Annual Hobart Latin Summer School

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON CENTRE
32nd ANNUAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN MEDIEVAL AND LATER LATIN

NOTRE DAME PRIORY, COLEBROOK, TASMANIA

15 – 19 JANUARY, 2024

REGISTER ON HUMANITIX

Latin is arguably the mother tongue of Europe. Its literature is immensely rich. In a sense it never died; original work continues to be written in Latin up to modern times. This course will offer a general introduction to Latin with particular emphasis on the enormous body of medieval and later literature. We shall read original passages of Scripture, liturgy, history, theology and poetry, both secular and secular. There will also be an introduction to palaeography, including an opportunity to handle original medieval manuscripts. There will be a strong emphasis on the pronunciation of Latin in speech and music.

The course us designed for students who already have some Latin, but determined absolute beginners should purchase a self-instruction primer and work on the basics between now and the start of the course. Participants will never be embarrassed by their shaky Latin: the teaching method leaves the entire task of translation and exposition to the Lecturer. This approach has been useful to relative beginners as well as those who are more experienced. The instructor is Dr David Daintree.

Where: Notre Dame Priory, Colebrook
When: Monday 15 January to Friday 19 January 2024
Time: 9.00 am to 3.00 pm each day for five days
Cost: $350.00. Tea and coffee and lunch will be provided daily.
Accommodation with all meals at the Priory’s guest house, Bethany, may be available at an additional charge of $100 per day.
Registrations are essential: email director@dawsoncentre.org.

THE PROGRAMME
There will be four lectures a day on each of the five days, from Monday 15 to Friday 19, starting at 9.00 am. There will be only one lecture after lunch each day, to free up the afternoons for private study.

TOPICS COVERED:
• Liturgy and Scripture.
• Latin prose narrative: including passages from the Venerable Bede, St Brendan, Peter Abelard, Isidore of Seville, Robert Grosseteste
• Hymns, sequences and religious poetry, including works by St Ambrose, Venantius Fortunatus, Adam of St Victor, and St Thomas Aquinas.
• Secular Poetry, including songs from the Carmina Burana.
• The Classical tradition, starting with passages from Virgil.
• Theology and Patristics: St Augustine, Boethius, St Thomas Aquinas, St Benedict, St Patrick and Thomas a Kempis.
• Palaeography – handling and interpreting manuscripts.

Participants should bring both a grammar and a small dictionary to class each day.
Any Latin Primer designed for self-instruction can be used, but F Kinchin Smith’s Teach Yourself Latin (out of print, but copies are available from www.abebooks.com) is particularly recommended. A free digitised version is available at https://archive.org/details/TeachYourselfLatin_201810/mode/2up.

All proceeds from this course go to the Priory and the Christopher Dawson Centre (http://www.dawsoncentre.org).

For further information contact director@dawsoncentre.org.

Annual Hobart NT Greek Summer School

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON CENTRE
SUMMER SCHOOL IN KOINE AND BIBLICAL GREEK

22 – 26 JANUARY, 2024

REGISTER ON HUMANITIX

This five-day intensive school is for beginners who want to experience the excitement of reading parts of the Bible and early Christian literature in the original language.  We shall read extracts from the Gospel and Epistles, as well as some important passages from the Septuagint (the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament), as well as some pieces from the early Fathers of the Church and the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.  Accommodation at the Centre is available on request. We are trialling the Emmanuel Centre for the first time – it sounds ideal.  We would appreciate expressions of interest at this time.

This course is suitable for beginners, provided that they are willing to undertake preliminary work on the Greek alphabet (to be provided) before the course begins. 

Where: The Emmanuel Centre, 123 Abbott Street, Newstead, Launceston
When: Monday 22 January to Friday 26 January 2024
Time: 9.00 am to 3.00 pm each day for five days
Cost: $350 (pension concession available)
Registrations are essential: email Dr David Daintree dccdain@gmail.com

Some prior knowledge of Greek is not essential, but beginners should purchase a self-instruction primer (see below) and work on the basics between now and the start of the course.  It is particularly important to begin the course with a comfortable recognition knowledge of the Greek alphabet, otherwise learning even basic grammar and vocabulary will be frustrating and inefficient.  Alphabet recognition exercises will be sent to registered participants prior to the start of the course.  Participants will never be embarrassed if their Greek is imperfect: the teaching method leaves the entire task of translation and exposition to the Lecturer. This approach has been useful to relative beginners as well as those who are more experienced.

