Scholars, Scribes, and Readers: An Advanced Course in Arabic Manuscript Studies – Call For Applications

Scholars, Scribes, and Readers: An Advanced Course in Arabic Manuscript Studies
Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK
6-10 June, 2016

The Islamic Manuscript Association, in cooperation with Cambridge University Library and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, is pleased to announce an advanced short course in manuscript studies, entitled Scholars, Scribes, and Readers: An Advanced Course in Arabic Manuscript Studies, which will be held at Cambridge University Library from 6 to 10 June 2016.

This intensive five-day course is intended for researchers, librarians, curators, and anyone else working with Islamic manuscripts. As an advanced course, it is particularly aimed at those who already have some experience in Islamic codicology and palaeography and all participants must have a good reading knowledge of Arabic. The course will focus on Arabic-language manuscripts from various regions, including historical Turkey, Iran, and India. It is hoped that this advanced course will allow participants to gain greater exposure to and familiarity with the vast array of practices encountered in Arabic manuscripts.

The workshop will consist of three days of illustrated, interactive lectures on selected manuscripts and two days of hands-on sessions focusing on a selection of manuscripts from the Cambridge University Library collection. The manuscripts selected for presentation by the instructor cover the whole range of scribal practices encountered in a variety of subjects/genres, geographical regions, and historical periods (see the programme for details).

Those who attend the interactive lectures can expect to:

  • Learn how to evaluate the authenticity and quality of transmitted texts through analyzing various carefully selected manuscripts, and the data contained therein.

Those attending the full course, including both the lectures and hands-on sessions, can expect to:

  • Be able to apply in practice the acquired theoretical knowledge from the interactive lectures.
  • Conduct detailed examination of all aspects of the selected manuscripts.
  • Consult manuscripts from a variety of subjects/genres and scribal practices from different regions and historical periods.
  • Work in groups of three, guided by the instructor, to put together a detailed description of a manuscript and communicate your findings to the whole class.
  • Receive feedback on your description from the instructor and engage in open discussions about each group’s findings.
  • Gain greater confidence in deciphering sometimes puzzling phenomena encountered in manuscripts; in other words, participants will become better “detectives”.

The course will be led by Adam Gacek, a retired faculty lecturer and former head of the Islamic Studies Library, McGill University, who is the author of a sizeable corpus of publications on Islamic manuscripts, including The Arabic Manuscript Tradition: a Glossary of Technical Terms and Bibliography (2001, 2008 – Supplement), and Arabic Manuscripts: a Vademecum for Readers (2009).

Please note that the hands-on sessions are limited to twelve persons for conservation and pedagogical reasons. Participants can choose to attend the full five day course, including lectures and hands-on sessions, or the three days of lectures only. There is no attendance limit for the lectures. All instruction will be in English.

For full details, please visit: http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/courses/scholars,-scribes,-and-readers-an-advanced-course-in-arabic-manuscript-studies/registration.aspx

ANZAMEMS Member News: Kriston Rennie – Medieval Monastic History

Dear members, please see the following letter from ANZAMEMS committee member Kriston Rennie:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you en masse to gather some intel about past, present, and future research endeavours in the field of medieval monastic history. In anticipation of a symposium to be held in Dresden later this year (27-29 October), I am trying to assemble a complete picture of the work being done in Australia and New Zealand. I have been asked by the Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (FOVOG) at TU Dresden to ‘represent’ our region, with a view to establishing more active and international networks with scholars from Europe (east and west), North America, and South America. Celebrating 20 years of study into comparative religious orders, the FOVOG would ideally like to assess the international state of research, ‘to generate and illustrate new perspectives on the exploration of vita religiosa in order to envisage new projects.’ The ‘workshop’ promises to gather 40-50 scholars from around the world; all have been tasked with the same responsibility.

