This Rough Magic – Call For Papers

This Rough Magic (http://www.thisroughmagic.org) is a journal dedicated to the art of teaching Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

We are seeking academic, teachable articles that focus on, but are not limited to, the following categories:

  • Authorship
  • Genre Issues
  • Narrative Structure
  • Poetry
  • Drama
  • Epic
  • Nation/Empire/Class
  • Economics
  • History
  • Religion
  • Superstition
  • Philosophy and Rhetoric
  • Race/Ethnicity
  • Multi-Culturalism
  • Gender
  • Sexuality
  • Art

We also seek short essays that encourage faculty to try overlooked, non-traditional texts inside the classroom and book reviews.

Submission deadline for our upcoming Summer issue is currently May 1, 2016. Veteran faculty and graduate students are encouraged to submit.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.thisroughmagic.org.

Information regarding this Rough Magic‘s editorial board may be found here: http://www.thisroughmagic.org/editorial%20info.html.

Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages – Objects, Actors, and Representations – Call For Papers

Textile Gifts in the Middle Ages – Objects, Actors, and Representations (Textilschenkungen im Mittelalter)
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome
November 3-4 2016

As art history has given greater attention to material culture and its social contexts as a whole, the applied arts have also re-entered the scope of art historical discourse. Cultural-historical approaches, such as those employed in material culture studies, explore the objectness of artifacts and their efficacy. Related are studies of objects as mediums of symbolic communication, in which such objects are described and interpreted as part of complex performances of ritual and ceremony. Gifts of textiles in the Middle Ages provide a test field for the evaluation of such questions and approaches for the discipline of art history.

Gifts of textiles and clothing appeared in diverse contexts and fulfilled various functions in pre-modern Europe. They could be offered in the course of an initiation rite and or an act of social transition, including upon investiture, marriage, or entry into a monastery. Gifts of clothing to the poor, meanwhile, were among the works of charity thematized in the vitae of numerous medieval saints. Sumptuous textiles were sent as resplendent gifts to religious institutions or, like patterned silk textiles from Byzantium, circulated through diplomatic gift exchanges. Gifts of clothing were also distributed within the court as compensation in kind, which supported the structuralization and hierarchization of courtly society. Gifts of clothing could represent the donor. Especially in the case of clothing previously worn by its donor, the physical presence of the giver might have been woven into the materiality and form of the gifted garment.

The goal of this interdisciplinary conference is to situate the diversity and polysemy of such acts of symbolic communication into the broader context of medieval gift culture.

Already in the 1920s, Marcel Mauss showed that gift giving established social relationships and was composed of three necessary elements: giving, accepting, and reciprocating (the “principle of reciprocity”). At play in such exchanges is essentially the construction of power and social hierarchies. While Mauss’ theory has long been employed within medieval studies, recent criticism has pointed out that the particular efficacy resulting from the material and visual qualities of gifts has not been sufficiently addressed, as studies applying Mauss’ model concentrate primarily on donors, recipients, and their interaction. In other words, the context of the exchange has been privileged over the objects of exchange (Cecily Hilsdale, 2012). With its focus on images and objects, art history is poised to show how the dynamics of reciprocity and its attendant obligations might be charged both visually and materially.

The conference focuses on textile gifts in pre-modern Europe in order to explore such questions in greater detail. The integration of anthropological models into an art historical approach allows for gifted artifacts to be taken seriously as independent entities within the giving process as a socially generative form of communication. The relationship between the actors and the “agency” of gifts themselves can therefore be further explored (Bruno Latour).

We invite paper proposals from the field of art history and related disciplines, such as history, anthropology, archaeology, and literature. Papers might address the following subjects in particular:

  • Textile gifts as acts of symbolic communication in the Middle Ages: Especially welcome are case studies that illustrate the act of giving and the sense of obligation generated between donor and recipient and that, in so doing, attend to the visual and material efficacy of textile gifts. Papers might consider gifts of personal garments, like the gifting of a sovereign’s mantle to an ecclesiastical institution, and the honor—or affront—such gifts might entail.
  • Methodological reflections on the suitability of anthropological models for medieval art history: How helpful are anthropological models (Marcel Mauss’ gift theory and its lineage) in understanding and interpreting pre-modern textile gifts? We begin with the premise that no single general theory is capable of explaining every gift act definitively. Rather, a number of approaches originating in Mauss, some of which are controversial, could be debated within the context of medieval textile gifts.
  • The relationship of textile gifts as performative acts to their representations: How were medieval textile gifts represented in word and image? What relationship do these representations have to their material prototypes (surviving textile gifts) and their contexts (acts of donation)?
  • Gendered aspects of textile gifts: Could textile gifts in the Middle Ages be gender-specific? Can we observe different behavioral patterns in the gifting practices of men and women?
  • Re-use and re-contextualization of textile gifts: The appreciation, use, and conservation of medieval textile gifts, including their restoration or alteration, can reveal much about how recipient institutions dealt with their donations. How, for example, did recipients interpret and use textile gifts in the formation of their identities? How did such a process shape the relationship between a recipient institution and its donor?

