Call for Papers: The 19th International Seminar on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts, Arnamagnæanske Institut, University of Copenhagen, 19th to the 21st of April 2023. (Deadline: 31 August 2022)

The 19th International Seminar on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts will be held at the University of Copenhagen from the 19th to the 21st of April 2023.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers on subjects relating to the care and conservation of manuscripts in the broadest sense, including conservation techniques and related matters as well as curatorial, codicological, philological and book historical subjects. Panels of three (or more) related papers may also be proposed.

Unlike the last seminar, which was held virtually, the next seminar will be a presential meeting, meaning that speakers will be expected to deliver their papers on location in Copenhagen. The entire seminar will also be livestreamed, in order  to reach a broader audience.

To submit a proposal, please send an email to ami@hum.ku.dk with “C&C19” in the subject line. Proposals should include a preliminary title and an abstract (250-500 words). When submitting proposals, please provide your full name, position and affiliation.

The deadline for submission of proposals is 31 August 2022.

Short Course: ‘Islam and Creativity in Popular Culture’, Online 12, 19 and 26 September 2022, 13:30 – 16:00 BST

This is a three-day online course that addresses the many new expressions of mass mediated creative arts that make reference to Islam. These expressions may be motivated by a wish to express an Islamic interpretation or spirituality, but they may also be for other reasons, such as from anti-racism or critical perspectives. Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, take part in this ongoing art making process. By looking into a number of exciting and intriguing case-studies, and by combining this with the latest theoretical ideas in the field, this course aims to enable participants to individually analyse and comprehend contemporary creativity in relation to Islam.

Read and download course structure: https://fal.cn/3pxq7 

Course Convenor: Professor Jonas Otterbeck is a specialist on contemporary Islam. He is Head of Research at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) and the current holder of the Rasul-Walker Chair in Popular Culture in Islam. The three main topics of his research are Islamic views on music, Muslims in Europe, and contemporary Islamic ideas. Theoretically, he has worked within gender, culture, and religious studies. In August 2021, Otterbeck’s new book The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music was published by Edinburgh University Press, and his current research is on creativity and Islam.

Date and Time: 12, 19 and 26 September 2022,13:30 – 16:00 London Time.

Tickets and Booking: £75 professionals | £45 students, AKU alumni and staff.

Book now: https://fal.cn/3pxqb 

Organiser: Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), London.

*The course will be delivered via Zoom. Readings and further details will be provided later upon registration.

Lecture: ‘Unimpressed: Livery Badge and Legal Tender in Late Medieval England’, The Courtauld Research Forum, London and Online, 22 June 2022, 5:00 BST

This event is hosted by The Research Forum at The Courtauld, and is organised by the Medieval and Renaissance Cluster.

About this event

Please note this event will be live streamed to allow those outside London access to the event. All those who wish to access the event via this online method should book a ‘Livestream’ ticket rather than ‘Lecture Theatre’ ticket.

Booking closes 30 minutes before the event start time.

At the center of this talk are two unimpressive objects: the livery badge and the coin. Cheap, lead alloy medallions, livery badges bear the insignias of members of the nobility who would distribute them as well as cash payment bearing the face of the king to individuals in their service. Both of these exchangeable objects—badges and coins—enacted social, political, and economic alliances in fifteenth-century England, a system known as maintenance, or, more controversially, “bastard feudalism.” Both objects are also a form of replicable portraiture. And both, over the course of the fifteenth century, underwent physical changes that caused their possessors to doubt their value. Taking seriously the formal and material properties of badges and coins, along with the conditions of their production and distribution, in the decades preceding and coinciding with the Wars of the Roses, I consider how they were essential to activating the perceptual regime that regulated how people envisioned themselves and their relationships to broader political communities, all while casting suspicion on the stability of those very relationships. Ultimately what this juxtaposition exposes is the value of and vexation posed by replicability to representation at this time.