There is a great interest in Germany about our respective countries, and I would like to represent our research ambitions, funding opportunities, and collaborations accurately. To my mind, this is an exciting opportunity to showcase our work (projects, grants, publications, etc.), to explain the current situation of our universities and funding systems, and ultimately to initiate some profitable connections. My thinking is not limited solely to our own research, but also to the work of our MPhil and PhD students, and post-docs. Discussion on ‘research clusters’ and ‘areas of expertise’ should also, in my opinion, take into account possible supervisory arrangements with other countries and institutions. I’m certain, for example, that colleagues here in Germany would be fascinated by the possibility of ‘linkage grants’ and the Australian-DAAD scheme, and to learn about our active society, biennial conference, and postgraduate training seminars. In other words, I don’t perceive this invitation as being about drawing Australia and New Zealand into a European framework; it offers the potential to work also in the other direction, to the benefit of all invested parties.

So, in essence, I am asking for expressions of interest – so to speak. If you have an interest in the field of medieval religious orders and/comparative religious history, please contact me to share your thoughts, ideas, and plans. If you have publications and/or current work in this field, please bring them/it to my attention. If you have a firm grasp of our strengths (e.g., Dominican, Cistercian), please share your thoughts. If you’ve already got some profitable links (formal or informal), please let me know. And if there is something or someone that you feel should must not be overlooked in our presentation to an international forum, I’d be extremely grateful for your insight and perspective.

I can be reached anytime through my work address: k.rennie@uq.edu.au.

I look forward to hearing from you soon (preferably before 1 August. 2016).

Sincerely,
Kriston Rennie

15th C. Middle European Illuminated MS From the BSB Collection – Bavarian State Library Online Exhibition

The Bavarian State Library in Munich has upcoming exhibition of 15th-c. Middle European illuminated manuscripts from the BSB collection. For more information about the exhibition in English, please visit: http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/digitalscriptorium/news/april2016.html.

For those who are unable to attend in person, there is a virtual exhibition of some of the items online on the following link:

https://www.bilderwelten2016.de

Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson and Professor Ian Gadd, The Death of Shakespeare – The University of Adelaide Free Public Lecture

The Death of Shakespeare Public Lecture

Date: Tuesday, 26 April 2016
Time: 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Venue: Elder Hall, The University of Adelaide
Cost: Free but Bookings essential by Wednesday 21 April, 2016. Please click here to register your attendance

This year the world celebrates 400 years of William Shakespeare’s Legacy

At the time of his death on 23 April1616 Shakespeare was far from a celebrity. Beyond the country town of Stratford where he had been born and now was buried, his death appears to have occasioned little interest or attention. None of his fellow-poets chose to mourn his passing; no gatherings in his honour were held; no contemporary references to his death have survived. Why did the final exit of the man now acclaimed as the world’s most famous writer not attract more resounding applause? How was Shakespeare’s reputation established in the years after his death? How did his fame spread–through Europe, the British Empire, globally?

Speaker: Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson, University of Melbourne
Response: Professor Ian Gadd, Bath Spa University
Musical Performance: Adelaide Baroque (Emma Horwood: Soprano; Anne Gardiner: Harpsichord; Graham Strahle: Viola da amba; Jayne Varnish: Recorders)
Chair: Dr Lucy Potter, The University of Adelaide

Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson, FBA FRSE FAHA has had an outstanding academic and professional career and is one of Australia’s most energetic and effective champions of the importance and value of the Humanities. Currently an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, he has previously been Fellow and Lecturer of Wadham College, Oxford (1962-9), a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge (1995-2005), and has chaired the English Faculties of both these Universities. He was also Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, Edinburgh University, perhaps the most distinguished and certainly the oldest Chair of English Language and Literature in the world. Resigning his Oxford fellowship to return to Australia in 1969, he was Professor of English at the ANU and also Head of Department (1969-91).

In the last three years Professor Donaldson has produced two related publications, the culmination of a life-time of scholarly work: his authoritative biography, Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford: OUP, 2011), and his General Editorship of the Cambridge Edition of The Works of Ben Jonson (Cambridge: CUP, 2012). The Cambridge Works has been praised in the London Review of Books as ‘[a] formidable enterprise’ while the Times Literary Supplement has described it as an ‘outstanding edition’ and an ‘invaluable scholarly resource’. The biography, Ben Jonson: A Life, has also been published to critical acclaim.

