Pre-Modernisms
12th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Friday, October 28th, 2016

As the famous sayings go, everything old is new again, and history repeats itself. How many times have we heard someone described as a Renaissance man or woman, or something that seems old-fashioned called “medieval?” Scholars of these periods often find, of course, that such evaluations are, at best, inaccurate. However, trans-temporal approaches to study and even historical anachronisms can produce fruitful new inquiries into our fields, from contemporary children’s literature that engages in medievalisms to produce new fantasy worlds to queer and transgender studies that attempt to see the past from non-normative perspectives. This conference aims to bring together a wide variety of scholars of different disciplines and especially different time periods to pair what we know about the classical, medieval, and early modern periods with what later times perceive about these periods and how they manipulate the past for present agendas. As such, this conference is aimed not only at pre-modern scholars, but also at scholars of later and contemporary periods whose work engages in envisioning the past.

Please submit a 300-word abstract no later than September 15 at 5 PM. E-mail: medieval.study@gmail.com

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Arthurian Tradition
• Early Book Collections
• Architectural Styles
• Medieval TV and Film
• Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Historical Fiction
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Historically Based Political Rhetoric
• History of Marginal Perspectives
• Law and the Legal Tradition
• Renaissance Humanism
• Philosophical Traditions
• Renaissance Faires and Period Dress
• Medieval and Early Modern Adaptations of Classical Texts
• Premodern Recipes and Remedies
• Contemporary Classroom Approaches
• Linguistic Developments
• Premodern Historiography (including history plays)

Medieval Association of the Pacific 2017 Conference
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
16–18 March 2017

The 51st Annual Meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific will be held 16–18 March 2017, at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, located near the Pacific Ocean, just minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, and ranked among the most beautiful college campuses in the country. The conference will conclude with an exciting evening program at the J. Paul Getty Museum, renowned for its collections of antiquities, medieval manuscripts, European paintings, and photography.

Presentations on all aspects of medieval studies are welcomed, but the program committee particularly invites abstracts for papers on the theme “Preserving and Presenting the Medieval.” Possible topics could include the multiple uses of the medieval past in contemporary media and culture; the modern politics surrounding the conservation of medieval artifacts and sites; advances and challenges in curatorial science and methodology; medieval reflections on and practices toward ruins, renovation, and material heritage; the transmission, editing, translation, and dissemination of medieval texts; and debates over the meaning of the term “medieval,” its perpetuation, and its relevance. In keeping with MAP’s mission to bring together scholars from around the Pacific Rim, the program committee also encourages proposals treating cultures and societies of the Pacific world between ca. 500 and 1500, as well as submissions from medievalists based in Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

Keynote Speakers:

• Zrinka Stahuljak, Professor, French and Francophone Studies, UCLA “The Medieval Potential”
• Nancy Turner, Conservator, Department of Paper Conservation, The Getty Museum “Observation and Image-Making: Medieval Illuminations and the View from L.A.”

Submissions:

For the 2017 MAP meeting, participants may submit a proposal for either a 20-minute paper or an 8- minute presentation as part of a roundtable session. Proposals must be submitted either as MS Word documents or as PDF files. Please send proposals to aperron@lmu.edu, laskaya@uoregon.edu, and map2017lmu@gmail.com. Keep in mind that the deadline of October 31, 2016, is firm and that proposals received after this date cannot be accepted.

Paper Proposals

Proposals need to include the following for each speaker: name, discipline, institution (if applicable), email address, and an abstract of up to 250 words. Papers normally will be 20 minutes in length (8–10 pages).

A small number of papers closely addressing the theme of the conference will be selected for inclusion in a plenary panel to open MAP 2017.

Roundtable Presentation Proposals

The program committee also invites participants for a small number of roundtable sessions focusing on specific aspects of the conference theme. These include:

• Medievalism, the media, and popular culture
• Preservation of medieval sites
• Manuscript transmission and conservation
• Medieval attitudes toward and practices concerning renovation and material heritage
• Rethinking the “Middle Ages” as a period

Those interested in participating in roundtable discussions should plan to speak for no more than 8 minutes and should send in their name, discipline, institution (if applicable), email address, and an abstract of no more than 100 words. The program committee will form the roundtables and put participants in contact with one another. To facilitate scholarly interchange, roundtable participants will be expected to pre-circulate their proposed comments among the group prior to the conference.

Conference Information & MAP Membership

The conference website, which will include further details about MAP 2017, is currently under construction and will be available in the fall. In the meantime, please direct any questions to Anthony Perron, History Department, Loyola Marymount University (aperron@lmu.edu). Participants in the conference must be current members of MAP. To join or renew your MAP membership, please go to www.medievalpacific.org.