Submission: Proposals for talks should be sent in the form of an abstract (max 1 page) with a brief CV by March, 24, 2016 to Christiane Elster (elster@biblhertz.it).

Annual Conference of Byzantine and Medieval Studies – Call For Papers

The Byzantinist Society of Cyprus (ΒΕΚ: Βυζαντινολογική Εταιρεία Κύπρου)
First Annual Conference of Byzantine and Medieval Studies
Nicosia, Cyprus
13-14 January, 2017

Honorary President: Athanasios Papageorghiou, Director Emeritus, Dept. of Antiquities.
Keynote Speaker: Ioli Kalavrezou, Professor, Harvard University.

Scholars, researchers and students are encouraged to present their ongoing research, work in-progress or fieldwork report on any aspect of the history, archaeology, art, architecture, literature, philosophy and religion of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Byzantine, Medieval and Ottoman periods.

The languages of the conference will be Greek, English, French and German.

Programme Committee: Nikolas Bakirtzis (Chair), Stavros Georgiou, Maria Parani, Ourania Perdiki, Andreas Foulias.
Organizing Committee: Doria Nicolaou, Christina Kakkoura, Andriani Georgiou, Despoina Papacharalampous.

More information and paper proposal submission process at this link:
http://www.byzantinistsociety.org.cy/wordpress/?p=81

Learn more about the Byzantinist Society of Cyprus here:
http://www.byzantinistsociety.org.cy

Celebrating William Byrd (1539/40–1623): A Concert

Celebrating William Byrd (1539/40–1623)
A Concert by Polifemy & Walking the Dog

Date: 20 March, 2016
Time: 3:00pm
Venue: Wesley Uniting Church, 1 National Circuit, FORREST, ACT
Cost: $15
Contact: Enquiries: 0406 377 762

The concert will explore the many facets of Byrd’s musical and religious life, featuring his Missa 3 Vocum (Mass for three voices), anthems, Psalms from the Anglican service, and fantasias and instrumental songs of a more secular nature.

Featuring:

  • Missa 3 Vocum (1594)
  • Fantasias for Recorders
  • Songs from Psalmes, Songs and Sonnet (1611)
  • and more…

English: The Journal of the English Association, Special Issue: Literature, Landscape, and the Environment – Call For Papers

English: The Journal of the English Association invites contributions to a special issue on literature, landscape and the environment.

In the years since the publication of seminal texts such as Carson’s Silent Spring, and with environmental concerns never more pressing, ecocriticism has become firmly established in literary studies as a way to think about the challenges facing writers and their readers. Moreover, literary critical engagement with the environment has been enriched in recent years through intersectional work with fields as diverse as disability studies, spatial studies, gender theory, and post-humanism.

We invite contributions that consider with any aspect of the relationship between literature, landscape and the environment, in any period or genre. In particular we welcome submissions that make a contribution to debates in the following areas:

  • Histories and canons of ecocriticism
  • Literature, landscape and the environment in the class-room
  • Digital interventions literary landscape studies
  • Contemporary poetics of place
  • Re-evaluations of key texts in ecocriticism

Essay submissions of 5-9000 words and poetry submissions of individual poems should be made via the journal’s portal: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/english

Deadline: 15 May, 2016.

Please include ‘LLE Special Issue’ in the title of your submission.

Further information for authors is available here: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/english/for_authors.

Brill Fellowship 2016 ­ – Call For Applications

Since 2006 publishing house Brill, the oldest publishing house in the Netherlands, has funded the accommodation of one or two so-called Brill fellows with the Scaliger Institute. The Brill fellow carries out research in the Special Collections of the University Library within one of the publishing areas of Brill in the Humanities. The Brill fellow is expected to contribute to the activities of the Scaliger Institute, and to give a public lecture. If the opportunity presents itself, Brill is prepared to publish the lecture in co-operation with the Scaliger Institute.

Conditions: Brill Fellowship

The applications for a Brill fellowship have to comply with a number of conditions:

  1. A research proposal must be submitted in which the relationship between the proposed research and the primary sources, which are to be researched and consulted in the department Special Collections, is specified
  2. A list of manuscripts, editions of other items to be consulted in the library, supplied with shelf marks
  3. A start and end date of the proposed research
  4. A curriculum vitae
  5. A list of relevant publications
  6. Two academic references

The deadline for the Brill Fellowship 2016 is 1 April, 2016.

