“Pirate Fiction in the Middle Ages, 500-1500 AD”
The Image of the Sea-Warrior in Medieval Texts from the Factual to the Fantastic –
University of Southern Denmark, Odense
21-22 September, 2017

Keynote Speakers: Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen) & Emily Sohmer Tai (CUNY)

In the recent years the study of plunder at sea in the Middle Ages, more popularly known as piracy, has received increased interest in medieval studies. Most research up to now on medieval piracy has so far approached the subject from a politico-legal point of view. This has yielded important insights into the legal status of piracy and its practice in the Middle Ages. However, investigations into the perception of pirates and piracy in medieval Europe, and possible changes in this perception over time, are mostly lacking. This is an unfortunate state of affairs. Although pirates and piracy in legal terms denote criminals and crime, these terms in much literature and popular fiction designate rebellious heroes against tyranny and injustice. While law and state power are most certainly vital to the study of piracy and plunder at sea by neglecting the image, perception and contemporary discussion of this maritime culture only half the story is told.

Inspired by the works on “fiction” in the archives by Natalie Zemon Davis and Claude Gauvard this conference seeks to address this lacuna by bringing historians and scholars of literature and art together to explore ‘pirate narratives’ not only in historiography and law but also in medieval romances and novels, hagiography, chronicles, diplomatic correspondences and iconography. We therefore invite scholars to contribute to the discussion of medieval sea warriors, pirates and piracy by the study of the various narratives of illustrious and/or infamous persons such as Ragnar Lothbrok, the Jomsvikings, Eustace the Monk, William Smale and John Hawley, Don Pero Niño, Gadifer de la Salle, Klaus Störtebeker, and Benedetto Zaccaria. This list is by no means exhaustive and we welcome papers on any men, women (factual or fictive) or themes of war and plunder at sea in the medieval Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean in the ‘long’ Middle Ages.

Deadline for paper proposals (max. 200 words including paper title) should be send to Thomas Heebøll-Holm thee@sdu.dk no later than 31 January, 2017. There will be no registration fee.

This conference is a collaboration between Thomas Heebøll-Holm, Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark and the Centre for Medieval Literature (CML), Odense & York.

Encountering the Material Medieval
University of St Andrews
19-20 January, 2017

Keynote Speakers:

• Prof Andrew Prescott, University of Glasgow
• Prof Emma Cayley, University of Exeter

The University of St Andrews School of Art History in collaboration with the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies (SAIMS) present Encountering the Material Medieval, the second edition of an interdisciplinary conference on materiality and material engagements with the medieval, taking place on 19-20 January 2017 in Scotland.

The academic year 2016-2017 looks like it is going to be the year of modern medievalisms, with three conferences addressing how the medieval fits into our modern world in the UK, France and the USA. While the idea of medievalism directly impacts modern scholarship and culture at large, it encourages an engagement with a theoretical abstraction of the medieval culture. This way, the materiality of the sources, and the intrinsic materiality of our embodied engagement with the medieval, is neglected.

Beyond the digital humanities, we are interested in material engagements with the medieval. This takes place in the library, where we encounter manuscripts in an intimate, skin-to-skin contact; during fieldwork, when we need to crouch in order to enter a medieval altar; in one’s own kitchen, when we try to reproduce a recipe freshly transcribed from a manuscript; or on the fairground, where we can hold in our own hand a replica of medieval pottery.

We are dedicated to encouraging multi-mediality and non-traditional presentation methods during the conference. Therefore, we invite interactive presentations, installations and posters, workshop and hands-on activities proposals (45-50 minutes), as well as papers (not longer than 20 minutes) on the following range of topics and their relationship to the study of materiality, physicality and embodiment in/with the Middle Ages:

• The concept of materiality and physicality as research and teaching methodology;
• Bringing the materiality of the medieval to the institution or the wider public;
• Semiotics and anthropology of the material Middle Ages in modern or medieval thought and practice;
• The human and non-human, material and embodied, materiality and boundaries;
  Medieval to modern (dis)continuities in genealogy of material.
• Papers and workshops on other issues related to the study of materiality and physicality in the Middle Ages are also welcome.

Please send your submissions (250 word abstract) along with a short biography (max. 100 words) to medmat@st-andrews.ac.uk no later than 15 November, 2016.

For more info, visit our website
Medievalmaterialities.wordpress.com
Find us on Twitter: @medievalmateriality and tweeting with #medmat17

Enchanted Isles, Fatal Shores: Living Versailles
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (with additional events at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney)
17–18 March, 2017

Conference Website

On the occasion of the Versailles: Treasures from the Palace exhibition at the NGA, which brings major works of art from the Palace of Versailles to Canberra, this conference showcases the latest ideas about the lives of past people and objects, as well as the living culture of Versailles today.

Staged in Canberra, which like Versailles is a planned capital city, centre of government and culture, this is a unique opportunity to explore the enduring influence and resonance of Versailles, its desires and self-perceptions of modernity, from film to fashion to architecture. Gathering a generation of scholars whose work is shifting our perceptions of the art, culture and life of ancien-régime Versailles and its reception, this is the occasion for fresh and challenging research, and new perspectives on canon-defining works.

1664 is formative in the history of Versailles—the year a modest hunting lodge began to be transformed, to become a centre of art, fashion and power in Europe for more than a century. The dream of Versailles as an enchanted isle for the French aristocracy came to a grisly end with the 1789 revolution. Only two years later, the first fleet of British colonists came to settle on the east coast of Australia, on what Robert Hughes famously dubbed ‘the fatal shore’. Life at Versailles changed irreparably just as it would for those who lived in, and migrated to, Australia at the close of the eighteenth century.