Encounters and Reimaginings: Medieval Scandinavia and the World
2017 Berkeley Graduate Student Symposium
University of California, Berkeley
March 3-4, 2017

ScandGrads, the graduate organization affiliated with Department of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley, is proud to announce the interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium in Berkeley, California to be held March 3-4, 2017.

From the shores of Vínland to the halls of Byzantium, the Norse traveled widely and encountered many cultures—which in turn influenced Norse society at home. Traces of these journeys can be found in the archaeological record, saga narratives, and modern interpretations thereof. Moreover, continental ideas and literary forms—from romances to saints’ lives—informed Scandinavian intellectual and everyday life. The organizing committee welcomes papers exploring encounters and reimaginings across the Old Norse world, as well as echoes and influences of medieval Scandinavia in modern contexts.

We are happy to announce our two plenary speakers for the conference:

• Professor Marianne Kalinke (Emerita, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Professor Jonas Wellendorf (University of California, Berkeley)

Both Professor Kalinke and Professor Wellendorf have written extensively on cultural and literary interactions between the Old Norse-Icelandic sphere and continental medieval Europe. We are very excited to welcome both of them in March!

Any student or early career researcher is welcome to submit a proposal related to the conference theme in areas of study including but not limited to: literary studies, material culture, migration, law, politics, religious studies, reception studies, linguistics, and textual studies.

All interested applicants are encouraged to submit an abstract of 200 words to the organizing committee at scandgrads@gmail.com by August 31, 2016.

‘More than meets the page’: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s-1700s
University of Warwick
4 March, 2017

Keynote Speakers:

• Dr Marika Keblusek (Leiden University)
• Dr Angela McShane (RCA/V&A)

For Italy, the ‘long seventeenth century’ was a period of considerable financial challenges. This was especially evident on the book market. Nevertheless, thanks to new techniques and formats which mutually related text and images within the same publication, innovative genres were born that were marketed towards both ends of the audience spectrum, from the learned to the illiterate.

‘More than meets the page: Printing Text and Images in Italy, 1570s-1700s’ aims to investigate the ways in which the consolidation of the book and print trade influenced the development of such new book genres from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. The products emerging in the wake of these processes reached consumers throughout distant countries, between Italy and the rest of Europe. Moreover, various professionals and skilled workers earned their living thanks to the print market, from the production to the distribution of printed items. For instance, workshops of woodcutters specialized exclusively in book illustrations, such as for scientific treatises, and publishers regularly sent participants to fairs throughout Europe. The new commercial items, moreover, contributed to the spread of cultural phenomena, for instance the Grand Tour through its souvenir prints that were sometimes incorporated in atlases.

This one-day interdisciplinary conference seeks to examine these matters by focusing on the products, audiences and professionals involved. By doing so, it sets out to lay the foundations for a shared history of printed products and markets in the early modern period. The conference promotes a multidisciplinary perspective, bridging the gaps between art history, history of the book and other disciplines such as intellectual history and communication studies.

We invite papers addressing, although by no means limited to, questions such as:

• Who were the publishers that specialized in the new genres, both in earnest or merely to face the financial challenges they encountered from the late sixteenth century onwards?
• Can specific socio-­‐geographical patterns be discerned (through either individual case studies or larger scale data analysis)?
• In what ways was the book trade on a whole influenced by booksellers’ increasing reliance on book fairs and news correspondents, and by the emergence of bookselling as a separate profession? And what was the relevance of supplementary trades, such as paper production?
• To what extent did the production methods and channels of distribution used in the book‐ and print trade overlap during this period?
• What was the impact of collecting on the physical appearance of print products, such atlases and albums, and on the demand for already circulating books?
• Were certain of the new genres specifically targeted towards particular audiences? Can cheap print in its various shapes, such as news printing, be considered as reaching a shared audience between different social classes?
• In what ways did figures active within cities or in areas between city and countryside, like street singers, performers, public news readers, and pedlars, contribute to the book ‐ and print trade?
• How can the status of Italy, which despite its waning glory was still able to remain one of the leading players on the book -­ and print market, in all this be understood?

We invite papers from both established and emerging scholars in universities, museums, galleries, and other related institutions.

Accepted speakers will be expected to pay the conference fee and fund their own travel; bursaries for postgraduate students might be offered to help with travel expenses, however this is not guaranteed. All accepted speakers are encouraged to apply to their institutions for subsidies to attend the conference.

Abstracts for 20-­‐minute papers, not exceeding 300 words, accompanied by a brief academic CV (100 words), should be sent by 31 August, 2016 to: meetsthepage@gmail.com.