The Group for the Study of Early Cultures at the University of California, Irvine announces its First Annual Graduate Student Conference
“Friends, Fellows, and Forms of Freedom: Premodern Civil Societies”
Friday, November 21st, 2008, at UC Irvine
Keynote Speaker: Page duBois, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, UC San Diego Abstract Deadline: September 1st, 2008
“Civil society” refers to the system of voluntary civic and social networks that stand against the formality and force-backed structure of the state. It includes such institutions and formations as the press, guilds and unions, religious communities, friendships, the theatre, schools and universities, and many other groups whose members share interests and activities. In the seventeenth century, the phrase “civil society” was still synonymous with political life as such; by the end of the eighteenth century, the phrase had come to designate all those forms of social life that are not the state. To pursue the shapes and origins of civil society before modernity, then, is to attend to the process by which “politics” and “society” separated from each other as distinct spheres of human association and to imagine different forms their relationship to each other might take.
This conference will attempt to discover the outlines, origins, or equivalents of “civil society” in the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance periods, in Europe and globally. Were earlier civilizations freer to imagine more egalitarian and less restricted social relationships in the absence of a codified civil/political distinction? At any particular moment, is civil society characterized more by unity or by diversity?
Order or freedom? Hierarchy or equality? What effects did civil society have on literature and art, or vice versa, and what genres (the letter, the essay, the proverb, the comedy, the symposium, and the dialogue, as well as guides to comportment and “civil conversation”) were specific to it? What role did religion play in establishing networks of social relationship? What historical events and pressures led to the separation of civil society from the state? What role did the incorporated structure of the medieval city play in establishing the localized economic basis of modern citizenship, and how did the forms of “civil” citizenship interact or compete with “political” citizenship? How did forms of education dictate membership, participation, and modes of communication in civil societies, and in what ways were these forms continuous or not through periods of social, political, and religious change? How did the institutions and iconographies of gender, marriage, friendship, family, hospitality, gift-giving, love, labor, race, class, and nationality help establish pre-modern civil societies or their equivalents?
CALL FOR PAPERS:
We invite all interested graduate students from any university in any discipline to submit a one-page abstract on any topic dealing with premodern civil societies. Please send abstracts as word documents attached to e-mails to BOTH conference organizers, Jacob McDonie (rmcdonie@uci.edu) and Jesse Weiner (weinerj@uci.edu), by September 1st, 2008. We will notify all applicants of our decisions by September 21st, 2008. We will try to provide out-of-town participants with housing with UCI graduate students. Please direct all inquiries to the conference organizers.
Ambrosiana Foundation Announces Session at 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies
“The Ambrosiana Library and Its Collections”
In honor of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (www.ambrosiana.it), the Ambrosiana Foundation is organizing a panel of papers centering on works held in the varied collections of the Biblioteca’s library and art gallery. Founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo in order to promote cross-cultural understanding, the Ambrosiana holds manuscripts, documents, works of art, and other objects created by the various cultures with which Italy shared the Mediterranean Sea. This includes manuscripts on subjects ranging from medicine, mathematics, and astronomy to history, law, literature, and religion, and written in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and various vernacular tongues. We seek papers that pertain to manuscripts, documents, works of art, or any other objects in the Ambrosiana’s holdings that date from, or are relevant to the study of, the Middle Ages. Our goal is a panel that engages scholars from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to art, history, literature, religion, science, and the history of libraries and collecting.
Proposals must be submitted in accordance with Congress guidelines.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2008.
For further information or submissions, please contact
Alison Locke Perchuk by phone at 213-210-2311, or email: alison.perchuk@gmail.com.
SELIM XX
The Twentieth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language & Literature will be held at the University of Oviedo, from the 2nd to the 4th of October 2008. More information at http://www.uniovi.es/SELIM/selim20/index.html
Participants are invited to send their proposals for paper or poster presentations. Presentations should be about 15-20 minutes long. Some extra 10 minutes will be allowed for questions and debate. The language of the conference is English (preferred), but contributions in Spanish (no interpreting facilities) will also be accepted. Please send your abstract in English to: selim@web.uniovi.es using a word-processor file (.doc, .rtf). Include your name, address and affiliation.
