Monthly Archives: August 2018

National Library of Australia’s Asia Study Grants and Summer Scholarships

Applications for the National Library of Australia’s Asia Study Grants and Summer Scholarships are now open and will close on 30 September 2018.

The Asia Study Grants assist scholars in Australia to undertake research relating to Asia through a four week period of intensive access to the NLA’s Asian language and Asia-related collections. 

The Summer Scholarships support younger scholars and a scholar from rural or regional Australia undertaking postgraduate research, who require special access to the Library’s collections. Summer Scholarships are for researchers aged under 35 undertaking PhD studies, plus one open age scholarship.

More information can be found on the NLA’s website. 

CFP: John Gower Society at ICMS Kalamazoo, 2019

The John Gower Society is still seeking submissions for two panels, and for one roundtable (co-sponsored with the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS)), at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) 2019, Kalamazoo, MI.

1) Gower Reads the Classics

2) Revisiting John Gower’s Poetic: Papers in Honor of RF Yeager

3) Practical Approaches to Teaching Gower: A Roundtable

Panel details are provided below. Proposals must be received by 15 September (see guidelines in the ICMS CFP https://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call).

Submit proposals to:

Brian Gastle, Western Carolina University
Dept of English, 305 Coulter Hall, Cullowhee NC 28723
Phone: (828) 227-3922; Fax: (828) 227-7266
Email: bgastle@wcu.edu [Preferred method of submission]

1) Gower Reads the Classics

John Gower’s debts to the Latin classics have been long acknowledged. His intimate familiarity with Ovid’s works has been many times demonstrated. Less well examined are his borrowings from other ancient sources, either in their original form, or received by him through medieval filters: the example of the Ovide Moralisé comes to mind. Gower’s use of the Latin Classics, as Andrew Galloway notes in the recent Routledge Research Companion to John Gower, exemplifies his “participation in a pan-European contemporary fascination with using Antiquity.” This session intends to bring such streams of classical influence into sharper focus by returning attention to Gower’s classical reading: what did he know, where did he find it, how, subsequently, did he turn what he read to use in his work?

2) Revisiting John Gower’s Poetic: Papers in Honor of RF Yeager

Gower studies owes an immense debt to both the scholarship and the leadership of RF Yeager. Having authored, edited, or co-edited over eighteen books and collections, and over three dozen articles and essays, he has mentored countless junior scholars and fostered and shepherded the study of Gower over the past forty years. As President of the International John Gower Society, he has grown membership in the society from the handful that begun the Society over thirty-five years ago to almost 200 members today, and he has organized each of the five Gower Society Congresses which draws scholars from around the world. Simply put, his influence on Gower studies is second to none. Given his 2018 retirement from the University of West Florida, and his transition to Emeritus faculty, the John Gower Society would like to honor Bob Yeager with a session of papers presented in his honor and that reflect his significant influence on the field.

3) Practical Approaches to Teaching Gower: A Roundtable

This roundtable, co-sponsored by the John Gower Society and the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS), seeks short presentations (5-6 minutes) which focus on practical pedagogical issues and strategies involved in teaching John Gower’s works in classes of all levels (from k-12 to graduate). The panel is particularly interested in practical approaches and welcomes lesson plans, assignment descriptions, examples of student projects, and teaching resources. TEAMS Middle English Text Series (METS) publishes and hosts online Gower’s works (in ME and in translation of the shorter Anglo-French and Latin texts), and it is an apt time for such a panel given that more selections of Gower’s works are appearing in anthologies (in both Modern and Middle English), and the MLA recently published its MLA Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. This panel seeks to provide a venue for sharing approaches to, and materials for, teaching Gower in a variety of classroom settings using these newly established and emerging print and online resources.

The John Gower Society is an open and inclusive organization that seeks to foster collegial, productive, and engaged scholarship and teaching related to Gower and his works; it welcomes submissions from all scholars, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, cultural identity, dis/ability, sexual or affectional orientation, or gender identification.

“Fro this day forth I thenke change / And speke of thing is noght so strange, / Which every kinde hath upon honde, / And wherupon the world mot stonde, / And hath don sithen it began, / And schal whil ther is any man; / And that is love, of which I mene.”

