Illness, Healing and the Body in the Middle Ages: Graduate Conference in Medieval Studies at Princeton University
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Deadline: 25 February 2011
Law, Violence and Social Bonds ca. 900-1250
University of St Andrews
17-19 June 2011
Deadline: 11 March 2011
Proverbia Septentrionalia. The Uses of the Proverb in the Medieval Cultures of Northern Europe.
St. Thomas More College
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
11 – 13 November, 2011
Deadline: 4 April 2011
The Labyrinths: Third bi-annual graduate conference of the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.
September 30th- October 1st, 2011
Deadline: April 22nd, 2011
Les discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des femmes et des hommes à l’échelle européenne de 1400 à 1800: La SIEFAR – Société Internationale pour l’Etude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime, 4e colloque du programme “Revisiter la Querelle des femmes”
Centre Reid Hall de l’Université de Columbia, 4 rue de la Chevreuse, 75006 Paris.
24-26 novembre 2011
Date limite: le 30 avril 2011
FULLER DETAILS FOR EACH FOLLOW BELOW:
Illness, Healing and the Body in the Middle Ages: Graduate Conference in Medieval Studies at Princeton University
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Deadline: 25 February 2011
The Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University invites submissions for
its eighteenth annual graduate conference in Princeton, New Jersey. We are
also pleased to announce that this year’s keynote speaker will be Caroline
Walker Bynum, Professor of the History of Medieval Europe at the Institute for
Advanced Studies, also in Princeton.
This year’s conference is dedicated to exploring the themes of illness, healing,
and the body in the broadest possible sense. Among them are individual and
collective experiences of disease, practices of bodily and spiritual healing, and
the complex notions related to embodiment itself. We welcome presentations
dealing with both reality and its representations. Our goal is to assemble
panels reflecting a balanced awareness of both the basic human experiences
our medieval predecessors share with us and the ideas and cultural practices
that separate our world from theirs. In keeping with the Program’s aim to
promote interdisciplinary exchange among medievalists, we encourage
proposals from a variety of time periods, geographies, and disciplines. Topics
might include, but are not limited to:
• Disease, injuries, and symptoms of illness
• Sex, generation, heredity, and childbirth
• Death and mourning
• Mental illness and spiritual health
• Traditions of folk and learned medicine, and their practitioners
• Sites of healing, from saints’ shrines to hospitals
• Defense and discipline of the body
• Depictions of the body in art and literature
• The miraculous bodies of the saints
• Gender and the body
• Notions of the relationship between body and soul
• The body as metaphor
• The construction of “foreign” bodies (Muslims, Jews, and others)
• Incarnation, embodiment, and materiality
• Other sorts of bodies or corpora (animals, objects, texts)
In order to support participation of speakers from outside the northeastern
United States, we are offering a limited number of modest subsidies to help
offset the cost of travel to Princeton. Financial assistance may not be
available for every participant; funding priority goes to those who have the
furthest to travel. Every speaker will have the option of staying with a
resident graduate student as an alternative to paying for a hotel room.
Interested graduate students should submit abstracts of no more than 500
words to Rebecca Johnson (rwjohnso@princeton.edu) by February 25, 2011.
All applicants will be notified by March 5, 2011. Presentations should be no
longer than 20 minutes.
Law, Violence and Social Bonds ca. 900-1250
University of St Andrews
17-19 June 2011
Deadline: 11 March 2011
A three-day conference at the University of St Andrews exploring the themes of law, violence and social bonds during the high medieval period. Considering attitudes towards lawful and unlawful violence in relation to social bonds – be they familial, seignorial or spiritual – and bringing together a number of distinct conceptual approaches, such as anthropology, sociology and prosopography, this conference will offer new avenues of research and discussion. Scholars from Britain, Europe and North America will gather to explore these issues across a wide range of cultural and geographical milieux. Professors Dominique Barthélemy (Paris IV) and William Ian Miller (University of Michigan Law School) will both deliver keynote addresses.
Proposals are invited from postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers for 20 minute papers, from any mediaeval discipline. Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to lvsb@st-andrews.ac.uk .