Each intending participant should purchase, as soon as possible, a primer of New Testament Greek.  There are many available, but a good choice is Gavin Betts, Complete New Testament Greek: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding New Testament Greek with Original Texts.

The Lecturer is Dr David Daintree who founded the Annual Latin Summer School in Hobart in 1993.   Proceeds from this course will go to support The Christopher Dawson Centre.

THE PROGRAMME

There will be four lectures a day on each of the five days, starting at 9.00 am. There will be only one lecture after lunch each day, to free up the afternoons for private study.

To enrol and for further information contact David Daintree dccdain@gmail.com.

Conference: Inventing the Human

Registration for the conference on ‘Inventing the Human’ (29 Nov – 2 Dec), hosted by the University of Melbourne, is now open. This exciting 4-day event will include provocative keynote speeches, an exhibition, roundtable discussions and more than 80 papers contributed by scholars from around the world. 

Please register online as soon as you can to take advantage of the Early Bird prices.

Early Bird before 16 October 2023:

General/Waged AU$160.00+GST
Student/Unwaged AU$80.00+GST

After 16 October 2023:

General/Waged AU$220+GST
Student/Unwaged AU$110+GST.

A draft of the conference program is now available here or by clicking ‘Program’ on the left menu bar of the conference website. 

In-person attendees will have the opportunity to view Dominion, the exhibition accompanying the conference, which features works by leading contemporary artists including Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Safdar Ahmed, Richard Bell, Penny Byrne, Michael Riley and Hadieh Shafie.

CFP: Children, Dependency, and Emotions in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Archival and Visual Narratives

12th-14th September 2024
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies

CFP Deadline: 1 December 2023

Children in the early modern world were dependent upon caretakers in many ways: physically, socially, and emotionally. Children could also be subjected to and negotiated social and economic dependencies, including conditions of serfdom, indentured labour, servitude, slavery, and family ties. Highly mobile, children were traded and trafficked between households, across cultural boundaries, and over land and oceans. These experiences could be exacerbated through considerations of gender and (premediated) sexuality. Wedged between these intersections of power, space, and (in)visibility, children have frequently been neglected in history writing, with their limited traces in archives contributing to this marginalisation. Following recent calls for praxeological approaches, global history, and the history of material culture, their silences are beginning to break.

We wish to foreground children’s representations, articulations, and their experiences in archival and visual narratives as modes of overcoming their assumed absences in the historical record. Children shaped dependent relationships, not least in their capacity as future adults. A child’s entry into strong asymmetrical dependencies may have been involuntary but they needed to adapt. Processes of adaptation, negotiation, and rejection, in turn, stabilised and destabilised dependencies. Under strong and enduring forms of asymmetrical dependency (i.e. chattel plantation slavery), enslaved children were paradoxically first treated as incomplete units of labour, but upon reaching physical maturity encountered a state of permanent infantilisation through calculated deprivation by enslavers. Accounting for both the violence of strong asymmetrical dependency and its archives, while recovering children’s agency, is a challenge for historians.

It is the aim of this conference to conceive of children not as isolated, ‘minor’ subjects in history but as seminal agents. We welcome papers that:

  • Explore the experiences of dependent children in the early modern world through novel approaches, particularly that of the history of emotions and/or microhistory;
  • Consider the gendered dimensions and gendered disparities of childhood experiences;
  • Interrogate institutional frameworks of slavery, dependency, serfdom, capitalism, and the family from the ground up;
  • Investigate archival and visual sources that recover child-authored narratives and early modern discourses about children, childhood and infantilisation; and
  • Interpret how these narratives may have reinforced or challenged dependent relationships, communities, and spaces.

The conference probes the possibility of an integrative global approach to the history of children in the early modern world. We welcome examples of research on all world regions, including indigenous studies and the history of borderlands. We also encourage interdisciplinary contributions and creative theoretical engagements.

We welcome submissions from advanced doctoral students, early career researchers, and senior scholars. Please submit your abstracts of ca. 300 words along with a short biographical note to earlymodern@dependency.uni-bonn.de by 1st December 2023. The conference will take place in person in Bonn and limited travel funding may be available for speakers. Please indicate in your submission if you require funding. Successful applicants will be notified by 30th December 2023.