 

Australian Academy of the Humanities Symposium: Clash of Civilizations?

The Australian Academy of the Humanities 49th Symposium will be held 15-16 November 2018 at the State Library of NSW, Sydney. Annual Fellows’ events and meetings will occur 16-17 November 2018 in Sydney. The theme for the 49th Symposium is Clash of Civilisations? Where are we now?

This event is open to all, and will bring together a large cross-section of Academy Fellows, scholars, early career researchers and members of the broader community, especially those working in education, policy, and community development.

Twenty-five years ago, American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington posited the question ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ suggesting religious and cultural identity would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War era (Foreign Affairs, 1993). He predicted that, as the West began to develop a better understanding of the cultural fundamentals underlying other civilisations, Western civilization and its values would cease to be regarded as ‘universal’. This has certainly proved to be the case.

The Symposium will reassess Huntington’s question, in light of recent global developments and historical inquiries, and consider how the concept of ‘the clash of civilisations’ has been used as an enduring rhetorical device for explaining divisions between groups and across time and place. It will explore modern and ancient cross-cultural encounters and their contemporary implications in the spheres of history, politics, and religion, as well as their cultural expressions in literature, film, and the arts.

 

ANZAMEMS 2019: Closing dates approaching for CFP, bursaries and prizes, PATS

The Committee of the ANZAMEMS 2019 Conference (5-8 February 2019 in Sydney, Australia) invites paper and panel proposals, PATS expressions of interest, and bursary and prize applications to be made by the following dates:

Call for Papers Deadline: 31 August 2018

Travel Bursary and George Yule Prize Application Deadline: 30 September 2018

Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminars Application Deadline: 31 August 2018

Call for Papers and Panels

The theme for ANZAMEMS 2019 is Categories, Boundaries, Horizons. Categories and boundaries help us to define our fields of knowledge and subjects of inquiry, but can also contain and limit our perspectives. The concept of category emerges etymologically from the experience of speaking in an assembly, a dialogic forum in which new ways of explaining can emerge. Boundaries and horizons are intertwined in their meanings, pointing to the limits of subjectivity, and inviting investigation beyond current understanding into new ways of connecting experience and knowledge. Papers, panels, and streams are invited to explore all aspects of this theme, including, but not limited to:

  • the limitations of inherited categorization and definition
  • race, gender, class, and dis/ability boundaries and categories
  • encounters across boundaries, through material, cultural, and social exchange
  • the categorization of the human and animal
  • national and religious boundaries and categorization
  • the role of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research
  • temporal boundaries and categories, including questions of periodization

Proposals for papers on all aspects of the medieval and early modern are also welcome.

For more information and to submit a proposal, visit the website here: https://anzamemsconference2019.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Call for Postgraduate Student & ECR Travel Bursary, Kim Walker Postgraduate Travel Bursary and George Yule Prize Applications

Postgraduate and Early Career Scholars meeting the requirements to apply for bursaries and prizes are encouraged to apply before 30 September 2018.

For more information and to submit an application, visit the website here: https://anzamemsconference2019.wordpress.com/bursaries-prizes/

Call for Applications to Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminars

The PATS will run on 4-5 February 2019, as a two-day training seminar preceding the conference.

Strand 1, Digital Editing and the Medieval & Early Modern Manuscript, will focus on the skills of paleography and codicology as well as digital editing and text encoding as participants collaboratively create an edition of a manuscript.

Strand 2, Doing Digital Humanities: From Project Planning to Digital Delivery, will focus on the skills of digital project management, and aims to assist participants to develop their own digital projects with the support of instructors.

For more information and to submit an application, visit the website here: https://anzamemsconference2019.wordpress.com/pats/

 

 

CFP: 2019 Shakespearean Theatre Conference

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, full sessions, and workshops for the third Shakespearean Theatre Conference, to be held June 20-22, 2019 in Stratford, Ontario. 