For full details and to apply, please visit: http://www.library.leiden.edu/special-collections/scaliger-institute/research/brill-fellowship.html

Interfaces, Vol.2: The Theory and Phenomenology of Love – Call For Papers

The Theory and Phenomenology of Love

Deadline: April 15, 2016

Onde si move, e donde nasce Amore?
Qual è ’l su’ propio, e là ’ve dimora?
È e’ sustanzia o accidente, o memora?
È cagion d’occhi, o è voler di core? […]

[‘Where does Love move from, and whence does it originate? What is its appointed place, and where does it reside? Is it substance or accident, or memory? Is it caused by the (sight of the) eyes, or is it heart’s will?’]

The 13th-century Florentine poet Guido Orlandi addressed these lines to his fellow citizen Guido Cavalcanti (Dante’s ‘first friend’, as we read in Dante’s Vita nova). His sonnet is organized around several specific questions on the nature of Love, the place where it is located and activated, the way it originates, grows, manifests itself, and wanes. Cavalcanti would answer with his great canzone Donna me prega, which is not only one of the most complex and difficult poems of all Romance literature, both in terms of metrics framing and content, but also a veritable treatise on Love in verse – with multiple references to the philosophical and medical tradition and the Aristotelian debate on the relation between sensitive and intellectual soul.

Such a text is good example of the kind of subjects we would like to explore in the second issue of Interfaces, that will be centred on a specific theme: “The Theory and Phenomenology of Love”. Interfaces invites papers dealing not with love tout court (a significant part of the entire medieval literature, at least in the vernacular, is about love!), but with reflections and speculations on the nature of Love and the ways it manifests itself.

Authors will be free to address any medieval European literature, language, genre, text, or to work across these categories, provided they give a strong theoretical framing to their argument. The aim of Issue No. 2 of Interfaces is not to collect a series of contributions on Love, but rather to provide readers with a sort of ‘encyclopaedia’ of the different conceptions, definitions, and representations of Love in the medieval traditions. Contributors are encouraged to highlight contacts, similarities, or differences between cultures and through places and times, and to survey the origin, permanence, alteration, or overlap of the paradigms of explanation to the phenomenon.

Interdisciplinary, comparative, and diachronic studies will be welcome, as well as more specific and circumscribed analysis of single texts or small groups of texts. Among the possible genres to explore are lyric poetry, narrative or doctrinal poems, verse or prose romances, letters, narrative texts, chronicles, historical accounts, as well as historical documents, medical, philosophical, or theological literature, translations (both medieval and modern), iconographic representations, etc. Some possible approaches and theoretical frameworks include the study of gender and sexuality, the history of emotions, the history of medicine, and neuroscience.

Authors are invited to reflect also on the nature of the Object of Love, be it visible or unseen, concrete or phantasmatic, a creature or the Creator; in this regard, contributions addressing the themes of Love of God and mysticism and the relation between earthly love and spiritual love will be welcome too.

As it is stated in the Journal’s Scope and the opening essay of Issue No. 1, Interfaces considers European literatures as the products of the interconnected textual cultures which flourished between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance in a region extending from the North Atlantic to the Eastern Mediterranean: therefore contributions on the shared Greco-Roman heritage of the Latin West and on Arabic and Hebrew as languages of Europe are welcome, as well as comparative studies on Persian, Indian and Chinese, given the role of the Silk Route in the exchange of stories and learning in the continuous Afro-Eurasian space.

Interfaces invites papers in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

The World of Conversion and the Conversion of the World: Shakespeare and China Workshop

The World of Conversion and the Conversion of the World: Shakespeare and China Workshop
Date: Monday 14 March, 2016
Time: 4:15-6:00 PM
Venue: William Macmahon Ball Theatre, Old Arts, The University of Melbourne, Parkville
Registration: Details here
Enquiries: che‐melb‐admin@unimelb.edu.au

World of Conversion: Shakespeare, Paul Yachnin

For more than a century up to and including Shakespeare’s time, conversion was the centerpiece of religious, social, and political life. It was also a site of crisis. How could Spanish Christian authorities be sure that the conversions they had compelled their Jewish subjects to undergo would stick? The same kinds of challenges dogged the conversional programs in the Americas and also through the sixteenth century in Britain as the population, including Shakespeare’s family, was harried back and forth by wholesale shifts in the confessional identity of the Church. Shakespeare mined the resources of problematized conversion from The Taming of the Shrew to The Tempest, where characters such as Katherine and Caliban grow deeper on account of the undecidability of their conversions. Shakespeare did not untether conversion from religion, but he let out so much line that conversion came to live and signify primarily in particular characters and in their particular stories. By relocating conversion to plays that were almost emptied of religious doctrine but were nevertheless filled with religious language, thought, and emotion, Shakespeare created a world in which playgoers found themselves free to think feelingly about the individual and collective crisis of conversion through which they were living.

