The Eleventh Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (June 10-12, 2024) is a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the Symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation into all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and Renaissance studies.

The plenary speakers for this year will be Cynthia J. Hahn, of Hunter College and the City University of New York, and John Witte, Jr., of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

The Symposium is held annually on the beautiful midtown St. Louis campus of Saint Louis University. On campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments as well as a more luxurious hotel. Inexpensive meal plans are also available, and there is a wealth of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues within easy walking distance of campus.

While attending the Symposium, participants are free to use the Vatican Film Library, the Rare Books Division, and the general collection at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library. These collections offer access to tens of thousands of medieval and early modern manuscripts on microfilm as well as strong holdings in medieval and Renaissance history, literature, languages, manuscript studies, theology, philosophy, and canon law. The Jesuit Archives & Research Center is adjacent to the university and also accessible to Symposium attendees.

We invite proposals for papers, complete sessions, and roundtables. Any topics regarding the scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern world are welcome. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are scheduled for ninety minutes. Scholarly organizations are especially encouraged to sponsor proposals for complete sessions, and organizing at least two sessions in coordination with each other is highly recommended. All sessions are in-person.

Mini-conferences hosted by societies or organized around a theme occur in the context of the SMRS. Paper submitters are welcome to submit their paper for general consideration at the Symposium or for one of the mini-conferences. This year’s mini-conferences are:

• 49th Annual St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies
  • All areas of manuscript studies, including but not limited to paleography, textual criticism, codicology, preservation and curation, and art history, are welcome
  • Lowry Daly, SJ Plenary Speaker: Daniel Hobbins (University of Notre Dame)
• Boethius 2024: The 1500-Year Memorial Conference (see details below)
• The 2024 Conference on John Milton (see details below)

The submission portal will open on November 1. The portal has buttons for submission to the main SMRS and for each of the mini-conferences. The deadline for all submissions is December 31, 2023. Decisions will be made by the end of January and the final program will be published in March.

For more information or to submit your proposal online go to: https://www.smrs-slu.org/.

Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri

CALL FOR PAPERS

Papers (not to exceed twenty minutes reading time) are invited on any aspect of Milton studies, from close readings of particular works to broader investigations of themes and trends. The conference will be held on the campus of Saint Louis University, in conjunction with the annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Please submit a 250-word abstract using the Milton Conference tab at the SMRS conference website: https://www.smrs-slu.org/submit.html. Proposals for sessions and round-table discussions are also welcome. The submission portal will open on November 1, 2023. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2023.

Keynote Speaker: Stephen B. Dobranski, Regents’ Professor of English, Georgia State University and Editor-in-Chief of Milton Studies

Featured event: The John Geraghty Symposium on “Ephemera.” (Speakers to be confirmed)

Sponsored by Saint Louis University and Washington University in St. Louis.

For more information, please contact Sara van den Berg (sara.vandenberg@slu.edu), Jonathan Sawday (jonathan.sawday@slu.edu), or Ryan Netzley (rnetzley@siu.edu).

When: June 10-12, 2024 (Monday-Wednesday)
What: The 49th Annual St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies (In-Person Only)
Where: St. Louis University at St. Louis, Missouri

Conference Website: https://www.smrs-slu.org/

Up for a challenge? An Open Call to all Old English Scholars—

Join us in June at “The Odd Words in Beowulf” Roundtable in St. Louis at the “Symposium on Medieval Studies.” The ivory halls will heat up with a groundbreaking discussion that fundamentally will change our current understanding of Beowulf.

Why are there so many odd words in Beowulf? Those one-time example words, found nowhere else in the Old English corpus. Each roundtable will examine five example words found in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/asd/index-introduction) that give just one citation line for each word.

Those first five words are: lārena (269), unhār (357), werhðo (589), mān-fordǣdlan (563) and icge (1107) or another one-time word of your choosing from Beowulf. No duplications, so first-come, first-served.

Re-examine your word choice(s) in context.

Are the spaces in the right places? The Beowulf manuscript is infamous for inconsistent or missing spaces.