The deadline for submissions is 11 March 2011.
For full details, including the full call for papers; and if you have any further questions: please refer to the conference website at: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/saims/law/ or please feel free to contact any of Kate Hammond,Rob Houghton, or Matthew McHaffie at lvsb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Proverbia Septentrionalia. The Uses of the Proverb in the Medieval Cultures of Northern Europe.
St. Thomas More College
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
11 – 13 November, 2011
Deadline: 4 April 2011
At this conference we will examine the uses of the proverb in the medieval cultures of northern Europe, in particular how such phrases are employed in literature and in non-fictional writings. The discipline of paroemiology, or the study of proverbs, recognizes their origins as often preceding the literate stage of societies. In fact, they must have made up a significant element in that formulaic framework by which knowledge and wisdom were fixed and transmitted generationally in the communities of pre-literate humanity. The still unmapped syntactic structure of the paroemial form lent itself both to mnemonic efficiency and to rhetorical persuasion—even today, there are cultures in Africa where litigation and governmental advice are expressed proverbially, and the conduct of law in our own societies still employs proverbial material occasionally, just as do our politicians.
Aristotle was of the view that proverbs constituted the remains of man’s early philosophy which survived through their brevity and cleverness, and whole books of sacred texts are devoted to these formulaic dictums upon just and wise behaviour. In this context, the entertainment of The Fables of Aesop is surely subordinate to their grounding in the wisdom often encapsulated at their close with a sentence of proverbial nature. The fact of proverbs arising from the oral heritage of a culture has led some to opine, with Francis Bacon, that “The genius, wit and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs,” but whether such pursuits are productive is doubtful. Of greater use to the discipline is the acknowledgement that proverb texts have, and indeed may be defined by, their own generative structure, a structure to which Archer Taylor referred, if unconsciously, when he observed, “An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not.”
The presence of this structure in texts incorporated in poems and stories marks such passages not merely as instructive in themselves, but also as resonating with accepted communal wisdom in ways that can help us understand the works in which they occur. Papers are welcome at this conference on any aspect of proverbial material in north European medieval literature and culture.
Those interested in presenting a paper should send a proposal of up to 150 words that clearly outlines the treatment of the proposed topic and its relation to the conference theme. All submissions must include the following: name, title, affiliation, address, and email address, and a one paragraph biography including recent publications and research interests. Students should indicate their status. Only one proposal per person may be considered. Papers that contain previously published materials should be identified as such.
The deadline for submissions is 4 April, 2011.
Inquiries about the conference and proposals should be submitted electronically in an easily accessible form to either Michael Cichon: mcichon@stmcollege.ca or Richard Harris: heorot@sasktel.net
For full details, please see the conference website: http://www.usask.ca/english/icelanders/Proverbia%20Septentrionalia%20Call%20for%20Papers.html
The Labyrinths: Third bi-annual graduate conference of the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies, UBC, Vancouver, Canada.
September 30th- October 1st, 2011
Deadline: April 22nd, 2011
The labyrinth is a structure consisting of a number of intercommunicating passages arranged in bewildering complexity, through which it is difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance (The Oxford English Dictionary).
The structure of the labyrinth can be found in many artistic forms from visual arts to literature. Specifically, we would like to investigate how the image or symbolic meaning of the labyrinth is represented in literature and consider the effects of its tangled structure on the articulation of literary discourse. In labyrinthian texts, the reading experience is one of confusion and perplexity; interpretation comes only from walking mazes of words and intersecting meanings. The image of a labyrinth not only encompasses an architectural structure, but also an idea and a state: the secret, concealed at its center, and the condition of wandering and being lost. Furthermore, the boundaries of labyrinth symbolism go beyond the physical embracing metaphysical realms: while ancient cultures saw it as an initiation and mystical pattern, modern perception seems to perceive it as a confrontation to its most profound existential angst.
We encourage questions, positions and ideas exploring approaches to all aspects of literature, theory and linguistics relevant to labyrinth contexts in French, Francophone Hispano-American, Spanish and Italian literatures.
