Professor Carolyne Larrington, Public Lecture @ The University of Adelaide

“Game of Thrones! History, Medievalism and How It Might End”, Professor Carolyne Larrington (University of Oxford)

Date: Tuesday 8 November, 2016
Time: 6:15pm–7:15pm
Venue: Napier Lecture Theatre 102, The University of Adelaide
Enquiries: Jacquie Bennett (jacquie.bennett@adelaide.edu.au)
Registration: Online here.

In this lecture I’ll talk about watching and writing about HBO’s Game of Thrones as a medieval scholar. I’ll also explain some of the medieval history and literature from which George R. R. Martin chiselled the building blocks for the construction of his imaginary world. Game of Thrones has now become the most frequently streamed or downloaded show in TV history. I’ll suggest some reasons for its enormous international success as the medieval fantasy epic for the twenty-first century, and will undertake a little speculation on how the show might end.

Carolyne Larrington is Professor of Medieval European Literature at the University of Oxford, and teaches medieval English literature as a Fellow of St John’s College. She has published widely on Old Icelandic literature, including the leading translation into English of the Old Norse Poetic Edda (2nd edn, Oxford World’s Classics, 2014). She also researches medieval European literature: two recent publications are Brothers and Sisters in Medieval European Literature (York Medieval Press, 2015) and an edited collection of essays (with Frank Brandsma and Corinne Saunders), Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature (D. S. Brewer, 2015). She also writes on the medieval in the modern world: two recent books are The Land of the Green Man (2015) on folklore and landscape in Great Britain, and Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (2015), both published by I. B. Tauris. She is currently researching emotion in secular medieval European literatures, and planning a second book about Game of Thrones.

Offensive Shakespeare Conference – Call For Papers

Offensive Shakespeare Conference
Northumbria University
24 May, 2017

Sponsored by The British Shakespeare Association

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Douglas Lanier (University of New Hampshire)
Dr Peter Kirwan (Nottingham University)

Outrage as BBC bosses “use Shakespeare to push pro-immigration agenda”

This was a headline in The Daily Express on 25 April 2016, after the BBC included what has become known as the ‘Immigration Speech’ from Sir Thomas More in a programme celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. From Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler expurgating ‘inappropriate’ passages from their Family Shakespeare, through Jewish campaigns in the early 20th Century to remove The Merchant of Venice from American classrooms, to the recent ‘outrage’, people have been offended by what Shakespeare wrote or by the uses to which others have put him. But what is it that offends us and how do we deal with it? What makes Shakespeare and his appropriations such a sensitive issue?

This conference seeks to answer these questions by examining the following and related areas:

Case studies of individuals or groups taking offence at Shakespeare’s texts.
Examples of Shakespearean rewritings aimed to address ‘offensive’ issues.
Shakespearean plays or performances which have been banned, censored, or campaigned against.
Debates around including or removing Shakespeare from educational curricula, and/or making the study of his work mandatory.
Appropriations of Shakespeare by anti-democratic, repressive movements (e.g. ‘Nazi Shakespeare’, ‘racist Shakespeare’).
Iconoclastic uses of Shakespeare, going against established orthodoxies.
Adaptations of Shakespeare into popular genres or idioms (charges of ‘dumbing down’).
The ways to tackle plays which include passages offensive to current moral, ethical, or political sensibilities (e.g. The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, The Merchant of Venice).
Issues surrounding studying and teaching Shakespeare without giving offence in the era of ‘trigger warnings’.
Uses of Shakespeare in propaganda, inflammatory speeches and/or heated political debates.
Authorship controversies.

Online Booking is now available: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/onlinepayments/fadsscnf20/?view=page3

Full Delegate Fee: £30
Postgraduate Student and Unwaged Fee: £15

Thanks to a generous grant from the British Shakespeare Association, we are able to offer two bursaries of £75 each to assist postgraduate students with the costs of attending the conference. Please, email the organisers if you would like to apply for one of these.

If you would like to present a paper, please send a 200-word abstract to Monika Smialkowska (monika.smialkowska@northumbria.ac.uk) or Edmund King (edmund.king@open.ac.uk) by 15 February, 2017.

