Kings Launch “Sharing Ancient Wisdoms” Project


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Kings College London have launched their Sharing Ancient Wisdoms project, which is publishing several texts of interest to Medievalists/Byzantinists.

For more details see: http://www.ancientwisdoms.ac.uk

 

 

Included in the collection:
– Gnomological Material in Arabic and in Arabic-Spanish transmission
Texts established by Ines Dallaji, Lorenz Nigst, Christoph Storz, Elvira Wakelnig

– Arabic Philosophical Compendia and Excerpts of Arabic and Latin Philosophical Texts
Texts established by Christoph Storz and Elvira Wakelnig

– Apophthegmata et gnomae secundum alphabetum
Annotated edition of Greek Gnomologia by Denis Searby, Måns Bylund, Pontus Österdahl, with English translation by Denis Searby

– Kekaumenos, Consilia et Narrationes
Greek text, English translation and commentary by Charlotte Roueché, with further translations by H.G. Beck, J. Signes Codoner, G.G. Litavrin, M.D. Spadaro

Call For Papers: Heraldic Artists and Painters in the Middle Ages

Call For Papers: Heraldic Artists and Painters in the Middle Ages
(Poitiers, 10-11 Apr 2014)

Hyghalmen_Roll_Late_1400sThe big names of art history such as the Limbourg brothers, Donatello, Pisanello, Barthélemy d’Eyck, Jean Fouquet or Albrecht Dürer have left important traces of their preoccupation with heraldic and emblematic depictions, whether in preserved artwork or by being mentioned in financial sources. Besides them, a huge number of other, less well known artists have also contributed to shape the medieval heraldic heritage.

Many questions need to be asked here: about the formation of those artists and their heraldic culture, about the extent of their intervention in the conception of heraldic and emblematic programs, and about their relationship to the patron. On what basis did they work, did they have textual descriptions or already any drawn models to start from? Which liberties did they take in dealing with the heraldic rules of depiction? What was their eventual contribution to the evolution of heraldry in the late Middle Ages and did artistic creation contribute to the spreading of heraldry as a mean of symbolical and political communication as well as prestige? How have art historians treated this part of medieval artistic creation so far? And which role did the heralds play in this matter? Could it be possible that they did execute heraldic depictions as well and if so, which artistic skills did they need to do so? Finally, how do we have to imagine the creation of heraldic depictions such as mural paintings, painted roll of arms or the illustrated charters of concessions of arms?

Papers can be presented in English or French.

Proposals should be sent by 5th January 2014 together with an abstract
(200 words) in English or French to hiltmann@uni-muenster.de

Workshop organised by the research programme Héraldique, emblématique et signes d’identité au Moyen Age (Laurent Hablot, CESCM, University of Poitiers) and the research project The performance of coats of arms – Die Performanz der Wappen. Zur Entwicklung von Funktion und Bedeutung heraldischer Kommunikation in der spätmittelalterlichen Kultur,
Dilthey-Fellowship of the Volkswagen Foundattion (Torsten Hiltmann, Historisches Seminar, University of Münster)

London Medieval Graduate Network, Courtauld Institute, 6th December

courtauld300[1]The London Medieval Graduate Network holds seminars at different institutions a number of times each term, which allow for students to give short papers on aspects of their research. All are very welcome.

The next meeting will be held in seminar room 4 at the Courtauld Institute of Art: Somerset House on the Strand.

The setup is that there will be three papers of around 15 minutes with some time for immediate questions, and then the second hour a round table of the issues raised over some wine and nibbles, and we would be very appreciative if people could bring crisps or other snacks, or a bottle.

If you would like to give a paper there is still space. Please contact James Alexander Cameron at james.cameron@courtauld.ac.uk with your name, paper title, institution and level of study. Other enquires are also welcome.

Call For Papers: Other Animals and Humans in Medieval Art, Kalamazoo 2014

Call for Papers: Other Animals and Humans in Medieval Art, Kalamazoo 2014

Session to be held at the 2014 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 8-11, 2014. Sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA).

Organizers:
Corine Schleif (Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona)
Martha Easton (Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey)

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For some, “animals are good to eat.” For others, “animals are good to think with” (Levi-Strauss). Medieval art and society could not have existed without nonhuman animals. Human knowledge of animals is and was produced and exchanged largely through images (Berger)—albeit differently during the Middle Ages than today. hyena-eating-corpsePapers may address the ways in which humans defined themselves against animal others in and through visual images or the ways in which interspecies relationships were prescribed and proscribed pictorially. We welcome not only papers in which animals are absented and employed as signs for persons and things outside of themselves, but also and especially studies that interrogate “real” animals (Fudge, Hobgood-Oster) as sentient beings with agency as well as filaments within tangled interdependent networks (Haraway, Latour).