Speakers may present in English, French or Spanish.
Contributions may include:
Fractal structures, hypertexts, intertextuality and palimpsests
Literary architectures
Enigmas, riddles, games
Urban landscapes, flânerie, wanderlust
Diaspora, pilgrimage
Myths
Memory, mind, dreams, spatial and temporal disorientation
Order and chaos
Visionary literature
Reader’s role: how do we walk the labyrinth?
Abstracts of not more than 250 words should be directed to fhislabyrinths@gmail.com no later than 22 April 2011.
Please note that there will be a 20$ participation fee.
Les discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des femmes et des hommes à l’échelle européenne de 1400 à 1800: La SIEFAR – Société Internationale pour l’Etude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime, 4e colloque du programme “Revisiter la Querelle des femmes”
Centre Reid Hall de l’Université de Columbia, 4 rue de la Chevreuse, 75006 Paris.
24-26 novembre 2011
Date limite: le 30 avril 2011
La SIEFAR (Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime) et l’Université de Columbia à Paris organisent, à l’automne 2011, le quatrième colloque international consacré aux discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des femmes et des hommes sous l’Ancien Régime. Ce colloque s’inscrit dans un programme scientifique pluriannuel et pluridisciplinaire visant à faire progresser nos connaissances sur l’abondante production de discours relatifs à la relation entre les sexes, depuis la fin du Moyen Age jusqu’aux lendemains de la Révolution française. Un premier colloque, organisé avec l’IHMC – CNRS/ENS (Paris) en novembre 2008, a été consacré à la période 1750-1810. Le deuxième, organisé en collaboration avec l’IHMC et l’Université de Columbia à Paris, tenu en novembre 2009, et le troisième, organisé en collaboration avec l’université de Columbia à Paris, tenu en novembre 2010, ont couvert les périodes 1600-1750 et 1400-1600.
Le programme s’achève en 2011 par un colloque à visée comparatiste, mettant l’accent sur la circulation des discours entre la France et l’ensemble de l’Europe. Ces rencontres s’accompagnent de diverses publications (traditionnelles ou en ligne), d’articles, de textes et de documents témoignant de l’ampleur de la « Querelle des femmes ». L’ensemble permettra de mieux comprendre l’évolution d’un débat qui a accompagné, justifié, préparé les transformations politiques et idéologiques de cette longue période, et marqué de son sceau une grande partie de l’histoire contemporaine.
Les contributions devront aborder la « Querelle sur l’égalité des sexes » de façon problématisée et non monographique, avec une attention particulière réservée à la circulation des idées, des textes ou des images entre la France et les autres pays européens et, dans une visée comparatiste, s’attacher
· aux questions de diffusion : les modes et l’étendue de la diffusion des textes (traductions, retraductions, adaptations, suppléments, échos de textes dans des mémoires, des correspondances), les phénomènes d’intertextualité, les rôles joués par les acteurs des transferts culturels (éditeurs, traducteurs, commanditaires)
· aux questions de réception : réactions et débats à propos des textes produits en France et diffusés à l’étranger ; réactions et débats en France à propos de documents produits à l’étranger
· aux aspects sociologiques : milieux de production des discours relatifs à la Querelle (établissements religieux, cours, salons, académies) ; contextes politiques et sociaux ; circulation des idées entres ces espaces ; rapports entre commanditaires et auteur(e)s,
· aux modalités d’expression : la variété des genres et des supports de ces discours (théâtre, poésie, roman, traités, catalogues de femmes célèbres, manuscrits, livres, relation entre textes et illustrations), processus de transferts des ‘modes’ médiatiques, adaptations
· au contenu : circulations de topoi spécifiques, d’idées philosophiques et de traditions argumentatives
Les propositions de contributions d’une page au plus, accompagnées d’une brève présentation de leur auteur(e), doivent parvenir avant le 30 avril 2011 à contact@siefar.org.
En savoir plus sur le Programme “Revisiter la Querelle des femmes”: http://www.siefar.org/revisiter-la-querelle-des-femmes/presentation.html