ANZAMEMS and ANU’s Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS) are pleased to announce a joint information session for postgraduate students – all are welcome.
The session will be held online on 30 October, see below poster for details.
Register at: https://www.trybooking.com/CMIEA
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
Registration is now open for the conference of the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group on 21 October 2023. See the flyer below for details.
Long-standing ANZAMEMS members Constant Mews and Kathleen Neal have just had their edited collection, Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic, published with Amsterdam University Press.
Justice and injustice were subjects of ongoing debate in medieval Europe. Received classical and biblical models both influenced how these qualities of moral and political life were perceived, discussed and acted upon. Important among these influences was the anonymous seventh-century Irish text, On The Twelve Abuses of the Age, a biblically-inspired discussion of the moral duties particular to each sector of society. This volume probes its long influence, and its interaction with the revival of classical ideas. By bringing together scholars of political thought and practice, in lay and religious contexts spanning the seventh to fourteenth centuries, this volume crosses boundaries of periodisation, discipline and approach to reflect upon the medieval evolution of concepts of injustice and means of redress. Contributions address how ideas about justice and injustice were discussed among scholars and theologians, and how those ideas were translated into action through complaint and advice throughout the medieval period.
CONSTANT J. MEWS is Emeritus Professor and formerly Director of the Centre for Religious Studies, Monash University (Australia). He specializes in the religious and intellectual history of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, on which he has published widely, but is also completing Aidan Breen’s edition of DDAS for the Corpus Christianorum.
KATHLEEN B. NEAL is Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Monash University (Australia). She specializes in later-medieval political culture and communication. Her monograph The Letters of Edward I: Political Communication in the Thirteenth Century was published by Boydell Press in 2021.
Order your copy of Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic here!
Tuesday 31 October 2023
6:30 pm (AEDST) online only
ANU Centre for Early Modern Studies
Dr Katherine Butler Schofield
Senior Lecturer, King’s College London
After more than a decade of political insecurity in Mughal India, the relative stability of the first twenty years of emperor Muhammad Shah’s reign (r. 1720–48) ushered in a significant revival of the arts at the imperial Mughal court in Delhi, Shahjahanabad. Right at the centre of this vibrant milieu was the emperor’s singing teacher and master of the imperial musicians, Anjha Baras Khan. But posterity has forgotten him. Instead, it is his rivals Ni‘mat Khan “Sadarang” and Firoz Khan “Adarang” whom we remember today as the greatest Indian classical musicians of the eighteenth century. Why?
This musical rivalry played out against the geopolitical backdrop of a much more tumultuous drama: what eyewitnesses called the “scattering of Shahjahanabad”. Delhi was repeatedly invaded, sacked, and occupied 1739–61, and Mughal court musicians were forced to flee to the four corners of India, where they had to seek new patrons and employ novel strategies to survive. What happened to Delhi’s musicians during this time of crisis is copiously documented in a biographical genre new to Indian musical literature at this time: the commemorative compendium of “lives”, or tazkira. In this talk, I will be looking at musicians’ biographies and genealogies in Persian, Urdu and classical Hindi as both a product of this era’s upheaval, dispersal, diversification, innovation, and anxieties; and as a record of these things. Both views give us unusual access to the history of elite artisans on the move in late Mughal India.
Dr Katherine Butler Schofield is a historian of music and listening in Mughal India and the paracolonial Indian Ocean. Working with Persian, Urdu, and visual sources for elite musical culture in North India and the Deccan c.1570–1860, Katherine’s research interests lie in South Asian music, visual art, and cinema; the history of Mughal India; Islam and Sufism; empire and the paracolonial; musicians at risk; and the intersecting histories of the emotions, the senses, aesthetics, ethics, and the supernatural. She has been Principal Investigator of a European Research Council Starting Grant (2011–15/16) and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow (2018). Her books include Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858 (CUP, 2023), Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature, and Performance in North India, with Francesca Orsini (Open Book, 2015), and Monsoon Feelings: a History of Emotions in the Rain, with Imke Rajamani and Margrit Pernau (Niyogi, 2018).
Katherine trained as a viola player before embarking on postgraduate studies in Indian music history at SOAS University of London. She came to King’s in 2009 after a research fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a lectureship at Leeds. She was formerly known as Katherine Butler Brown.
