Tag Archives: medieval and renaissance studies

CFP Royal Spectacle and Court Performance: Medieval and Early Modern Perspectives

Royalty has often been accompanied by spectacle, ritual, and excess. Monarchs have exploited public space to exert authority, express anger or encourage love, deploying high-profile and fantastic rituals or displays to communicate with their publics. Clothing, accessories, gifts, food, and other materials have been used to build friendships, negotiate social hierarchies, or to convey displeasure. Art, statuary, monuments and buildings, as well as the more ephemeral prints, ribbons, or household goods, have been used as propaganda and to further a performance of power. Art and material goods were often part of elaborate performances at court, on stage, in the press, or on the street, where spectacle was embodied and communicated as identity, power and privilege. Such activities were replete with emotion, as courtiers sought to build or
negotiate relationships, encourage awe or affection, and promote appreciation of systems of monarchical power and divine right. This workshop explores royal spectacles and court performances in the medieval and early modern world and now calls for papers that speak to this theme.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
Displays of monarchical power or identity
Court performances and interactions
Fashion diplomacy and dress
Gift-giving, hospitality and generosity
Abundance and excess
Ephemeral displays
Print power and the monarch in the public sphere
The audiences for monarchical displays and court performances
Displays of emotion and the capacity of performance to promote feeling
Drama, theatre, and literary court performances
Medieval and Early Modern spectacles in the modern era
Gender, race, class as spectacle

Deadline for proposals 30 April 2023.
Please email proposals to courtlyperformances@gmail.com

Medieval Literary Form – Call for Abstracts

Over the last decade, scholarship in medieval literary studies has developed interests in how ‘new formalist’ approaches and interests might be applied to pre-Modern texts and traditions. Some excellent examples include Robert J Meyer-Lee and Catherine Sanok, eds., The Medieval Literary: Beyond Form (2018); Thorlac Turville-Petre, Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry (2018); Johnson, Knapp and Rouse, eds., The Art of Vision: Ekphrasis in Medieval Literature and Culture (2015). These works, and others, explore formal qualities (and the idea of literary form itself) in a variety of different ways: in terms of theoretical or historical ideas of form; or focus on particular formal aspects (eg. descriptio; ekphrasis; narrative technique; rhetoric).

This panel seeks papers informed by an interest in literary form, broadly imagined. This might include studies of poetry and rhetoric or specific poetic tropes; literary interactions across and between literature in different languages; or wider cultural understandings of literariness and formalism, and the possibilities of considering medieval aesthetics (which might include visual culture and architecture or ‘historical’ narrative as well as literary texts). The sub-theme welcomes work from across the full range of medieval studies, in terms of chronology, discipline, genre, or language, but has a particular interest in late medieval literary culture (eg. Gower, Chaucer, alliterative poetry, Middle English Romance and drama).

For further details and to submit an abstract please see: https://new.sewanee.edu/academics/medieval-colloquium/2022-conference-info/conference-sub-themes/medieval-literary-forms/

Medieval and Early Modern Centre: Editing in Australia

ATTENTION ALL EDITORS OF TEXTS

Professor Paul Eggert has recently published an article on Editing in Australia (see article), showing the breadth and depth since the nineteenth century of scholarly textual editing in this country. As Paul says, his article focuses mainly on the editing of texts in English, although at the same time he mentions in passing some non-English texts. Working in the area of European languages (Italian, French, Latin), we the undersigned, in consultation with Paul, think that it would be appropriate to write a companion piece focusing on the editing in Australia of texts in non-English European languages in order to underline the contribution to this scholarly field made by scholars working in these areas. This of course raises the question of Australian editing of texts in Asian and other non-European languages, but this might merit another article by scholars working in those areas.

We are circulating this letter in the hope of finding those who are involved in text editing or who might know others who are similarly involved (both critical and scholarly editions, including unpublished theses). We would be grateful if you could provide us with details of your work for our article and pass on this letter to others who might be interested. Regarding the work of scholars no longer with us, we would be glad if you could list them for us, as well as details of their work.

Frances.Muecke@sydney.edu.au
Nerida Newbigin
Margaret Sankey

Medieval and Early Modern Centre April Newsletter

Medieval and Early Modern Centre, April 2022 Newsletter


April is a quieter month for events: Easter, mid-semester break, and Anzac Day land squarely in its middle and – hopefully – give us all some much-needed respite.

This month’s MEMC lunchtime seminar – on Friday 29 April – is a double-bill. We will have the opportunity to hear shorter papers (about 20 minutes each) from two of the Centre’s Honorary Associates, Andrew Mellas and Penny Nash. As you can see in the abstracts below, the presentations bring us into the material, sensory, and emotional worlds of the European middle ages, taking us from Byzantine liturgy through Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian dress and costume.