This conference is organised by the German-Australian DAAD-Universities Australia collaborative project Child Slaveries in the Early Modern World: Gender, Trauma, and Trafficking in Transcultural Perspective (1500-1800) of early career researchers from the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, and the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn: Joseph Biggerstaff, Susan Broomhall, Kristie Flannery, Claudia Jarzebowski, Jessica O’Leary, and Lisa Phongsavath.

Call for Applications: ANZAMEMS Seminar – Medieval and Early Modern Sources

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The MEMS program at the Australian Catholic University, Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Monash University, the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the Australian National University, the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney and Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in partnership with ANZAMEMS are delighted to host a masterclass on:

Medieval and Early Modern Sources:
Skills for reading medieval and early modern manuscripts and printed texts

This two-day masterclass will introduce postgraduate students and ECRs from across Australia and New Zealand to a range of textual sources for medieval and early modern research and provide some introductory skills training for how to identify, read and analyse these materials. The event will draw together experts in each of these fields and provide participants with opportunities to network and expand disciplinary horizons as well as develop palaeographic, reading and analytical skills. Texts will include medieval charters, sources from the State Library of Victoria’s early modern Emmerson collection, early modern German printed texts, medieval hagiographies, manuscript fragments from the Bischoff collection at Monash University’s Sir Louis Matheson Library, and more.  Participants will be brought into contact with leading scholars in medieval and early modern studies from different institutions around Australia and the UK. The masterclass is organised by a new national consortium of medieval and early modern studies centres in Australia (established in 2022), and participants will have the opportunity to engage with members of those centres (ACU, ANU, Sydney, UWA, Monash) as well as other specialists.

Confirmed presenters include: Professor Miri Rubin (QMUL); Professor Chris Ocker (ACU/University of Redlands; Dr Susanne Meurer (UWA); Dr Anne Holloway (Matheson Library, Monash); Dr Anna Welch (State Library of Victoria); Professor Ros Smith (ANU); Dr Hélène Sirantoine (University of Sydney).

DATE: Thursday 2 November and Friday 3 November 2023
VENUE: ACU, Melbourne Campus (Fitzroy/East Melbourne)
CONTACT: Megan.Cassidy-Welch@acu.edu.au 
BURSARIES: Available to assist with travel costs if required. Accommodation (1 or 2 nights), lunch, morning and afternoon teas are also provided.
ELIGIBILITY: Current ANZAMEMS members currently enrolled in a higher degree program or within 7 years of completion of a higher degree program. Independent scholars as well as those with institutional affiliation are welcome to apply. Attendance will be capped at about 15-20 participants.

APPLICATIONS should be emailed to Professor Megan Cassidy-Welch (Megan.Cassidy-Welch@acu.edu.au) and should include in one page: a statement of current HDR or ECR status; proof of current ANZAMEMS membership; statement about need/interest in this research skills training; whether a bursary is needed to support attendance; any other relevant statement re. career/candidate interruption that may be relevant to the application.

Applications should be received by OCTOBER 15 2023.

Job Opportunity: Editorial Adviser – Routledge Resources Online – Medieval Studies

Chris Jones (University of Canterbury), Section Editor for “Powers (1100-1550),” is looking to appoint 2-3 enthusiastic Editorial Advisers to assist him with the development of Routledge Resources Online – Medieval Studies.

The first release of Routledge Resources Online – Medieval Studies, which took place in August this year, saw several hundred entries from fourteen volumes of the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages series (published between 1993 and 2006) revised and updated with current literature. These articles were published alongside brand new entries that reflect the changes in the field since 2006. Over the coming years, the plan is to expand the resource further with newly commissioned material.

The resource presently offers a mix of open access material and articles behind a paywall. The “Powers” category is wide and has, to date, included entries for, for example, individual rulers (specific kings, queens, aristocrats), types of local government, legal procedures, bureaucracy, and city states but also a range of concepts and broader topics such as “crime and punishment” and “peace treaties”.

Appointments as Editorial Adviser will be for approximately 6 months and involve a one-off payment of ₤350.00 before tax (equivalent in either NZ$ or AUD$ at time of payment).

