Vale John Gray

And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
(Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales)

With much sadness I report that our friend and colleague, Mr John Gray, passed away in Sydney on Tuesday 17 March 2020 after a long battle with cancer. A member of ANZAMEMS for many years, John retired from James Cook University in 2006 after forty years of service as a lecturer and administrator.

John was a polymath whose learning and teaching extended across Old and Middle English Languages and Literature, Old Icelandic, Linguistics, Stylistics and Shakespeare studies. In the 1990s and 2000s he instituted subjects which became core units for students in Journalism, Communication and English. He was also an innovator in computer pedagogy and online teaching. The conference papers he delivered on these subjects assisted colleagues throughout Australia and internationally.

John was a friend and supporter to colleagues in Townsville and Cairns, and for those of us still teaching he remains an invigorating and inspiring influence. His wit was legendary. He spent endless time out of class counselling students on their work. An educator in the best sense of the word, he fostered students’ enthusiasm by his wit, cheerfulness and qualities as a performer. His rapport with students and ability to impart first-year academic literacies is unsurpassed in my career experience. He received perfect scores in student feedback and attracted loyalty from the most cynical or insecure students.

While I believe John’s retirement years were enjoyable and that is a gladdening consolation for his passing, it is nevertheless deeply saddening that he is gone. His wife, Denese Gray and extended family will be greatly bereft, and I offer deepest condolences and sympathy to them.
When he retired, Professor Richard Lansdown, then head of English, made the announcement: “John Gray has left the building.” John Gray has indeed left the building, never to be forgotten by the many people who knew him. Rest in peace.

from Associate Prof. Cheryl Taylor, James Cook University

AAH Call for Humanities Expertise: COVID-19 and Pandemics

The Australian Academy of the Humanities is pleased to be joining forces with Australia’s other Learned Academies to launch the COVID-19 Expert Database.

The database provides access to Australia’s leading researchers and experts across all disciplines who are willing and able to help Australia tackle COVID-19 and its aftermath. Envisaged as a publicly available searchable database, it will provide a starting point for governments, industry, education, the research sector, the media, and the community to easily connect with expertise.

Championed by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel AO, the database is an initiative of Australia’s Learned Academies – the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Council of Learned Academies – to ensure that multidisciplinary expertise is brought to bear on this issue of critical national importance.

We encourage Academy Fellows and humanities researchers across all career stages to register, especially those with expertise across ethical, historical and cultural approaches to pandemic or epidemic management, crisis recovery and communication.

Call for humanities expertise

This initiative complements the Academy’s call for expertise issued last week, which seeks to support our advice to government and inform policy directions. We are keen to hear from humanities researchers working in areas including (but not limited to):

-lessons from past experiences of epidemics, pandemics and quarantine;
-community responses to the COVID-19 crisis;
-social distancing challenges for Indigenous communities and other cultural impacts;
-access and equity to essential services, including digital communications and technologies;
-ethical decision-making;
-translation and analysis of information for multilingual populations; and
-the role of arts and culture in community building, recovery and resilience.

We invite you to complete this confidential online form, outlining your research speciality across these areas.

Society for the History of Discoveries Student Essay Prize

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 May of each year

Areas of eligible research include: voyages of exploration, travel narratives, biography relevant to the history of discoveries and exploration, history, cartography, the technologies of travel, impact of travel and cultural exchange, and other aspects of geographic discovery and exploration.

Who is Eligible: Students from any part of the globe currently enrolled in a college or university degree program and who will not have received a doctoral degree prior to 15 May of the submission year. Note: Graduating high school or college students accepted into a program but who do not begin classes until fall of the submission year are NOT eligible.

The Research Paper: An eligible research paper shall be original and unpublished, written in English, between 3,000 and 8,000 words, plus footnotes or endnotes. Papers written for college or university class assignments are encouraged, but students may write specifically for this prize. A reasonable amount of illustrative and tabular material will be welcome, but is not required.

The awardee will receive a prize of $500.00 (US) and will be invited to present a version of the paper at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries. Information about participation in the conference will be provided to the awardee upon notification of the award, including details concerning costs and travel funding. Acceptance of the prize is not contingent upon your ability to attend the conference. Additionally, the awardee will be invited to submit the winning paper to the society’s peer reviewed journal, Terrae Incognitae, for which it will undergo the usual review process prior to formal acceptance for publication, of which there is no guarantee.
For more information and formatting instructions visit https://discoveryhistory.org/student-prize/

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
Submission Deadline: 15 May
Electronic submissions only to:
Dr. Anne Good, committee chair amg@reinhardt.edu
Subject line: SHD Student Prize

Questions? Contact Dr. Good, committee chair amg@reinhardt.edu

CFP Aesthetics in Early Modern Poetry at #ANZA21

We invite scholarly proposals for papers on aesthetics in medieval and early modern poetry (c. 400 to 1800), as part of a panel or panels being established at ANZAMEMS 2021. 