Are there words inside of a word?

Are there letter rune(s) inside the word?

[Letter runes are the letter(s) for the phonetic beginning letter of the runic word from the Elder Futhark and/or the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc alphabets, e.g.: i is for īs/ice, etc.]

Is there a scribal error and/or a variant?

In 250-words, break down your odd word into its actual words. Provide a bilingual translation of that line along with the lines before and after. At the Roundtable, explain your methods and your epiphany in 10-minutes. [Letter Rune Charts provided to all Presenters.]

For questions or guidance, contact Jim Buckingham at wibuck50@gmail.com

Send your 250-word abstract and a 50-word bio to Jim Buckingham at wibuck50@gmail.com

Before the Deadline: December 31, 2023

ICMAC, the congress organisers Prof. Barbara Bombi FBA, Dr Edward Roberts, and Prof. Peter Clarke and congress programming committee invite proposals for individual 20-minute papers and for sessions (of 3 x 20-minute papers or 4 x 15-minute papers) on any aspect of medieval canon law, including, but not limited to, the following themes:

·        Texts and Jurisprudence

·        Influence of the ius commune on the Western Legal Tradition and International Law

·        Canon Law and Local Ecclesiastical History

·        Canon Law, Theology, and Pastoral Care

·        Medieval Law in Comparative Perspective

Proposals should be submitted as Word attachments via email to the congress address (icmcl2024@gmail.com) no later than 15 December 2023.

An individual paper proposal should comprise: paper title and language of presentation; a brief abstract (100-150 words); the speaker’s details (name; academic status; institutional affiliation; email address).

A session proposal should comprise the above for each paper proposed, together with: the details (as for speakers above) of the session organiser and session chair; the session title; a brief rationale (50-100 words) for the session, i.e., how the papers are related.

Proposals are welcomed from those at all stages of their academic career, including PhD students and post-doctoral researchers, as well as independent scholars. Papers may be delivered in these languages: English; French; German; Italian; or Spanish. Scholars not presenting in English are encouraged to use PowerPoint presentations and/or provide written English summaries of their papers.

Regular sessions will not feature papers on text-editing projects (but can include papers on manuscript studies). Updates on such projects will be showcased in a poster session during the Congress. Scholars who wish to present on such projects may submit two proposals if they desire, one for the poster session and another for a regular session.

The organisers would especially welcome proposals on the theme ‘Bridging the Divide’, focusing on Canterbury as a place of significance in the history of Western Christianity and medieval canon law before and after the Protestant Reformation and as the centre of the global Anglican communion. Contributions to this theme might cover such topics as:

• Canterbury’s role in the compilation and diffusion of medieval canon law in the English Church
• Canon law and local jurisdictions: application of canon law in the archbishops’ and other local church courts
• Canon law and secular law: the impact of the Becket crisis on medieval canon law (especially after the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164) and its long-term legacy
• Global Anglicanism: the continuing influence of medieval canon law in the Anglican communion and other post-Reformation churches

Although the chronological focus of the Congress is typically c. 500 – c. 1500, we would also welcome contributions from early modernists to this theme, which is designed to bridge the all too separate study of pre- and post-Reformation Christianity and explore continuities and synergies in the history of canon law over the longue durée. Historians of early modern Catholicism are also invited to offer papers exploring continuities of pre-Tridentine canon law in Europe and the New World, including among English Catholics.

In addition, we would welcome contributions to the strand ‘Canon law and governance’, which will explore how the study of medieval canon law can help inform current public policy debates, notably on the role of international law, electoral systems, constitutional reform, and representative government. The strand will thus focus on these four topics:

• Canon law and international law: the transnational influence of medieval canon law on the emergence of national legal systems
• Constitutionalism and canon law: the interaction of medieval canon law and secular law in the development of governing institutions
• Communities and canon law: the role of medieval canon law in the emergence and definition of groups and communities, such as women and clergy
• Elections and consent: the influence of medieval canon law on the role of elections and consent in government