Australian Catholic University: Senior Research Fellow (Early Christianity) – Call For Applications

Australian Catholic University – Centre for Biblical and Early Christian Studies
Senior Research Fellow (Early Christianity)

Location: Melbourne
Salary: AU$138,669 to AU$150,553
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Permanent

We seek researchers of outstanding potential and demonstrated achievement to contribute to the research of the Centre for Biblical and Early Christian Studies. Researchers will contribute to a major five-year project, Modes of Knowing and the Ordering of Knowledge in Early Christianity. This international project, led by Prof. Lewis Ayres (ACU/Durham) and four others from ACU, Durham and Notre Dame, investigates ‘modes of knowing’ constructed by Greek, Latin and Syriac Christians c.100-700 CE. A particular focus is the manner in which developing Christian thought was shaped by classical intellectual discourses (such as grammar, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine), institutions, social practices, and material culture.

This project builds on research across the Centre in areas such as the social and cultural history of early Christianity, the cultural and intellectual transformation of Classical antiquity, strategies of Christian identity formation, and intersections between Christianity and ancient philosophy, rhetoric, medicine, and education.

Within the ‘Modes of Knowing’ project, we envisage individual projects that will relate early Christian modes of knowing to at least one of: a) contemporary philosophical, medical and rhetorical discourses; b) social practices of early Christianity and late antiquity (e.g. asceticism, pilgrimage, liturgies); c) imperial and institutional power structures; or d) and the material world of early Christianity and late antiquity (e.g. relics, sacred texts). Researchers will also have opportunities to pursue other individual and collaborative research beyond the Modes of Knowing project.

The Project and Centre are located in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at ACU. The Institute promotes interdisciplinary and collaborative study through research that seeks to enrich and extend the traditional fields of philosophy and theology at an international level. It hosts several discipline-specific and interdisciplinary research seminars and reading groups, and regular international symposia at ACU’s Rome Campus. Research in Theology and Religious Studies at ACU was rated above world standard in the 2015 Excellence in Research Australia exercise. The Institute is currently undergoing a major expansion: recent junior and senior appointments have been made in Philosophy, Theology, Ethics, New Testament Studies and Early Christian Studies.

General enquiries about the position, the project, and working at ACU Melbourne can be directed to Professor Lewis Ayres (lewis.ayres@acu.edu.au).

Total remuneration valued to AUD138,669 – AUD150,553 pa, including salary component AUD117,361 – AUD127,518 pa, employer contribution to superannuation, and annual leave loading.

To apply, and for further information, including the full position description, please visit http://careers.acu.edu.au/caw/en/job/971107/research-fellowsenior-research-fellow-early-christianity

Centre for Editing Lives and Letters: Three Research Assistant Positions – Call For Applications

The Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL) is currently recruiting for three research assistants, to work on our Archaeology of Reading project, including transcribing and translating marginal annotations from digital facsimiles of early modern books. The posts are part-time (2.5 days a week) and are funded for one year in the ﬁrst instance.

The postholders will have knowledge of the history and culture of late sixteenth-century Europe and current digital research environments, as well as a high level of proﬁciency in early modern palaeography.

The postholders will be expected to have an MA degree or equivalent in a relevant subject area (such as History, literature, languages, Digital Humanities etc – if unsure please email lucy.stagg@ucl.ac.uk). However, applicants should not have completed a PhD degree. Candidates will ideally have language skills, including a modern language and Latin.

For more details, and how to apply, please visit: http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/news/2016/10/scouting-3-research-assistants-excellent-palaeography

Applications close: 4 November, 2016

Heckman Research Stipends – Call For Applications

Heckman Research Stipends
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota

Heckman Stipends, made possible by the A.A. Heckman Endowed Fund, are awarded semi-annually. Up to 10 stipends in amounts up to $2,000 are available each year. Funds may be applied toward travel to and from Collegeville, housing and meals at Saint John’s University, and costs related to duplication of HMML’s microfilm or digital resources. The Stipend may be supplemented by other sources of funding but may not be held simultaneously with another HMML Stipend or Fellowship. Holders of the Stipend must wait at least two years before applying again.

The program is specifically intended to help scholars who have not yet established themselves professionally and whose research cannot progress satisfactorily without consulting materials to be found in the collections of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.

Applications:

Applications must be submitted by April 15 for residencies between July and December of the same year, or by November 15 for residencies between January and June of the following year.

Applicants are asked to provide:

a letter of application with current contact information, the title of the project, length of the proposed residency at HMML and its projected dates, and the amount requested (up to $2,000)
a description of the project to be pursued, with an explanation of how HMML’s resources are essential to its successful completion of the project; applicants are advised to be as specific as possible about which resources will be needed (maximum length: 1,000 words)
an updated curriculum vitae
a confidential letter of recommendation to be sent directly to HMML by an advisor, thesis director, mentor, or, in the case of postdoctoral candidates, a colleague who is a good judge of the applicant’s work

Please send all materials as email attachments to: fellowships@hmml.org with “Heckman Stipend” in the subject line. Questions about the Stipends may be sent to the same address.