Ian Gadd is Professor of English Literature at Bath Spa University and President of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), the largest scholarly society in the world devoted to the study of the history of the book. His research focuses on the printing and publishing of books in England in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was the Charlton Hinman Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, in 2011.

Australia’s Silent Film Festival: Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary Celebration

Australia’s Silent Film Festival: Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary Celebration Silent Films With Live Music

Date: 15 April, 2016
Time: 5:30 pm-6:15 pm (drinks and nibbles in Dixson Room)
Venue: Dixson Room, State Library of NSW. The Shakespeare Room will also be open.
Tickets: $30/ $25 Online www.ozsilentfilmfestival.com.au or call T 0419 267 318
More info: www.ozsilentfilmfestival.com.au/cms/uploads/2016_programs/state_lib_apr.pdf

Digital restorations of:

The Life and Death of Richard III (1912) 59 minutes USA Director James Keane and starring Frederick Warde Preserved by the American Film Institute

“An astounding rediscovery of the cinema, Richard III is the earliest surviving American feature film, newly discovered and restored to its original brilliance through the American Film Institute…… Produced as a vehicle for Frederick Warde, a legendary stage actor of the 19th Century, Richard III was the most ambitious Shakespearean adaptation to date. The film not only attempts to honour the intricacies of the original play, it flavours the drama with spectacular crowd scenes and rich colour tints. Richard III offers a fresh glimpse at a time when Shakespeare wasn’t strictly the domain of scholars but was a source of popular entertainment, “when Americans didn’t have to be spoon-fed a great dramatist but were united in their passion for one who gave them characters who mirrored their own complex humanity, not to mention sublime poetry, along with requisite doses of sex and violence.” (Frank Rich, the New York Times)

Bromo and Juliet (1926) 24 minutes USA With Charley Chase and Oliver Hardy

“In this short the wonderful comic, Charley Chase, stages a play as a fund raiser but has to keep an eye on his drunken father and deal with a rascal cab driver, Oliver Hardy. What play? The Bard’s greatest tragic romance. Why do this play? Well, he is way out of his depth as a young businessman who plays Romeo as a promise to his sweetheart who wishes to play Juliet. Plenty of chases, drinks, mad cap all round and back to the play at the film’s end!”

Accompanist: Kaine Hayward

Kaine is in demand as a piano accompanist and has worked as for companies including The Australian Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, Sydney Dance Company and The Sydney Conservatorium of Music. As a singer, he has performed at both The Sydney Opera House and Hamer Hall, performed lead roles for Opera Australia, toured internationally and maintains a busy concert schedule.

The Shakespeare Room located on the ground floor of the Mitchell wing commemorates the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. Arthur G Benfield’s stained glass window, the Seven Ages of Man, depicts a scene from As You Like It.

Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, histories & tragedies, published according to the true originall copies, also known as The First Folio, was published in 1623. It was produced only eight years after Shakespeare’s death on 23 April 1616. Apart from the bible, this volume is now considered the most influential book ever published in the English language. A facsimile copy of the first folio is displayed in the Shakespeare room.

The Dangerous Women Project – Call for Contributions

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh invites submissions from students and researchers reflecting on the question: ‘what does it mean to be a dangerous woman?’

Responses will be published on the Dangerous Women Project website, linking International Women’s Day 2016 with International Women’s Day 2017. Each daily post should explore, examine or critique the ‘dangerous women’ theme. We invite creative responses, reflections, and research-led posts by or about women of diverse backgrounds and identities. Research-based submissions are curated under a special category accessible at http://dangerouswomenproject.org/tag/research-led. With posts attracting over 2,000 readers per week (and growing), this is a great opportunity for public engagement and to disseminate your work to a wider audience.