Papers on other aspects of medieval canon law and governance, such as human rights, are also welcome. The purpose of this strand is to show the continuing relevance of medieval canon law to political issues and appeal to a broader public audience. Invited speakers in this special strand include:

• Prof. Orazio Condorelli (University of Catania, Italy)
• Prof. Christof Rolker (University of Bamberg, Germany)
• Prof. Caroline Humfress (University of St Andrews, UK)
• Prof. Nicholas Vincent FBA (University of East Anglia, UK)
• Prof. Sara Butler (Ohio State University, USA)
• Prof. Charles West (University of Sheffield, UK)
• Dr Joseph Canning (Queens’ College, Cambridge, UK)
• Dr Danica Summerlin (University of Sheffield, UK)

We are pleased to announce that the 26th Biennial SASMARS Conference will be held from  1 to 4 August 2024 at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Papers may cover any time period within the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and deal with any area of interest or discipline that could be relevant to the topic “What Lies Beneath”.

Ideas to consider could include, but need not be limited to:

• Beneath the heavens
• Beneath the earth
• Beneath the waves
• Beneath the skin
• Beneath the belt
• Beneath the story
• Beneath the language
• Beneath perceptions and emotions
• Underworlds and Otherworlds
• Invisible worlds

We are delighted to have as plenary speaker Prof. Andrew Breeze of the University of Navarra, Spain.

Proposals:
Proposals should consist of a title and abstract of up to 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, contact details, and a biography of no more than 100 words. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes when read and will be followed by Q and A.

Deadline:
Please submit proposals to Carin Marais (marais.carin@gmail.com) by 31 January 2024. Any enquiries can be sent to the same email address.

Please note that the conference will be held in person and that conference fees include accommodation at Mont Fleur for three nights, all main meals and mid-morning and mid-afternoon tea and snacks. A shuttle service will be available for transport between Cape Town International Airport and Mont Fleur at a small fee.

Symposium 2: Women and Power
Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 8-11 September 2024

Gold histamenon of Zoe and her sister Theodora dating from their join reign in 1042

We welcome proposals for the second symposium of our project, which explores Harald Hardrada’s status as a frontier-crosser extraordinaire and uses it as a common thread to explore themes related to the Mediterranean, the Nordic world, and their connections in Harald’s times. You can find more information about the project and this call for papers on the project’s website: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/hardrada/

Harald left Norway in 1030, first finding refuge in Kievan Rus’ and then entering Byzantine service. He travelled along all Byzantium’s borders and across them in the Middle East and North Africa. He then returned to Northern Europe to claim the crowns of Norway, Denmark, and England, where he died at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.

This symposium explores how powerful women shaped Harald’s formative travels, from Ingegerd of Sweden in Kievan Rus’ to Empress Zoe of Byzantium and Rasad in Fatimid Egypt. Yet This symposium will also be an opportunity to develop a wide-raging discussion and comparison on the broad theme of women and power across the varied cultures with which Harald interacted.

Proposals for papers on those themes are welcome from postgraduate students as well as established scholars. They should include participants’ names, affiliations, contact details, the proposed title, and an outline of no more than 500 words. Please submit proposals by 3 March 2024 to gianluca.raccagni@ed.ac.uk. Postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers with accepted proposals will receive logistical support during the symposium.

CALL FOR PAPERS

In celebration of the eighth centenary of St. Francis of Assisi’s reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna, Franciscan University of Steubenville and Saint Francis University will host a weekend-long academic conference on the topic of this historic event. All those interested in the life of St. Francis and the legacy of his stigmatization from every discipline and field are invited to submit paper proposals. Suggestions for paper topics include but are not limited to:

• Francis’s stigmata in the early Franciscan sources
• Theology of St. Francis’ stigmata / theology of Christ’s Passion
• Franciscan spirituality and mysticism
• Implications of St. Francis’s stigmata for Christian ethics / professional ethics
• Depictions of the stigmata in art and culture
• Science of stigmata
• Other examples of stigmata in history
• Legacy of St. Francis’ stigmata in the life of the Church

If interested, please send a 400-word proposal and a one-page CV to: jmatenaer@franciscan.edu