Entangled Histories: Australian Historical Association Annual Conference 2017 – Call For Papers

Entangled Histories: Australian Historical Association Annual Conference 2017
Newcastle, Australia
3-7 July, 2017

The AHA is pleased to invite abstracts for panel sessions and individual papers for its annual conference at the University of Newcastle. This year’s theme is ‘Entangled Histories’ in reference to the growing use of ‘entanglements’ as a key theoretical term in the humanities and social sciences. It reflects the increasing move away from narrowly defined ‘national’ histories towards an understanding of History as an interlinked whole where identities and places are the products of mobilities and connections. The conference theme will explore the ways in which peoples, ideas and goods circulated across the boundaries of empires and nations. ‘Entangled History’ views all cultures and societies as connected. We welcome submissions that consider the value of entangled frameworks for historical analysis from all historical periods, themes and research areas. We especially encourage proposals for panel sessions of three papers.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University
Professor Christina Twomey, Monash University.

Conference Themes: Indigenous histories; histories of violence; migration and refugee histories; Mobilities, transnational spaces and borders in history; histories of sexuality; digital histories; histories of health, illness and disability; intimate histories of families and localities; public histories and cultural heritage.

If your abstract does not fit into any of the above themes, please submit to the General Conference Program theme.

Affiliated Conferences and Special Strands: the conference will include a number of strands:

1. The Australian Women’s History Network Symposium, “Symbiotic Histories.” For at least forty years, feminist historians in Australia and elsewhere have documented intimate histories, guided by a belief in the personal as political, a desire to challenge grand narratives, traditions and borders, and a commitment to acknowledging the dynamics of intersectionality. Feminist historian Mrinalini Sinha has emphasised the importance of contextualising intimate histories, noting how gendered discourses have a “symbiotic” relationship to local and global histories of dispossession, colonisation and nation building. We see this conference as an opportunity to build on her analysis. If historians are asked to consider how gender has been historically articulated in the local and the transnational – as well as the national – then, much like “entanglements,” we might uncover the underlying connections, contradictions, and interdependencies between and among our subjects. For this symposium we invite speakers – individually or on panels – to contribute papers that speak to symbiotic histories of women and gender. We especially invite papers that explore the potential for symbiotic histories of women and gender. For more information contact the conveners: Dr Chelsea Barnett, Isobelle Barrett Meyering, James Keating and Sophie Robinson: auswhn@gmail.com

2. Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network, “Green Stream.” We invite submissions of papers and panels in what has become a broad interdisciplinary field since Roderick Nash coined the term in 1972. We welcome submissions across a wide range of research topics as well as in environmental historiography. We are especially interested in looking at the intersection of histories of technology and the environment. For inquiries contact: Dr Nancy Cushing (Nancy.Cushing@newcastle.edu.au).

3. Religious History Association Conference. The RHA invites papers and panel proposals that address religious history from any time period and geographical location. In addition to this broad call, we would like to invite papers or panel proposals in three specific areas: critical engagement with missionary activity; Moravian missions; and papers which engage questions of sexuality and/or marriage and religion. For further information and inquiries contact: Dr Christina Petterson (christina.petterson@gmail.com), or Dr Laura Rademaker (Laura.Rademaker@acu.edu.au).

4. Oral History Australia and the National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ), “Working with Memories”. This strand will bring together presenters and papers that explore the opportunities and challenges of working with memories as sources for historical research and production. Presenters in this strand will be invited to submit their papers to the Oral History Australia Journal. For inquiries contact: Professor Alistair Thomson (alistair.thomson@monash.edu), or Dr Nepia Mahuika (nmahuika@waikato.ac.nz).

Submission and Presentation Guidelines

Each presenter will have 20 minutes presentation and 10 minutes discussion time. Delegates can present only one paper across the AHA and affiliate conference streams. Conference registration is open to everyone, but all presenters must be members of the AHA or its affiliate organizations.

Each author may only submit ONE presentation proposal.

Presentation proposals must be submitted by the 1 March, 2017.

