Call for Papers – JLGC 09: Reinventing Boundaries in Times of Crisis

Het Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference uit Leiden heeft een Call for Papers gelanceerd in verband met grenzen in crisistijd. Abstracts van 500 woorden kunnen ingediend worden tot 15 januari 2021. Meer informatie is op de website van de Universiteit Leiden zelf te vinden: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2020/11/ljgc-09-reinventing-boundaries-in-times-of-crisis

Call for Papers – Sharing species, sharing knowledge : The circulation of animals between East and West (12th – 16th centuries) – Louvain-la-Neuve, 20 en 21 november 2020

Op 20 en 21 november vindt aan de Université catholique de Louvain een conferentie plaats over de uitwisseling van kennis, dieren en natuurlijke producten tussen het oosten en het westen van de twaalfde tot en met de zestiende eeuw. Het programma is (in pdf-bijlage) hieronder terug te vinden.

Call for contributions – Francophone Literature in the Low Countries (ca. 880 -1600) – A special issue of Queeste, Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries

Het tijdschrift Queeste zoekt bijdragen voor een speciaal nummer dat zal verschijnen in 2021. Het nummer zal zich richten op Franstalige middeleeuwse literatuur in de Lage Landen. Abstracts moeten verstuurd worden voor 30 april 2020. Meer details kan u in het bericht hieronder vinden en in het pdf-bestand in bijlage.

In 2015, we concluded the introduction of our special issue on Literature and Multilingualism in the Low Countries with a renewal of Queeste’s ‘commitment to the varied and multilingual culture of the Low Countries’. And indeed, in the five years since then, Queeste has continued to publish scholarly articles on the production and circulation of literature in Dutch, French, and Latin, on translation, and on multilingual text collections and reading culture in the Low Countries.

While the editors applaud this continuous attention to multilingualism and language contact, we also feel that Queeste often approaches these issues from a distinctly Dutch-language perspective. This poses the risk of downplaying the actual impact of the literature in French (and Latin) that was written, copied and disseminated in the Low Countries. Following up on the earlier issue on multilingualism, we therefore aim to publish a new special issue of Queeste devoted solely to current scholarship on medieval Francophone literature in the Low Countries, to appear in 2021.

Since Queeste actively seeks to deliver the diversity that is implied in the journal’s subtitle, this special issue should be seen as another step towards a more balanced and accurate representation of the region’s multilingual literary culture. We therefore hope that this collection of essays will mark the beginning of a steady supply of articles on the medieval francophone literature produced and received in the Low Countries.

We invite reflections on any aspect of the authoring, copying, and reception of French literary texts in the area covering modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Northern France. As we aim for a wide and diverse panorama, we welcome general overviews as well as case studies, written from a varied range of theoretical and methodological perspectives (literary theory, codicology, stylometry, etc.), with a diachronic, comparative or contextualizing approach, and discussing texts from a broad spectrum of genres (lyric, epic, theatre, but also religious, moral-didactic, scientific, and practical writing).

Contributors should by no means feel confined to the textual production in the principally francophone regions and social circles of the Low Countries, but are encouraged to (also) discuss examples of French literature in reception contexts and parts of the area that have not been typically associated with francophone culture.

Abstracts (300 words or less) should be sent to the editorial board of Queeste before 30 April 2020 (b.j.m.caers@hum.leidenuniv.nl), after which authors will be notified by 15 May. Contributions of ca. 8000 words (including notes and bibliography) should be delivered before 31 October 2020 and will be, as always, subject to double blind peer review. Contributors are requested to follow the journal’s stylesheet (https://queeste.verloren.nl/guidelines).
For any further questions, please contact the editors of this special issue directly:

* Alisa van de Haar (a.d.m.van.de.haar@hum.leidenuniv.nl) or
* Dirk Schoenaers (d.j.c.schoenaers@hum.leidenuniv.nl).

Queeste is a multilingual journal and accepts articles written in Dutch, English, French, and German. Find out more at: https://queeste.verloren.nl/

Free speech, religion and political culture in northern Europe, 1400-1750 (Edinburgh, 16-17 April 2020)

Organization: Alasdair Raffe (University of Edinburgh), Martine Veldhuizen (Utrecht University)

This workshop explores aspects of ‘freedom of speech’ in late medieval and early modern northern Europe.  Freedom of speech was by no means a fundamental right in the late middle ages and early modern period, and yet expressions of critical opinions towards power were always possible and often widespread.  They 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 Edinburgh workshop will analyse the practice of free speech, paying particular attention to the expression of controversial religious and political ideas.  Much recent scholarship has examined the circulation of news and information, the mobilisation and manipulation of political opinions and the media of public debate.  Other works have broadened our understanding of religious debates and dissent, especially in the two centuries after the Reformation.  Building on this research, speakers at the workshop will examine claims to freedom of religious and political speech.  Some contributors will discuss theoretical arguments in defence of free speech, others the media and linguistic character of ‘free’ utterances.  Papers will assess instances of free speech in historical and literary contexts, and trace the consequences of speaking up for an opinion.  We invite case studies that can help us to address large, pan-European questions regarding free speech.

The workshop will consider the following questions:

  • How did late-medieval and early modern Europeans think about and defend free speech?
  • Which media and forms of language were used to express religious and political ideas? What determined the choice of particular media and forms of language?
  • What kind of messages were spread? Were they subversive or did they legitimise power?
  • How was free speech received? What were the effects of free speech in the development of religious communities, political attitudes and subversive movements?
  • Can ‘European’ patterns be distinguished, or were the practices of free speech determined more by national, provincial and local institutions and norms?

We invite proposals from historians, literary and linguistic scholars.  We would particularly welcome contributions from advanced PhD students and postdoctoral scholars.  Papers should be twenty-five minutes in length and given in English.

Abstracts of 300 words, together with a one-page CV, should be sent to Alasdair Raffe (alasdair.raffe@ed.ac.uk) by Friday 6 December 2019.

“Ruimte en afstand in de Middeleeuwen”: 25ste Mediëvistendag (8 november 2019, Universiteit Antwerpen)

25ste Mediëvistendag

Vrijdag 8 november 2019

Universiteit Antwerpen

Departement Geschiedenis, “Het Brantyser”, Sint-Jacobsmarkt 13

De 25ste Mediëvistendag zal op vrijdag 8 november 2019 gehouden worden in Antwerpen met als thema: “Ruimte en afstand in de Middeleeuwen”. De dag zal bestaan uit een plenair gedeelte met key note voordrachten, gevolgd door verschillende projectpresentaties.

Voor de projectpresentaties (van 20 minuten) zijn we nog op zoek naar in Nederland en Vlaanderen werkzame promovendi (betaalde onderzoekers en buitenpromovendi) die in de beginfase van hun onderzoek zijn. Daarnaast is er ruimte voor de presentatie van postdoc-onderzoek of van grote koepelprojecten, hetzij in de vorm van posters, hetzij in de vorm van papers. Research Master studenten die deelnemen en een korte paper schrijven, krijgen daarvoor 1 ECTS.

Presentaties graag vóór 25 oktober aanmelden via het secretariaat van de Onderzoekschool: ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Inschrijven voor de Mediëvistendag kan via een e-mail aan het secretariaat van de Onderzoekschool, graag vóór 25 oktober: ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl, o.v.v. ‘Mediëvistendag 2019’. De kosten van deelname bedragen 10 euro. Verdere informatie hierover zal zo snel mogelijk verstrekt worden.

Het definitieve programma zal kort na 25 oktober bekend worden gemaakt. Nadere informatie is te verkrijgen bij het secretariaat van de Onderzoekschool (ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl).

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25th Medieval Studies Day

Friday 8 November 2019

University of Antwerpen

History Department, “Het Brantyser”, Sint-Jacobsmarkt 13

The 25th Medieval Studies Day will take place on Friday, November 8, 2019, at the University of Antwerp. This year’s theme will be: “Space and Distance in the Middle Ages”. The day will consist of a plenary session with key note lectures, followed by various project presentations

For the project presentations we are still looking for PhD students working in the Netherlands and Flanders (both paid PhD students and external doctoral students), who are at the start of their research projects. Post-docs or leaders of large research projects are also expressly invited to present their projects, either as posters or as papers. Research Master students who attend and write a short paper will be awarded with 1 ECTS.

