CALL FOR PAPERS and IMAGES OF RESEARCH

The EMREM Postgraduate Forum

Annual Symposium and
Images of Research Exhibition

Thursday 18th and Friday 19th May 2017

 Papers and images of research are invited for the 2017 EMREM two-day interdisciplinary symposium, to be held at the University of Birmingham. The theme for this year’s event is ‘Powerful Objects’. 

Postgraduates from all fields of EMREM (History, Archaeology, Literature, Linguistics, Music, Art History) are welcome to share their research by giving papers and/or entering the exhibition, while also building networks at this friendly and well-established symposium.  You may submit both a paper and an image.

Possible topics for papers and images might include, but are not limited to:

Materiality and Embodiment                 The Sacred and the Numinous

Text as Object                                              Relics and Reliquaries

Life Courses and Biographies                 Digital Humanities

Object-Oriented Ontologies                   Royal Regalia

Human and Non-Human Objects         Mechanical and Musical Instruments

Painting and Sculpture                             Weaponry and Armour

Tombs and Monuments                           Coins and Coinage

Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please send proposals of approximately 300 words, OR 1000 words if applying as a panel, to emremforum@googlemail.com by 1st March 2017.

For the exhibition send a high resolution image along with a 200 word summary of what it shows and how it links to your research (if accepted, we will organise the printing). These will be exhibited during the conference, and prizes awarded.

emremforum.wordpress.com   facebook.com/emremforum    @EMREM_Forum

Beyond Between Men: Homosociality Across Time

University of Oxford, Monday 19 June 2017

Since the publication of Eve Sedgwick’s groundbreaking 1985 work Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, ‘homosociality’ has become a regularly-used shorthand term for social bonds between persons of the same gender, and for the hegemonic norms that result from those social bonds. Despite this, academic discourse on homosociality in its historic context is surprisingly underdeveloped. Homosocial relationships and spaces do not just naturally manifest: they must be introduced, maintained, and developed in a variety of social contexts. That it is often assumed that homosociality simply ‘happens’ is a result of the internalisation of the cultural discourse that makes gender solidarity – in its most basic form, needing ‘girl time’ or ‘guy time’ – seem obvious and natural, when in fact promoting and maintaining (and in rarer contexts, deliberately dismantling) homosocial relationships and spaces requires sustained work on individual and collective levels. This one day symposium aims to bring together scholars of all periods of history and from different disciplines to discuss what homosociality means and what its study contributes to our understanding of the past.

Our plenary speaker is Dr David Clark, Associate Professor at the University of Leicester and author of the influential Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature (2009).

We are seeking abstracts of approximately 100 words for papers of no more than twenty minutes in length. Submissions are sought from academics across the humanities and with any period of specialism from antiquity to the modern day. We intend that a selection of the conference papers will be published as a collection at a later date, though submitting your abstract does not commit you to this further project.

This conference is organised with the support of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford, TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), and the Leverhulme Trust. Please submit abstracts to, or make enquiries at, beyondbetweenmen@gmail.com. Closing date for submission of abstracts is Monday 27 February.

MEDIEVAL MIDLANDS POSTGRADUATE CONFERENCE : ‘IDENTITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES’

TRINITY HOUSE CHAPEL, DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

THURSDAY 27^TH AND FRIDAY 28TH APRIL 2017

Medieval Midlands (supported by the AHRC’s Midlands 3 Cities consortium) are pleased to invite proposals for papers, posters, workshops and round-tables for the second Medieval Midlands Postgraduate Conference, to be held at De Montfort University, 27^th-28^th April, 2017. The theme of the conference is ‘Identity in the Middle Ages’.

The conference welcomes papers that focus on any geographical location between 400-1500 CE from any relevant academic discipline. Speakers are encouraged to interpret the theme of ‘Identity’ as is relevant to their own postgraduate research.

The conference will celebrate dynamic and innovative research that is currently taking place in the UK Midlands, and submissions are therefore welcomed on this basis.

Papers will be 20 minutes in length. Abstracts of around 300 words are invited from postgraduate researchers. Proposals are also welcomed for other formats of presentation and should also be put into a 300 word abstract. All of these should be sent to Esther Lewis at Esther.Lewis@nottingham.ac.uk by Friday 10^th February 2016. Please title your email “Medieval Midlands Conference Submission”.

There will be a limited number of bursaries available to support travel expenses for speakers.

Revealing Records VIII, Kings College London, 23rd May 2017

Now in its eighth year, the Revealing Records conference series brings together postgraduate researchers working with a wide range of sources from across the medieval world to share challenges and approaches through the presentation of their research.

Next year’s conference is to be held on Tuesday, 23rd May 2017, in the Council Room at King’s College, London. Keynotes will be delivered by Dr John Sabapathy (UCL) and Dr Matthew McHaffie (KCL).

We encourage applications from students working with a wide variety of records – from the written word to objects, buildings and more. Papers that employ an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon palaeography, archaeology or other related disciplines are particularly welcome.

Abstracts (300 words max) are welcome from students wishing to present a 20-minute paper.