Sonja Drimmer is Associate Professor of Medieval Art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476 (Penn, 2018). Her most recent publications include, “Connoisseurship, Art History, and the Paleographical Impasse in Middle English Studies,” Speculum (April 2022) and “The Shapes of History: Houghton Library, Richardson MS 35 and Chronicles of England in Codex and Roll,” in Beyond Words (2021). Currently she is at work on her second monograph, Political Visuality: Reproduction, Representation, and the Wars of the Roses.

Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Couratuld) and Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld).

For more information, or to register, click here.

Symposium:  Fragmented Illuminations, Victoria & Albert Museum, 7-8 July, 2022

 As a follow-up to the display Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (now extended to 26 June), a symposium will take place online on 7-8 July (pm). The Fragmented Illuminations Symposium will seek to make sense of these detached leaves, cut-out initials and other ornamented snippets. Day 1 will examine the practice of collecting pieces and leaves cut from illuminated manuscripts, with a particular focus on the 19th century. Day 2 will investigate the original context of some of these cuttings, the books they came from and the artists involved.

For more information, and to register, click here.

CFP: British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Online Conference (23-24 November 2022), deadline 12 August 2022

The British Archaeological Association invites proposals by postgraduates and early career researchers in the field of medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology.

Papers can be on any aspect of the medieval period, from antiquity to the later Middle Ages, across all geographical regions.

The BAA postgraduate conference offers an opportunity for postgraduate students and early career researchers at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present and discuss their research, and exchange ideas.

Proposals of around 250 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a CV, should be sent by Friday 12th August 2022 to postgradconf@thebaa.org.

Call for Papers: Medieval Ecologies, 2022 New England Medieval Conference (NEMC), Colby College, October 8, 2022 (Deadline: 20 June, 2022)

This conference will provide an opportunity for medievalists working across a range of disciplines and geographic areas to join in conversation about premodern ecologies and their literary historical representations, as well as their material and cultural entanglements. We interpret “ecologies” broadly as interaction and interrelation within and between human, animal, and material worlds. Accordingly, we invite papers that may ask such questions as: How can the textual and material evidence of the past inform our understanding of human interactions with the natural world, including anthropogenic impacts, practices of care, cultivation, environmental remediation, and the longue durée of environmental change? How can ecocritical approaches enrich our understanding of the Middle Ages? What do the philosophical and theoretical perspectives of premodern thinkers offer to the Environmental Humanities? How might medieval ways of knowing the world shape understandings of contemporary environmental crises? Might premodern epistemologies and ontologies disrupt contemporary understandings of biodiversity, practices of care, and our interconnectedness to animal, vegetal, and fungal critters?

We invite abstracts for twenty-minute papers, as well as pre-organized panels of three papers. Please send abstracts of 300 words to Megan Cook (mlcook@colby.edu) and Anita Savo (asavo@bu.edu) by Monday, June 20, 2022.

For more information, click here.

Symposium: The Public Curatorship of the Medieval Past. University of Lincoln, 15th September 2022

The symposium will explore how the medieval past is ‘curated’, that is, collected, interpreted, and communicated, across both professional and popular society. In addition, the symposium looks to question the ways in which medievalism impacts these acts of curatorship.  

Guided by the underlying principle that remembering and communicating the medieval past is a process shared in by individuals from all sections of society, the desire is for the symposium to facilitate much needed lines of communication within and beyond academic circles, thereby supporting greater cross-societal debate on how the medieval past can and should be communicated publicly.

As such, the symposium brings together a group of 5 keynote speakers from a variety of fields such as heritage, public archaeology, and reenactment to explore the variety of ways in which the medieval is publicly curated.

Keep up to date by following us on twitter @PublicPast

Keynote Speakers

Dr Fran Allfrey is a lecturer at the University of Reading and studies the afterlives of medieval texts, objects and histories.

Jeppe Christensen is the Head of Authenticity for the reenactment and living History group Vikings!

