Daily Archives: 11 October 2018

CFP International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place

Proposals are invited for the 15th annual IASESP (International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place) conference, to be held at Liverpool John Moores University, 24 – 26 April, 2019. The conference theme is ‘Spaces and Places on the Edge: Margins, Borders, and Thresholds’

Place or space identified as on the edge is often the result of a judgment from the center. But it is also along the edges that one can shape or define the center. Edge and center are clearly relational and dynamic. What is a liminal space from one perspective can be the center from another vantage point. A border or frontier can be a boundary defining a space, a frame, or a threshold to a different environment, a gateway. It can be a physical or virtual space as well as a psychological or emotional state. Where is the edge? Borders circumscribe or limit space but they also are zones of contact. How does one distinguish between a border and a threshold? How do people experience edges, borders, and thresholds (alarm, excitement, indifference)?

This interdisciplinary conference will explore questions related to spaces and places on the edge spatially, socially, politically, and metaphorically.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Barriers/perimeters
  • Borderland(s)
  • Boundaries
  • Buffers/buffer zones
  • Coastlines
  • Dialectic of center and periphery, metropole and frontier
  • Ecotones/ecoclines
  • Extinction thresholds
  • Fringe areas/movements
  • Frontiers
  • Horizons
  • Interstices
  • Liminality
  • Marshes
  • Mapping the edges
  • Marginalia
  • Marginalized people or places
  • Midrash or Tafsir
  • Natural or manmade borders
  • Phenomenology of edges
  • Suburbs
  • Thresholds

Please send an abstract and brief CV by 15 February 2019 to Troy Paddock, paddockt1@southernct.edu

Call for book chapters: Predicting the Past (Brill)

Chapter proposals are invited for Predicting the Past. Worldwide Medieval Dream Interpretation, to be published in Brill’s series Reading Medieval Sources. This volume aims to give a high-level survey and analysis of dream-books in the Middles Ages (400-1500 CE) in different parts of the world: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, and to explore their development, dispersal, and typologies. We also intend to investigate issues such as production, use, and audience according to different disciplinary perspectives (e.g. history, literature, art, and religion). We would also welcome reflections on the field – where it currently is and what the future approaches and debates might be.

We are looking for well-sculpted essays which take engagement with dream-books as their main focus, and use dream-books to shed light on particular aspects of medieval society and culture. To be part of the series Reading Medieval Sources, the source itself and its use, value, and application must be central to the essays.

For scholars interested in contributing an essay, please consider the sections of the volume:

1) the different traditions of dream-books and their presence / role in different countries over the Middle Ages (Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas) the materiality of the source, different formats, illustrations, etc.

2) intersections of dream-books with art, literature, censorship, interpretation, symbology, divination, etc.

Please submit your abstract (max. 500 words) and CV to Professor Valerio Cappozzo  (VCAPPOZZ@OLEMISS.EDU) by 30 December, 2018.

CFP 40th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Proposals are invited for the 40th Medieval and Renaissance Forum: Listening and Learning in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which will take place on 12 and 13 April, 2019 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. 

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) or panel proposals that discuss music and other aural experiences in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Papers and sessions, however, need not be confined to this theme but may cover other aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history, and music.

This year’s keynote speaker is Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Fassler is a music historian who gives the liturgy and its performance primary emphasis in her scholarly publications and her teaching. Her scholarship profoundly elucidates the connections between texts and music. Her 2014 book, Music in the Medieval West and its accompanying anthology (Norton) are now standard introductions to medieval music. Fassler’s many books, edited volumes, and articles focus on the Latin Middle Ages from around 800-1300, but she also has strong interests in contemporary sacred music and ritual, and in American song, singers, and song collections. She is currently writing a book on Hildegard of Bingen. Fassler is also a documentary filmmaker focusing on communities of song. She recently finished (with Christian Jara) the short documentary Where the Hudson Meets the Nile: Coptic Chant in Jersey City.

Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome. Please indicate your status (undergraduate, graduate, or faculty), affiliation (if relevant), and full contact information, including email address on your proposal.

We welcome undergraduate sessions, but ask that students obtain a faculty member’s approval and sponsorship.  

Please submit abstracts, audio/visual needs, and full contact information to Dr. Robert G. Sullivan, Assistant Forum Director at sullivan@german.umass.edu.

Abstract deadline: 15 January, 2019

Presenters and early registration from 15 March, 2019.