We look forward to seeing you on Zoom at the end of the month. Meanwhile, enjoy the upcoming break,
John Gagné, Director

Events
MEMC Lunchtime Seminar

Friday 29 April
12:00 noon – 1:30 pm

Andrew Mellas (MEMC, Sydney), and Penny Nash (MEMC, Sydney)

(1) Andrew Mellas, “Romanos the Melodist and the Liturgical Emotions of Pascha”

The hymnos of Romanos the Melodist sought to shape an emotional and liturgical community in Constantinople. Retelling the sacred stories of Scripture, they become affective scripts for the faithful, teaching them to yearn for compunction, weep with grief and dance for joy. Emotions formed part of the desire for and experience of the salvific mystery in Byzantium. However, they were transformed together with the whole of human nature in this mystical experience.

This paper will explore one of Romanos’ paschal songs, On the Resurrection VI, which invited the faithful to experience the dialectic between the beginning of salvation history and the end of all things, weaving together the fallenness of the congregation with the promise of rebirth. While this paper will also allude to other hymns composed for Pascha, it will consider how the tears of Romanos’ protagonist, Mary Magdalen – who was conquered by weeping but overcome by the fire of love – embodied a metamorphosis of grief into joy. In the liminal space between the absence and presence of Christ’s body, during the interlude between crucifixion and resurrection, Romanos’ song elicited a longing for the eschaton that is yet to come but already dawning.

See below for Zoom link

(2) Penny Nash, “Pointy Hats, Glittering Headdresses and Audacious Demeanour as Symbols of Power and Sovereignty”

The examination of clothing, jewellery, gifts, and other material objects, together with the deportment of the giver and the receiver of such items, especially in how they are visually presented, is crucial in understanding the intentions of the participants.

The paper deals with the symbolism of the posture and clothing, especially headgear, in a number of depictions of historical figures. Examined are Pepin’s and Charlemagne’s pointy hats; Theophanu’s gifts to the West from Byzantium; the bareheaded portrait of Henry, dux of Bavaria (‘the Wrangler’); and Countess Matilda’s possible claim to royality in her manuscript portrait with the Germanic king Henry IV and Abbot Hugh of Cluny at Canossa – among other images.

This paper puts into historical perspective selected artworks created between the eighth and early-twelfth centuries in Western Europe (the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian periods). It demonstrates how important representations can be in depicting and nuancing our understanding of the tensions and concerns of the people involved and prefaces later portrayals in the Renaissance.

Join via Zoom (same link for both talks): https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/89068632840

Call for Papers: 2022 ANZAMEMs Ceræ panel

The Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies is hosting a hybrid online and at the University of Western Australia for it’s 13th biennial conference, with the topic “Reception and Emotion”. Ceræ is accepting submissions for a panel with the following themes.

Themes: Reception, Emotion, and Witchcraft

As Michael Ostling and Laura Kounine have pointed out, the history of witchcraft has always also been a history of emotions: the victims, the accusers, and the witches themselves. It demonstrates the importance of perspective: whose emotions are we permitted to see, from whose standpoint? What role do emotions play in creating the idea of witchcraft, and how do these differ over time and space? The intersection of the history of emotions and the history of witchcraft also highlight the importance of reception (both premodern and present-day) and concerns regarding methodology (in both fields). It also invites scholars to critically consider the additional intersection of rationality, as this is often contrasted with both emotions and witchcraft – often to the detriment of the latter. Does this help us to uncover particularly elusive aspects of premodern witchcraft, or reinforce negative stereotypes? Ceræ invites submissions for papers to discuss these themes.

Paper proposals may include but are not limited to
•To what extent are emotions and a lack of reason which informs them one of the only ways which we try to understand the irrational within a system of dogmatic beliefs?
•Differences in the intersection of emotions and witchcraft between the medieval and early modern periods.
•Regional differences in associations and intersections between emotions and witchcraft.
•The vulnerability of marginalised communities to these associations and intersections.
•Emotions that are brought into particularly close association with witchcraft; conversely, those which are not, and what impact this can have for our understanding of premodern witchcraft.
•The additional intersection of emotion, witchcraft, and religion.

Please send abstracts of not more than 250 words to editorcerae@gmail.com by December 31st.

For further information on the ANZAMEMS conference, visit https://www.anzamems2021.com/

CFP – Royal Bodies panel

This panel will convene at the Thirteenth Biennial Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (#anza22), to be held in-person at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, and online via Zoom, from 27-30 June 2022.

The idea of the ‘king’s two bodies’, a duality predicated on the idea that a monarch possessed two bodies, a natural body and a body politic – the former mortal, the latter an embodiment of both the nation and the authority of sovereignty – has long been of interest to scholars of medieval and early modern monarchies.

The body of a monarch remains a contest site, with the life, health, fertility, and sexuality of kings or queens continuing to be an important part of politics. Royal scandal graces the covers of newspapers and magazines and trends on social media, and royal weddings, births, and deaths continue to capture the public’s imagination and interest.

We seek papers that examine the significance of the royal body, in particular, the reception of the royal body across time periods, cultures, and media and how royal bodies both convey and elicit emotions.

Proposals for 20-minute conference papers should consist of:

  1. A title
  2. An abstract (max. 200 words)
  3. A short biography (max. 50 words)

Submissions should be emailed (as a Word document attachment) to mgerzic@gmail.com by Monday 13 December 2021.

Please see the call for papers for further information:

ANZAMEMS Early Career Fellowship Program

ANZAMEMS is pleased to annouce the lanuch of its new ANZAMEMS Early Career Fellowship Program, which will provide flexible support and mentoring for research and publication to early career researchers in medieval studies, early modern studies, and medievalism.

The fellowship includes $3000 AUD of flexible funding for research and/or living expenses, and six months’ mentorship by a senior ANZAMEMS academic.

Applications for the 2022 ANZAMEMS Early Career Fellowship Program (to be taken up between 1 March 2022 – 28 February 2023) are open now, and close on Friday 14 January 2022.

For more details, see the ANZAMEMS website

CFP: Leeds International Medieval Congress, 2022, Crusades without Borders

Crusades without Borders

How do we imagine histories of the crusades without borders? How have borders – lived, imagined, invented – influenced and informed scholarship on the crusades since the Middle Ages? What does a history of the crusades without borders look like? This special strand seeks to explore histories and historiographies relevant to the topic of ‘Crusades without Borders’ from the Middle Ages to the present.

The Australasian Crusades Studies Network seeks papers for a strand on ‘Crusades without Borders’ at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2022. Researchers at all career stages and affiliations are invited to send abstracts for proposed papers on the theme of ‘Crusades without Borders’. We are interested in papers that explore themes such as:

Encounters, entanglements, engagements;
Divisions (historical and historiographical);
Distance and proximity;
Border policing;
Gender;
Race;
Theoretical and methodological issues.

Please submit abstracts of 250 words, including your name, contact email, affiliation to Professor Megan Cassidy-Welch (Megan.Cassidy-Welch@acu.edu.au) by Friday September 17, 2021.

CFP: Resilience, Persistence, and Agency

Resilience, Persistence, and Agency
The American University of Paris, Paris, France
On-site and online
5th – 7th January 2022

Resilience in the face of adversity for marginalized individuals, persistence in the face of obstacles created by hegemonic power structures, and creative or subversive forms of agency were as often exerted by feminine and queer actors in the Middle Ages as they are in the twenty-first century. Contemporary medieval scholarship is inflected by intersectional feminist frameworks that explore how individuals can understand and subvert power structures in the face of multiple oppressions, postcolonial studies that broadens our understanding of what constitutes a “Middle Ages,” and critical race theory that invites medievalists to interrogate the history of their discipline and the pernicious ends to which “medievalism” has been put in contemporary white supremacist discourses.

This edition of the Gender and Medieval Studies Conference invites papers that examine how resilience, persistence, and agency were deployed by actors during the global Middle Ages and how medieval studies can play an activist role in deconstructing the misperceptions of the period that buttress oppressive politics.

The organizers welcome proposals on any aspect of resilience, persistence, and agency as it relates to medieval genders and sexualities from scholars at any stage of study or career. Proposals for papers may include, but are not limited to:

Subversive discourses in the Middle Ages/covert agency/unrecognized resilience/transgressive behaviors/persistence and resistance/anachronism and activism/postcolonial medieval studies/recovering trans and queer narratives/antiracist medieval scholarship/non-European Middle Ages.

We anticipate contributors giving papers of 10-15 minutes. Proposals for panels of 3-4 papers are also warmly welcomed, as are proposals for roundtables (90 minutes) of 3-5 participants.

The conference aims to be as inclusive as possible and encourages participation from around the globe. As such the sessions and activities will be a mixture of on-site events in Paris with remote and/or asynchronous participation welcome. The conference will be broadcast via Zoom on Paris time.

Please submit proposed titles and abstracts of 300 words, with a short biography to Elizabeth Kinne (gmsconference2022@gmail.com) by September 15, 2021. See the conference website for further details.

Visit the Gender and Medieval Studies website and find us on Twitter @medievalgender.

PhD and MPhil Applications: Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the Australian Catholic University

The Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Program of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry (IRCI) welcomes applications from highly motivated students to study toward a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). We seek applicants who wish to develop research projects in medieval and early modern history in areas such as social, cultural, religious, and gender history.

We are particularly interested in hearing from prospective PhD students interested in developing projects aligned with our large-scale collaborative project, ‘Religious Mobilities: Medieval and Early Modern Europe and the World’. Multiple research scholarships are available to support PhD students in this project.

The IRCI’s MEMS program is the largest medieval and modern program in Australia, and a dynamic, supportive, internationally-engaged research community. Students are supported by reading groups, seminars, professional development opportunities, events across ACU’s cognate faculties and institutes, and international networking opportunities.

For further information, please contact the MEMS Program Director, Professor Megan Cassidy-Welch.