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.