Vagantes 2014
University of Texas at Austin
March 20-22, 2014

Conference Website

Vagantes is the largest conference in North America for graduate students studying the Middle Ages. Vagantes aims to provide an open dialogue among junior scholars from all fields of Medieval Studies. The conference features two faculty keynote speakers and professional development workshops, but its main focus is the presentation of original research by junior scholars. We are pleased to have Dr. Glenn Peers from The University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Bonnie Effros of the University of Florida as our keynote speakers this year.

Vagantes emphasizes interdisciplinary scholarship; each year, presenters from backgrounds as varied as Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Classics, Languages and Literatures, Manuscript Studies, Musicology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies come together to exchange ideas. In this manner, Vagantes fosters a sense of community for young medievalists of diverse backgrounds, and because the conference does not have a registration fee, this community can flourish within the margins of a graduate student budget.

Abstracts for twenty-minute papers are welcome from graduate students on all topics considering the Middle Ages. Please email a brief vita, along with an abstract of no more than 300 words by Monday, November 18, 2013 to:

Raúl Ariza-Barile
arizab.raul@utexas.edu

and

Sarah Celentano
scelentano@utexas.edu

20th Annual ACMRS Conference
Catastrophes and the Apocalyptic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Embassy Suites Scottsdale Hotel, Scottsdale, Arizona.
February 6-8, 2014

Conference Website

Keynote speaker: Professor Jaime Lara, Research Professor, ACMRS and the Hispanic Research Center (HRC), Arizona State University; previously Chair, Program in Religion and the Arts, Yale University.

We welcome papers that explore any topic related to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and especially those that focus on this year’s theme of catastrophe and the apocalyptic.

Selected papers related to the conference theme will be considered for publication in the conference volume of the Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance series, published by Brepols Publishers (Belgium).

Before the conference, ACMRS will host a workshop on manuscript studies to be led by Timothy Graham, Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico. The workshop will be Thursday afternoon, February 6, and participation will be limited to 25 participants, who will be determined by the order in which registrations are received. The cost of the workshop is $30 and is in addition to the regular conference registration fee.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words and a brief CV to ACMRSconference@asu.edu. The deadline for proposals/abstracts is midnight, MST on 6 December 2013. Proposals must include audio/visual requirements and any other special requests.

If you have any questions, please contact the conference coordinator at acmrs@acmrs.org or 480-965-5900.

Second Annual Indiana Medieval Graduate Student Consortium Conference
The Geographic Imagination: Conceptualizing Places and Spaces in the Middle Ages
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
28 Feb-1 Mar, 2014

Conference Website

Keynote Speaker: Professor Geraldine Heng, Perceval Fellow and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and Women’s studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

The transnational turn in the humanities over the last two decades has put increasing pressure on our ideas of nationhood and has provided us with a liberating awareness of the constructedness of the spaces we study. New methodologies have developed in response to this pressure as scholars turn to comparative approaches, borderland studies, histoire croisée, studies of empire, and oceanic models in order to accommodate the ambiguities of nationhood and of conceptions of space. Suggested by seminal transnational studies, such as Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, many critics now study “the flows of people, capital, profits and information.” Recently, David Wallace’s ambitious literary history of Europe has adopted a similarly fluid approach to culture, avoiding a study of “national blocks” of literature, organizing itself instead along transnational itineraries that stretch beyond the European sphere. The Middle Ages offer a particularly broad and rich era in which to encounter fluid notions of space, as any glance at a medieval map such as the famous Hereford mappa mundi invitingly suggests. We invite presentations from all fields to explore any aspect of the medieval “geographic imagination,” of conceptions of space, place, and nation: ideas of geography, cartography, transnational identities and networks, intercultural encounters, mercantile routes, travelogues, rural and urban spaces, religious places, and concepts of locality and local identities.

Please submit a 300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by 15 December 2013 on the conference website, www.nd.edu/imgc2014. Proposals should include the title of the paper, presenter’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests.

This conference is generously sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. The Nanovic Institute is committed to enriching the intellectual culture of Notre Dame by creating an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students and faculty to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs, and institutions that shape Europe today.

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions
Collaboratory: Languages of Emotion: Translations & Transformations Collaboratory

Date: 10 – 12 June 2014
Venue: The University of Western Australia
Call for Papers due: 15 December 2013. Submit Papers here.
Registration: Register here. Registration is free, though participants, apart from the plenary speakers, will need to organise their own travel funding.

Plenary speakers:

• Professor Anna Wierzbicka (Linguistics Program, ANU).
• Dr. Naama Cohen-Hanegbi (Tel Aviv University).
• Dr. Javier E. Diaz Vera, Department of Modern Philology, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, will lead a plenary workshop on detecting and analysing emotions terminology and images in medieval texts

Granted that the terms for ’emotions’, let alone the definitions of what constitutes an emotion, vary from culture to culture and over time, one of the most difficult and intriguing problems in the history of emotions is how to interpret these variations and draw out their significance for modern analysis.  This collaboratory will address particularly the question of cultural variation and historical evolution of the terminologies of emotion in pre-modern Europe.  What terms were available for expressing or describing emotions, and what did people mean by them?  How were emotions terms translated between different pre-modern European languages, and where were such differences highlighted and explored by pre-modern authors — not just lexicographers, but also perhaps philosophers, diplomats, travel writers, and others)?  How did the use of emotions terms vary between different genres and registers? Consideration might be given to scientific and medical literature, theology, devotional literature, fiction, correspondence, even visual arts. And finally, how do we, as modern researchers, best ‘translate’ these terms for our own understanding and analysis?

