CFP: British Archaeological Association Sessions at the IMC, Leeds 2017, deadline 23 September 2016

Call for Papers: BAA Sessions at the IMC, Leeds, July 3rd -6th 2017
Deadline: Friday 23 rd September

After a successful outing to the Leeds IMC this summer where the BAA hosted two sessions, the BAA welcomes proposals for further BAA organised sessions next year (July 3rd -6th 2017). The IMC’s research theme for 2017 is “Otherness” which I think could be interpreted very successfully by the BAA’s members and relate well to research incorporating material culture.

“Other” could refer to those who are deemed to be other in society (strangers, foreigners, monsters); objects that are unusual, or out of the norm, and could therefore be considered as ‘other’; case studies that do not conform to type; and even topics concerning what is culturally “other” (such as artistic, architectural, and literature styles).
Approaches to this topic could include how “other” is encountered and responded to, or how ‘other’ can be defined and identified.

Suggested topics from the IMC include:
• Peoples, kingdoms, languages, towns, villages, migrants, refugees, bishoprics, trades, guilds, or seigneurial systems
• Faiths and religions, religious groups (including deviation from the ‘true’ faith) and religious orders
• Different social classes, minorities, or marginal groups
• The spectrum from ‘Strange’ to ‘Familiar’
• Individuals or ‘strangers’ of any kind, newcomers as well as people exhibiting strange behaviour
• Otherness related to art, music, liturgical practices, or forms of worship
Full details of the IMC and their interpretation of ‘other’ and other topic suggestions can be found here:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125137/international_medieval_congress

It is hoped that the BAA can organise several sessions once again, with similar papers grouped together (either methodologically or by subject). Therefore if you do have any ideas about colleagues whose research would complement your own paper, please do include such comments along with your paper’s proposal.

How to Submit: Proposals should consist of a title, and short abstract (50-150 words). Please send paper proposals to hpmahood@gmail.com by Friday 23rd September. If you have any questions, please do get in touch.

CFP: Special thematic strand: ‘Otherness,’ IMC Leeds 2017

imc_postcard_2017_front_1Call for Papers: Special thematic strand: ‘Otherness,’ International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 3–6 July 2017
Deadline for paper proposals: 31 August 2016.
Deadline for session proposals:
30 September 2016

The IMC provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Paper and session proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome.

However, every year, the IMC chooses a special thematic strand which – for 2017 – is ‘Otherness’. This focus has been chosen for its wide application across all centuries and regions and its impact on all disciplines devoted to this epoch.

‘Others’ can be found everywhere: outside one’s own community (from foreigners to non-human monsters) and inside it (for example, religious and social minorities, or individual newcomers in towns, villages, or at court).

One could encounter the ‘Others’ while travelling, in writing, reading and thinking about them, by assessing and judging them, by ‘feelings’ ranging from curiosity to contempt, and behaviour towards them which, in turn, can lead to integration or exclusion, friendship or hostility, and support or persecution.

The demarcation of the ‘Self’ from ‘Others’ applies to all areas of life, to concepts of thinking and mentalité as well as to social ‘reality’, social intercourse and transmission of knowledge and opinions. Forms and concepts of the ‘Other’, and attitudes towards ‘Others’, imply and reveal concepts of ‘Self’, self-awareness and identity, whether expressed explicitly or implicitly. There is no ‘Other’ without ‘Self’. A classification as ‘Others’ results from a comparison with oneself and one’s own identity groups.

Thus, attitudes towards ‘Others’ oscillate between admiring and detesting, and invite questioning into when the ‘Other’ becomes the ‘Strange’.

The aim of the IMC is to cover the entire spectrum of ‘Otherness’ through multi-disciplinary approaches, on a geographical, ethnic, political, social, legal, intellectual and even personal level, to analyse sources from all genres, areas, and regions.