Mapping Medieval Geographies |
Cartography and Geographical Thought in
the Latin West and Beyond: 300-1600 A CMRS Ahmanson Conference
at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Thursday May 28th - Saturday May 30th 2009
Geography as it was understood and practiced in the Middle Ages, within both
eastern and western traditions, and as represented both graphically and textually,
is a subject of renewed interest and importance among historians, philologists and
geographers. This conference aims to promote an exchange between those of
different disciplines working on geographical ideas and thinking from late
Antiquity to the Renaissance on the themes of ‘Translation, transmission,
transculturation’, and ‘Mapping, imagining, placing’.
Key speakers are: Dan Birkholz (Austin Texas), Veronica della Dora (Univ. Bristol), Kathy Lavezzo (Univ.
Iowa), Natalia Lozovsky (UC Berkeley), Andrew Merrills (Univ. Leicester), Meg Roland (Marylhurst Univ.),
Emilie Savage-Smith (Univ. Oxford), and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute, London).
Paper contributions are invited which address the two conference themes, either (1) on the continuities in
geographical knowledge from Antiquity into and through the Middle Ages; the complex transculturation of
formal geographical and cartographic knowledge between Latin, Byzantine and Islamic scholars and
travelers; and the copying and transmission of ‘key’ geographical texts and sources and their selection and
adaptation, or (2) on questions of ‘scale, place and the geographical imagination’ looking at the changing
distinctiveness, character and uses of ‘geography’ in medieval thought; the intertextual nature of ‘medieval
geography’ between visual (cartographic) and textual descriptions, and connections between ‘thinking
geographically’ (ie. spatial sensibility) and ‘geographical thinking’ (ie. writing and visualizing ‘geography’) in
the Middle Ages.
Please send a 150-word abstract of your suggested paper, including title and contact details to:
Dr Keith D. Lilley, School of Geography, Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University
Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, BT7 1NN.
Or email it to: k.lilley@qub.ac.uk
Closing date for abstract submission: September 30 2008. Limited funds are available to help support
doctoral students present papers thanks to the Historical Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG.
Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy An International Conference to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the death of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
University of Kent, at Canterbury, 22nd-25th April, 2009
Taking as its theme the legacy of Anselm, the conference will operate with a broad interdisciplinary remit. The organisers welcome papers on all aspects of the legacy of Anselm’s thought and career. The conference will be an opportunity to celebrate, deepen and re-examine key questions about the name that Anselm has enjoyed in the fields of philosophy and theology; to re-assess the impact that he and the intellectual methods he developed had upon his immediate, 12th century and later successors; to look again at the historical Anselm and the role he played in the political and ecclesiastical issues of his day, and to explore the rich and diverse ways in which his memory has been preserved and debated since his death. It is hoped that the breadth and depth of Anselm’s interests, from the centre of his monastic life to his activity in the world, will be reflected in the subject matter of the conference.
‘Saint Anselm and his Legacy’ is organised under the aegis of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University and the Canterbury Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
The deadline for proposal submissions is mid-October 2008. Please send proposed paper titles, with an abstract of 300 words (papers to be 20 minutes long) to:
Dr Giles E. M. Gasper
Department of History
Durham University
43 North Bailey
Durham, DH1 3EX
United Kingdom
g.e.m.gasper@durham.ac.uk
The Review of English Studies engages in the historical study of English Literature and the English Language, encouraging fresh interpretations and the comparative study of historical texts. It is the leading scholarly journal of English literature and the English language from the earliest period to the present. Submission of papers focusing on the literature and language of the medieval period are especially welcome.
VAGANTES Graduate Student Conference 2009
The medievalists of Florida State University have the honor of hosting the eighth annual Vagantes Medieval Graduate Student Conference on March 5-7, 2009. Vagantes is now the largest conference in North America for graduate students studying the Middle Ages. The goal of Vagantes is to provide an open dialogue among young scholars from all fields of medieval studies. The conference features two faculty speakers, twenty-four student papers, and an audience of approximately 100 people. It seeks to create a sense of community for junior medievalists of diverse backgrounds within the margins of a graduate student budget.