Versailles was not the static creation of one man but a hugely complex cultural space, a centre of power, of life, love, anxiety and creation, as well as an enduring palimpsest of aspirations, desires and ruptures. The splendour of the castle, and the masterpieces of art and design it contains, masks a more sordid history. The conference’s theme, Enchanted isles, fatal shores, encourages examination of the tensions between splendour and misery, insiders and outsiders, display and privacy that framed life at Versailles.

Conveners: Mark Ledbury, Power Professor of Art and Visual Culture, University of Sydney; Robert Wellington, Lecturer, ANU School of Art Centre for Art History and Art Theory; and Lucina Ward, Senior Curator and coordinating curator for the exhibition, National Gallery of Australia

For conference enquiries email or phone +61 2 6240 6432

Call for papers

Conference conveners seek proposals to deliver 20-minute papers addressing the subject of the conference; those that address the key themes below are especially welcome.

Key themes:

• The ‘lives’ of Versailles: How did the various communities of artists, artisans, gardeners, courtiers and administrators who lived at the chateau work together?
• Virtual Versailles: How do we account for the unrealised ambitions for Versailles, the projects and aspirations that were not completed in the ancien régime?
• Adaptations and destructions: The history of the chateau is one of constant construction and renovation, but at what cost? How do we account for these losses? What role can digital technologies play in this process?
• Challenging period terms: The phases of design at Versailles take the name of the three kings with whose reigns they coincided, giving a false impression of their role in the creation of period style. Is it possible for a study of Versailles to recuperate a sense of individual artistic agency?
• The private and the public: Libellous pamphlets and personal memoirs provide a tantalising glimpse of what went on behind closed doors at Versailles, but can we speak of a material culture of private life in a chateau designed as a stage for the performance of monarchy? What can we retrieve about the private sexual desires and personal anxieties of the chateau’s inhabitants through its extant remains?
• ‘Le sale et le propre’: How does a study of hygiene transform our understanding of life at the chateau?
• Versailles and Paris: How was Versailles connected to the economic capital of France, and how did courtiers, artists and artisans live and work between the two places?
• Being there: High nobles would often be forced to live in tiny uncomfortable apartments in the ‘rats nest’ of Versailles, just to be close to the king. How did the presence and absence of courtiers and others at Versailles influence the works of art, furniture and fashions that they commissioned?
• Resonances of Versailles: What was the impact of Versailles in a broader geographic and historical context? What can we make of private mansions from the gilded age to the present that emulate the Versailles aesthetic?
• Versailles on film: Life at Versailles has proved to be an enduring inspiration for filmmakers and television show producers. What are the facts and fictions of period dramas that recreate life at the chateau, and what role do they play in sustaining a living history of Versailles?

Please send an abstract of 300 words and a short CV to the conveners at Versaillesconference@nga.gov.au by 30 October, 2016.

Othello’s Island 2017
The Fifth Annual Conference on Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Nicosia, Cyprus
CVAR, Nicosia, Cyprus (STC)
5-8 April, 2017 (with optional coach trip on 9 April, 2017)

Conference Website

We welcome applications to present papers at the 2017 edition of Othello’s Island. This will take place in Nicosia, Cyprus, in April 2017. We are interested in hearing papers on diverse aspects of medieval and renaissance literature, art, history, society and other aspects of culture, and these do not have to be specifically related to Cyprus or the Mediteranean.

It is worth looking at the range of papers from past conferences to see that previous speakers have covered topics ranging from slavery in medieval Cyprus and Malta, to the impact of Italian Renaissance art on Cypriot Byzantine painting, to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

That said, given our location, Cyprus, the Levant and the Mediterranean do impact on the conference, not least because for anyone interested in medieval and renaissance history Cyprus is real gem, full of architectural and other material culture relating to the period. This includes museums filled with historic artefacts, gothic and Byzantine cathedrals and churches and a living culture that has direct links to this period.

Othello’s Island has developed a reputation as one of the friendliest medieval and renaissance studies conferences in the world today, and it is also genuinely interdisciplinary. In part this is due to the relatively small size of the event, which generates a true sense of community during the conference.

Full Papers (20 minutes plus questions)

If you are interested in giving a talk at the conference please submit a proposal for a paper. Standard papers are 20 minutes long, followed by 5 or 10 minutes for questions. The basic theme of the conference is mediaeval, renaissance and early modern art, literature, social and cultural history, but we are very open minded on the topic of papers, so please feel free to submit a proposal, or contact us first to discuss the idea.

Topics in the past have included art, medieval and renaissance literature, architecture and archaeology, religious experience and belief, relations between different religions and ethnic groups, slavery, the position of women, trade routes and even the influence on western Europe of medieval food from the middle east. We have also had papers looking looking beyond our core historical period, looking at the continuing use of medieval and renaissance history and imagery to justify colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the impact of Shakespeare on the Indian film industry.

Proposals for papers should comprise a cover sheet showing:

1. Your title (eg. Mr, Ms, Dr, Prof. etc.) and full name
2. Your institutional affiliation (if any)
3. Your postal address, e-mail address and telephone number
4. The title of your proposed paper

With this you should send a proposal/abstract for your paper of no more than 300 words and a copy of your CV/resume to info@othellosisland.org with the subject line OTHELLO 2017. All papers must be delivered in English and in person by the author of the paper. We cannot accommodate speakers wishing to present using Skype (or similar), or proxy presentations.

The deadline for submissions of proposals is 1 January, 2017. Early submission is strongly advised. We aim to have a decision on the acceptance of papers within four weeks of submission.