Submissions process:
We are open to a variety of formats and media (essay, story, memoir, poetry, comic, info-graphic, video, image with accompanying text, etc), and welcome text contributions of up to 2,000 words. Research-based submissions must be written in a style and tone that is accessible and engaging to a public audience. All authors must submit a short bio of up to 100 words, and, where possible (though not essential), a photo/image to accompany a submission. All submissions will be reviewed for suitability and relevance by the Dangerous Women Project team, including the IASH Director and staff, with guidance from a wider Consultation Group from across The University of Edinburgh. Submissions should be sent to: iash@ed.ac.uk.

Next closing date for submitting contributions: 30 April, 2016.

We aim to respond with an outcome within one month of the close of each submissions period.
More information on the project is available at our website: www.dangerouswomenproject.org.

Ghent University: Postdoctoral Researcher in History (State Formation 1300-1600) – Call For Applications

Medieval/Early Modern History: one postdoc position (1 + 3 years) within the ERC Starting Grant Project “STATE – Lordship and the Rise of the State in Western Europe, 1300-1600” The postdoctoral researcher will participate in an ERC-funded research project that pursues a new interpretation of state formation in Western Europe between 1300 and 1600. This period is considered as the key phase in the genesis of the modern state, as various polities now centralized fiscal and military resources under their command. While there is debate whether this was primarily a top-down process carried out by princes, or a bottom-up process carried out by popular representation, scholars tend to agree that state building was essentially a process of centralization. This assumption must be questioned, as recent studies have raised awkward questions that cannot be answered by the current paradigm. The research hypothesis is that the emerging states of Western Europe could only acquire sufficient support among established elites if they also decentralized much of their legal authority through a process in which princes created or endorsed a growing number of privately owned seigneuries as “states-within-states” for the benefit of elites who in turn contributed to state building.

This project will study the interplay between states and seigneurial elites in five regions – two in the Low Countries, two in France, and one in England – to test whether fiscal and military centralization was facilitated by a progressively confederal organization of government. Together, the case studies cover four key variables that shaped the relations between princes and power elites in different combinations all over Europe. It concerns different trajectories in 1) state formation, 2) urbanization, 3) the socio-economic organization of rural society, and 4) ideological dissent. The comparisons between the case studies are aimed at the development of an analytical framework to chart and to explain path-dependency in Europe.

The postdoctoral researcher, starting 1 September 2016, will explore secular lordship in the French provinces of Normandy and Languedoc. Depending on personal preference, a focus on either the fourteenth or sixteenth century is possible. The heuristic aim is to develop a snapshot survey of seigneuries and their owners of a part of each province, using sources preserved in the Archives nationales/Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, as well as in regional archives (travel expenses are borne by the ERC-project). The interpretative aim is to use these case studies to engage with current theories on state formation and elite formation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.

You will be based at Ghent University in the Department of History and the Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies and be part of the research team led by prof.dr. Frederik Buylaert (currently Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Ghent University as of September 2016). The team will consist of two postdoctoral fellows and two doctoral students. Close collaboration is expected with dr. Justine Firnhaber-Baker (University of St Andrews), who will co-supervise the French case studies of the project.

Ghent University was founded in 1817 and counts approximately 40,000 students and 9,000 staff. It is consistently listed in the top 100 of the universities of Europe (see http://www.ugent.be/en).

For full details and to apply, please visit: http://www.ugent.be/en/work/vacancies/scientific/postdoc-rsf0n

Applications close on 15 May, 2016.

Instructor @ English Dept. Arizona State University – Call For Applications

Instructor
Arizona State University, Department of English
Position Type: Non tenure-track faculty
Position Location: Tempe, Arizona 85287, United States
Subject Areas: English / Linguistics, Creative Writing, Rhetoric and Composition, Film and Media Studies, English Education, Literature, Second Language Writing, Developmental Writing, Disciplinary Writing, Workplace Writing, Academic Writing
Application Deadline: 2016/04/22

The Department of English on the Tempe Campus at Arizona State University invites applications for the position of Instructor. The successful candidate will be expected to teach courses primarily in the Writing Program and in other disciplinary areas within the department as needed. This is a full-time, benefits-eligible appointment made on an academic year basis. A typical full-time course load is five classes per semester. Subsequent annual renewal is possible contingent upon satisfactory performance, the needs of the unit, availability of resources, and sufficient enrollment in assigned courses. Anticipated start date is August 2016.