Dr Robert Houghton is a lecturer at the University of Winchester and explores representations of the Middle Ages in modern games.

Professor Carenza Lewis is professor for the public understanding of research within the college of arts at the University of Lincoln.

Dr Will Wyeth is a Properties Historian at English Heritage specializing in castles and their landscapes.

Call for Papers

We invite papers that explore themes or topics to do with the process of publicly curating the medieval past. This could also include any of the following:

The challenges that are present in communicating the medieval past through a variety of mediums, be that heritage, archaeology, digital media, or reenactment and living history (or a combination of these mediums), and, if applicable, the initiatives you feel could, or indeed have, implemented in order to tackle these challenges.
Impact (positive or negative) of medievalism on the process of communicating the medieval past
Community projects looking to curate the medieval past
Research into the public understanding and reception of the medieval past
We particularly encourage abstracts from researchers outside of academia.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to Lynsey McLaughlin (lcoombs@lincoln.ac.uk), by Friday 8th July 2022.

For more information, click here.

Scholarship: The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) MA Scholarship 2022/23 (Deadline: 15 JULY 2022)

We are thrilled to launch the second round of the Masters’ Bursary scheme, supported by the generous bequest of the Arnold Hayward Stevenson Educational Trust Fund.

There are significant, often structural, barriers to postgraduate study, in particular in disciplines like architectural history. We need to do more to diversify our discipline and those who practice it. As part of the Society’s commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion we very strongly encourage underrepresented communities to imagine their futures in architectural history and to apply for this bursary. Recognising that partial support often excludes those from non-traditional backgrounds for postgraduate study in the humanities, we are offering a £20,000 bursary to one candidate.

We hope this bursary will be transformational for the successful candidate, opening up the possibility of further study and career development in architectural history in higher education, heritage practice and/or museums and collections.

Further Particulars:

  • The bursary is for a sum of £20,000, to include fees and maintenance (1 year full-time or 2 years’ part-time study)
  • Candidates, who have already been accepted to a post-graduate taught or 1 year post-graduate research Masters in Architectural History or related disciplines, are eligible to apply. 
  • The Society will not support candidates on MArch courses
  • Funds will be issued to the candidate directly, not via their university
  • Funds will be paid in two instalments over the academic year, subject to successful progress through the course
  • There is an expectation that the recipient of the award will work closely with our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and Early Career Research networks, and take part in organising the SAHGB’s yearly PhD / ECR Symposium.
  • Eligible candidates may self-nominate for this Scholarship by filling in the fields at the base of this page.

If you’d like to join our network, please email info@sahgb.org.uk. We are grateful to the trustees of the Arnold Stevenson estate for the generous bequest which has made this award possible.

The closing date for applications will be: 15 JULY 2022

For more information, and to apply, click here.

Call For Papers: 41st Haskins Society International Conference, 28-30 October 2022, University of Richmond. Deadline: 30 July 2022

 The Haskins Society is delighted to announce our return to an in-person, annual conference in Richmond, Virginia on 28-30 October 2022. We invite proposals for presentations on any topic related to the history and cultures of peoples in northwest Europe in the early and central middle ages, and their encounters with societies in the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the larger medieval world. The Society has a longstanding tradition of encouraging interdisciplinary exchange, and so papers from all disciplines are encouraged.

In order to make our conference as accessible as possible, we will also be exploring options for virtual attendance and presentation of papers this year.

The featured speakers in 2022 will be:

  • Cord J. Whitaker (Wellesley College)
  • Frances Andrews (University of St Andrews)
  • Anne E. Lester (Johns Hopkins University)

For individual paper submissions, please send a 250-word abstract and c.v. to haskinsconference@gmail.com.

For full panels (usually 3 papers), provide a one-page rationale for the panel in addition to the information for each paper. Panel organizers are encouraged to contact the conference organizers in advance of their submission.