Abstracts for twenty-minute papers are welcome from graduate students on topics considering the Middle Ages. In keeping with the mission of Vagantes to advance interdisciplinary studies, we invite submissions in areas including but not limited to history, literature, art history, philosophy, religious studies, and musicology. Please email a brief vitae and abstract of no more than 300 words by October 1, 2008 to careyfee@yahoo.com. Carey Fee, Department of Art History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
Fons Luminis: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval Studies
We are pleased to announce the launch of Fons Luminis, a semi-annual, peer-reviewed journal for Medieval Studies. We are seeking submissions of articles from all areas, especially those with an interdisciplinary emphasis. Junior faculty and graduate students are particularly encouraged to submit.
The deadline for submissions for the Autumn issue is 15 July; the deadline for the Spring issue is 15 January. Articles should be around 8000 words, and should follow the Speculum stylesheet. Electronic submissions are preferred. For more information, please see our website at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/fonsluminis/index.php.
The Journal of the North Atlantic (JONA):
is a new multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed and edited scientific journal focusing on the peoples of the North Atlantic, their expansion into the region over time, and their interactions with their changing environment (first issue, March 2008).
is intended to serve as a forum for researchers, and as an information resource for teachers, students, and the intellectually curious who would like to learn about the latest research and study opportunities within the region.
will be published in print and online versions.
will publish a wide diversity of research papers, as well as research summaries and general interest articles in closely related disciplines, which, when considered together, contribute to a comprehensive multidisciplinary understanding of the historical interplay between cultural and environmental changes in the North Atlantic world.
focuses on paleo-environmental reconstruction and modelling, historical ecology, anthropology, ecology of organisms important to humans, archaeology, human/environment/climate interactions, climate history, ethnography, ethnohistory, historical analyses, discussions of cultural heritage, and place-name studies.
will publish field observations, notes, and archaeological site reports, as well as book reviews, summaries of important news stories, opinion papers, and free brief announcements of meetings, symposia, conferences, and grant opportunities.
will accept advertisements that are directly related to the journal's thematic content.
The Board of Editors welcomes your interest in the Journal of the North Atlantic and cordially invites you to look at it's website at www.eaglehill.us/jonageninf.html. The First Call for Papers and Subscriptions is available on this site as a PDF download (maximum 2 minute download on a 56K modem). It provides a broad overview of the journal, complete with intriguing color photos. Instructions for Authors are available as a PDF download (maximum 30 second download on a 56K modem). It gives an overview of how versatile the journal is for researchers. An online version of the journal will be posted in the journal's own website and in the BioOne.org database. These online versions allow authors to include special files such as video, database, and audio files with their articles. The journal will be indexed in a full range of journal databases. We welcome your interest and questions!
Journal of the North Atlantic
Eagle Hill Foundation
PO Box 9, 59 Eagle Hill Road
Steuben, ME 04680-0009 United States
Phone: 207-546-2821, FAX: 207-546-3042
Early Modern Women: an Interdisciplinary Journal(http://www.emwjournal.umd.edu) is now accepting submissions for Volume 2. We will accept submissions of essays related to women and gender covering the years 1400 to 1700. We especially encourage submissions that appeal to readers across disciplinary boundaries. Essays may consider art history, cultural studies, history, history of philosophy, history of science, literature, music, politics, religion, theater, and any global region. Newer and interdisciplinary approaches are especially welcome.
Five paper copies and one electronic copy of each manuscript should be sent to: Editors
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies
0139 Taliaferro Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-7727
USA
All manuscripts must be printed double-spaced (including documentation) on one side of letter-size paper, and should not exceed 35 pages (8750 words) including notes. Documentation should appear as endnotes, and MUST follow Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (2003), chs. 16 and 17 (NOT author-date style). All manuscripts are subject to editorial modification with authorial approval. Editors will accept submissions on a continuous basis. Queries and electronic copies may be addressed to emwjournal@umd.edu.
