The University of Bergen, the Bergen Medieval Research Cluster and the Norwegian University Centre in Paris are happy to welcome all PhD candidates to apply to an interdisciplinary PhD Workshop in Paris in 4-7 November 2019. The seminar will be held in English, and will feature a series of leading medieval scholars – including UiB’s professor Leidulf Melve and professor emeritus Sverre Bagge. The full lecture programme will be published in due course.

In addition to the key note lectures from invited lecturers, the seminar will consist of presentations and discussions of the PhDs’ papers. The aim of the seminar is to highlight the role of the Middle Ages in French and Norwegian historical traditions, the changing role, methods, purposes and uses of the humanities, potential problems in reception research and historiographical analysis. While we hope that the workshop will serve to inspire theoretical reflection and to heighten the awareness of the general aspects of the participants’ own projects, the candidates’ papers should primarily be of specific (and specified) use in the PhD applicant’s own projects.

Call for Papers

The Middle Ages have been the object of enduring interest for scholars ever since the Middle Ages were constituted as an analytical framework by renaissance scholars and enlightenment philosophes. The ‘Medieval’ has for all successive generations been simultaneously a term of abuse, a label for primitivism and ridicule, for complexity and abstraction, a space for poetic and spiritual reflection, a caricature of depotism, barbarism and popular liberty, a source for political renewal and golden age-theories, as well as an object of study. The Middle Ages have been a movable feast – a label which has changed its meaning and been applied to different times, places, ideals and problems in posterity. To a wide range of disciplines, the evolving reception of the written texts of the Middle Ages gives a particularly poignant lens through which to view the development of national narratives, political theory and the humanities as academic disciplines.

The seminar will take place at the Centre Universitaire Norvègien de Paris, located close by the old university quarters in Paris at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. The following themes are example of the approaches that could be discussed at the seminar:

– The research history of medieval studies, in particular the Scandinavian and the French traditions.

– The development of a particular historical topic through the course of a literary tradition.

– The changing perceptions of the literary culture, production and contexts in the Middle Ages.

– The development of method(s) in scholarly writing about the Middle Ages.

– The relationship between history-writing and political theory, religious thought, philosophy, law or political rhetoric.

– The use of the Middle Ages in political theory, religious thought, philosophy, law or political rhetoric.

– The Middle Ages in national narratives, in particular the Scandinavian and the French traditions.

– Medievalism in music, literature, architecture, art or aesthetic theory.

– Comparative, methodological or critical perspectives on the given topics.

Apply to participate

Before the course starts, each participant will prepare a paper for pre-circulation. The paper will address your research project in relation to (a) course theme. A paper of no more than 15 pages must be submitted by 1 October. 30 minutes will be allotted to each presentation, followed by comments and a discussion of 15 minutes. The seminar will start with lunch Monday 4 November and end with lunch Thursday 7 November. Participation in the seminar will be accredited by 5 ECTS points. The course is capped at 14 PhD candidates.

We will be able to fund the housing and dining costs of the participants, but travel expenses have to be covered by the home universities. Please send us the preliminary title of your paper and a short abstract of no more than half a page  your PhD project before 15 June, so that we can assess applications to join. We welcome candidates from all nationalities, backgrounds and relevant disciplines!

You can send your application via e-mail to the Bergen Medieval Research Cluster coordinator Dr. Irene Baug and other enquiries to Peter Hatlebakk.

Ateliers internationaux de formation doctorale

Pouvoirs, sociétés, imaginaires
dans les villes du monde méditerranéen (XIIe-XVe siècle). Pour une approche
historico-anthropologique de la ville médiévale:

IIIeme Atelier doctoral
San Gimignano (Sienne), 17-21 juin 2019

Les imaginaires dans les villes du monde
méditerranéen (XIIe-XVe siècle)

Appel à candidatures

Cet atelier de formation doctorale s’inscrit dans le prolongement direct de la Scuola di alti studi dottorali qui, de 2004 à 2016, a constitué un lieu de formation de pointe pour les jeunes chercheurs consacrant leurs recherches à l’étude de la culture locale. Promu par le Centro di Studi sulla civiltà comunale de la Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Toscana, l’école s’est signalée comme l’une des « écoles d’été » les plus qualifiées au niveau international : sur plus de 200 participants, plus de 40 provenaient d’universités nonitaliennes.