Deadline: March 1, 2024

September 18–21, 2024, Williamstown, MA AND New Haven, CT
May 2025, South Korea

The Research and Academic Program of the Clark Art Institute is sponsoring a travelling seminar on the global origins and transmission of print. The project has the ambitious goal of re-thinking the history of pre-modern print, offering a more unified and inclusive history of the transformative technology. While often Johannes Gutenberg is heralded as the inventor of printing with movable type in Mainz, Germany in the mid 1450s, printing had been practiced in Asia (movable type and woodblock) and North Africa (woodblock) for centuries prior. Indeed, this seminar maintains that early printing in Europe should be narrated as a late stage in an inter-connected, inter-continental, inter-faith course of development rather than as an exceptional moment of discovery driven by Christian European practitioners. This seminar will work to redress the dominant western narrative of print as a European invention and proffer in its place an inclusive Afro-Eurasian account of reproductive technologies. The investigation will encompass innovations in printing text and images from before 1500 across three continents, focusing on the use of mechanical reproduction to produce multiples impressions.

We are bringing together a group of specialists of Asian, Islamic, and late-medieval European print to look closely at works on paper at institutions in the United States, Asia, and Europe. We will address critical issues around Eurocentric narratives in the history and curatorial strategies of print, creating cross-disciplinary dialogue around concepts of knowledge production, repetition, reproduction, transmission, and imprint. The seminar will benefit the participants by both expanding their familiarity, vocabulary, and understanding of print beyond their field of specialization while also offering an intellectual groundwork by which to consider re-narrating dominant histories of print, especially the prevailing European account, to include Afro-Eurasian traditions. Whereas often histories of print are siloed into geographic and chronological specialties, this series of seminars will offer participants the opportunity to work in conversation across place and time to create a more complex history of print.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

The travelling seminar will first convene September 18–21, 2024 in Williamstown, MA and New Haven, CT to explore collections and begin establishing material and conceptual arenas of exploration. Visits to collections at the Clark Art Institute, Williams College, and Yale University will enable to group to examine examples of early European and Asian print technology. In May 2025, the Working Group will travel to South Korea for a week to visit collections, and final dates will be determined based on participants’ availability for future travel to Munich and Mainz, Germany.

The Clark Art Institute will sponsor the travel, including airfare, accommodations, and meals.

HOW TO APPLY

This program is open to all scholars across rank and specialization, from pre-doctoral scholars to tenured professors and senior curators. We will bring together a group of people across geographic specializations and career stage. Ideally, however, the candidates should be scholars of print with a focus on (or knowledge of) print materials pre-1550.

To apply, please submit the following to Susan Dackerman and Caroline Fowler at cfowler@clarkart.edu:

• Two-page statement of interest, including a description of relevant research previously undertaken and proposed research to explore within the travelling seminars
• A current C.V.
• A notice of availability to travel to New England in September 2024 and to Korea in May 2025

PLEASE SUBMIT ALL MATERIAL BY APRIL 1, 2024

The Medieval Out of Time & Place
22-23 September 2023
University of Missouri – Kansas City

Plenary: Dr. Elizabeth K. Hebbard
Peripheral Manuscripts Project                                                                     
French & Italian, Indiana University – Bloomington

200-word abstracts due 31 May 2023

https://forms.gle/uJqQZcKESS891iEbA

sample topics The Medieval Out of Time & Place

• medieval objects in new locales or contexts
• the reuse or recycling of the medieval in the modern age
• medieval saints celebrated in alternate geographies and temporalities
• medievalism as a framework for imagining the past
• the European past in the American/Midwestern present
• the Midwestern medieval, neo-gothic space and architecture
• monasticism in the Midwest
• medieval archives in the Midwest
• medieval objects in a digital world
• the digital medieval in the Midwest
• teaching the future, using the past
• the future for Medieval Studies in the Midwest

A limited number of bursaries are available for graduate student travel, thanks to a grant by the Committee on Centers and Regional Associations & The Medieval Academy of America.

