Imitation and Innovation: Uses of the Past in the Medieval and Early Modern World
The Eleventh MEMSA Conference
Durham University
11–12 July, 2017

The use of the past is a theme which transcends disciplinary boundaries, and has contemporary as well as historical resonance. This is manifested in a physical sense through the moulding of and engagement with landscapes, the manufacture and (re)use of material culture, and in a more abstract sense through the creation and manipulation of memory and identity which form the core of social ideas and mentalities about the world.

This year’s MEMSA Conference will focus on how people in the Medieval and Early Modern World engaged with, understood, and interpreted the past, in order to explore the ways in which they perceived and sought to shape their own world. In doing so, we will also be able to gain a greater awareness of how past worlds still contribute to shaping our own present perceptions.

We welcome abstract submissions from postgraduates and early career researchers from any discipline engaged in the study of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including History, Literature, Archaeology, Theology, Art, Music, Languages, and Culture. Possible presentation themes may include, but are not limited to:

• (Re)use of landscape, architecture, artefacts, and art
• Myths, legends and oral tradition
• Memory, remembering and memorials
• Perceptions of truth and authority
• Creation and reworking of historical narratives
• Translation and adaptation of literary texts
• Religious and political reform
• Reform, restoration and revolution
• Progression, improvement and enlightenment
• The production of knowledge and networks of learning
• Links to the ancient world
• Technological developments
• Destruction of peoples / suppression of ideas
• Later interpretations of the period, e.g. in film, literature and education

In addition to the panels, the conference will include two keynote addresses, by Dr Helen Smith (University of York, CREMS), and Dr Len Scales (Durham University, Department of History). There will also be an opportunity to take a tour of Durham Cathedral and Castle for any interested delegates.

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words to memsaconference2017@gmail.com for papers no longer than 20 minutes by Friday 14 April, 2017.

For more information, please visit our blog, website, or sponsor’s pages:
durhammemsa.wordpress.com * dur.ac.uk/imems/memsa * dur.ac.uk/imems
Arranged with the support of Durham University’s Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

The Interdisciplinary Network of Port Studies (RedEP)
7th General Conference
University of Cádiz
13-15 September, 2017

Conference Website (in Spanish)

The Harbour as an object of analysis

The harbour is the common topic of the conference. Harbours are much more than just functional and administrative units. They are the result of human interaction between
distant places by sea. They are the meeting point of different cultures and also the cluster of different economic activities. Harbours can be places of difficult cultural
integration but also cluster of creative actions during the days and during the nights.

A variety of approaches

The possible research approaches to the port studies are many. The harbour could be the object of local studies. On the contrary they could be considered under the global perspective of social sciences. Someone could study the relations between different harbours and among harbours and its hinterland. Someone else could analyse the social and cultural relations between the different
actors living and working in the harbour. It could be possible to study port issues with a synchronic approach or, on the opposite using a diachronic perspective.

Interdisciplinary invitation

Considering the harbour as a door open on the social analysis, allows to evidence a spatial, political, economic and urban context. A context usually interpreted as an observer and rarely
as a protagonist of relevant episodes that have changed the social life of harbour cities. All scholars which share this interdisciplinary approach to port studies are kindly invited to
participate to this General Conference.

The papers accepted by scientific committee will be considered for the Proceedings.

Conference items:

1. Space and territory

• International, national and local environment in the port history (the history of the harbors, the cities and the regions)
• Harbor in the national and regional projects.
• Dynamics and actors in the port cities.
• The port city as an interdisciplinary area.
• Cartography.

2. Economics

• Harbors and regional development.
• Harbors and international market.
• Dry ports.
• Harbors and agricultural, industrial and commercial policies.
• Port infrastructures.
• Shipyards
• Building and production
• Corrosion of port tools.
• Logistics: transport systems.
• Harbors and railways: challenges.
• The role of the business
• Fishing harbors
• Harbors and tourism

3. Society

• Unrest in port cities.
• Trade Unions in the harbors.
• Networks of harbors.
• Migration and environment.
• History of Maritime mobility (historiography and methodology)
• Urbanism and planning. The port suburbs.
• Life in port cities.
• People and society in the harbors.

4. Culture

• Port identities.
• Arts.
• Media.
• Cultural Heritage.
• Oral histories.
• Travelers stories.
• Music and harbors.
• Harbors and languages.