Possible entities to research for ‘Otherness’ could include (but are not limited to):
•       Peoples, kingdoms, languages, towns, villages, migrants, refugees, bishoprics, trades, guilds, or seigneurial systems

  • Faiths and religions, religious groups (including deviation from the ‘true’ faith) and religious orders
    •       Different social classes, minorities, or marginal groups
    •       The spectrum from ‘Strange’ to ‘Familiar’.
    •       Individuals or ‘strangers’ of any kind, newcomers as well as people exhibiting strange behaviour
    •       Otherness related to art, musics, liturgical practices, or forms of worship
    •       Any further specific determinations of ‘alterity’

Methodologies and Approaches to ‘Otherness’ (not necessarily distinct, but overlapping) could include:
•       Definitions, concepts, and constructions of ‘Otherness’
•       Indicators of, criteria and reasons for demarcation
•       Relation(s) between ‘Otherness’ and concepts of ‘Self’
•       Communication, encounters, and social intercourse with ‘Others’ (in embassies, travels, writings, quarrels, conflicts, and persecution)

  • Knowledge, perception, and assessment of the ‘Others’
    •       Attitudes and behaviour towards ‘Others’
    •       Deviation from any ‘norms’ of life and thought (from the superficial to the fundamental)
    •       Gender and transgender perspectives
    •       Co-existence and segregation
    •       Methodological problems when inquiring into ‘Otherness’
    •       The Middle Ages as the ‘Other’ compared with contemporary times (‘Othering’ the Middle Ages).

    How to Submit: The IMC online proposal form is now available.
    Proposals should be submitted online at: www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/imc2017_call.html
    The IMC welcomes session and paper proposals submitted in all major European languages.

Call for Contributions: Of Man Eating Men: Medieval and Early Modern Cannibalism (edited volume)

Call for papers: Edited volume: Of Man Eating Men: Medieval and Early Modern Cannibalism, edited by Sarah Lambert, under consideration with the series Explorations in Medieval Culture (Brill).


The “headline” idea of cannibalism evokes images of depraved killers feasting on the flesh of their victims, Sweeny Todd-style. Modern society has been fascinated by cases of murder that involve ingesting parts of other human beings. However, the word and the concept have a fascinating early history in the medieval world.


Debates around transubstantiation engaged with the idea of theophagy—the cannibalistic consumption of Christ’s body, and the virulent anti-Semitism of the period focused on accusations of the Jewish consumption of Christian blood in an imagined act of blasphemous cannibalism. During periods of famine or siege, people occasionally resorted to cannibalism out of desperation. Dante records literary horror at his invention of the divine punishment of Ugolino della Gherardesca who gnaws upon the head of Archbishop Ruggieri, implying that in starvation, Ugolino may have been driven to cannibalize his sons and grandsons—an act disproven by modern forensic science. There are numerous scenes of cannibalism in medieval and early modern art and narrative. Cannibalism has always existed and is a facet of what it means to be human. It is a universal phenomena that often relates to the primal desire to survive, but can also be an act of veneration and honor, and is still a topic of fierce debate amongst anthropologists and archaeologists today.


This volume examines way that cannibalism served variant and normative functions in the culture of the European middle ages, taking in religious, literary, psychosocial, artistic and historical fields of inquiry; it interrogates distinctions of “reality” and “fiction”, and questions early definitions of the human species as illustrated by discourses of autophagy, “eating the self”.

How to submit: The editor welcomes abstracts of 250 words on any aspect of cannibalism in the medieval or early modern period including, but not limited to, theology, art, literature, history, law, medicine, archaeology, anthropology, psychology and forensics.


Abstracts should include the author’s name, contact details, affiliation, email address and a brief bio, and should be sent to Sarah Lambert: s.lambert@gold.ac.uk

This volume is under consideration with the series Explorations in Medieval Culture (Brill).

Save

CFP: The Stones Cry Out: Modes of Citation in Medieval Architecture, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (11-14 May, 2017), deadline 15 September 2016

Call for Papers: The Stones Cry Out: Modes of Citation in Medieval Architecture, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 11-14, 2017
Deadline: September 15, 2016.

Organized by Lindsay Cook (Columbia University) and Zachary Stewart (Fordham University)

Citation, understood in its earliest legal sense, refers not to the act of reiterating or to the act of repeating but rather to a formal process of assembling parties separated by space and time. It is therefore best understood as a complex procedure for forging new relationships between people, places, and things that, though highly structured, are by no means inherently stable.