Nuremberg, Wednesday, 25 September 2024 - Saturday, 28 September 2024

Epic, beyond other genres, has been both a guarantor of cultural continuity for millennia and a site of fundamental innovations in literary style and content in Western culture. It has also occasioned heated controversies, because of the complex associations it bears, e.g., with nationalism, colonialism or racism. How do such debates relate to Medieval Latin – or do they?

The conference “Epic in the Latin West (4^th–15^th Centuries)” proposes to explore the genre in its highly varied developments from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Medieval Latin gave expression to an overwhelming number of epics, many of them still little studied. The centre of gravity will be the Latin of the Middle Ages, but connections with Classics, other vernaculars, and modernity from the Renaissance to the present day are also possible topics. What do these earlier centuries have to say to the twenty-first?

Many avenues might be investigated, such as:

- Epic Heroes and Heroines: adaptation of classical heroes (from Homer, Virgil, Lucan, and others); questions of gender; rise of new heroes (biblical and saintly); effects of Christianity on the nature of heroism.

- Texts and Genres: epic and other genres (e.g. historical writing, hagiography, philosophy, and theology); defining features of epic; orality and literacy, in composition and transmission; stylistics and metrics; verse in relation to prose.

- Reception: intertextuality, concentrating on Latin but also relating to the vernaculars; text transmission and philological aspects; quotation and paraphrase; text and image; text and music; epic and other media (romances, novels, film, and recent media forms, so long as the connection with Medieval Latin is strong).

The conference will take place under the aegis of the International Medieval Latin Committee (president: Prof. Dr. Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard). Mornings will feature plenary lectures (keynote speeches) by internationally recognized specialists, while the afternoon will have papers given in panel sessions (each 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion). The conference languages are German, English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.

This call for papers is open to scholars at all career stages who would like to present in the panel sessions. Interested individuals should send their proposals to kongress-epos2024@fau.de under the key word Vortrag Epos 2024 by 1 March 2024.

Please send, in addition to your C.V., the title of your contribution and an abstract in English (max. 300 words). The papers themselves may be delivered in any of the conference languages named above. In selecting papers, the organizers are looking to create a spectrum that is thematically and methodologically as broad as possible.

For more information about the conference and accompanying program, see our homepage:

https://www.mittellatein.phil.fau.de/epos-2024-2/

Prospective presenters and audience members may register there.

For 10 young scholars, travel bursaries in the amount of 400€ each will be available on a competitive basis through the generosity of the HWB Mittellatein Foundation. Please send your application before 30 June 2024, including a full C.V. and a short statement describing your interest in Medieval Latin to: Dr. iur. Felix Berschin, Kennwort „HWB Mittellatein“, Max-Reger-Str. 41, 69121 Heidelberg (Germany)

The Symposium on Crusade Studies a quadrennial conference sponsored by the Crusade Studies Forum of Saint Louis University. The Symposium invites proposals for scholarly papers, complete sessions, and roundtables on all topics related to the crusading movement. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are schedule for ninety minutes.

Abstracts of 250 words and session proposals should be submitted online at http://www.crusadestudies.org/symposium-on-crusade-studies.html The deadline for submission is March 31, 2024. Late submissions will be considered if space is available. Decisions will be made by the end of April and the program will be published in June.

Plenary Speakers:
Thomas Asbridge, Queen Mary University of London
Helen Nicholson, Cardiff Univeristy

For more information, or to submit your proposal, go to
http://www.crusadestudies.org/symposium-on-crusade-studies.html

The 98th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place at the Grand Hyatt Washington in downtown Washington, DC. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and a consortium of medievalists from DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland.

The conference program will feature sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies. The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies and medievalism, including on the themes and strands proposed below. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration will be given to individuals whose field would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions, including independent scholars, emeritus or adjunct faculty, university administrators, those working in cultural heritage institutions (libraries, archives, museums, scholarly societies, or cultural research centers), editors and publishers, and other fellow medievalists. The Program Committee seeks to construct a program that fully reflects and expands the diversity of the Medieval Academy’s membership with respect to research areas and representation.

Plenary addresses will be delivered by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor of Medieval Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne; and Maureen Miller, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, and incoming president of the Academy.