5. Policy

• Port national administration.
• Public and private harbors.
• Actors and practices.
• Port law.
• The role of institutions in the harbors development

6. International actors.

• IMO
• ONU
• WHO

7. Harbours and Canals

• Buildings.
• Enlargement.

8. Submarine activities, harbours and archelogy (associations)

• Shipwreck.
• Dredging
• Submarine camera.

9. Business and innovation in port industry:

• Projects, containers, drones
• Vinyl in yacht
• Physical Internet

For more information, please Contact: Luis López‐Molina:
viijornadas.estudiosportuarios@uca.es
0034 956015733

Law and Legal Agreements 600-1250
The Faculty of English, Cambridge University, 9 West Road, Cambridge, CD3 9DP
12-13 January 2018

Following on from the Law and Language Colloquium in 2015 and the Law and Ritual Colloquium in 2016, the final Colloquium in the Voices of Law series, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, will be Law and Legal Agreements 600-1250. This conference aims to draw together scholars working on various geographical areas to identify points of similarity and contrast in language, text and legal practice.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Robin Chapman Stacey

The making of legal agreements opens a window onto various aspects of the medieval world, from trade to marriage to the treatment of ‘outsiders’, and this conference aims to chart the development of these agreements from the period c.600 to c.1250.
Papers covering the following strands are encouraged, but not limited to:

• Agreement and Disagreement – including aspects of judgments and arbitration; conflict resolution; the material and visual culture of legal disputes; violence
• Inheritance, Kinship and Marriage – including topics on dower and dowry; family relationships defined through legal action; divorce and annulment of marriage; fostering and the process of adoption; wardship and inheritance, including will making
• Status, ‘Others’ and Gender – including free and unfree; female agency; queer cases before the courts; sexual deviancy and the intersectionality of status and gender in the making of legal agreements. This strand can also consider the legal status of aliens and strangers; exclusion, expulsion and displacement; and issues surrounding community and identity, including different faith identities and heretical identities in secular and canon law
• The Spoken vs the Written Word – including performance; witnesses and jurors; the use of liturgy and religious texts; satire
• Written versus Material Evidence – including the materiality of legal spaces; archaeology and architecture; the interaction between written and material evidence

Email abstracts of no more than 300 words to voicesoflaw@gmail.com by no later than 17:00 Wednesday 15 February, 2017. Abstracts and papers must be in English. Registration and bursary application forms will be available to download from the Events page of the Voices of Law website at www.voicesoflaw.wordpress.com/events, and are also available on request – just email voicesoflaw@gmail.com to request a form, and find out more.

Receptions
2017 Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association
Australian National University, Canberra
21–22 April, 2017

Conference Website

This conference invites papers on the broad theme of the alterity of the Middle Ages. The state of being other or different–otherness–is at the heart of the reception theory and offers the opportunity to investigate the ways the Middle Ages have been received into the modern world; and the ways in which the Medieval world acted as conduit for the transmission of the Classical. We welcome any papers related to all aspects of the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods (c. 400–1150) in all cultural, geographic, religious and linguistic settings, even if they do not strictly adhere to the theme.

Abstracts of 250-300 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted via email to conference@aema.net.au by the new deadline of 20 February, 2017.

Due to circumstances beyond our control (UEFA Champions’ League Final) we have to move the third Power of the Bishop conference to 8-9 June 2017 as all Cardiff hotels are fully booked already for our original dates due to the football match on the weekend!

Our keynote speaker Prof. Philippa Hoskin has confirmed her availability for the amended dates.

If you have already registered, please email us to confirm that you can still attend.

If you would like to register, please do so either by emailing us directly with your details, or by following this direct link to our form: either http://powerofthebishop.blogspot.co.uk/#!/p/registration.html [the form appears in a pop-up window].

Power of the Bishop III: Bishops as Diplomats 1000-1400
Cardiff University
8-9 June, 2017

Conference Website

This two-day conference sponsored by Medium Aevum will explore the importance of diplomacy in a bishop’s career. How bishops responded to situations was often crucial to building or destroying their reputations, and, sometimes, their very lives depended on their ability to exercise their diplomatic skills.