Over the past several decades, a growing number of scholars—including, most notably, Wolfgang Schenkluhn, Hans-Joachim Kunst, Dieter Kimpel, Robert Suckale, Dany Sandron, and Arnaud Timbert—have examined, in explicit terms, the role of citation in architectural production during the Middle Ages. On the one hand, their work has been of great benefit to the field, demonstrating that citation is a productive paradigm for understanding the ways in which isomorphic relationships enable spatial environments to create, support, or subvert social orders. On the other hand, their work has also raised troubling questions about the capacity of buildings to convey meaning, assuming as it does that architecture, like language, functions as a coherent semiotic system. Vitruvius laid the groundwork for the application of this logocentric analogy to classical architecture, but does it necessarily obtain within all modes of architectural production, particularly those considered un- or anti-classical? What are the advantages or disadvantages of choosing citation—versus imitation, replication, appropriation, influence, or habit—as a discursive frame for studying the recurrence of formal elements within architectural ensembles? How does such a visually oriented method address issues of production, perception, technology, function, and value? How might it alter current accounts of the design, construction, and meaning of buildings modeled after famous precedents such as St. Peter’s in Rome, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Great Mosque of Damascus, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, or the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris?

This session invites papers that pursue these kinds of questions as they pertain to the diverse building cultures of the Middle Ages, West and East, between c.300 to c.1500. Highly encouraged are contributions that investigate the stimuli for citation, the media that make it possible, and the agents that make it productive. Especially welcome are papers involving case studies that consider the potential volatility of architectural citation across cultures, regions, institutions, audiences, materials, architectural types, art-historical styles, or chronological periods.

How to submit: contact Lindsay Cook (lsc2140@columbia.edu) and Zachary Stewart (zdstewart@gmail.com) to propose a 20-minute paper. Submissions must include a title, a one-page abstract, a short CV, and a completed Participant Information Form (available here: wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions).

CFP: Other Spaces: Gender and Architecture in the Imagination, International Medieval Congress at University of Leeds (3-6 July 2017), deadline 12 September 2016

Call for Papers: Other Spaces: Gender and Architecture in the Imagination, International Medieval Congress at University of Leeds (IMC 2017), July 3-6, 2017
Deadline: September 12, 2016

Paper Panel sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the significant roles played by medieval women as patrons of architecture and to the ways in which gender informed the design and function of architectural sites. But what about representations of women and architecture in the medieval imagination? How do visual materials such as manuscript illuminations, paintings and tapestries, and literary works, such as dream visions, conceptualize the relationship between women and architectural space? To what degree are gender and architecture mutually constituted? What conclusions can we draw about spaces considered feminine, and how do these spaces renegotiate the divisions between private and public? Given the longstanding associations between the female body and enclosure, what is the relationship between gender roles and real or imagined enclosures? In what ways do gendered imagined spaces help reconceive real spaces, or vice versa?

Though all topics will be considered, we are particularly eager for papers that address female identity and agency as figured through architectural forms.

How to submit: Please send your name and affiliation, a paper title and abstract (200-250 words) to Boyda Johnstone (bjohnstone1@fordham.edu) & Alexandra Verini (averini@ucla.edu) by Sept. 12, 2016.

Conference Review: International Bridges Group in Prague 2016

This year, the delegates of the International Bridge Group assembled in Prague for their annual symposium. Held over three days, the delegates enjoyed tours of medieval monuments, a day of papers at Vila Lanna, and a day trip to study medieval bridges outside of Prague. The event was a spectacular introduction to medieval Bohemia and – via the none-too-shy monumental decoration of the Charles Bridge in Prague – provided a fascinating insight into the socio-economic ramifications of the campaign of stone bridge construction in the Middle Ages.

Day 1: The Charles Bridge and medieval Prague

A visit to St Vitus Cathedral was one major highlight of this aesthetically munificent event. Dr IMG-20160710-WA0012Klàra Benešovská (Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences) and Petr Chotěbor (master mason of the cathedral) opened the doors for us an hour before the official opening. Points of particular interest to the IBG included the work of Peter Parler, who took over as master mason from 1356 and who also designed parts of the Charles Bridge. Likewise, St Wenceslas’ chapel, with its lavish decorations, stood out as a relative of Karlštejn Castle’s interior, impressing upon us the ties between court and church in fourteenth-century Prague.

Being in Prague enabled the group to take full advantage of the expertise of IBG’s co-founder, Dr Jana Gajdošová, whose forthcoming book focuses on Prague’s medieval bridges. As visitors populated the cathedral, we made our way to the so-called Judith bridge tower. The 12th century bridge, which was built by King Vladislav I, was destroyed in the St Mary Magdalene flood in 1342; however, fragments of its towers survive, built into the fabric of the later structure. We were granted access to one of the towers which once fortified the west end of the Judith Bridge and where a relief carving of two figures, that once decorated the exterior wall of the tower, survives.