Thematic Strands:

The Program Committee envisions a conference to include the following strands:

The Programming Committee particularly invites contributions on a first strand of sessions on the topic of Internationalisms. This focus reflects the Committee’s desire to highlight the capital region as an international hub, as well as to examine critically the promises and challenges of the idea of internationalisms for medieval studies. As the capital city of the United States, Washington, DC is rich in cross-cultural expertise and is a center for many international networks in academia. With the recent turn towards the Global Middle Ages and the newfound reliance upon transnational digital exchange during the global pandemic, the hosts of MAA 2023 seek to capitalize on the region’s strengths to invite fellow medievalists to examine medieval studies in an international context and to consider the necessity of embedding medieval studies in the American academy in a globalized and decentered world. This approach also invites critical reflection on the entanglement of medieval studies in narratives of nationalism, colonialism, and racism. In sum, we seek to draw on the pluralities of international engagement that emerge from our location in Washington, DC and to engage critically with the existence of multiple centers, networks, peripheries, and dynamics that impacted the medieval world in the past and continue to shape how we study it today. Specific themes that might be addressed include:

• Medieval Studies Today
  • Legacies of National Schools of Historiography
  • Disciplines, Periodizations, and Frameworks
  • Postcolonialisms and Decolonization
  • Neo-medievalism
• Digital Medieval Studies
• Queerness across Boundaries
• Migrations and Movements
• Foreign Service in the Middle Ages
• Transportation and Trade
• Slavery and the Slave Trade
• Translation, Translators, and Multilingualism
• Religious Encounters
• Race and Racialization

A second strand of sessions has been proposed by the Program Committee. We particularly invite submissions addressing the following themes, which may or may not intersect with the Internationalisms themes, to include:

• Cosmographies and Microcosms
• “Beyond the King”: Broadening Concepts of Medieval Power and Rulership
• Belief and Unbelief
• Certainty and Speculation
• The Five Senses
• Dialogue with the Sciences of the Human Past
  • Archaeology, Public History, and the Conservation Sciences
  • Climate Histories, Archives, and Proxies
  • The Epidemiology and Paleogenomics of Infectious Disease
• Deploying the Medieval in Fiction, Fantasy, and Games
• Artisanal Epistemologies
• Textiles
• Expanding the Audience for Medieval Studies
  • Advocacy for Medieval Studies
  • Presenting the Middle Ages to the Public
  • Encouragement of Study of World Languages and Study Abroad

The third strand of sessions  will emerge from the papers and sessions proposed by members of the Academy. We invite proposals on any theme in Medieval Studies from diverse chronological, geographical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives. We also welcome innovative sessions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries or that use various disciplinary approaches to examine an individual topic.

Special Sessions CPF: The conference will feature select sessions in collaboration with local institutions in the DC area as follows:

I.    Sessions held at partner institutions:

Close Looking in the Medieval Treasury at the National Gallery of Art

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Organizers: Emily Pegues (Assistant Curator, Sculpture and Decorative Arts, National Gallery of Art) and Matthew J. Westerby (Research Associate, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art)

We welcome proposals for short overviews (5 minutes or less) to guide close looking and spark group discussion during a site visit to the National Gallery of Art’s medieval collections, centered around the Chalice of Abbot Suger. Proposed talks for conversation should engage any of the works on display in galleries G-17, G-18, and G-19. Proposals from students and researchers that focus on treasuries, treasured objects, and the re-use of objects and materials across boundaries are especially encouraged.

Manuscript Fragments and Fragmentology at the Library of Congress

Friday, February 24, 2023

Organizers: Marianna Stell (Reference Librarian, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress) and Matthew J. Westerby (Research Associate, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art)

Moderator: Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America)

With the aim of identifying and reconstructing broken books, the field of Fragmentology has adopted digital tools and shared virtual workspaces. What data do we gather and what stories do we tell with this emerging field of research? How are librarians, curators, collectors, historians, musicologists, textual scholars, students, and digital humanists collaborating and producing new knowledge? How do these bits of books intersect with nationality and identity, and how do these constructs impact the scholarly work of identifying and reconstructing manuscripts? This session will be hosted onsite at the Library of Congress, and although it is not limited to any geographical scope, new research on DC-area collections of medieval manuscript fragments is especially welcome.