While all approaches to Tudor-Stuart drama are welcome, we especially encourage proposals that respond to our broad theme of “festival and festivity.” How do we understand and perform festive, antic, celebratory, or bacchanal elements in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries? How did these plays draw on and contribute to early modern festive cultures, and how have historical changes to such cultures shifted the meaning of theatrical revelry? To what extent is the festive limited or invigorated by genre and convention? In what ways do cultural and theatrical festivals, including dedicated Shakespeare festivals and Shakespearean playhouses, influence and shape contemporary Shakespearean performance? What do the histories of these festivals have to tell us about changing responses to early modern drama, and what new directions seem promising?  

Plenary Speakers:
Farah Karim-Cooper (Shakespeare’s Globe)
M. J. Kidnie (Western University)
Paul Prescott (University of Warwick)

The conference is a joint venture of the University of Waterloo and the Stratford Festival, and will bring together scholars and practitioners to talk about how performance influences scholarship and vice versa. Paper sessions will be held at the University of Waterloo’s Stratford campus, with plays and special events hosted by the Stratford Festival.

Please send proposals to shakespeare@uwaterloo.ca by 1 February 1, 2019.

Kenneth Graham – Department of English, University of Waterloo
Alysia Kolentsis – Department of English, St. Jerome’s University
Lois Adamson – Director of Education, Stratford Festival

CFP: AEMA panel at Leeds International Medieval Congress, 2019

The Australian Early Medieval Association (AEMA) invites paper proposals for a panel at IMC Leeds 2019:

“Materialities of Antipodal Medievalism: displaced materiality and cultural consumption of the northern Middle Ages for the peripheral medievalist.”

Abstract: Antipodes are periphery to the European core, and recent developments in decolonization and the Global Middle Ages have contributed to understanding the inherent nature ofthe core/periphery dialectic that subsists in medieval studies. Access for antipodal scholars (however defined) to the materialities (the products, the evidence) of medieval cultures of the northern hemisphere is heavily mediated, through hegemonic and competing mechanisms of scholarship (such as the academy) as well as through non-formal means, including popular and social media.

This panel will explore the challenges arising from the study of medieval cultures and societies when the scholar is peripherally located (academically, physically, culturally, theoretically, psychologically), what this might mean for the old hegemonies of medieval studies in Northern Europe and how we even define and do ‘medieval’ into the future. Papers will consider the varied materialities that impinge on antipodal/peripheral scholars, from any relevant discipline, looking at theoretical implications and/or exemplar case studies/analyses of relevant texts/objects/institutions.

Submissions may address one or more of the following sub-themes:

  • The nature and impact of skewed or constrained access to the materials of medieval studies due to peripheral/antipodal location.
  • Regimes of circulation and consumption and the links, networks, and systems that underpin or undermine material access for the antipodal/peripheral scholar.
  • Power, hegemony and post-colonial perspectives on global scholarship.
  • The impact of materialities on memory, and how selective, skewed or constrained access to these shape/skew an antipodal/peripheral view of the past.
  • The impact of antipodal/peripheral displacement on textual scholarship, considered in itself or in comparison with other types of medieval materialities.

Please send submissions to Roderick McDonald mcdrod@gmail.com by Monday 10 September 2018.

Faking It: Manuscripts for the Margins, Macquarie University, 22 Sept

On Saturday 22 September a day of public lectures on forgery and fake manuscripts will be held at Macquarie University in Sydney. ‘Faking it: Manuscripts for the Margins’, convened by Malcolm  Choat and Rachel Yuen-Collingidge, will take place in the Australian Hearing Hub, Level 1 lecture theatre at Macquarie University from 9.30 am–5 pm, with an evening reception and a viewing of an associated exhibition of forgeries and questioned objects in the Museum of Ancient Cultures to follow.

This public event brings together twelve speakers to present diverse perspectives on forgery, authenticity, and related issues. The keynote speaker is Professor Professor Christopher Rollston, Associate Professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures at George Washington University, Washington D.C., who will be joined by eight other international scholars of forgeries, and experts from Macquarie and other Australian institutions.

