Medieval Sexualities: An Interdisciplinary Conference
Institute of Archaeology, UCL
11-12 June 2016

The Northern/Early Medieval Interdisciplinary Conference Series is pleased to invite proposals for papers on medieval sexualities. This interdisciplinary event will explore how different forms and concepts of sexuality are represented and produced in the medieval context though textual, material, archaeological, visual and musical sources. For example, how are sexualities communicated though medieval art and writing? How are material objects used to create, encode and communicate particular identities? Whether absent or present, sexuality in medieval texts is equally telling. From the Anglo-Saxon Wife’s lament to the lamenting lover of 12th and 13th century troubadours, the taboos and editing of Apollonius of Tyre, Aelfric’s virgin martyrs, the sexualized devotion of Margery Kempe and the clever ruse of the Anglo-Saxon Judith, the power of sexuality is ubiquitous. Manuscript illustrations abound with scenes of eroticism, as do the carvings on later medieval churches. Sexuality in the Middle Ages is a topic that has steadily started to receive more serious attention from scholars. This conference will explore the significance of these varied (re)presentations of sexualities in literature and visual art looking at agency and voice, power and satire.

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes each on any aspect of sexuality, from researchers in any discipline, and considering any medieval culture.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Sex and gender relations in medieval literature/music/material culture
• Perceptions and self/representation of sexuality in the Middle Ages
• Tropes of sexuality in medieval cultures
• The role of sexuality in material objects, graves and other areas of archaeological interest
• Gradual change of expression in sexualities throughout the medieval period
• Sexuality and medieval gender identity
• The absence or presence of sexuality: sexuality as an absent presence
• Social norms and boundaries of individuals and cultural groups such as monastics, musicians and others
• Seductions, taboos and transgressions
• Sex, devotion and the body in medieval mysticism
• The landscape and medieval sexualities
• Papers exploring the treatment of medieval sexualities and gender in modern contexts and media, such as games, films and graphic novels, are also welcome.

Abstracts of 250 words are invited for submission by 10 May 2016. Please email abstracts to the conference committee at NEmics2016@gmail.com.

Treasure in heaven, treasures on Earth: the secular world and material consumption in Western European monasticism c.1050 – c. 1250

21-23^rd September 2016
Hatfield College, Durham University

Abstracts are invited for a conference entitled ‘Treasure in heaven, treasures on Earth: the secular world and material consumption in Western European monasticism c.1050 – c. 1250’ to be held 21-23^rdSeptember 2016 at the University of Durham. All are encouraged to submit, from graduate students to established staff, and from all disciplines.

This conference will explore ideas of monastic practice and rhetoric towards the social and material world, both within and outside the cloister. Both individual monks and their communities engaged with the secular world, whether driven by necessity or by their own impetus, despite the perceived dangers of interactions with lay society and their values. This period saw the unprecedented amassing of material wealth by monastic communities, closer interaction with lay society alongside increasing divisions in the interpretation of St. Benedict’s Rule, especially in the sphere of wealth and its appropriate use. How monks endeavoured to maintain their adherence to monastic expectations in this new atmosphere is the chief concern of this conference. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Monastic dealings with money, offering, usury and communal wealth.
• Monks as landlords and secular lords.
• The rule of St. Benedict and the practicalities of life in the medieval monastery.
• Monks as builders and patrons of construction.
• Monks and their relationships with women and the secular social hierarchy.
• Monks and earthly goods.
• Monastic theological approaches to the relationship between the monk and the world.

Transcending disciplinary boundaries, this conference aims to bring together scholars working on all aspects of monastic life and thought in order to examine the various ways that monks in Western Europe from the mid-eleventh to the mid-thirteenth century approached and interacted with the world around them. Papers are encouraged which deal with all areas of medieval western Europe, including Scandinavia.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit abstracts of 200-300 words. Submissions should include name, affiliation, and contact details. The deadline for submissions is: 1st June 2016. Subsidies will be available for postgraduate delegates. For more information about the conference, to join the conference mailing list or to submit an abstract, please email the committee at: treasure.in.heaven@durham.ac.uk

Organizing committee: Stephanie Britton and Rosalind Green.

This conference is kindly funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies, the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and the Centre for Academic and Researcher Development, all Durham University.

After Chichele: Intellectual and Cultural Dynamics of the English Church, 1443 to 1517

St. Anne’s College, Oxford, 28-30 June 2017

An international conference organised by the Faculty of English, University
of Oxford, this event builds on the success of the 2009 Oxford conference, After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, which resulted in a book of essays (ed. by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh) that vigorously interrogated the nature of religious and intellectual culture in England in the long fifteenth century. After Chichele adopts a similar investigative and interdisciplinary approach. The period has been chosen precisely because the inner workings of English intellectual and religious life during these years have proved challengingly resistant to the formation of grand critical narratives. What are the chief currents driving the intellectual and cultural life of the church in England during this period? What happened to intellectual questioning during the period, and where did the Church’s cultural life express itself most vividly? What significant parochial, regional, national and international influences were brought to bear on English literate practices? In order to address these questions, the conference will adopt an interdisciplinary focus, inviting contributions from historians, literary scholars, and scholars working on the theology, ecclesiastical history, music and art of the period, and it is expected that a wide range of literary and cultural artefacts will be considered, from single-authored works to manuscript compilations, from translations to original works, and from liturgy to art and architecture, with no constraints as to the conference’s likely outcomes and conclusions. It is intended that the conference should generate a volume of essays similar to After Arundel in scope, ambition and quality.

Plenary speakers: David Carlson, Mary Erler, Sheila Lindenbaum, Julian Luxford, David Rundle, Cathy Shrank.

Possible topics for discussion:
Religious writing and the English Church; the emergence of humanism and the fate of scholasticism; literature and the law; cultural and ecclesiastical patronage; developments in art and  architecture; the liturgical life of the Church; the impact of the international book trade and of print; palaeography and codicology; the Church’s role in education, colleges and chantries; the impact of travel and pilgrimage.

Please send 500 word abstracts (for proposed 20-minute papers) by Friday, 12th August 2016 to Vincent Gillespie, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford OX2 6QA (vincent.gillespie@ell.ox.ac.uk).

Science at Court, 1285-1450
An interdisciplinary conference at Newnham College, Cambridge
3-4 June, 2016

From the anonymous Middle English Court of Sapience to Nicole Oresme’s Livre du ciel et du monde to the lavishly illustrated copies of Pliny’s Natural History produced for the Visconti family, medieval scientific discourse was often inflected by – and constructed around – literary, musical, and artistic forms present at court.  This conference invites abstracts on what it means to “do science at court” in the late medieval period, particularly in the context of literature, music, and the arts.

How do tradition, law, and power dictate the boundaries of science? How do ethics or political science affect natural philosophy? How do didactic poems or works of counsel, conduct, and governance blur the boundaries between science and mimesis?  What is the relationship between empiricism and narrative or visual forms? How does music do mathematical and political work?

Science at Court welcomes proposals on any aspect of art at court in the context of late medieval science.

Due to the generous support of Newnham College, travel subsidies will be available for attendees who may have difficulty obtaining funds.

Please send abstracts to Dr. Tekla Bude (tlb33@cam.ac.uk)  by 15 January, 2016.

You can follow updates on the conference here: www.scienceatcourt.com