Minimum qualifications: MA or MFA in Creative Writing, Film & Media Studies, English Education, Linguistics, Literature, Rhetoric & Composition or related discipline; three years’ experience in higher education teaching composition courses, and evidence of effective teaching.

Desired qualifications: PhD or evidence of graduate coursework beyond the Master’ level in the areas listed above; experience teaching at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum; evidence of experience in both theory and practice within a writing intensive field, such as: academic writing, creative writing, developmental writing, disciplinary writing, second language writing, and workplace writing; evidence of participation in disciplinary conferences or other relevant professional development; evidence of experience teaching multi-media composing or online/hybrid courses.

For full details and to apply, please visit: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/7160

Objects and Possessions: Material Goods in a Changing World 1200‒1800 – Call For Papers

Objects and Possessions: Material Goods in a Changing World 1200‒1800
University of Southampton’s Avenue Campus
3-6 April, 2017

Conference Website

Our keynote speakers include Dr Chris Briggs (Cambridge), Professor Giorgio Riello (Warwick) and Professor James Walvin (York)

This interdisciplinary conference looks at material culture across a long timeframe in order to explore the worlds of goods and objects across Europe and its overseas colonies, the connections and relationships facilitated by the exchange of goods, the importance and interpretation of the inheritance of goods and objects, and the ways in which goods brokered relationships between Europe and the wider world in the period.

The aim is to deepen our understanding of how goods ‘worked’ in a variety of social, economic and cultural contexts. We know a great deal about real property and the possession of land, but comparatively little about goods and chattels and their connections, and how these developed across a long timeframe. Over the period 1200‒1800 there were great changes in the type, range and availability of goods, from the finest items of the elite, the work of craftsmen on an individual basis, to the manufacture and widespread availability of cheap and utilitarian goods and equipment.

Customs of ‘possession’ need to be exposed, to show what ownership might mean, what property might be held by women or children, and what might be considered inalienable within families. The conference will look to identify the cultural connections – and how goods and attitudes to them change culture. It will also consider how goods were transferred, exchanged and collected, as well as the ways in which objects could be used to mediate connections and broker relationships between different people and places.

Proposals are invited for single papers and for whole sessions (three papers). Papers should not exceed 30 minutes. Themes might include:

  • The ownership of goods; the law and objects
  • Patterns of inheritance for different categories
  • The connections of different groups in society to goods, for example, domestic equipment, jewellery, textiles
  • The introduction of new goods, fashions and colours
  • The increasing quantities and diversity of goods
  • Furnishings for household interiors
  • Consumer revolutions (e.g. sugar, colour, fur)
  • Vocabularies for describing goods
  • Trades and markets for goods
  • Processes of collecting and accumulation
  • The politics of possession and display

We are now inviting proposals for papers for single papers and for whole sessions (three papers) – papers should not exceed 30 minutes. Short abstracts (no more than 200 words per paper) should be sent to Chris Woolgar (C.M.Woolgar@soton.ac.uk) by 12 September, 2016.

Emotion, Ethics and War: Centre for the History of Emotions (UWA Node) Seminar and Discussion

Centre for the History of Emotions (UWA Node) Seminar and Discussion: Emotion, Ethics and War

Date: Friday 15 April, 2016
Time: 1:00pm-4:00pm
Venue: Philippa Maddern Seminar Room 1.33, Arts Building, University of Western Australia
Cost: Free. However, space is limited, so RSVP requested by Thursday 14 April to: katrina.tap@uwa.edu.au
Presenters: ECR Dr Patrick Gray (Durham University, UK), Prof. Andrew Lynch (Director and Chief Investigator), Prof. Bob White (Meanings Program Leader, Chief Investigator, UWA) and Dr Kirk Essary (CHE Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UWA).