The panel(s) will examine the influence of aesthetic styles, movements, rhetorical and aesthetic techniques and theories on the development of poetry, or the work of specified poet(s) at any time during the relevant periods in Europe and Britain. Papers should be set within the broader topic of the overall conference, and deal with questions of reception and/or emotion. Papers might consider:

• The role of emotions in medieval or early modern aesthetic theories;
• Models of embodiment in aesthetic theories during the period;
• Theories of affect, ‘affectus’ and/or feelings;
• The impact of theological and biblical sources (for example, by Augustine and Aquinas);
• The impact of philosophy of mind, body, morality and ethics (such as Platonic and Aristotelian);
• Formal theories of poetics and rhetoric, including the role of style in poetic and rhetorical figures and tropes;
• The impact of artistic movements (such as Neoplatonist, Neoclassical, Baroque) and the reciprocal influence of visual arts on poetry (eg ut pictura poesis);
• Public and private models of ‘taste’, audience and reception;
• The role of pleasure, the imagination and sensuous and vivid imagery;
• Techniques for the aestheticization of the sacred (such as the poetics of enigma);
• Theories of the sublime and the beautiful;
• Participatory versus objectivist aesthetics;
• Materialist, or transcendental and idealist models;
• Poststructural or psychoanalytic approaches; or
• The role and value of historicist and/or modern theory.

We invite submissions for 20 minute presentations, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. If you are interested in presenting your work, please send the title, a 200 word abstract and a 50 word biography, at the first instance to Dr Jane Vaughan at jane.vaughan@uwa.edu.au

Deadline for Panel Submissions: 30 June 2020

The panel(s) will be held as part of the biennial conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, at the School of Humanities, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 8 to 12 February, 2021.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr Jane Vaughan at jane.vaughan@uwa.edu.au

National Library of Australia Fellowships

The Library has diverse collections that support, inspire and transform research. Fellowships enable researchers to embark on a period of intensive research into the collections in a supportive, intellectual and creative environment.

Who should apply?
Fellowships are open to researchers from Australia and overseas undertaking advanced research projects. Eight funded fellowships will be awarded for research areas where the Library’s collections have the depth to support the desired outcomes.

What do Fellows receive?

  • an honorarium of AUD1,000 per week for 12 weeks
  • travel and accommodation support*
  • privileged access to the Library’s collections, staff and resources
  • uninterrupted time for research

Additional Honorary Fellowships may be awarded to support research and special access but without financial support.

Applications close Friday 24 April 2020 at 5pm (AEST).

For guidelines and to apply see here.

CFP Fifteenth Century Conference

Fifteenth Century Conference | University of Bristol, 3-5 September 2020

The theme of the conference is ‘Disruption’, a term that is gaining ground in management and leadership studies today, often as an expression of positive change. The concept seems particularly appropriate to the events of the fifteenth century, when Britain and Europe were struggling to contain militarism, social and cultural change, competing ideologies, and intellectual challenges. Then as now, disruption throws up important questions. How can leaders and thinkers process disruptive events? What impact do disruptive events have on communities and populations? Is disruption different from change? Can individuals trigger disruption or does it happen at institutional or social levels? What can be learned from disruptive events and their aftermath? Can disruption be a force for good?

We welcome abstracts, from any discipline, that explore aspects of disruption’, or any other topic relevant to fifteenth-century studies. Areas of interest can include, but are not limited to:

• politics • religion • military history • economics and commerce • cultural history • environment • institutions • science and medicine •literature & literary forms • intellectual history • literary criticism and theory • gender • space • law • language • materiality

Plenary speakers: Peter Crooks (TCD) and Helen Swift (Oxford)

Send abstracts and queries to: helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk

Abstracts (maximum 300 words) may be for individual papers (20 minutes), roundtables (90 minutes), or sessions of three or four speakers (90 minutes) and should include contact details for all speakers. Proposals are welcome from academics at all career stages and from independent scholars.

Deadline: 30 May 2020

CFP Dealing with Disasters: Cultural Representations of Catastrophes, c. 1500-1900

Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 14-15 January 2021

Nowadays, we are constantly confronted with frantic reports on natural calamities. Major news outlets describe the potentially cataclysmic effects of the latest forest fires, floods, and storms – and due to the ongoing climate crisis, extreme weather events can be expected to have ever greater impacts on our lives. If we are left wondering how we should deal with these disasters, we should also acknowledge that natural calamities have always occurred and have affected human experience in myriad ways.

For many centuries, news about catastrophic events has been disseminated via media such as pamphlets, chronicles, poems, and prints. This conference seeks to address the cultural representations that reflected and shaped the ways in which people learned and thought about disasters that occurred either nearby or far away, both in time and space.

This conference welcomes contributions that engage with the cultural dimensions of disasters and reflect on representations of catastrophes in different media. In doing so, we offer a platform to scholars from various backgrounds to adopt multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to reconceptualising the broader socio-cultural consequences of disasters.

