The 8^th Annual Graduate Conference at the University of Pennsylvania welcomes papers on the topic ‘Performance’. The conference will take place on 18^th March, 2016. The Keynote Speaker will be Prof. Theresa Coletti from University of Maryland.

Papers are encouraged to address any aspect of the performances, whether planned or improvised, exceptional or everyday, which formed an integral part of medieval culture. This conference will also seek to understand how performance enables critical readings of medieval texts by considering communal reading as a dramatic enterprise, from the rhetorical techniques of lectores to the responses of audience members. Papers may approach the topic of performance from a wide range of scholarly disciplines, such as History, Art History, Musicology, Literary Studies, Theater History, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Cultural History.

Please submit abstracts for 15-20 minute papers to pennmedieval@gmail.com by January 10, 2016. Submissions should include your name, paper title, email, and institutional and departmental affiliation. The deadline for full paper submission, not to exceed 10 pages, is March 6, 2016.

Paper or session proposals are invited for the 43rd Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies, organized by the Vatican Film Library and to be held at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, 14–15 October 2016. The guest speaker will be Madeline H. Caviness (Mary Richardson Professor Emeritus, Tufts University), speaking on “Medieval German Law and the Jews: The Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books.”
Proposals should address the material aspects of late antique, medieval, or Renaissance manuscripts. Papers are twenty minutes in length and a full session normally consists of three papers. Submissions of papers may address an original topic or one of the session themes already proposed. Submissions of original session themes are welcome from those who wish to be organizers.

Please submit a paper or session title and an abstract of not more than 200 words by 15 March 2016 via our online submission form. Those whose proposals are accepted are reminded that registration fees and travel and accommodation expenses for the conference are the responsibility of speakers and/or their institutions. For more information, contact Erica Lauriello, Library Associate Sr for Special Collections Administration, at 314-977-3090 or vfl@slu.edu . Conference information and online submission form are posted at http://lib.slu.edu/special-collections/programs/conference.

For further details, please visit:

http://www.medievalart.org/icmacommunitynews/2015/11/4/call-for-papers-43rd-saint-louis-conference-on-manuscript-studies-14-15-october-2016

The Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York is pleased to introduce an interdisciplinary conference from 28^th to 29^th June 2016, which that welcomes graduate students who are new to presenting their research, as well as more experienced students who would like to prepare for conferences later in the summer. Through a mixture of traditional panels, anonymous feedback sessions, and open discussions, this two-day conference will provide attendees with a unique opportunity to practice delivering papers and develop otherpresentation skills – such as creating more effective visual aids and navigating questions posed by the audience – in a friendly and constructive environment.

Proposals are now being accepted for 20-minute papers. This conference is interdisciplinary, and we welcome medievalists from all relevant academic departments. Topics to consider may include, but are not limited to:

Cross-border connections: for example diplomatic, linguistic and aesthetic;

Texts in their contexts: including codicological and textual communities;

Interactions between politics, church and society.

We likewise welcome papers being prepared for Leeds IMC 2016, including the theme ‘Food, Feast and Famine’. Please email proposals of no more than 300 words to the conference organisers at cms-grad-conf@york.ac.uk no later than Friday 27th November, along with your name, institution, and area of research.

‘Approaching the Medieval’ postgraduate conference
Newnham College, Cambridge, 4th May 2016
With keynote speaker Robert Mills (University College London)

We are delighted to open the call for papers for the inaugural conference hosted by ‘Approaching the Medieval’, a cross-disciplinary postgraduate reading group at the University of Cambridge.

We welcome 20-minute papers from graduate students and early career researchers in all areas of medieval studies, across languages, cultures and disciplines: history, history of art, philosophy, theology, history of science, musicology, palaeography and codicology, archaeology, literature, philology and linguistics. Papers should be given in English. Please submit 250-word abstracts to approachingthemedieval@gmail.com by 1st February 2016.

Our keynote speaker, Robert Mills will give an address entitled ‘How to Do Things with Fur’. Dr Mills is Reader in Medieval Art and Director of the LGBTQ Research Network at University College London.