The event will feature presentations of fake texts in Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English on stone, papyrus, parchment, and paper, as well as discussions of forgery as the construction of history in the Middle ages; the way we assess authenticity; public controversies over questioned manuscripts; the effect of forgeries on antiquities markets, scholarship, and public discourse; and the relationship between fake and replica in the age of 3D replicas. Throughout the event will examine the importance of forgeries for the way we assess and communicate history, and how they effect our view of both the past and the present. A list of speakers and titles may be found below. Further information about the event, including abstracts, may be found at http://www.forgingantiquity.com/conference2018#Fakingit 

Admission is free, but registration is required. To register, go to http://events.mq.edu.au/Faking-It-2018. For inquiries, please contact malcolm.choat@mq.edu.au

Funding for this event has been generously provided by the Ian Potter Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the MQ Ancient Cultures Research Centre, the Sir Asher Joel Foundation, and the Society for the Study of Early Christianity.

Speakers and Titles

Forging Fakes and Just Plain Faking. Thoughts on a Range of Forgery Types
Rodney Ast, University of Heidelberg

Forgery or restoration? Fake inscriptions in Grand Tour collections.
Caroline Barron, Birkbeck, University of London

New Testament Textual Criticism and Forgery
Stephen Carlson, Australian Catholic University

Once a forger, always a forger. How to deal with fake inscriptions
Lorenzo Calvelli, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Fan Fiction: Evangelicalism, Inerrancy, and the Marketplace for Modern-day Relic Hunters.
Kipp Davis, Trinity Western University

The Jerusalem Papyrus, Israel, and UNESCO
Michael Langlois, University of Strasbourg

3D printed replicas vs their originals for the study and preservation of ancient Egyptian antiquities
Rita Lucarelli, University of California Berkeley

Fake Founders and Counterfeit Claims: Forging the Past in the Middle Ages
Levi Roach, University of Exeter

Emotional Authenticity: Anne Boleyn’s Letter from the Tower
Stephanie Russo, Macquarie University

Fires in the sky: the “Tulli Papyrus”, an alleged Egyptological forgery
Nicola Reggiani, University of Parma

The Future’s Perfect Forgery (and the Way for You to Debunk It).
Christopher Rollston, George Washington University

Faking it: Reflections on a theme
Rachel Yuen-Collingridge (Macquarie University)

CFP for Queens in Waiting: Potential and Prospective Queens, Ambitions and Expectations

We are seeking proposals for essays to be included in a proposed volume on ‘Queens in Waiting’ to be submitted to the Queenship and Power series (Palgrave). The collection seeks to explore the processes of becoming or attempting (successfully or not) to become queen through a collection of case studies of individual women or comparative groupings of women. Potential topics could include but are not limited to:

  • Female heirs (and spares) to the throne
  • The wives of heirs (and spares) to the throne
  • Child Queen regnants waiting to come of age/ wield independent power
  • Female claims in succession wars/disputes
  • Betrothals to / child brides of, Kings or heirs to the throne
  • Wives or mothers of monarchs who had to wait for elevation of status or coronation (for example until the birth of an heir or the death of a husband)
  • The role of potential and rival queens (whether rival or consort) in usurpation or succession wars/disputes
  • Aspirations to queenship
  • Education/preparation of female relatives for queenship
  • Linguistic and cultural preparation of foreign brides for queenship in a new realm
  • Recognition (or not) of status as future queen through title/ grant of wealth or official influence/ status at court / legal status in wills/succession acts etc
  • Assessing and negotiating ‘worthy’ marriages for royal women/ potential brides for a king or heir to the throne.
  • Attempts of non-royal women (or their families) to marry into the succession
  • Careers of women who became or attempted to become queen serving at court
  • Precedence at court between Queens past, present and future (for example relations between queens and their mothers or daughters-in-law, or scenarios where a long-reigning monarch has several generations of potential future Queens in line for the throne)
  • Expectations of/from a future queen – ‘suitability’ for queenship
  • Agency (or not) of individual women in becoming Queen through marriage or through assertion of their own succession rights etc.
  • Multiple attempts by the same woman to become Queen of the same or different realms
  • Understandings of Queenship as a vocation or destiny
  • ‘Pretender’ Queens, exiled Queens

Proposals which cover political, ceremonial and/or representational aspects of any of these topics will be considered and we are open to essays considering different cultural, geographical or chronological contexts.

Proposals of 350-500 words along with a brief CV should be sent to Sarah Betts and Chloë McKenzie at queensinwaiting2018@gmail.com by 15 November 2018.           