We are now calling for paper proposals for this collaboratory.  If you wish to present a paper, please provide a title, abstract, and brief (no more than 1 page) CV by 15 December 2013. Papers (apart from the plenaries) will be 20 minutes long; and any topic dealing with the terminologies and languages of emotions in Europe, 1100-1800, will be welcome!

Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies
The Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading
7-9 July, 2014

Conference Website

The Reading Early Modern Conference continues to establish itself as the place where early modernists meet each July for stimulation, conversation and debate. As in previous years, proposals of individual papers and panels are invited on research in any aspect of early modern studies relating to Britain, Europe and the wider world. This year, the plenary speakers are Randall McLeod (Toronto) and Tony Claydon (Bangor).

We would welcome proposals for individual papers and panels on any aspect of early modern literature, history, art, music and culture. Panels have been proposed on the following themes and further panels or individual papers are also invited on these topics or any other aspect of early modern studies:

• 1714: the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts; succession in a British and European context.
• Material texts: technologies of paper, pen and print; binding and unbinding books; compilation, collection, anthologising; modern technologies and early modern texts.
• Writers’ career choices: poetry versus plays; theatre history; plague closures; history of printing; debates over authorship.
• Knowledge, method, practice; mechanic arts; guilds and mysteries; tacit knowledge; statecraft and arcana imperii; how-to manuals; thinking about thinking.

Proposals for panels should consist of a minimum of two and a maximum of four papers.

Each panel proposal should contain the names of the session chair, the names and affiliations of the speakers and short abstracts (200 word abstracts) of the papers together with email contacts for all participants. A proposal for an individual paper should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper with brief details of affiliation and career.

Proposals for either papers or panels should be sent by email to the chair of the Conference Committee, Dr. Rebecca Bullard, by 6 January 2014, r.bullard@reading.ac.uk

We welcome proposals from postgraduates, and the conference hopes to make some money available for postgraduate bursaries. Anyone for whom some financial assistance is a prerequisite for their attendance should mention this when submitting their proposal.

Christopher Marlowe at 450: An Anniversary Special Issue of Early Modern Literary Studies

2014 will be a significant year of early modern literary anniversaries. The 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth is certain to attract a significant degree of popular and scholarly attention, but his is not the only milestone of note; 2014 will also mark the 450th anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare’s exact contemporary, Christopher Marlowe. In order to recognise this occasion, we invite contributions to a special anniversary issue on Marlowe, which will be published in 2014.

We welcome contributions on any aspect of Marlowe studies, but topics to be addressed might include:

• Theoretical approaches to Marlowe based upon recent developments in areas such as gender, race, geography, sexuality, etc.
• The place of Marlowe biography
• Marlowe and editing/textual criticism
• Marlovian afterlives
• Marlowe in performance
• Marlovian genres
• Marlowe’s influence
• Marlowe and early modern repertory
• Marlovian poetics

Abstracts of around 300 words should be submitted to Dr Dan Cadman (d.cadman@shu.ac.uk) or Dr Andrew Duxfield (a.duxfield@shu.ac.uk) by 1 November 2013. We anticipate a deadline of July 2014 for full submissions.

Early Modern Literary Studies (ISSN 1201-2459) is an open-access refereed journal serving as a formal arena for scholarly discussion and as an academic resource for researchers in the area. Articles in EMLS examine English literature, literary culture, and language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; responses to published papers are also published as part of a Readers’ Forum. Reviews evaluate recent work as well as academic tools of interest to scholars in the field. EMLS is committed to gathering and to maintaining links to the most useful and comprehensive internet resources for Renaissance scholars, including archives, electronic texts, discussion groups, and beyond. For further details see: http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html

Seduction: The Art of Persuasion in the Medieval World
Illinois Medieval Association Annual Conference
University of Illinois-Chicago
February 21-22, 2014

Conference Website

We encourage proposals that engage with the rhetoric and representation of seduction and persuasion in all aspects of medieval discourse: literature, art, history, and culture. We invite papers from all disciplines. Preference is given to submissions closely related to the conference theme, but abstracts on any aspect of medieval studies are welcome.

Papers investigating the art of seduction and persuasion might touch on these topics, for example:

• Romantic/erotic love
• Sermons and preaching
• Debates of all kinds
• Conversion experiences
• Political persuasion
• Inspiring and carrying out crusades and Crusades
• The writing of history in chronicles, cartularies
• War
• Materiality and the power of objects
• Marginalia
• Transgression
• Conformity

Barbara H. Rosenwein, Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, is the keynote speaker.

Proposals for whole sessions as well as individual papers are welcome.

Three-paper sessions are scheduled for 90 minutes, including 20 minutes for each paper and time for discussion.

Individual papers: 250 word abstract.
Panel proposals: Proposal should include a short abstract for each paper (250 words total).

Deadline to submit abstracts: November 15, 2013

Direct questions to IMA2014@uic.edu and visit http://ima2014.publish.uic.edu for more information