For more information, please see the attached Call for Papers, or visit https://approachingthemedieval.wordpress.com/conference/

The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2016 will be on the theme of Wonder. The conference is aimed at early career scholars and graduate students working in Medieval Studies. It is a great opportunity for graduate students and early career fellows to meet peers and colleagues from around the world. Contributions are welcomed from diverse fields of research such as History of Art and Architecture, History, Theology, Philosophy, Anthropology, Literature and History of Ideas.

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. Please email 250-word abstracts (text only, no attachments) to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 24th January 2016.

CFP: Romance in Medieval Britain Conference (deadline: 1 Nov 2015, 1 Feb 2016)

In the summer of 2016, the 15th Biennial Romance in Medieval Britain Conference will be hosted for the first time outside of the British Isles and Ireland. The Romance in Medieval Britain Conferences address the genre of Romance – understood broadly – in the multilingual literary landscape of the British Isles (and Ireland) during the Middle Ages. The conference will feature plenary lectures by Suzanne Akbari (Toronto) and Corinne Saunders (Durham).

Proposals for papers, complete sessions, or roundtables can be sent to Robert Rouse (robert.rouse@ubc.ca). Proposals may address any aspect of romance in medieval Britain, its engagement with continental texts and traditions, or its post-medieval afterlives. Proposals engaging with the multilingual nature of the genre are especially welcome.

There will be two rounds of deadlines for this CFP. The first will be November 1st 2015, and the second February 1st 2016. Proposals received in the first round of the CFP will be given priority.

The conference will be held on the beautiful Vancouver campus of The University of British Columbia, with campus accommodation (ranging from dorm-style rooms to hotel-style suites) available for attendees. Information about accomodation and registration will appear nearer to the time of the conference.

CFP: Anachronism and the Medieval (deadline: 28 Feb 2016)

A seminar dedicated to “Anachronism and the Medieval” is planned for the next European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Conference, to be held from 22-26 August 2016 in Galway, Ireland. The organizers look forward to receiving proposals for papers to be presented in this seminar.

This seminar focuses on anachronism, broadly defined, and its relation to the medieval period. Often understood negatively as a computational fault or disruptive error, anachronism is closely related to archaism, presentism, and para-/pro-chronism, as well as to the notion of the preposterous (in its literal Latin sense of “before-behind”). Contributors to this seminar might reflect on broad issues of temporality or particular instances of anachronism—intentional or unintentional—in relation to medieval literary exemplars, but equally welcomed are contributions that explore anachronicity in conjunction with later (Renaissance to contemporary) engagements with the medieval past and its textual traditions.

Please send proposals of 300 words to both Yuri Cowan (yuri.cowan@ntnu.no) and Lindsay Reid (lindsay.reid@nuigalway.ie) no later than 28 February 2016. Earlier submissions would be appreciated.

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library invites abstracts for twenty-minute papers for two sessions, “Rolls and Scrolls after the Codex: New Approaches to an Old Technology” and “Working with Manuscript Fragments,” at next year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. Both sessions seek to explore approaches to non-codex manuscripts across a variety of disciplines.

Rolls and Scrolls after the Codex: New Approaches to an Old Technology
Organizers: Katherine Hindley, Anya Adair, and Ray Clemens (Yale University)
Despite the ascendancy of the codex in the medieval period, the technology of the manuscript roll/scroll remained a popular means of presenting and preserving texts and images. This panel aims to encourage conversation on the subject of medieval rolls and scrolls by inviting papers engaging with any aspect of this physical format and/or the texts it contained.
Papers offering new research into the form or content of medieval manuscript rolls and scrolls are encouraged – from the details of their codicological features to the content of the texts they contain. Some ongoing questions of rolls research that papers might address include: How do form and content interact in rolls? What is their social status? How are we to understand and tackle the codicological challenges of manuscript artifacts that rest so uncomfortably under the label “codex”? What digital tools are best able to render rolls research accessible, adaptable and interactive?

