Proposals are invited for the seminar “(Re)constructing history through landscape and practice”, to be held as part of IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic – Transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, April 11-13, 2019).

Seminar organisers: Dr Pamela O’Neill and Associate Professor Jay Johnston (University of Sydney)

This seminar will draw together academics and practitioners to investigate how we experience, represent and ultimately construct history. It will consider the creative processes that are triggered when the subject is physically immersed in the landscape: archaeologists who seek to authentically reproduce artefacts and sites, historians and toponymists who travel hypothesised early routeways, folklorists who seek to replicate encounters with the otherworld, artists who create through physical immersion in landscape, religious practitioners who (re)enact pilgrimage, heritage bodies who curate historic sites, writers who publish or blog their travel experiences. This seminar aims to explore multiple questions regarding the relationship between discursive academic and creative modes of enquiry including:

• In what ways do we create historical, artistic and other narratives in response to immersion in landscape?
• In what ways do such narratives differ from those created in a disengaged, physically separate context traditionally espoused by scholarship?
• Of what value are such narratives to historians and other scholars working in the traditional mode?
• What does a close physical experience of landscape add to scholarly understanding?
• What could be the ultimate effect of a physically immersive model of scholarship being integrated into the academic endeavour?
• How do these modalities of research and exploration relate to Critical Practice (practice-based methodology)?
• What could such scholarship contribute to the understandings and experiences of the general public?

We invite expressions of interest from all who are keen to take part. Please include:

• a very short biographical statement (100 words),
• a brief explanation of your interest in the seminar
• and a suggestion for a presentation you could contribute (200 words).

Please send expressions of interest to:

pamaladh@gmail.com AND jay.johnston@sydney.edu.au by 31 July 2018.

‘Lives and Afterlives’
The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
University of the South in Sewanee, TN
April 12-13, 2019

Conference Website

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium invites proposals for panel themes engaging with the lives and afterlives of medieval cultures for its 2019 meeting. These sub-themes address a particular aspect of our general theme, and could be the basis for either one or two panels. As a rule of thumb, panel themes should be broad enough to encourage numerous applicants, and interdisciplinary proposals are particularly encouraged. Possibilities might include the theologies of heaven, medieval ecologies, everyday life in the Middle Ages, the production of reliquaries, ordering of public space, and popular medievalism. If a panel theme is accepted, organizers will be responsible for selecting participants (from abstracts submitted through the website by October 26, 2018) and choosing a commenter (a well-established expert in the field) to respond to the papers at the panel session.

Panel theme proposals should include a description/rationale of the panel theme, a list of possible commenters (organizers may serve as commenters), and the CVs of the organizers, all submitted via e-mail to medievalcolloquium@sewanee.edu. Panel proposals are due July 27, 2018. Commenters are generally established figures in the field with a significant record of publication; participants in the Colloquium are generally limited to holders of a Ph.D. and those currently in a Ph.D. program.

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium also invites proposals for individual papers engaging with any aspect of our 2019 theme, ‘Lives and Afterlives.’ Possibilities might include the theologies of heaven, medieval ecologies, everyday life in the Middle Ages, the production of reliquaries, ordering of public space, and popular medievalism. Papers should be twenty minutes in length, and commentary is traditionally provided for each paper presented. We invite papers from all disciplines, and encourage contributions from medievalists working on any geographic area. A seminar will also seek contributions; please look for its separate CFP soon. Participants in the Colloquium are generally limited to holders of a Ph.D. and those currently in a Ph.D. program.

Please submit an abstract (approx. 250 words) and brief c.v., via our website (http://medievalcolloquium.sewanee.edu), no later than 26 October 2018. If you wish to propose a session, please submit abstracts and vitae for all participants in the session. Completed papers, including notes, will be due to commenters no later than 12 March 2019.

You may also propose a complete panel of either two or three papers; please submit all abstracts together, and attach all relevant CVs. Complete panel proposals will be due at the same time as our general call, October 26, 2018.