You may submit one of two presentation types:

1. Single paper proposal

2. Panel or Roundtable paper proposals

1. Single paper proposal must follow the guidelines below:

Title: Maximum of 10 words
Biography: No more than 50 words
Summary of Abstract: Maximum of 30 words. This will be the only description of your paper in the conference program, so please choose your words carefully.
Abstract: No more than 250 words. This abstract will be posted on the conference website in a PDF file with all other abstracts, but will not be published in the conference program.

2. Panel or Roundtable paper proposals must follow the guidelines below:

The panel chair or one of the panellists must submit each paper individually in the name of the author of each paper.

Within the submission process please indicate the following:

The name of the panel chair
The email of the panel chair
The title of the panel session
Affiliated conferences strand (if relevant)

Please note the above details must be the same for each paper on the panel.

The following must be included for each paper:

Title: Maximum of 10 words
Biography: No more than 50 words
Summary of Abstract: Maximum of 30 words. This will be the only description of your paper in the conference program, so please choose your words carefully.
Abstract: No more than 250 words. This abstract will be posted on the conference website in a PDF file with all other abstracts, but will not be published in the conference program.

Enquiries:

Professor Philip Dwyer
Email: aha2017@newcastle.edu.au
Tel. 61 (0)439426218

Pembroke College (Cambridge): Harry F. Guggenheim Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences – Call For Applications

Pembroke College, Cambridge
Harry F. Guggenheim Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences

Location: Cambridge
Salary: £22,494 to £25,298
Hours: Full Time
Contract Type: Contract / Temporary

The College hopes to elect not later than 14 March 2017 to a Harry F. Guggenheim Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences, with appointment from 1 October 2017. Candidates for the Research Fellowship should have recently completed or be about to complete a doctoral degree, and should be able to conduct research of outstanding quality on aspects of the human propensity for violence and aggression and its amelioration, from within the disciplines of history, philosophy, international relations, and human, political and social sciences. The duration of the Fellowship will be for three years. Like all Pembroke Research Fellows, the holder will be expected to do a limited amount of teaching for the College, but would require the permission of the Governing Body to undertake other paid work. The stipend will range from £22,494 to £25,298 and is reviewed annually.

Research Fellows are offered subsidised accommodation, in College or in College-owned flats or houses; where accommodation is not required the Harry F. Guggenheim Research Fellow will be provided with a study in College.

Applications, which are due by 25 November, 2016 should be made online at http://www.pem.cam.ac.uk/the-college/job-vacancies, where further particulars and relevant links are available. Informal enquiries can be made to the Senior Tutor’s Assistant, Sally Clowes, at sts@pem.cam.ac.uk.

Cultures of Exclusion in the Early Modern World: Enemies and Strangers, 1600-1800 – Call For Papers

Cultures of Exclusion in the Early Modern World: Enemies and Strangers, 1600-1800
University of Warwick
18-19 May, 2017
Conference Website

When walking through the streets of London, Joseph Addison urged readers of The Spectator to ‘make every face you see give you the satisfaction you now take in beholding that of a friend’. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the ways early modern people embraced sociability, and created new spaces and ‘languages’ of interaction. Yet, not all strangers who met became ‘friends’. Most remained relative strangers, and others became ‘enemies’. How did people determine who was a potential friend, ally, or enemy? Why, how, and in what ways, were individuals and groups socially ‘excluded’? Did physical appearance and conduct, status, occupation, religion, ethnicity, gender, and place of origin, determine whether one was ‘in’ or ‘out’?

Many early modern historians of social relations, popular print, urban history, gender history, criminality, material culture, and the history of the body, senses and emotions, have recently touched upon these issues. Nevertheless, many fundamental questions about the ways men and women understood and managed their social interactions remain. This timely two-day interdisciplinary collaboratory takes the idea of ‘cultures of exclusion’ as a starting point to explore how social relationships were theorised and constructed, and how and why certain groups and individuals were excluded from particular social interactions and spaces.

We welcome abstracts and/or proposals for panels from postgraduates, early career researchers and faculty staff whose research intersects with these themes, as well scholars from any discipline working on Britain, Europe or the wider world.