The session conceives of research on rolls in the broadest sense to foster what we hope will become a sustained conversation about this tenacious form. Music and liturgical rolls, religious and legal records, domestic accounts, genealogies and chronicle histories, and literary works are all of interest. We welcome interdisciplinary connections between paleography, literature, art history, history, and language study, as well as work taking on the digital humanities challenges of these non-codex materials. Literary textual editors, students of diplomatics, Torah scholars and those researching Latin and vernacular materials are encouraged to share insights on the common technology of their texts.

Working with Manuscript Fragments
Organizers: Elizabeth Hebbard and Ray Clemens (Yale University)
Manuscript fragments are rich mines for investigation. They contain codicological clues to several layers of use: physical wear, for example, can demonstrate how a fragment was recycled as a wrapper or as reinforcement in a binding. Similarly, marks of ownership, frequently penned on fragments serving as flyleaves and wrappers, can provide further information about readers, owners, and users of the fragment both in its original and its repurposed form. Fragments still in situ in bindings can indicate a great deal about the mobility of both manuscript and printed texts at their point of intersection in a binding. The fragmentary manuscript, seen in this light, is both a network of scribal and reader communities, and a means to reconstruct such communities.

Still other kinds of stories are told by whole leaves, resulting predominantly from the unfortunately widespread practice of biblioclasty among book dealers beginning in the early twentieth century. In both cases, digital humanities furnishes tools that allow scholars to recognize and reassemble fragments belonging to one another, now scattered across many institutions.

This session invites contributions from all academic disciplines that consider manuscript fragments of any kind: individual manuscript fragments, fragment collections, broken books, and the reconstruction of fragmented texts and manuscripts. How do fragments travel, and where? What methodologies are best suited to “fragmentology”? What challenges do fragments pose to current cataloguing methods? Given that texts bound in codices are often incomplete, what is the status of the “fragment” and the “fragmentary” with regard to the medieval material record?

Submission Instructions
Deadline: 10 September 2015
Submit abstracts to:
anya.adair@yale.edu (Rolls and Scrolls after the Codex)
or elizabeth.hebbard@yale.edu (Working with Manuscript Fragments)
Please send also a completed Participation Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF)

This conference is devoted to current concern with manuscripts in all their physicality. We invite abstracts for twenty-minute presentations or short contributions to a Flash Session; each Flash paper will be 5 minutes long and should be accompanied by a focused visual presentation.

Please submit an abstract and cover letter with contact information by September 15, 2015 to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405b, Bronx, NY 10458, by email to medievals@fordham.edu or by fax to 718,817,3987.

The last of the three workshops organised by the International Medieval Society, in partnership with several universities and learned societies, and focusing on Image, will take place in Paris on Friday 29 May 2015.

The workshops aim at developing academic exchange, promoting the crossing of disciplinary boundaries within Medieval Studies and building on past and current works to elaborate new practical and theoretical tools for research, through the contribution and collaboration of French and international academics.

Thanks to the support of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature-Medium Aevum, we are able to help with the funding of the travel expenses for UK postgraduate students (up to £200). If you would like to apply, please email the organiser with a CV including the name of two referees and a short justification for support.

L’Image, le vendredi 29 mai 2015, 16h30-18h30

Intervenants : P. Boucheron (Université Paris I), H. Maguire (John Hopkins University), J. Wirth (Université de Genève)

Lieu : Salle de conférence extérieure de la maison de la recherche, Université Paris 3, 4 rue des Irlandais, Paris 5^e

Métro : Cardinal Lemoine (10), Place Monge (7), Odéon (4), Saint-Michel-ND (4, RER C), Luxembourg (RER B)

Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles. Inscription : i.fabry-tehranchi[at]reading.ac.uk

The Annual Conference of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society will be held at the Centre for Medieval Studies, King’s Manor, University of York Monday 7 September – Wednesday 9 September 2015.

If you would like to present a 20-minute paper on any topic related to Arthurian studies, please send a title and abstract (maximum 200 words) to the organiser by the deadline of 31 May 2015. Speakers must be members of the Society at the time of the conference. We also welcome proposals from membersfor round tables and themed sessions in which at least one participant is a current member of the Society.

Proposals and enquiries should be sent to the organiser: Professor Helen Fulton, University of Bristol: helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk