Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 14-15 January 2021

Nowadays, we are constantly confronted with frantic reports on natural calamities. Major news outlets describe the potentially cataclysmic effects of the latest forest fires, floods, and storms – and due to the ongoing climate crisis, extreme weather events can be expected to have ever greater impacts on our lives. If we are left wondering how we should deal with these disasters, we should also acknowledge that natural calamities have always occurred and have affected human experience in myriad ways.

For many centuries, news about catastrophic events has been disseminated via media such as pamphlets, chronicles, poems, and prints. This conference seeks to address the cultural representations that reflected and shaped the ways in which people learned and thought about disasters that occurred either nearby or far away, both in time and space.

This conference welcomes contributions that engage with the cultural dimensions of disasters and reflect on representations of catastrophes in different media. In doing so, we offer a platform to scholars from various backgrounds to adopt multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to reconceptualising the broader socio-cultural consequences of disasters.

Themes that could be explored include, but are not limited to:

• representations of disasters in different media
• religious and ritual responses to disasters
• scientific understandings of disasters and technological innovation
• literary and artistic responses to catastrophes
• remembrance and memory culture surrounding disasters
• material culture of disasters, including disaster relics
• political and societal dimensions of representations of disasters
• human-nature relations in the context of disasters
• history of emotions in the context of disasters
• appropriation of disasters and (collective) identity formation
• solidarity and conflict in the wake of disasters

Proposal
Paper proposals (max. 300 words) should reach the conference committee by 1 June 2020 via email: dealingwithdisasters@let.ru.nl.
Please enclose a 100-word biographical note.

See attached for full CFP.

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3-4 October 2020 | The University of Western Australia, Perth

Our knowledge of the world — imagined, experienced, or learned — is constantly in flux. As humans, we change, adapt, and mould the environments around us, the knowledge systems we use and the items we create. Adaptation can be forced through the presentation of an obstacle, or it can occur symbiotically within a group.

In 2020 Limina: The Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group (PMRG), and Medieval and Early Modern Studies at The University of Western Australia are joining forces to provide a forum for the presentation of the myriad of ‘adaptations’ worlds, individuals, languages, ideas, and peoples, real or otherwise, experience.

The conference will be held at The University of Western Australia from the 3–4 October 2020. It will consist of a masterclass, opening plenary address and reception on 2 October. The main conference will take place on 3–4 October 2020.

The conference committee invites proposals for 20-minute papers or panels (of no more than three speakers) from the breadth of humanities research to explore the products of adaptations, and the processes that bring them into being.

Papers topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Literary and popular culture adaptations (e.g. text to screen; children’s literature and YA adaptations of texts, graphic novel and video-game recreations of literary classics);
• Adaptations throughout history (e.g. Cultural adaptations, reception, neoclassicism, medievalism, early modernism, Neo-Victorianism, Gothic revival, science fiction, utopianism, etc.);
• Adaptation of memory (e.g. emotion or event based i.e. historical re-enactments, responses to crises/trauma/adversity/oppressive systems);
• Translation studies (e.g. translations of medieval manuscripts or ancient papyri);
• Adaptation and electronic literature (e.g. going beyond re-mediation to interface and recreate the text)
• Childhood studies (e.g. learning; education; “adapting to and through the world”);
• Critical studies on visual adaptations (e.g. interpretive dance; interactive artworks);
  Adaptations of the self (e.g. biographies; auto-biographies, con-artists, fakes, forgeries and
• scams);
• Adaptation and embodiment (e.g disability, immaterial bodies, in/corporality, disability; cyborgs, AI);
• Adaptations of reality (e.g. sci-fi; hallucinogens, VR);
• Museum and Material Studies (e.g. displaying/reinterpreting/rehousing material artefacts to contemporary audiences, heritage studies and technology, 3D modeling/printing);
• Environmental adaptations (e.g. permanently or temporarily adapting the environment to suit the needs of humans, artificial environments, biospheres/biodomes);
• Adaptation of space and place (e.g. rehabilitation, renovation, renewal, gentrification, repatriation).

Conference abstract submissions should consist of:

-A title
-An abstract (max. 200 words);
-A short biography (max. 50 words).

Submit abstracts to: adaptationconference2020@gmail.com by the 31 May 2020. The committee aims to have responses returned by 14 June 2020.

