Daily Archives: 17 July 2018

CFP: De Re Militari sessions at ICMS Kalamazoo, May 2019

De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History is seeking proposals for five sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2019 (Western Michigan University, 9-12 May 2019).

De Re Militari is interested in papers on all aspects of warfare, broadly defined. Papers from the Kalamazoo sessions may be considered for publication in the Journal of Medieval Military History https://boydellandbrewer.com/series/journal-of-medieval-military-history.html

The five sessions are:

  1. Annual Journal of Medieval Military History Lecture
  2. War and Chivalry
  3. Early and High Medieval Military History
  4. Late Medieval Military History
  5. Medieval Military Technology

Proposal deadline is 15 September 2018. Proposals should be sent to Dr Valerie Eads, Department of Humanities and Sciences, School of Visual Arts, New York: veads@sva.edu

CFP: Material Collective Roundtable at ICMS Kalamazoo

The Material Collective is sponsoring a roundtable at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2019 (Western Michigan University, 9-12 May 2019) on The Middle Ages: What Does it Have to Do with Me?

What does medieval art, culture, and history have to do with my life; what is the point of knowing this stuff? Immersed in the study of the Middle Ages as we are, we may lose sight of the fact that for many people the material to which we are passionately devoted holds little to no interest. It is our hope that this roundtable discussion can produce some strategies for countering this disengagement.

As we consider how to expand access to and engagement with the field, we invite consideration of the roles identity can play in both academic and popular engagement with Medieval Studies. From its antiquarian origins to today, the field has been shaped by nationalist identities, impulses, and agendas. In more recent decades, scholarly attention to gender, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual identities has expanded and re-shaped the field and created opportunities for multiple identifications with the past. We also wish to question this paradigm: must engagement be structured by identity?

We welcome contributions treating all aspects of fostering access to and engagement with Medieval Studies both in the classroom and beyond. This includes consideration of the way we as scholars talk about Medieval Studies—where our voices are heard and what we can be heard to say. With humanities fields under constant threat, we may also wish to consider the various publics with whom we might profitably engage. Beyond undergraduate students are the parents, administrators, and legislators whose voices sway what does and does not get taught at colleges and universities; there are also the primary and secondary school students who may enter our classrooms someday in the future.

A discussion of public engagement is also an opportunity to reconsider the way we conceive of our field. Ongoing efforts to decolonize Medieval Studies are essential to the mission of making the field accessible to a more diverse public. This includes engaging colleagues to recognize the need for change as well as the need to support medievalists marginalized by race, LGBTQ identity, or employment status.

Topics for consideration may include but not be limited to:

  • Engaging students
  • Engaging the public beyond the classroom
  • Medieval Studies and modern identities
  • Medieval Studies in the neoliberal academy
  • Promoting access to Medieval Studies
  • Role of public scholarship within the academy

Please submit abstracts of 300 words by 15 September 2018 to Rachel Dressler (dressler@albany.edu) and Maeve Doyle (DOYLEMAE@EASTERNCT.EDU).

CFP: AEMA Panels at ANZAMEMS 2019

Proposals are invited for two panels being organised by the Australian Early Medieval Association for the ANZAMEMS 2019 conference, 5 – 8 February 2019, University of Sydney. A summary of each panel follows. See the attached PDFs for full proposal requirements and contact details. Call for proposals closes 3 August 2018 (extended to 17 August for Panel 2).

Panel 1: Cultural Identity in the Early Medieval Celtic World

Identity is a cultural marker that is almost ephemeral, so hard is it to pin down in the sources. It is a quality which varies over time, has different meanings depending on the intended audience, and an individual can hold multiple identities. Yet in the early medieval world, a person’s identity could be readily discerned from various visual and aural markers. This session will seek to uncover how identity was understood among early medieval communities, tribes, and kingdoms within the Celtic-speaking lands of Europe.

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers on any aspect of Celtic cultural identity including, but not limited to:

  • Etymology, Categorisation, and the description of identity in the early medieval period
  • The changing nature of cultural boundaries and horizons over time
  • Modes of change for cultural and/or personal identity across time and space
  • The individual within society: definitions of self
  • How did individuals change their identity: war, migration, conversion, marriage and death
  • How were strangers identified in the context of pilgrimage, mercantile travel, or war
  • The limitations of modern categories of cultural identification
  • The role of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research

Panel 2: Cultural Identity in the Anglo-Scandinavian World

Scandinavian migration and settlement in the British Isles and Ireland in the early Viking Age effected significant cultural and social change among communities as cultures interacted, assimilated and, at times, rejected one-another. For scholars, categorising the resultant cultural groups has proved contentious, with a proliferation of overlapping terms such as ‘Anglo-Dane,’ ‘Anglo-Scandinavian,’ ‘Hiberno-Norse,’ ‘viking,’ ‘Norse,’ and ‘Dane,’ used interchangeably as ethnic identifiers. Contemporary sources, in contrast, do not clearly ascribe identity to ethnicity, but rather by cultural origin or religion. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example, primarily refers to those of a Scandinavian cultural identity simply as Dene [Dane] or, at times when interactions were hostile, as hæðene [heathen]. Which gives rise to the question: how was cultural identity perceived in the Early Medieval Anglo-Scandinavian world and to what degree was self-identity associated with ethnicity, religion, or language?

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers on any aspect of Anglo-Scandinavian cultural identity including, but not limited to:

  • Migration and the inter-cultural exchange of ideas
  • Religious identity and Christianisation
  • Linguistic identity and cross-cultural communication
  • Characterisations of the foreign in saga literature
  • The utility of modern categories of cultural identification

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