From here we made our way to the House at the Stone Bell, which was probably the private residence of John of Luxembourg and Elizabeth of Přemyslid, and which has a gothic façade bearing formal resemblance to that of the bridge tower.

IMG_-cdlg22The Charles Bridge and its Gothic tower was our last point of call. The tower, built facing the Old Town, greets users of the bridge. Designed by Peter Parler, the decorative scheme includes an elaborate east-facing façade which is decorated with heraldic emblems representing ten lands of the crown of Bohemia and figural statues. Within its central blind arch are statues of Emperor Charles IV, and his son, King Wenceslas IV, either side of the standing figure of St Vitus, one of the patron saints of Bohemia. Gajdošová emphasised the way in which the original sculptures, now in the Lapidárium, would have overlooked the viewer as they passed under the tower.

The bridge was a portal connecting the general populus of the Old Town and the sacred royal centre, as much in the imagination as in practice. Charles IV’s patronage is a testament to the political importance of bridges; far beyond the domestic concerns of the civic sphere, this vast structure, adorned with his likeness, facilitated crucial trade, communication and travel between eastern and western Europe.DSC_0811

The first day ended with a keynote from Prof Christopher Wilson, Emeritus of UCL. It explored the prolific career of the late thirteenth-century architect Henry Yevele and his construction of a chapel of St Thomas Becket on London Bridge. The two-storey apsidal chapel was built according to Yevele’s design between 1384 and 1397. Probably recalling the chapel to Our Lady Undercroft beneath the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury cathedral, the lower and upper storeys of the chapel were dedicated respectively to the same pair. Eighteenth-century etchings suggest its appearance accorded with the reserved perpendicular style favoured by Yevele in his design for the nave of Canterbury cathedral. The paper drew from medieval and antiquarian sources to build up a picture of the lost edifice.

Day 2: The Papers

On the second day the delegates heard ten papers, divided across three sessions, outlined below.

Session 1: Lost, Destroyed and Re-used Bridges

David Harrison, a co-founder of the IBG, discussed the apparently systematic demolition of medieval bridges during the Georgian period, suggesting the motivations behind the destruction often had as much to do with fashion as engineering. He was followed by Klàra Benešovská, who considered the extensive patronage undertaken by Jan of Dražice, the last Bishop of Prague. The focus was his patronage of the bridge in Roudnice nad Labem and its connections to Avignon, where Master William came from to teach the local builders the bridge building techniques of southern France. The paper was a useful complement to the conference’s emphasis on the legacy of Emperor Charles IV but also to the following paper. For this, Michal Panáček shared his exhaustive research into the building technologies of the medieval bridge in Roudnice nad Labem and the Charles Bridge in Prague. The paper emphasised how much more technologically advanced the bridge in Roudnice was – probably since it had a direct connection with the sophisticated French bridge builders.

Finally, Alexandra Gajewski addressed the medieval afterlife of the magnificent Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard, sharing shocking accounts of how the piers of the second storey of arcading were recessed to enable wagons to cross a bridge never designed for human passage. She explored various reasons – aesthetic, practical, economic – that compelled medieval travelgaers to use this treacherous bridge.

Session 2: Bridges in Art, Sources and Myths

The second session opened with a paper by Gerrit Deutschländer who discussed medieval gates, their relation to bridges and their ability to glorify rulers. Then, Sarah Harrison gave an art historical overview of depictions of bridges as narrative cues, geographical aides or simply as aesthetic motifs. Susan Irvine closed the session with an exploration of the motif of the bridge in late medieval Middle English romance narratives. In her chosen case study, Gawain and the Green Knight, the bridge serves as means of testing the mettle of the chivalric hero and exploring prevailing questions of personal or universal morality.

Session 3: Digital Technologies and Bridges

Engineer Bill Harvey presented to us the usefulness of 3D-imaging medieval stone bridges as means of assessing their structural integrity and, often, saving them from demolition. Although Simone Balossino was unable to attend the event, he had sent us a video which captured the methods used by the Avignon team to digitally reconstruct the medieval Pont Saint-Benezet. Next, the author of this review presented the Digital Pilgrim Project, which is making 3D-images of a selection of the British Museum’s medieval badge collection and uploading them to the museum’s account with the 3D-imaging platform, Sketchfab. Lastly, Jana Gajdošová and David Harrison presented The Bridge Project to the group, funded by the GEO Sea and Currents Fund, which aims to bring awareness to medieval bridges, to plot them on a map and to thus digitally preserve them.