Professor Garthine Walker (University of Cardiff) is our confirmed keynote speaker. Her paper (title TBC) will hosted in the Zeeman Building at the University of Warwick on the 18th May 2017, held in conjunction with the University of Warwick’s Early Modern Seminar and Eighteenth Century Seminar.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

Theories of inclusion and exclusion
Social relationships and identity formation
Sociability and spaces for social encounters
‘First impressions’ – first meetings and encounters
Visual and discursive representations of outsiders and social outcasts
Exclusionary objects and material artefacts
Senses and emotions – smell, touch, sound and sight
Disguise and deception
Appearance – beauty, ugliness, dirt, disease, and disability
Conflict and quarrels
Rumour, gossip, slander, libel
Regulating and managing friendship
Religious affiliation, belief and belonging, inter-denominational conflict and/or cooperation
National and Ethnic inclusion and exclusion
Gendered representations of inclusion, conflict or ‘otherness’
Social deviants, beggars, runaways, slaves and criminals

Publication of a selection of papers is envisioned. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words for a 20-minute paper to culturesofexclusion@gmail.com by 12 December, 2016, along with a brief biography. Panel proposals are also welcome. Please include the full name, affiliation and email address of all participants.

For further details about the conference, including travel and accommodation information please visit our conference website: https://culturesofexclusion.wordpress.com

The organisers of this event are Naomi Pullin (naomi.wood@warwick.ac.uk) and Kathryn Woods (k.woods@warwick.ac.uk).

Parergon – Call for Proposals for Future Themed Issues

Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Call for proposals for a themed issue of Parergon

http://www.parergon.arts.uwa.edu.au

The journal Parergon, in print since 1971, regularly produces one open issue and one themed issue annually.

The most recent themed issues have been:

2014, 31.2 Medieval and Early Modern Emotional Responses to Death and Dying, guest-edited by Rebecca McNamara and Una McIlvenna

2015, 32.2 A Road Less Travelled: The Medieval and Early Modern World Reflected in New Zealand Collections guest-edited by Chris Jones

2015, 32.3 Religion, Memory and Civil War in the British Isles: Essays for Don Kennedy, guest-edited by Dolly MacKinnon, Alexandra Walsham, and Amanda Whiting

2016, 33.2 Approaches to Early Modern Nostalgia, guest-edited by Kristine Johanson (in print)

2016, 33.3 Poetry, the Arts of Discourse and the Discourse of the Arts: Rethinking Early Modern Poetic Theory and Practice, guest-edited by Zenón Luis-Martínez, Attila Kiss and Sonia Hernández Santano (forthcoming)

We now call for proposals for future themed issues, most immediately for 2018 (35.2)

Parergon publishes articles on all aspects of medieval and early modern studies, from early medieval through to the eighteenth century, and including the reception and influence of medieval and early modern culture in the modern world. We are particularly interested in research which takes new approaches and crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. Themed issues contain up to ten essays, plus the usual reviews section. The guest editor is responsible for setting the theme and drawing up the criteria for the essays.

Proposals should contain the following:

A draft title for the issue.
A statement outlining the rationale for the issue.
Titles and abstracts of all the essays.
A short biographical paragraph for the guest editor(s) and for each contributor.
An example of a completed essay if available. (This is not essential).

The editorial process

Once a proposal has been accepted:

The guest editor will commission and pre-select the essays before submitting them to the Parergon editor by the agreed date.
The Parergon editor will arrange for independent and anonymous peer-review in accordance with the journal’s established criteria.
Once the essays have been peer-reviewed, the Parergon editor will communicate the feedback to the guest editor.
The guest editor will then be asked to work with the authors to bring the submissions to the required standard where necessary.
Occasionally a commissioned essay will be judged not suitable for publication in Parergon. This decision will be taken by the Parergon editor, based on the anonymous expert reviews.
Essays which have already been published or accepted for publication elsewhere are not eligible for inclusion in the journal.

Time line

Proposals for the 2018 issue (35.2) are required by 30 January 2017, and completed essays by 30 November 2017 for publication in late 2018.

Preliminary expressions of interest are welcome at any time.

Proposals will be considered by a selection panel drawn from members of the Parergon Editorial Board who will be asked to assess and rank the proposals according to the following criteria:

Suitability for the journal
Originality of contribution to the chosen field
Significance/importance of the proposed theme
Potential for advancing scholarship in a new and exciting way
Range and quality of authors

Parergon, is available in electronic form as part of Project Muse, Australian Public Affairs – Full Text (from 1994), and Wilson’s Humanities Full Text (from 2008); it is included in the Thomson Scientific Master Journal List of refereed journals and in the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), and is indexed for nine major database services, including ABELL, IMB and Scopus.

Please correspond with Anne Scott anne.scott@uwa.edu.au.

Anne M. Scott, Editor Parergon

The University of Western Australia

Professor Carolyne Larrington, Public Lecture @ The University of Melbourne