Depuis 2017, les Ateliers internationaux de formation doctorale sont organisés par le Centro di Studi sulla civiltà comunale de la Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Toscana en collaboration avec le doctorat en histoire (Dottorato di ricerca in Studi storici) des universités de Florence et de Sienne et l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (Centre Roland Mousnier et Labex EHNE). Ils se déroulent à San Gimignano avec le soutien de l’administration municipale locale. Le Comité scientifique est composé d’Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan (Université Paris-Sorbonne), Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur (Università di Roma Tre), Giuliano Pinto (Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Toscana) et Andrea Zorzi (Università di Firenze).

L’objectif des ateliers est l’étude des sociétés urbaines du Moyen Âge, en mettant l’accent sur les systèmes politiques et les différentes manifestations de l’imaginaire urbain et en portant le regard sur toutes les villes du bassin méditerranéen – celles de l’Occident chrétien, celles de la zone d’influence byzantine et celles des régions sous domination islamique. Les ateliers offrent un environnement stimulant pour les échanges intellectuels entre spécialistes établis et jeunes chercheurs en formation, pour favoriser, à travers des moments de discussion et d’échange, le renouvellement de la recherche et l’élargissement des perspectives comparatives.

Les ateliers, multidisciplinaires, prévoient des leçons sur des questions interprétatives vastes dispensées par des professeurs spécialisés et des séminaires organisés par les participants sur leurs sujets de recherche.
Les enseignants du deuxième Atelier – consacré aux imaginaires dans les villes du monde méditerranéen -seront les professeurs Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan (Université Paris-Sorbonne), Mario Gallina (Università di Torino), Julien Loiseau (Aix-Marseille Université), Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur (Università di Roma Tre), Giuliano Pinto (Deputazione di Storia patria per la Toscana), Flocel Sabaté (Universitat de Lleida), Alessandro Savorelli (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) et Andrea Zorzi (Università di Firenze).

Les participants doivent être des étudiants doctorants, boursiers de recherche et boursiers postuniversitaires dans les disciplines historiques et de « médiévistique » de toutes les universités italiennes et étrangères et de toute nationalité.

La participation à l’atelier est réservée à 14 (quatorze) jeunes chercheurs, choisis à la discrétion du Comité scientifique sur la base d’une évaluation des diplômes et des programmes présentés. Les participants en surnombre ne sont pas autorisés.

Les ateliers ont un caractère résidentiel. Les personnes admises sont tenues d’assister assidûment à toutes les réunions et de conduire durant l’atelier un séminaire sur leurs recherches, selon le programme qui sera rendu officiel au début de l’atelier. Au terme de celui-ci, un certificat de participation sera remis aux participants. Nous nous réservons le droit de refuser un certificat à ceux qui, sans justification, n’auront pas suivi les cours avec assiduité.

L’hospitalité complète est offerte aux candidats retenus, à l’exclusion des frais de déplacement.

Les candidats doivent soumettre :

• une demande d’admission avec les coordonnées du candidat, l’indication de son niveau d’études et de son statut général et professionnel actuel, une adresse postale, un numéro de téléphone et un courrier électronique, en utilisant le formulaire disponible sur l’URL suivante : < https://drive.google.com/open?id=1I0TPd-Ca0_2B1yI_UEArF_23K7vP1Cd- >;
• une brève description du projet de recherche en cours (en utilisant le formulaire disponible sur l’URL indiquée supra);
•  un curriculum vitae de deux pages maximum présentant les études suivies et les activités scientifiques ;
• éventuellement, la copie des publications.

On ne prendra pas en compte les demandes omettant de fournir une description du projet de
recherche ou dépourvue du formulaire de candidature.