Day 3: Pìsek and Zvikov Castle

Our last day in the old territories of Charles IV took us to the town of Písek. Here we visited its 13th century bridge, the oldest in Bohemia, which survives close to its original form despite a number of floods and thanks to conservation work. The bridge was fortified by two gate towers, neither of which survives; however, the IBG was able to get an impression of these gates by studying the monumental wall painting in the castle of Písek. Viewing the town’s museum and churches was an opportunity to appreciate the reach of the gothic aesthetic in Bohemia during the Middle Ages. This was intensified by a sun-baked walk to the castle of Zvikov, positioned at the confluence of the Vltava and Otava. There, we encountered a moat bridge, an early example of the use of triradials, traceried arcades, and the cool interior of a fourteenth-century chapel with vibrantly restored wall-paintings.

To sum up, the IBG Conference 2016 achieved a balance of action and reflection. Prague, as an extreme case study in terms of the Charles Bridge’s potency as a political tool, proved both fascinating in isolation and a lens through which to consider the multifaceted functions of bridges across medieval Europe. Thanks is owed to Jana Gajdošová and David Harrison for organising this fascinating conference.

Amy Jeffs

CFP: Authority beyond the Law: Traditional and Charismatic Authority in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ioannou Centre, Oxford, 3 December 2016

corona ferreaCall for papers: Authority beyond the Law: Traditional and Charismatic Authority in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ioannou Centre, Oxford, 3 December 2016.
Deadline: 16th September 2016.

In Economy and Society, Max Weber theorised three ideal types of authority: charismatic, traditional and legal. While legal authority has been well-explored in modern scholarship and most resembles the structures of authority in our own world, more recent work has indicated the importance of the charismatic and traditional ideal types as lenses for viewing Ancient and Medieval authority. Thus, in his 2016 monograph, Dynasties, Jeroen Duindam stresses the importance of charisma to royal power, exploring the pageantry of power, ritual actions undertaken to safeguard the harvest or control the weather, and the personal delivery of justice, while Kate Cooper, especially in The Fall of the Roman Household, has argued that power in the ancient world was inseparably linked to individual households in a way similar to Weber’s theorising of traditional authority, making the (late) Roman ‘state’ seem significantly smaller than it has tended to before.

By bringing together scholars of many different periods and contexts, we intend to explore the value of Weber’s traditional and charismatic types for understanding changes, continuities and complexities in the construction of authority across Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Submissions might consider the following themes:

  • The use of the irrational and supernatural as a basis of authority
  • Ways that charismatic authority perpetuated itself without the creation of legal authority
  • The interactions between charisma and tradition within individual contexts
  • The use of traditional and charismatic authority legitimise law and legal instruments (rather than vice versa)
  • Status groups’ use of appeals to time-honoured rights and the distant past to legitimate their authority
  • The use of tradition and charisma by heretics and rebels to construct their own authority and delegitimise that of their opponents
  • The applicability of Weber’s typology to non-political authority and to the authority of places and objects
  • The influence of ideas about the ancient and Medieval worlds on sociological thought about authority (and vice versa)

Publication of some or all of the papers may be sought as a themed journal issue.

Submission: We welcome graduate students and early career researchers in Classics, Medieval Studies and other disciplines to submit abstracts of 20 minute papers to authoritybeyondthelaw@gmail.com by the 16th September 2016.

CFP: The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: The Idea of Luxury and the Role of the Object

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organizers: Andrew Sears, University of California, Berkeley; Laura Tillery, University of Pennsylvania

As Christopher Berry has shown in The Idea of Luxury, the concept of luxury is determined by countless factors: it is situated by socio-economic forces, enacted politically, and both justified and critiqued by philosophy and theology. Luxury is also a difficult scholarly concept to contend with, requiring close engagement with these aforementioned fields as well as distance from our own modern judgments and conceptualizations.

Our panel seeks to integrate physical objects within such epistemological studies and consider anew the vital role of Art History. We hope to use artworks to reevaluate some fundamental questions: what is luxury, how is it manifested in physical terms, and what are its functions for patrons, makers, and beholders? We also hope to bring to the fore new questions about the role of luxury objects in shaping scholarly questions and Art History as a discipline, dealing with the nature of the canon, the extant corpus of objects, and the role of collecting practices through time. Indeed, in today’s economic climate, it seems time to consider luxury’s history, our relationship to it, and what art historical lines of inquiry can bring to bear on cultural commentary.