The role will involve suggesting a list of approximately 20-30 new entries for inclusion in the resource and assisting the Section Editor to recruit appropriate writers for entries as well as managing their production. Editorial Advisers will be involved in reviewing content, for which the Section Editor will provide mentoring. Editorial Advisers may also suggest entries they themselves may wish to write.

The role would be suitable for either an advanced PG or an ECR looking to gain editorial experience on a large project with a major publisher. 

All enquiries should be directed to chris.jones@canterbury.ac.nz.

Member Publication: Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought

Chris Jones and Takashi Shogimen have recently published an edited collection with Routledge, Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought: Historiographical Problems, Fresh Interpretations, New Debates. The book includes contributions from ANZAMEMS members Clare Monagle, Constant Mews, Jason Taliadoros and others.

This collection of essays showcases historiographical problems, fresh interpretations, and new debates in medieval and Renaissance history and political thought.

Recent scholarship on medieval and Renaissance political thought is witness to tectonic movements. These involve quiet, yet considerable, re-evaluations of key thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, as well as the string of lesser known “political thinkers” who wrote in western Europe between Late Antiquity and the Reformation. Taking stock of thirty years of developments, this volume demonstrates the contemporary vibrancy of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought. By both celebrating and challenging the perspectives of a generation of scholars, notably Cary J. Nederman, it offers refreshing new assessments.

The book re-introduces the history of western political thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the wider disciplines of History and Political Science. Recent historiographical debates have revolutionized discussion of whether or not there was an “Aristotelian revolution” in the thirteenth century. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Marsilius of Padua are read in new ways; less well-known texts, such as the Irish On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, offer new perspectives. Further, the collection argues that medieval political ideas contain important lessons for the study of concepts of contemporary interest such as toleration.

ANZAMEMS members receive a 20% discount until 31 December using the code AFL03 at www.routledge.com/9781032380544.

Fellowship: ANU Humanities Research Centre

Applications for the 2024 ANU Humanities Research Centre Visiting Fellowship Program on the theme of “Time, Place, Everywhen” are now open.

Applications close Friday 20 October 2023

Apply Now

2024 marks the 50th year of the ANU Humanities Research Centre (HRC). To celebrate, the HRC is supporting research into different ideas of time and place and paying respect to Indigenous people through the theme of ‘everywhen’.

Everywhen brings together a sense of ever-present time with people, culture, law, the landscape and cosmos. While the term is associated with ANU anthropologist W.E.H Stanner, the fusion of time and place has deep origins and broad application.

Via research projects, as well as lectures, advocacy and art, the HRC invites world-class Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers to showcase the flourishing of the humanities and cognate fields by addressing the following questions and topics.

  • How have people from around the world and throughout history integrated time and place?
  • How can different conceptions of time and place unsettle practices of assimilation, extraction, and domination?
  • Regenerative approaches to knowledge and culture in higher education and the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector.
  • Everywhen-related examples of art, activism, public engagement and collaboration that advance truth telling, healing and belonging.
  • Through studies of language, literature, religion, material culture and history, what can be known and registered about everywhen and what can’t be?

How can changing ideas of time and place foster creativity and wellbeing?

2024 marks the 50th year of the ANU Humanities Research Centre (HRC). To celebrate, the HRC is supporting research into different ideas of time and place and paying respect to Indigenous people through the theme of ‘everywhen’.

Everywhen brings together a sense of ever-present time with people, culture, law, the landscape and cosmos. While the term is associated with ANU anthropologist W.E.H Stanner, the fusion of time and place has deep origins and broad application.

Via research projects, as well as lectures, advocacy and art, the HRC invites world-class Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers to showcase the flourishing of the humanities and cognate fields by addressing the following questions and topics.

  • How have people from around the world and throughout history integrated time and place?
  • How can different conceptions of time and place unsettle practices of assimilation, extraction, and domination?
  • Regenerative approaches to knowledge and culture in higher education and the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector.
  • Everywhen-related examples of art, activism, public engagement and collaboration that advance truth telling, healing and belonging.
  • Through studies of language, literature, religion, material culture and history, what can be known and registered about everywhen and what can’t be?
  • How can changing ideas of time and place foster creativity and wellbeing?

More details on ANU website