Member publication From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past

Congratulations to Aidan Norrie and Marina Gerzic on the publication of their edited collection From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past, which is now available to pre-order from Routledge. The collection features several ANZAMEMS members both current (including Aidan Norrie, Annie Blachly), and past (Marina Gerzic, Hilary Jane Locke, and Martin Laidlaw). The contributed chapters are based on a panel organised at the ANZAMEMS 2017 conference in Wellington.

From Medievalism to Early-Modernism is a collection of essays that both analyses the historical and cultural medieval and early modern past, and engages with the medievalism and early-modernism—a new term introduced in this collection—present in contemporary popular culture. By focusing on often overlooked uses of the past in contemporary culture—such as the allusions to John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1623) in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and the impact of intertextual references and internet fandom on the BBC’s The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses—the contributors illustrate how cinematic, televisual, artistic, and literary depictions of the historical and cultural past not only re-purpose the past in varying ways, but also build on a history of adaptations that audiences have come to know and expect. From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past analyses the way that the medieval and early modern periods are used in modern adaptations, and how these adaptations both reflect contemporary concerns, and engage with a history of intertextuality and intervisuality.

The table of contents can be accessed at https://www.aidannorrie.com/publications.html 

ANZAMEMS members wishing to promote recently published monographs or edited collections through the ANZAMEMS newsletter are welcome to send publication details to the newsletter editor Amanda McVitty.

CFP: Edited volume on disability and medieval saints

Volume title: Disability and the Medieval Cults of Saints: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches
Editors: Stephanie Grace-Petinos, Leah Pope Parker, and Alicia Spencer-Hall

We invite abstract submissions for 7,500-word essays to be included in an edited volume on the topic of Disability and the Medieval Cults of Saints. Because saints’ cults in the Middle Ages centralized the body—those of the saints themselves, those of devotees, and the idea of the body on earth and in the afterlife—scholars of medieval disability frequently find that our best sources are those that also deal with saints and sanctity. This volume therefore seeks to foster and assemble a wide range of approaches to disability in the context of medieval saints’ cults. We seek contributions spanning a variety of fields, including history, literature, art history, archaeology, material culture, histories of science and medicine, religious history, etc. We especially encourage contributions that extend beyond Roman Christianity (including non-Christian concepts of sanctity) and that extend beyond Europe/the West.

For the purposes of this volume, we define “disability” as broadly including physical impairment, diversity of bodily forms, chronic illness, neurodiversity (mental illness, cognitive impairment, etc), sensory impairment, and any other variation in bodily form or ability that affected medieval individuals’ role and treatment in their communities. We are open to topics spanning the medieval period both temporally and geographically, but also inclusive of late antiquity and the early modern era. The editors envision essays falling into three units: saints with disabilities; saints interacting with disability; and theorizing sanctity/disability.

We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Phenomenology of saints’ cults with respect to disability, e.g. pilgrimage, feast days, liturgy, etc;
  • Materiality of sanctity involved in reliquaries, shrines, and relics;
  • Doctrinal approaches to disability in relation to sanctity and holiness;
  • Sanctity and bodies in the archaeological record;
  • Intersections of disability and race/gender/sexuality/etc in hagiography, art, and material culture;
  • Healing miracles and disabling miraculous punishments;
  • Cross-cultural approaches to sanctity and disability;
  • Saints who wrote about disability;
  • Specific saints with connections to concepts of disability, e.g. Margaret of Antioch, Cosmas and Damian, Francis of Assisi, Dymphna, etc;
  • Theorizing sanctity in relation to disability; and
  • Saintly figures in non-hagiographic genres.

Timeline

Oct. 1, 2018      Proposals due

Oct. 31, 2018    Replies sent to proposals

Nov. 30, 2018   Volume proposal submitted to press (contributors will provide short abstracts and bios)

May 31, 2019    Essays due from contributors

Aug. 30, 2019   Editors deliver extensive feedback to contributors

Jan. 15, 2020     Revised essays due from contributors

April 3, 2020    Full volume manuscript delivered to press

Please submit abstracts of 300–400 words, along with a short author bio and a description of any images you anticipate wanting to include in your essay, to the editors at DisabilitySanctity@gmail.com by 1 October, 2018.