Limina and PMRG also welcome themed panel or workshop session proposals for the conference. Proposals should consist of:

-Panel Title;
-Proposed Chair (if available);
-Details of each presenter and paper as described above.

Submit panel/workshop proposals to: adaptationconference2020@gmail.com by 31 May 2020.

For more information see the conference website.

Australian Early Medieval Association conference, 30 Sept-2 Oct 2020, The University of Western Australia

The conference committee invites papers on the theme Journeys: Discovery and Belonging. The period we study was marked by the disintegration of established political and social orders, widespread migrations and incursions, and rising competition between religious ideologies. Developing forms of inter-cultural contact and exchange gave rise to new ways of conceptualising and articulating identity and alterity, but while new boundaries – physical and ideational – were established, all boundaries remained porous. People, objects and ideas continued to circulate, to take journeys. How did existing communities and new migrants adapt to, or resist, each other? How were institutions modified to include, accommodate or exclude new worldviews? What was the role of material culture in holding fast to the old, and in legitimising and promoting new polities, new ethnicities, and new ideologies? How did cross-cultural contacts in the early medieval period shape history?

We invite submissions on the following topics:

• Exchange across borders- trade, culture, and human trafficking  • Maintaining and modifying identity • Maritime exploration • Invasion, settlement, assimilation. • Cultural geography: significant space and place • The book as traveller / the reader as voyager • Imagined otherworlds / imagined others • The idea and material expression of homelands • Emotions and journeys / emotional journeys • Pilgrimage and adventure • Travel narratives • First
contacts • Reading race and ethnicity: conflict and co-existence • Conversion and religious conflict • Accommodation and defiance—tensions in the quest to belong • Translation, adaptation, linguistic change • Viewing ‘Europe’ from outside • Afterlives of the early medieval in modern identity formation.

AEMA also welcomes papers concerned with all aspects of the Early Medieval period (c. 400–1150) in all cultural, geographic, religious and linguistic settings, even if they do not strictly adhere to the theme.

We especially encourage submissions from graduate students and early career researchers.
Abstracts of 150-200 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted via email to conference@aema.net.au by 31 May 2020.

Please see below for a downloadable copy of the conference CFP, and an additional call for contributions for a proposed panel at the conference on ‘Medieval Recreations’.[gview file=”http://www.anzamems.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2020ConferenceCFP.pdf”] [gview file=”http://www.anzamems.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Medieval-Recreations-panel-proposal1.docx”]

If death and injury are central to warfare, so are the tools that cause bodily harm. This inter- disciplinary workshop, hosted by the University of Auckland’s ‘War in Context’ research hub, explores the cultures of violence and control that form around military weaponry by focusing on the wounds they inflict and the (at least perceived) pain and suffering they provoke. It investigates the ways in which individuals, communities, states, and militaries imagine, represent, adapt, and receive military technologies in the context of their wounding capacity.

We invite proposals for papers (30min, followed by 10min for questions and discussion) that focus on particular weapons (or types of weapons), the context in which they are used, and the ‘wounds’ they cause. We welcome papers from any historical period, including today, and hope to attract scholars from a wide range of disciplines and cultural perspectives. As such, ‘wounds’ can, and indeed should, be interpreted in a broad way and can encompass not only physical, but psychological, social, cultural, and political damage.

It is planned that the workshop will form the core of a publication – either an edited collection or special edition of an academic journal.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract (no more than 250 words), and a brief biography (no more than 250 words). We welcome proposals from scholars at all stages of their careers, including graduate students and early career scholars.

Proposals should be submitted through this submission portal by 1 June 2020.

There may be a small registration fee to help cover catering and other costs. If you would like to attend, even if not offering a paper, please also note your interest here by 1 June 2020 and you will be sent registration information once that is available.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact one of the conference organizers: Maartje Abbenhuis (m.abbenhuis@auckland.ac.nz), Jeremy Armstrong (js.armstrong@auckland.ac.nz), and Thomas Gregory (t.gregory@auckland.ac.nz).

The CFP for the 14th International Conference of the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS) with the theme ‘Food: Sacrificial, Spiritual, and Secular’ to be held at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, on 23-24 October 2020, has been extended until February 10. The updated CFP can be downloaded below.

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