Les demandes doivent être adressées sur la boîte cescc.2011@gmail.com , avec les documents requis en pièces jointes, au plus tard le 15 avril 2019.

Les candidats admis à l’atelier seront informés par courrier électronique avant le 5 mai 2019.

L’appel peut être téléchargé en pdf ici.

Scholars have long been debating whether a decline in women’s economic agency took place from the Late Medieval or Early Modern period onwards and what its chronology looked like.
Furthermore, historians have argued for a difference in women’s economic opportunities between southern and north-western Europe. Divergent juridical and demographic structures supposedly gave northern women more possibilities for agency than southern women. However, several case studies have shown deviations from these two models. This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on gender and work to compare different regions of Europe and various labour types, spanning both the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. In doing so, this workshop wants to discuss what factors shaped women’s work and wants to further the debate on women’s positions in urban labour markets, the impact of craft guilds, and the importance of gender on the informal markets.

We invite papers on women’s economic possibilities and especially encourage proposals that
include geographical and chronological comparisons and/or compare different types of work.
Themes may include, but are not limited to:
‐ Geographical and diachronic comparisons of women’s work
‐ The domestic production unit in urban economies
‐ The gendering of urban economic space
‐ Women’s presence on the informal markets and in craft guilds
‐ Methodological papers and reflections on (changing) definitions of work, economic agency,
informal markets, family economies in a medieval and early modern context.

The workshop will include papers from Prof. Anne Montenach (University of Aix-Marseille), Prof.
Ariadne Schmidt (University of Leiden), and Prof. Danielle van den Heuvel (University of
Amsterdam).

The language of communication during the workshop will be English. Proposals for 20-minute
presentations should be sent to Nena Vandeweerdt (nena.vandeweerdt@kuleuven.be) by 15 April 2019. Please include an abstract of max. 400 words, 4 keywords, and a short cv (max. 1 page). The participants will be notified by 15 May 2019.

Organisation: Nena Vandeweerdt and Heleen Wyffels (KU Leuven)
Scientific comittee: Prof. Violet Soen (KU Leuven), Prof. Jelle
Haemers (KU Leuven), Prof. Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea
(Universidad de Cantabria)

Late medieval European court cultures have traditionally been studied from a mono-disciplinary and national(ist) perspective. This has obscured much of the interplay of cultural performances that informed “courtly life”. Recent work by medievalists has routinely challenged this, but disciplinary boundaries remain strong. The MALMECC project therefore has been exploring late medieval court cultures and the role of sounds and music in courtly life across Europe in a transdisciplinary, team-based approach that brings together art history, general history, literary history, and music history. Team members explore the potential of transdisciplinary work by focusing on discrete subprojects within the chronological boundaries 1280-1450 linked to each other through shared research axes, e.g., the social condition of ecclesiastic(s at) courts, the transgenerational and transdynastic networks generated by genetic lineage and marriage, the performativity of courtly artefacts and physical as well as social spaces, and the social, linguistic and geographic mobility of court(ier)s.

Since the inception of the project, the MALMECC team have conducted an international project workshop dedicated to methodological innovation in late medieval studies (2017), and a series of  international study days (2018-19), focussing on late medieval ecclesiastic courts, late medieval multilingualism and cultural exchanges across linguistic boundaries, and cardinals’ and papal households of Avignon as transcultural hubs. A fourth international study day probing the transnational qualities of courtly life in north-western Europe is scheduled for March 2019 in Liège (Belgium).