Paul Yachnin is Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Among his publications are the books Stage‐Wrights and The Culture of Playgoing (with Anthony Dawson); editions of Richard II (with Dawson) and The Tempest; and six edited books, including Shakespeare’s World of Words and Forms of Association. His book‐in‐progress, Making Publics in Shakespeare’s Playhouse, is under contract with University of Edinburgh Press.

The Conversion of the World: China/china, Ben Schmidt

In January 1708, Europe triumphantly discovered China/china. That is, nearly half a millennium after the departure of the Polo brothers for the East and the ensuing, energetic, enterprising pursuit by Europeans of China, an alchemist sequestered in a dungeon in Dresden managed to produce hard‐paste porcelain, thus solving the ancient arcanum of Asian ceramics. This discovery marked a critical change in material arts and the production of china, of course; yet it also sparked a fundamental shift in Europe’s conception of China—and, ultimately, of the world. This talk looks at the alchemical moment of Meissen (as the new porcelain would be called) in the context of evolving European conceptions of its place in the world—as a form of geo‐conversion of broad‐reaching repercussions. It draws connections between material arts and geography, and it argues that an essential shift in global imagination took place in sync with the technological innovations, material productions, and decorative strategies developed in Meissen. It narrates, in short, an alchemical drama—a veritable conversion—that changed the world.

Benjamin Schmidt is the Giovanni & Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA). He is the author of Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World (2001; 3rd ed. 2006), which won the Renaissance Society of America’s Gordan Prize, awarded for the best book in Renaissance and Early Modern studies across all disciplines; and, most recently, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World (2015).

Professor Andrew Lynch, Institute of Advanced Studies (UWA) / Centre for the History of Emotions Public Lecture

“Medieval War in Modern Memory”, Professor Andrew Lynch (UWA)

Date: 18 April 2016
Time: 6:00-7:00pm
Venue: Fox Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, The University of Western Australia
Cost: Free, but RSVP is required
RSVP: Online via: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/medieval-war-in-modern-memory-registration-21509657966

War is perhaps the predominant theme in what is called ‘medievalism’ – the imaginative reception and reconstruction of the medieval period in modernity – but with ambvalent effects. While war has been central to many positive evocations of the medieval past, it has also served as an image of regressive barbarism: recent military atrocities, such as in the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia, are readily described as ‘medieval’; on the other hand, the Gulf War of 1990-91 was positively branded as a ‘crusade’ by its proponents. This talk will take up various possibilities of providing this perceived contradiction in modern cultural memory with a genealogy. One way is to invoke the long-term side-effects of the subjection of medieval intellectual and religious practices to humanist, Reformation and Enlightenment attacks, and the related nature of cultural defences of the medieval against such attacks: the glory of war (often symbolically adapted) became an important but sometimes fragile element of continuity and respectability allowed to the middle ages. Another way is to trace the use of medieval military history, chronicle and romance in Romantic medievalism and nationalist image-building, causing an identification of the middle ages with militarism which was later negatively reconfigured.

A third method examines how literature, film and other cultural products have treated war in their demarcation of the medieval from the period in relation to modernity. In investigating these matters, this illustrated talk ranges selectively from the immediate post-medieval period to the present day, but with an emphasis on the period 1800-2000, and will attempt to analyse some long-term trends in the discourse of war in both high-culture and popular medievalism.

Andrew Lynch is a Professor in English and Cultural Studies at UWA, and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Europe 1100-1800. He has written extensively on war in medieval and modern medievalist literature and culture.

Professor Albrecht Classen, Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (University of Sydney Node) Free Public Lecture

“Passion and Emotions in Late Medieval Literature: Lust, Life and Death”, Professor Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

Date: Monday 14 March, 2016
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Venue: Rogers Room, Woolley Building, The University of Sydney
Enquiries: craig.lyons@sydney.edu.au

More than ever before, late medieval literature explored the wide gamut of human emotions, particularly within the contexts of love, marriage, sexuality and death. The corpus of late medieval verse narratives (Boccaccio, Chaucer, Kaufringer, Les cent nouvelles nouvelles, Poggio Bracciolini, Georg Wickram, etc.) provides a wealth of insights into the way people interacted, giving a sense therefore of their feelings and concerns, their fears and worries. Marriage, above all, which became the focus of most of the leading poets of that time, has always been difficult and filled with tensions, and we can learn much about the central issues through this literary discourse.

Albrecht Classen is University Distinguished Professor of the University of Arizona. In 83 scholarly books and more than 600 articles, he has covered a wide range of topics concerning the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century, including eighteenth-century Jesuit history in Arizona/Sonora. In 2015 he published his 3-volume Handbook of Medieval Culture, his latest monograph The Forest in Medieval German Literature, and his ninth volume of his own poetry, Sonora: Harsh Words. He is the editor of the journals Mediaevistik and Humanities Open Access.