This conference aims to explore the common themes regarding the use and development of diplomacy in a bishop’s career; how and when was it deployed, and in what circumstances? What impact did the Gregorian Reforms and Investiture Crisis have on this aspect of a bishop’s skill-set?

Most importantly, how do we see diplomacy expressed? As well as through legal agreements and treaties, we would like to explore the role of diplomacy in other areas, including but not limited to: the architecture of the Cathedrals and Bishop’s Palaces, the various uses of the landscape, the visual elements within manuscripts that bishops patronised, the types of gifts given and exchanged; the choice of special dates and feast days to mark particular events.

Abstracts of 200 words in length, in English, should be emailed to powerofthebishop [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line “POB III ABSTRACT”.

Deadline for Abstracts: 20 February, 2017

A donde Neptuno reina: Water, Gods and the Iconography of Early Modern Power (16th–18th Centuries)
CHAM Conference—Oceans and Shores: Heritage, People, and Environments
Lisbon
12–15 July 2017

Since Antiquity, the personification of water—rivers or seas—has been a recurrent elements in the iconography related to power. From the Tigris to the Ganges, from the Mare Nostrum to the Atlantic Sea, water seems to have been an essential element in the visual display of powerful monarchies and empires. After the European discovery of the Americas, oceans started also to play an extraordinary role in allegorical representations, especially in Spain and Portugal, though elsewhere, too. This panel approaches water iconography, especially as related to oceans, as a mode of representation of power during the early modern period, addressing its role in politics and culture. We are interested in arts, music, and literature, and how they relate to the iconography of water and its relationship with power. Especially welcome are cross-disciplinary contributions, proposals that address different cases studies in a comparative way, and studies focused on ephemeral architecture and theatrical contexts. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Ephemeral art: Celebrations of victories, kings’ birthdays, or even religious events were the perfect context for the representation of water as the image of rulers.
• Prints, emblems, and propaganda: How does the topic relate to rulers’ propaganda?
• European powers and the new geography: How did sovereigns employ discoveries into their own images of power?
• Odes, poetry, and epic: How did literature use the image of oceans and rivers to glorify rulers, and what were the implications for the visual arts?

More information is available at the CHAM conference website, and please direct any questions to Dr. Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira, diezdelcorralcorredoira@tu-berlin.de. Proposals are due by 1 February, 2017.

The Literary Interface
2018 Literary Studies Convention
Australian National University, Canberra
July 4-7, 2018

An interface describes a surface or plane that lies between or joins two points in space, but it also refers to ‘a means or place of interaction between two systems’ and ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (OED).

This convention will bring together scholars working across the broad field of literary studies to discuss the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade. By placing the concept of the literary centre-stage while at the same time interrogating its role as an interface, we wish to open up for discussion questions about the role, dynamism, and value of the literary in a time of institutional change and ongoing disciplinary formation. We would also like to debate the role of the literary text – and literary studies as a discipline – as a site of encounter between diverse languages and potentially alien modes of reading and writing.

Invoking the possibility of melding, soldering, and/or merging different elements, the literary interface suggests the resilience as well as the suppleness of disciplinary boundaries. It conjures the possibility of new meeting points; zones of contact and interaction but also sites of contention and disruption that might challenge received platitudes yet help us to bring to the surface new meanings.

Confirmed keynotes include Rey Chow and Lauren Goodlad.

We invite papers and panel proposals, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Mediation, remediation, and transmediation
• Literary Formalism – its past, present and/or future
• Multimedia forms as interfaces
• The relationship between forms, networks, and hierarchies
• Encounters between readers and modes of reading
• Translation
• The relationship between literary studies and other disciplines, e.g., environmental studies, maths, ethnography, science
• The interface between academic and public critical cultures
• Spaces of reading (online and otherwise)
• The negotiation of literary value
• The classroom as literary interface
• Literary objects as interfaces: circulation, reception, paratexts
• The stage and other spaces of performance as interface between temporalities, bodies, performers, writers and audiences
• Cultural interfaces
• Languages of colonialists/postcoloniality
• Transnationalism and minor transnationalism.

Please send abstracts of 150 words and biographical note of 100 words to: julieanne.lamond@anu.edu.au. Submissions due 1 July, 2017.

For further information please contact the Conference Convenor, Dr Julieanne Lamond. E: julieanne.lamond@anu.edu.au; Tel: +61 2 6125 4786