In the project conference, we hope to unite as many strands of court studies as possible and invite speakers from any discipline engaged with the long fourteenth century (c. 1280-1450) to join us in exploring phenomena of late medieval courtly life from a transdisciplinary angle. Submissions for papers may address (but need not be limited to) one or several of the following thematic strands:

– New and unusual methodological approaches to the study of European courts and court cultures

– Blurring anachronistic boundaries set by modern scholarship

– Consciously exploring the interstitial spaces of the sacred-secular, courtly-urban-rural, virtuous-obscene, courtly-uncourtly-pastoral

– Forging links between liturgy, sound/music and space/architecture

– Music and the senses at court

– Space and place, visibility and invisibility, hearing and overhearing, silence and noise in late medieval courtly life

– Gender, genealogies, sexualities, marriage and celibacy at secular and ecclesiastical courts

– Court careers, courtly roles and their performativity

– Court communications: speech and language, multilingualism, speaking and singing, crimes of speech and slander

– Patronage, performance and cultural productions at courts: art, literature, music and entertainment, courtly diversions and their audiences

– Memory, identity and lineage

– Courtly ecologies of sounds, bodies, materials, identities, power

– Economics of the court; the court and the city; the court and the countryside

– The geography and limits of the court: boundaries, definitions, territories, institutions

– Courtly alterity: courtly discourses on race, sexuality, (social) differences and disability

– European courts and court studies in a global context

Please send abstracts of 250-400 words to Martha Buckley, project support coordinator (martha.buckley@humanities.ox.ac.uk). Deadline: 5 May 2019.

See also the website: http://www.malmecc.eu/conference/

Ce colloque vise à appréhender toute la gamme des socialisations possibles de l’activité d’écrire sur le passé dans les villes des sociétés médiévales et modernes, tant en Europe que dans les mondes islamiques. On entend ici, en effet, l’activité historienne au sens large : chroniques, histoires de villes, de sanctuaires, de monuments, notations dans des registres de villes ou de communautés, livres de famille italiens ou allemands, journaux individuels, généalogies, mémoires, inscriptions sur des monuments pérennes ou éphémères, en somme tout écrit fixant un récit du passé, à partir du moment où s’y trouve engagé un rapport à la ville. Il faut y inclure aussi les pratiques d’archivage et les pratiques de collection qui peuvent accompagner la réalisation d’écrits sur le passé.

Lors du colloque, on voudrait conjoindre dans l’analyse les histoires patentées et bien d’autres écrits dans lesquels on trouve des récits historiques – mais qui ne se présentent pas obligatoirement comme tels. On s’intéressera du reste tout particulièrement, dans ces écrits, aux modalités de définitions de l’activité historienne, à ses procédures de légitimation, ainsi qu’à la mobilisation éventuelle, qu’elle soit implicite ou explicite, d’autres travaux historiques. L’élargissement du spectre des écrits pris en compte rend possible l’observation de la circulation des textes, des références, des modèles au sein même de l’espace urbain, sans présupposer que cette circulation se ramène à la diffusion de pratiques savantes à d’autres éléments du corps social.

Depuis une quarantaine d’années et les propositions fondatrices de Roger Chartier et Armando Petrucci, les historiens ne cessent de mettre en lumière combien les sociétés urbaines à partir du Moyen-Âge ont été modelées par une culture écrite qui imprime sa marque aussi bien sur l’organisation politique que sur la vie économique, sociale et culturelle citadine. Cette culture écrite, liée aux échanges commerciaux, aux développements d’appareils de pouvoirs qui sécrètent des administrations, et à un fort encadrement ecclésiastique, qui implique entre autres le développement de l’offre éducative, a permis à des fractions substantielles quoique minoritaires de la population urbaine – notables puis couches supérieures de l’artisanat par la suite – l’accès à l’alphabétisation et à la maîtrise des codes qui permettent d’envisager la production de récits sur le passé. Cette culture écrite ne saurait être réduite à ce que les historiens ont pris l’habitude d’appeler les « écritures pragmatiques » – écrits de gestion, actes notariés – par différenciation d’avec la culture savante. Bien que les villes n’y soient pas dotées d’institutions propres et que l’alphabétisation y soit moins développée qu’en Europe, le monde musulman des époques médiévale et moderne connaît des processus sans doute comparables.