Themes that could be explored include, but are not limited to:

• representations of disasters in different media
• religious and ritual responses to disasters
• scientific understandings of disasters and technological innovation
• literary and artistic responses to catastrophes
• remembrance and memory culture surrounding disasters
• material culture of disasters, including disaster relics
• political and societal dimensions of representations of disasters
• human-nature relations in the context of disasters
• history of emotions in the context of disasters
• appropriation of disasters and (collective) identity formation
• solidarity and conflict in the wake of disasters

Proposal
Paper proposals (max. 300 words) should reach the conference committee by 1 June 2020 via email: dealingwithdisasters@let.ru.nl.
Please enclose a 100-word biographical note.

See attached for full CFP.

Download (PDF, Unknown)

ANZAMEMS AGM

The Annual General Meeting of ANZAMEMS Inc. will be held on Tuesday 28 April 2020 at 11:00am-1:00pm (AWST).

The meeting is hosted by The University of Western Australia and will be held via the video conferencing software Zoom.

Local times (for your convenience):
WA: 11:00am-1:00pm (AWST)
SA: 12:30pm-2:30pm (ACST)
VIC/NSW/TAS/ACT/QLD: 1:00pm-3:00pm (AEST)
New Zealand: 3:00pm-5:00pm (NZST)

Details of the Zoom connection will be circulated to members closer to the AGM date.

At the upcoming ANZAMEMS AGM a number of committee positions need to be elected. This email is also a call for nominations for the following positions:

Communications Officer
Parergon Reviews Editor
Postgraduate Officer (Australia)
Postgraduate Officer (New Zealand)

In addition, the following positions are declared open and can also be contested. The incumbents have all declared their willingness to remain in the positions, but if you wish to contest the position, then you may:

Secretary (Current incumbent: Karen Jillings)
Vice-President (Australia) (Current incumbent: Clare Monagle)
Treasurer (Current incumbent: Peter Sherlock)
Committee Member (Current incumbent: Helen Young)

If you wish to nominate for any of these positions on the ANZAMEMS committee, please send the Executive Administrator Marina Gerzic (info@anzamems.org) an email with your name, affiliation, and short biographical statement (please note: you must be a 2020 financial member to nominate), as well as the names of your nomination proposer and a seconder (please note: both must be 2020 financial members) by Wednesday 18 March 2020 at the latest.

Once the Executive Administrator has received nominations, a proxy form for those unable to attend the AGM to vote on these positions will be created and circulated.

Please note: names of nominees will only be printed on the proxy forms if they are submitted by the 18 March deadline.

Please contact the Executive Administrator for any further information about any of these committee positions.

CFP New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession

The mission of the New Chaucer Society is to “provide a forum for teachers and
scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age.” As the working conditions of those
teachers and scholars change, this forum needs to expand to reflect those changes.
For this reason, NCS is happy to announce the launch of a new on-line venue,
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, hosted on the New Chaucer Society
website. This peer-reviewed, open access site will offer brief essays on teaching,
service, and institutional environments/ cultures.

We would like to invite submissions for this new project from a wide range of
contributors, including K-12 educators and independent scholars. We are
particularly interested in essays that are immediately concerned with usefulness —
to readers across institutions and non-institutional settings. Some areas for
inquiry might include the following: teaching medieval literature in a Gen Ed
curriculum and/ or in a K-12 context; recruiting graduate students for the study
of medieval literature; the impact of curricular change on medieval courses; issues
of hiring, tenure and promotion; the workings of professional organizations,
journals, and conferences; graduate training for a shrinking number of academic
jobs; outreach to the public and to colleagues in other disciplines; strategies for
equity and inclusivity in teaching, recruiting, and hiring; strategies for addressing
or rectifying institutional constraints (budgets, criteria for tenure, etc.). We also
welcome collaborative essays or responses unified around a single topic.

We are now seeking contributions for Issue 2, #MeToo, and Issue 3, Open
Topic. Please submit essays of 3000 words to ncs.pedagogyandprofession@gmail.com by September 1, 2020 for consideration in Issue 2, to appear March 15, 2021, or Issue 3, to appear July 1, 2021.

CFP: Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques (HRRH) has established a well-deserved reputation for publishing high quality articles of wide-ranging interest for over forty years. The journal, which publishes articles in both English and French, is committed to exploring history in an interdisciplinary framework and with a comparative focus. Historical approaches to art, literature, and the social sciences; the history of mentalities and intellectual movements; the terrain where religion and history meet: these are the subjects to which Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques is devoted.

Contributions are invited from all fields of intellectual-cultural history and the history of religion and mentalities.

Some specific themes include:
• Music history
• Social policies and societal change (including studies with a comparative focus)
• Material culture and emotions
• Architectural and garden history
• Small businesses
• Colonial/imperial studies

Manuscript Submission
The editorial board welcomes submissions for publication in English or French. Authors should submit articles as email attachments, formatted as Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format files. Please note that all correspondence will take place via email. Send submissions and complete contact information to the editor, Elizabeth Macknight at e.macknight@abdn.ac.uk.

Have other questions? Please refer to the various Berghahn Info for Authors pages for general information and guidelines including topics such as article usage and permissions for Berghahn journal article authors (www.berghahnjournals.com/historical-reflections).

Indexed in:
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science)
• Scopus
• Historical Abstracts
• ERIH PLUS

For a full listing of indices, please visit the website.