Participants may explore relationships that manifest themselves in art in terms of companionship, communication, entertainment, food, clothing, energy, gift giving, or liturgical rituals.

Panelists may wish to examine intersections with issues of gender, class, race and breed. Papers may question critically the manner in which art functioned ideologically on behalf of human hegemony, as well as ways in which animals were perceived to “look back,” to be privy to divine omniscience, to utter otherwise hidden truths, and to rise to the level of the holy.

Deadline for Paper Proposals: September 15, 2013

Paper proposals should consist of the following:

– Abstract of proposed paper (300 words maximum)
– Completed Participant Information Form (available here).
– CV with home and office mailing addresses, e-mail address, and phone number
– Statement of ICMA membership status
– Funds may be available to defray travel costs of sponsored session participants.

All Proposals & Inquiries Should Be Directed To:
Corine Schleif: cschleif@asu.edu
Martha Easton: martha.easton@shu.edu

Conference: The Mobility of Antiquities

The Mobility of Antiquities. Cultural Processes and Collecting Practices in Early Modern Italy
London, Warburg Institute, November 15, 2013

wblogoIn the last few years, research on mobility (of ideas, cultural phenomena, people, and art works) has increasingly engaged scholars invarious disciplines. This workshop contributes to these studies by considering the mobility of antiquities in the early modern period from various perspectives, looking at mobility both as the physical process of moving objects and as a richly symbolic act. The papers in this study day will investigate the material context in which antiquities were discovered and the cultural and political processes involved in moving them from excavation sites to new locales. They will also deal with the issue of their ‘virtual’ mobility among collections and collectors by means of prints, drawings and casts.

Programme
First Session: 2:30 – 4:00
– Barbara Furlotti, ‘Antiquities Ripen in Wintertime. Excavations and the
Search for Ancient Findings in Sixteenth-Century Rome’
– Kathleen Christian, ‘Translatio and the Movement of Antique Sculpture
in Early Modern Italy’

Second Session: 4:15 – 6:00
– Bianca de Divitiis, ‘In Search of Identity: Moving Antiquities in
Southern Italy between the Medieval and Early Modern Period’
– Leah Clark, ‘Exchange and Replication: The Circulation of Antique Gems
and Coins in the Italian Courts’

Call for Papers: Twelfth Annual Material Culture Symposium

Winterthur Museum and Garden, Wilmington, Delaware, April 12, 2014
Deadline: Dec 2, 2013

ImageThe Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware invites submissions for papers to be given at the Twelfth Annual Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars.

Focus: “Consuming” is a multivalent word, fraught with provocative denotations and connotations. Whether we buy them, sell them, use them, or eat them, we all consume objects through a variety of channels. We seek papers that highlight the intersection between people and their things within this broad framework of consumption. This conference will consider how material culture can act as an extension of ourselves, provide repositories for memory, help stabilize identity, interrupt our sense of scale and space, give permanence to relationships, function as a semiotic marker, and enable human activities. Papers may also address how objects mediate human sensory experience and create aesthetic meaning. We encourage papers that reflect upon and promote an interdisciplinary discussion on the state of material culture studies
today.

This conference is not bound by any temporal or geographical limits. Disciplines represented at past symposia include American studies, anthropology, archaeology, consumer studies, English, gender studies, history, museum studies, and the histories of art, architecture, design, and technology. We welcome proposals from graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and those beginning their teaching or professional careers.

Format: The symposium will consist of nine presentations divided into three panels. Each presentation is limited to eighteen minutes, and each panel is followed by comments from established scholars in the field. There will be two morning sessions and one afternoon session, with breaks for discussion following each session and during lunch. Participants will also have the opportunity to tour Winterthur’s unparalleled collection of early American decorative arts and to engage in a roundtable discussion on Friday, April 11, 2014. Travel grants will be available for presenters.

Submissions: Proposals should be no more than 300 words. Please indicate the focus of your object­based research, the critical approach that you take toward that research, and the significance of your research beyond the academy. We encourage the inclusion of relevant images with your abstracts.

While the audience for the symposium consists mainly of university faculty and graduate students, we encourage broader participation. In evaluating proposals, we will give preference to those papers that keep a more diverse audience in mind. Programs and paper abstracts from past symposia are posted here:
http://www.materialculture.udel.edu/emerging_scholars.html.