Aussi s’agit-il avec ce colloque de considérer l’activité historienne comme une ressource mobilisée par des individus, des communautés, et des institutions, dans le cours de la vie sociale des cités. On cherchera, au travers des communications, à rassembler le plus de connaissances possibles sur la sociologie des scripteurs, les enjeux qui président à leurs écrits, les lieux – sociaux, ou scripturaires – dans lesquelles des histoires sont inscrites de manière privilégiée – jusque, parfois, dans les registres des notaires, certains tenant chronique à même les répertoires de leurs actes. On vise par là à comprendre les modalités réciproques de fabrication des identités urbaines et des identités sociales de ces scripteurs, et à mesurer la place que tient cette activité historienne dans les dynamiques urbaines. On s’intéressera aussi aux liens entre l’histoire telle qu’elle s’écrit en ville et d’autres foyers – monastiques, aristocratiques, curiaux – d’historiographie.

Ce colloque est organisé par le CHISCO de Nanterre et l’équipe Pouvoirs, savoirs et société de l’université Paris 8, dans le cadre d’un appel à projets du labex Les Passés dans le présent.

Comité d’organisation :

Anne Bonzon, Boris Bove, Franck Collard, Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil, Caroline Galland, Benjamin Lellouch, Nicolas Schapira

Les propositions de communication seront envoyées en fichier joint à l’adresse suivante : nschapira@parisnanterre.fr avant le 15 février 2019.

ou colloquememo@gmail.com

y accéder en se connectant sur la page d’accueil de google (gmail en haut à droite).

Le mot de passe est le suivant : Paris8Nanterre

On 26-28 April 2019, Trinity College Dublin will be hosting the annual Borderlines conference. The conference is in its 23rd year and attracts a large number of medievalists and early modernists from Europe and further afield.

This year’s theme is ‘Sound and Silence in the Medieval and Early Modern World’. While the concept of silence may seem antithetical to expression, a knowledge of the elements that serve to either silence narratives or aid in their articulation is integral to understanding any artistic or literary production and the culture from which it originates. In the medieval and early modern periods, silence was inextricably linked to prevailing ideas and ideologies – both religious and secular. The role of sound in the music, prose, and poetry of these periods is also crucial to the proliferation of ideas. Analyses of the roles that sound and silence play in literature and other forms of expression are thus vital to understanding the social, cultural, aesthetic, and political environments in the medieval and early modern world.

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers focussing on one or both concepts. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 4th February 2019.

Abstracts should be submitted via the ‘Submit Your Abstracts’ link on our website borderlinesxxiii.wordpress.com

Any questions or queries can be addressed to borderlinesxxiii@gmail.com

The movement of people and books across space and time – mobility and portability – were driving forces of medieval European literary and intellectual culture. Men and women, clerical and secular, constructed extensive social networks and communities through travel, written communication, and the exchange of texts. Shared literary practices and forms occurred at the regional and transregional levels, defining local identities and forging links between people separated by distance and time. Around the North Sea and Baltic littorals, legends from the Norse sagas, for instance, were taken up by writers. On a larger scale, people from north-western Europe to China exchanged stories of Barlaam and Josephat, while tales of Alexander are found from India to Ireland; in both cases, transmission was facilitated by the movement of people along the Silk Road. Rather than a full picture, often we are left with a set of trails, traces and clues that challenge us to create narratives out of the fragments.

This symposium aims to contribute to the understanding of medieval literature through the development of methodologies which examine the intersection of social networks and communities with literary forms. We welcome papers that attend to the agency of people (men and women), genres (literary, scientific, philosophical, legal etc.), modes (verse, poetry, prose), styles, texts and manuscripts (book types, layouts, images) in creating literary links across space and time. Building on the practices of both comparative literature and entangled history, the symposium will open up connections between literary cultures often considered to be separate. At the same time, and of equal importance, it will be alert to the absence of connections, to discontinuities, exposing the diversities and ruptures of medieval literature, as well as the commonalities.

By following the movement of forms and tracing social connections from Antiquity to the Renaissance, we will interrogate both geographies and chronologies of medieval European literature. Always keeping the intersection of the social and the formal in view, the symposium will move back and forth between small and large scales of time and place: the local, the transregional, the European, and the Afro-Eurasian. Issues of morphology, scale and periodization will be central to discussion, enabling conversations across a wide range of material to gain traction. The symposium will bring together methodological and theoretical contributions, addressing the intersection of people and forms; we welcome papers that work on large scale typological models as well as papers that address broader issues though closely-worked case studies.