Papers presented at the Haskins Conference by graduate students, untenured faculty, and independent scholars are eligible for the Denis Bethell Prize competition when submitted as full essays.

The conference does accept submissions for remote online presentations. If you wish your paper to be considered for remote presentation, please state this clearly in the abstract.

The deadline for all proposals is July 30

We also invite submissions for two alternative forms of presentation and participation:

1)         New Research Forum

On Friday morning, the conference will host an online New Research Forum to highlight and discuss new research or work in progress. Modelled on “flash sessions,” presenters will have five minutes to explain their projects as a prelude to in-depth small group discussions. Presenters will be listed in the program and should send a one paragraph abstract and c.v. to haskinsconference@gmail.com and include the word “Forum” in the address line.

2)         Thursday Afternoon/Evening Mock Interviews

To support graduate student members of the Haskins Society in their career development, the Haskins Conference will again offer the opportunity to have mock job interviews with senior scholars on Thursday afternoon and evening. Please contact Laura Gathagan (laura.gathagan@cortland.edu) to indicate interest.

The deadline for all proposals is July 30

Bursaries for Graduate Students

The Society and the University of Richmond are making available a number of bursaries to graduate students to facilitate participation in the conference. Four bursaries worth approximately $550 each will be available to graduate students.

In order to apply, please so indicate when submitting your proposal to give a paper or to take part in the New Research Forum. Please also include a statement, 300-400 words in length, that situates your proposal within your wider research trajectory and explains how participation in the Haskins Society conference will aid both your academic and career-development goals.

Support for Graduate Students

In order to encourage and support rising scholars, graduate student members of the Society are eligible to receive support from the Thomas Keefe memorial fund to cover the costs of registration.

For more information, click here.

Call For Papers: Hagio-Scape! How mobility and materiality shaped pre-modern geographies of devotion (400-1700): an international conference at the Norwegian Institute in Rome 24 – 26 May 2023. Deadline: 15 October 2022

An interdisciplinary conference at the Norwegian Institute in Rome (DNIR), 24 -26 May 2023, Organized by Dr. Marianne P. Ritsema van Eck (UiO) and Dr. Kaja Merete Hagen (UiO). Ever since fourth century CE, iconic objects and places have played a formative role in articulating Christian sacred space. This conference investigates the specific role of mobility and materiality in the creation of (trans)regional sacred landscapes and cityscapes, taking a longue durée perspective. In particular, our aim is to address the role of mobility of objects, texts, and persons in the creation of sacred topographies. This explicitly includes objects and materials with the potential to reference or invoke sacred topographies further afield, as well as translated sacred topographies, and sites with a multi-scalar sense of place. Moreover, this conference aims to address to the interplay between narrative/documentary sources and material culture: what role did cross-fertilization between narratives, and iconic objects and locations play in the creations of pre-modern hagioscapes? We are particularly interested in bringing together scholars specialized in different geographical areas, in order to confront and connect the process of hagio-scaping along the axes of the North and South, old and new. Ultimately, the aim is to put into dialogue practices from North Sea and Baltic area and with the Mediterranean basin, as well as Old and New World contexts. Confirmed invited speakers include Professors Achim Timmermann (Michigan), Christine Göttler (Bern), Margaret Cormack (Iceland), and Simon Ditchfield (York). Possible topics may include (but are certainly not limited to): • Versatile and mobile topographies of the Cross and/or of relics. • Geo-referencing sacred locations through objects and images • (Hagiographical) narratives about travelling sacred objects • Ritual topographies • Traveling images and objects (including trade and trafficking). • Mapping mobile topographies of the sacred (including historical maps and plans) Interested scholars* may send a half-page CV an abstract of ca. 250 words to m.r.van.eck@roma.uio.no before 15 October 2022. *(Junior) researchers who do not have access to institutional funding may apply for a travel grant, please indicate this in your proposal if you wish to apply for this.

For more information, click here.