We welcome papers in various stages of research, and across geographic, temporal, and material contexts. Potential topics include: the aesthetics of luxury; material treatises and the physical makeup of luxury; unexpected luxuries; church treasuries; notions of excess, and objects that warn against, or perhaps embody, luxuria and avaritia; commissioning, owning, and displaying luxuries; history and historiography of luxury; luxury and domesticity; luxury and gender; collecting luxuries.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract, C.V., and completed Congress Participant Information Form (available on the Congress website) to Andrew Sears (asears@berkeley.edu) and Laura Tillery (tillery@sas.upenn.edu) no later than 15 September 2016.

 

 

CFP: Digital Reconstructions: Italian Buildings and their Decorations, ICMS, Kalamazoo, May 2017

Call for Papers: Digital Reconstructions: Italian Buildings and their Decorations

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 11-14 May 2017

Organizers: Amy Gillette (Temple University) and Kaelin Jewell (Temple University)

Sponsored by the Italian Art Society

Historians of medieval architecture have productively used digital technologies to reimagine lost monuments or furnishings, reveal aspects of correspondence in pictorial and architectural iconography, decipher construction techniques, determine the nature and scope of collaboration between architects and decorators, and grapple with the ways in which medieval people experienced their three-dimensional, functional spaces. Digital reconstruction is also useful for bridging monuments and their modern publics—for instance, the Scuola San Marco in Venice has installed virtual “copies” of dispersed paintings in the Albergo, so that visitors can readily apprehend its original presentation. This panel seeks a program of digital reconstructions of medieval Italian architectural spaces, ranging from the 4th to the early 15th centuries CE, including chapels, refectories, churches, palace rooms, libraries, and/or villas. We welcome projects that digitally reconstruct vanished monuments, interiors of standing churches with reconstituted medieval screening systems, liturgical furnishings, and/or picture programs. We are particularly interested in projects that take a critical approach to these virtual spaces and address the choice of historical moment(s) and types of monuments, in addition to the reconstruction’s purpose and technological considerations. Speakers are encouraged to comment on the impact on the scholarly process, collaboration (including with non-art historians), teaching, museum practice, and conservation or preservation.

The deadline for 15-minute paper proposals is: September 15, 2016

Please send the abstract of your proposed paper (300 words maximum), CV with current contact information, and completed Participant Information Form, available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions to the organizers: Amy Gillette (amy.gillette@temple.edu) and Kaelin Jewell (kaelin.jewell@temple.edu)

 

CFP: Global Byzantium: 50th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (University of Birmingham, 25–27 March 2017)

Call for Communications: Global Byzantium: 50th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies
University of Birmingham

25-27 March 2017

csm_hos_loukas_1_f3374a8404

For its 50th anniversary, the Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies returns to the University of Birmingham, where it began in 1967. On this anniversary of the discipline we ask what the language of globalism has to offer to Byzantine studies, and Byzantine studies to global narratives. How global was Byzantium? Our understanding of the links which Byzantium had to far-flung parts of the world, and of its connections with near neighbours, continues to develop but the significance of these connections to Byzantium and its interlocutors remains keenly debated. Comparisons from or to Byzantium may also help in thinking about globalism, modern and historical. How, for example, might Byzantine legal structures, visual culture or military practice contribute to debates about the role of the medieval state or the relationship between modern cultural and national identities? Finally, Byzantine studies has always been an international discipline, marked by the interaction of its different national, regional and linguistic traditions of scholarship, as well as its highly interdisciplinary nature. How has this manifested in the interpretation of Byzantine history and how might practices of global scholarship be pursued in the future? The 50th Spring Symposium invites contributions for communications on any of these themes and warmly invites abstracts from scholars outside the UK and in fields linked to Byzantine studies.

The call for communications is now open. If you would like to offer a 10-minute communication on the theme of the symposium, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Daniel Reynolds at d.k.reynolds@bham.ac.uk by 1 September 2016.

Successful submissions will be informed no later than 1 October 2016. Some bursaries will be available to selected speakers, especially to attendees from outside the UK. If you would like to be considered for a bursary please indicate this on your abstract and we will send you further information about the application process if appropriate.

For more information, see: http://www.byzantium.ac.uk/events/spring-symposium-2017.html