Questions to consider include:

• How do we move from specific examples to writing/formulating larger narratives, from the micro to the macro, from the close up to the panoramic, without falling into generalizations?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of existing methodologies that account for the movement of objects, texts and people through space (e.g. histoire croisée, actor network theory, global history, etc.)?
• How does medieval Europe fit into a wider Afro-Eurasian space? How does Europe divide into and participate in regional geographies?
• How conscious were medieval people of new forms as a dimension of cultural exchange?
• What role does the modern historical imagination have to play in recreating social networks and formal encounters?
• How do medieval theories of cultural movement (e.g. translatio imperii et studii, spoliation, etc.) enable us to explain the transmission of literary forms?

Format

The symposium will meet over three days, with each day including 3 panels with three speakers. Papers will last 20 minutes and be followed by 45 minutes of discussion per panel. Since the substantial discussion following the papers is as important as the papers themselves, papers will not be allowed to overrun. Each session will have a respondent/moderator who will read papers in advance of the session and launch the discussion of their session through a short reflective invitation. For this reason, we ask that all papers be given in English. Speakers are asked to frame their research in ways which are simultaneously sophisticated and inviting of exchange with colleagues working across the literatures of medieval Europe (including Byzantium, and Islamic Spain and Sicily) and its neighbours. We welcome proposal for individual papers and for panels.

There will be a modest amount of preparatory theoretical reading in advance of the symposium.

Publication

We anticipate publishing extended versions of a selection of papers from the workshop in a special issue of Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures.

Venue

The symposium will take place in the Danish Institute at Athens, conveniently located in the Plaka. There are many tavernas, cafes and restaurants nearby.

Cost

There will be no charge to attend the symposium. There will be a charge to cover the cost of the symposium dinner. Delegates are responsible for covering the cost of their travel and accommodation. A small number of bursaries will be available for PhD students and early career scholars, for further information contact Kristin Bourassa (kristin@sdu.dk).

Abstracts

Please send short abstracts (250 words) and a brief CV (1/2 page) to George Younge (george.younge@york.ac.uk) by 1st March 2019. Panel proposals should include overview (100 words) and abstracts and CVs (as above) for all papers.

DOWNLOAD THE CALL FOR PAPERS AS A PDF

The ESSHC aims at bringing together scholars interested in explaining historical phenomena using the methods of the social sciences. The conference is characterized by a lively exchange in many small groups, rather than by formal plenary sessions.

This interuniversity workshop hosted by Ghent University is the first in an alternating series of three on ‘freedom of speech’ in late medieval and early modern Europe. By drawing together research on several European countries in the period 1300-1700, the series will reveal various perspectives on premodern free speech. Freedom of speech, i.e. ‘the right to express beliefs and ideas without unwarranted government restriction’, was by no means a fundamental right in the late medieval and early modern period. Yet research has shown that there were several opportunities for the expression of critical opinion towards power holders and that this practice was often widespread. These could be uttered verbally, through the spoken or written word, but also through other sign systems and media, ranging from the sound of musical instruments to heraldic languages. The objective of this workshop is to connect the different segments of research and thereby create a better overall understanding of pre-modern free speech.

We are accepting proposals from a variety of disciplinary angles for 30-minute papers on
• Pre-modern ideas about ‘freedom of speech’
• Juridical practices on free speech and subversive verbal utterances
• Political narratives and lyric
• Non-verbal media of ‘free-speech’ (visual, multimedia, sound…)
• …
Applicants are strongly encouraged to present papers in English. French papers will be accepted as well, if the powerpoint presentation is in English. Please send an abstract of 200 words to
minne.deboodt@kuleuven.be or linde.nuyts@ugent.be by the 10th of january 2019. Applicants will be notified by the 10th of february.

See the website http://www.freedomofspeech.ugent.be/