II.    Co-organized sessions (at conference hotel):

With the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art
Rethinking Global Medieval Art and Material Culture

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Organizers: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art  
 
The concept of global medieval art has become increasingly popular in recent decades. Discussions often highlight mobility, diplomacy, and trade within specific regional spheres. How can Asian and Near Eastern perspectives be better incorporated to complicate or challenge narratives? We invite proposals for papers (15 minutes) on medieval art and material culture, particularly from the regions spanning the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean. Exploring non-Western medievalisms, we welcome interdisciplinary presentations which consider, complicate, or challenge the concept of medieval and which center on architecture and material culture. Proposals may consider pre-modern transcultural and transregional entanglements. Participants may, but are not required to, consider works in the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (asia.si.edu). Limited funding available.  
 
With Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Environmental Histories of Medieval Landscapes: Narratives and Methods

Organizers: Abigail Dowling, Mercer University and Thaïsa Way, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

When we look at medieval landscapes, we have the tendency to cast them in terms of “nature” and the “natural” without considering the complex interplay between competing economic, political, and social processes and the ecology, climate, and weather that created them. This panel will invite scholars to submit papers utilizing new and innovative methods to uncover the myriad layers of how action – human or environment – shaped medieval landscapes.  We are thus interested in both new insights into the relationship of land and place to people and culture and in the methods, tools, and approaches used for such research on medieval landscapes  including the Byzantine, Islamic and Mediterranean worlds.

With The American Council for Southern Asian Art
The Mobile “Medieval” and Its Ramifications in Southern Asia

Organizers: The Board of the American Council for Southern Asian Art
 
This panel invites proposals from all regions of South and Southeast Asia that 1) address the usefulness of the “Medieval” for these regions; and, as a model for all regional historiographies, 2) consider whether the grouping of centuries it denotes is relevant to Southern Asia’s own historical specificities. Papers with a transhistorical, regional perspective - rather than one based on nation-states – should probe the meanings of the Medieval in specific locations. What are the primary sources for the construction of the Southern Asian Medieval, and what are the characteristics of the resulting historiographies? Do indigenous periodizations diverge from or converge with the Medieval, a colonial-era import? Papers may also examine Medieval Studies’ global turn and its productiveness for South-Southeast Asia. Does the development of a “Global Middle Ages” make Southern Asian historical realities more legible, or does it efface specificity by imposing a universalist meaning of “global”?

In addition, the conference will feature an ask-the-editors session with the staff of Speculum, roundtables on analyzing the global pre-modern and curating global medieval material culture, panels on K-12 education, and events organized by the Academy’s Graduate Student Committee. We will also offer optional pre and post-conference excursions and are presenting the world premiere of a new drama inspired by medieval female monastic culture produced in collaboration with the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art at Catholic University. Our closing reception will be held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.

Proposals:

Individuals may propose to offer a paper addressing one of the themes above, a full panel of papers and speakers for a listed theme, a full panel of papers and speakers for a session they wish to create, or a single paper not designated for a specific theme. Sessions usually consist of three 25-minute papers, and proposals should be geared to that length, although the Committee is interested in other formats as well (roundtables, poster sessions, digital experiences, etc.). The Program Committee may choose a different format for some sessions after the proposals have been reviewed.

Submissions:

The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2022. All proposals, for individual papers, sessions, or special formats, should include the following information:

●    Proposer’s name (in format for the program)
●    Statement of Medieval Academy membership (or statement that the individual’s specialty would not normally involve membership in the Academy)
●    Professional status/affiliation, if relevant (in format for the program)
●    Email address
●    Postal address
●    Telephone number(s)
●    Paper title
●    Theme for which the paper should be considered (or “general session”)
●    Abstract (maximum 200 words)
●    Audio-visual equipment requirements
●    Accessibility requirements