Send your proposal, with a current c.v. of no more than two pages, to:
emerging.scholars@gmail.com

Deadline: Proposals must be received by 5 p.m. EST on Monday, December 2, 2013. Speakers will be notified of the vetting committee’s decision in January 2014. Confirmed speakers will be asked to provide symposium organizers with digital images for use in publicity and are required to submit a final draft of their papers by March 11, 2014.

2014 Emerging Scholars Co-­Chairs:
Anastasia Day (Hagley Program in the History of Industrialization) and Philippe Halbert (Winterthur Program in American Material Culture), University of Delaware

Call for Papers: Vagantes 2014

Call for Papers:

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Vagantes 2014
March 20-22, 2014 at the University of Texas at Austin
www.vagantesconference.org

Vagantes is thelargest conference in North America for graduate students studying the Middle Ages. Vagantes aims to provide an open dialogue among junior scholars from all fields of Medieval Studies. The conference features two faculty keynote speakers and professional development workshops, but its main focus is the presentation of original research by junior scholars. We are pleased to have Dr. Glenn Peers from The University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Bonnie Effros of the University of Florida as our keynote speakers this year.

Vagantes emphasizes interdisciplinary scholarship; each year, presenters from backgrounds as varied as Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Classics, Languages and Literatures, Manuscript Studies, Musicology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies come together to exchange ideas. In this manner, Vagantes fosters a sense of community for young medievalists of diverse backgrounds, and because the conference does not have a registration fee, this community can flourish within the margins of a graduate student budget.

Abstracts for twenty-minute papers are welcome from graduate students on all topics considering the Middle Ages. Please email a brief vita, along with an abstract of no more than 300 words by Monday, November 18, 2013 to:

Raúl Ariza-Barile
arizab.raul@utexas.edu
Sarah Celentano
scelentano@utexas.edu

Call for Papers – From eald to new: translating early medieval poetry for the 21st century.

6-7 June 2014, School of English, University College Cork.

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In recent years, the shelves of commercial bookshops have been graced with accessible translations of medieval poetry from the Old English, Old Irish and Old Norse traditions, including Heaney’s award-winning rendition of Beowulf. Many of these reworkings give a contemporary flavour and immediacy to medieval texts, and they are increasingly being adopted for introductory courses on medieval literature. But what place do literary translations have in the academy, and should they be taught as creative works in their own right? How are the latest translations adapting to the needs of students and teachers? What exactly do we lose, and gain, in the translation of medieval texts?

This conference will explore the ideology of translation, the subtleties of the translation process, and the teaching of translation in modern university settings in relation to memory, adaptation and remediation. It will examine the cultural and historical inflection of individual translations, the ways in which the student’s experience of medieval literature is affected by the translation adopted for study, and the particular challenges related to the translation and reception of early medieval vernacular poetry.

We invite abstracts for 20 minute papers from both individuals and panels. Abstracts of approx. 250 words should be emailed to Dr Tom Birkett or Dr Kirsty March at ealdtonew2014@ucc.ie. The closing date is 15 December 2013.

Topics may include:

  •  Audience, cultural specificity and local idiom
  •     The meeting place of literary and academic translations
  •  Past translations, constraints of precedence, and suppression of difference
  •  Ideas of ownership, authorship and canonicity
  •  Teaching the translation of medieval languages in the academy
  •  Problematic poetry: translating verse forms, metrics, poetic language
  •  The potential of new media to change our relationship to the translated text
  •  Translation theory applied to medieval texts

For more information, see the website.

Call for Session Proposals – Conquest: 1016, 1066

‘Conquest: 1016, 1066’ – an interdisciplinary anniversary conference.

St Anne’s College, Oxford, and TORCH, 20-23 July 2016.

Call for Session Proposals (CFP to follow in May/June 2014)

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Sessions will run in parallel for 90 minutes each. Session proposals of any suitable form are invited (3x20min papers, 2x30min papers, round tables, debates); session organisers are welcome to have speakers already in mind, but need not do so: a call for papers will follow. Session organisers are asked to nominate one or more of the thematic strands in which their session would fit:

1.    The Church; monasticism, clerical reform, theology, religious experience
2.    Literature, authors, and patronage
3.    Language and multilingualism, language contact
4.    Institutions and governance; lordship; kingship
5.    Warfare, battles, conduct in war, fighting men
6.    Art and material culture; music; court life
7.    Society and peoples
8.    Trade and commerce
9.    Space, movement, contact, networks; England and Europe, England and Scandinavia
10.  Historiography

Email laura.ashe@ell.ox.ac.uk by 1 May 2014.