation in sports
• Segregation over the life course
• Segregation as a political strategy
• Self-imposed segregation
• Segregation as a religious practice
• Segregation and urbanism
• Segregation and colonialism

Interested colleagues are asked to submit a 500-word abstract and a brief biography (250 words) by email no later than 31 May 2023 for consideration. Please submit materials to genderandhistory@sheffield.ac.uk.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the Special Issue editors and successful authors will submit full drafts (6,000- 8,000 words) ahead of participation in a hybrid colloquium, which will be held in Bonn, Germany, in partnership with Research Area E (Gender and Intersectionality) of the Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies. We hope to be able to fund travel and accommodation for all participants. After the colloquium, the editors will select contributions to proceed through the journal’s peer review system. As with any submission, there is no guarantee of publication.

The Special Issue will be edited by Drs. Daniel Grey, Lisa Hellman, Julia Hillner, and Rachel Jean-Baptiste.

Special Issue Timeline
Abstract Proposals to SI editors: 31 May 2023.
Decisions communicated: 1 July 2023.
Draft papers submitted for circulation: 15 March 2024.
Colloquium: 25-27 April 2024.
Full submissions submitted for peer review: 1 September 2024.
Contributions in progress to G&H Editors: 1 March 2025.
Edited MS, illustrations and permissions: 31 May 2025.
Publication: October 2025.
Further information on Gender & History can be found here.