Please send abstracts to revealingrecords@gmail.com

Borderlines XXI, Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern World, University College, Cork, 14th-16th April, 2017

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for Borderlines XXI: Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern World. This conference will be held in University College Cork, 14th-16th April 2017. Proposals for both papers and panels are welcomed from postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers in the fields of both Medieval and Early Modern studies.

This conference will explore the concept of authority in both the Medieval and Early Modern periods. As Sir Philip Sidney has said, ‘there is nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion by authority, like too strong a liquor for a frail glass’ (Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney). Much like today’s society, authority and resistance to authority can be found in all aspects of Medieval and Early Modern societies, such as the religious, political, social, and the literary.

Borderlines XXI invites papers that address the social, historical, literary, religious and cultural significance of these roles. We welcome papers from researchers in the fields of Anthropology, Archaeology, Codicology, Drama, Digital Humanities, Folklore, History, History of Art, Geography, Languages, Literature, Music, Palaeography, Philosophy and Theology. Topics may include (but are not limited to):

Political and/or religious authority
Literary authority
Authority of the book
Gendered authority
Lack of authority
Translation of authority
Class/Societal authority
Rejection of authority
Liminal figures/places
Authority as autonomy
Structures of authority
Development of authority through the ages
Depictions of authority in art

Abstracts of 250 words for a 20-minute paper and a short biography are welcomed from postgraduates and early career researchers (MA, PhD and Postdoctural students), as are proposals for panels, and should be submitted by Friday 3rd February 2017 to borderlinesXXI@gmail.com.

Prisons and Prison Writing in Early Modern Britain Northumbria University, Newcastle, Monday 10 April 2017

John Bunyan is famous as a ‘prisoner of conscience’, and The Pilgrim’s Progress was written during his twelve-year incarceration in Bedford jail. The early modern period saw a dramatic increase in the prison population, and prison writing emerged as a major cultural form. The purpose of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore the experience of imprisonment and some of the diverse writings that emerged from prisons during the early modern period. Papers may focus on, for example, prisons and penal law; the physical conditions of prison life; the literary effects of imprisonment; the purposes of writings from prison; specific prison writers and writings. Please send a title and brief (200-word) summary of a 20-minute paper – no later than 1 February 2017 – to: David Walker (david5.walker@northumbria.ac.uk), Rachel Adcock (r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk) and Bob Owens (bob.owens@beds.ac.uk).

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference, Merton College, Oxford, 31st March – 1st April, 2017

Time: Aspects and Approaches

We are pleased to open the Call for Papers for the Thirteenth Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature. The conference is aimed at early career scholars and graduate students working in Medieval Studies. Contributions are welcomed from diverse fields of research such as History of Art and Architecture, History of Science, History, Theology, Philosophy, Music, Archaeology, 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 22nd January 2017. Suggested topics might include, but are not limited to:

Commemorating the Past: – Relics and Memory – Chronicles, Monarchs, and Reigns Marking, Observing & Dividing Time: – Books of Hours, Calendars, Feast Days
– Clocks, Sundials, Astrolabes, Volvelles – (Problematic) Period Boundaries
The Passing of Time: – Seasons and Weather – Life Cycles: Pregnancy, Childhood, and Ageing – The Reception of the Medieval Past
The End of Time: – Apocalypse and Judgment – The Afterlife and Purgatory
Time in Art, Music, and Literature: – Narrative Time in Different Genres – The Temporal Aspect of Music: Duration, Tactus, and Rhythm – Objects out of Time: Forgeries Manuscripts in their Time: – Textual Variance and Mouvance – Reassembly, Loss, and Conservation
Time’s Uncertainties, Fate, and Fortune: – Divination and Tarot Cards – Fortune’s Wheel Time in Astrology, Medicine & Cookery: – Eclipses, Lunaries, and the Zodiac – Medicinal Time: Bloodletting and Surgery – Recipes and the Preservation of Food Time: Aspects and Approaches

The conference will feature keynote addresses by Professor David d’Avray (UCL) and Professor Eric Stanley (University of Oxford). The registration fee (including a wine reception) is expected to be £10 (tbc). There will be a conference dinner on the first night of the conference; it is hoped that this will cost in the region of £30. All updates and further information, including details of travel bursaries, can be obtained from the conference website: http://mediumaevum.modhist.ox.ac.uk/time.

Bristol University Centre of Medieval Studies Postgraduate Conference, 3-4^th March, 2017.

Past Futures: Temporality and Space in the Middle Ages.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute presentations that engage with medieval concepts of time, space, and the future. Papers may include, but are not limited to the following topics:

Medieval concepts/narratives of the future
Science-fiction for the Middle Ages
Eschatological future
Queer times and spaces
Non-linear time and liminality
Prediction and forecast
Medievalism in post-medieval depictions of the future
Visions of development and technology

Abstracts and queries to be submitted to:
Jade Godsall: jg16184@bristol.ac.uk
Mary Bateman: mb16182@bristol.ac.uk

Deadline: 22 January 2017