Proposals for presentations have to be sent before 25 October to the administration of the Research School: ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl

Please, register for the day by sending an e-mail to ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl, preferably before October 25. There is an attendance fee of 10 euros, which will cover expenses for coffee/tea, lunch and drinks. More information  about this fee will follow as soon as possible.

The definitive programme will be announced  shortly after 25 October. Further information may be obtained from the administration of the Research School ozsmed@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

CfP ‘Objects of Devotion. Religion and its Instruments in Early Modern Europe’ (17-18 april 2020, University of Toronto)

Objects of Devotion. Religion and its Instruments in Early Modern Europe

How were religious ideas and practice realized through interaction with objects? How did the presence of sculptures, paintings, books, and church furniture—their visibility, tactility, and materiality—help form attitudes toward devotion, sacred history, and salvation? In other words, how did people think with things—both clerics and lay devotees? What was the complex role of sacrament houses, altarpieces, pulpits, jubés, and baptismal fonts in molding ideas about the central tenets of Christianity? How did statues of Christ and the saints make both present and problematic these issues—particularly when they involved performances: carried about the town, taken down from the cross and laid in the sepulcher, or lanced to emit spurts of blood? How did tombs help form ideas about the body, its mortality, and the hope of resurrection? How was the material of these objects comprehended—and what were the consequences of choosing sculpture over painting or selecting one stone over another? How were statues of Christ transformed when real hair was attached to their heads? How did lay, unoffical devotional practice differ from institutionalized forms of piety and how did they both influence each other? How did objects sustain both the status concerns and the often very precise religious beliefs of their patrons? Rather than verify these readings through early modern texts, we recognize both texts and objects as opaque cultural references that must be interpreted according to complex conventions and triangulated to offer compelling readings.

Historians of the late medieval and early modern period have created an antithesis between spiritual (inward) and physical (outward) devotion, branding the latter as superficial, ritualistic and mechanistic. More generally, from the first Protestant historians to Max Weber and his followers, the Reformation has come to be represented as the classic watershed between material, magical devotion and spiritual, rational belief. In a similar vein, art historians have opposed the notion of the medieval cult image, material and functional, to the early modern work of art, subject to aesthesis (Carolyn Walker Bynum, Hans Belting). Yet, does it make sense to distinguish between late medieval and early modern religious culture, given the fact that the definitions and boundaries of these periods are notoriously problematic and considerably overlap? To what degree have these differing traditions dictated separate approaches to these objects and their role in forming beliefs and practices?

We look for papers that draw from material culture studies, social history, art history, religious studies, and anthropology. And we envision a relatively small conference of about 18 speakers from a variety of disciplines. Talks will be limited to 20 minutes with equal time for discussion.

We are happy to cover hotel costs for 3 nights. Unfortunately we cannot reimburse travel expenses. If you are interested in this conference, please send us the following:

  • Name
  • Institutional Affiliation
  • Paper title (not more than 15 words)
  • Abstract (not more than 150 words)
  • Curriculum vitae of 2-3 pages
  • Brief explanation of the relevance of your paper to the theme of the conference

Please send your information and any questions to matt.kavaler@utoronto.ca and Annelaure.VanBruaene@UGent.be

Call for papers: International Meetings of the Middle Ages (28-29 November, Nájera)

Next Autumn, on 28-29th of November, the city of Nájera (La Rioja, Spain) will once again host the International Meetings of the Middle Ages, organized by the Medieval Research Group of the University of Cantabria.

Historians, PhD researchers and Graduate students are encouraged to submit abstracts for research presentations or posters on topics related to Law and Authority in the Medieval Atlantic city (and beyond).

Abstracts should be no more than 500 characters and should clearly state the purpose, thesis, methodology, and principal findings of the paper to be presented. Successful proposals will be published in 2020. All abstracts and a short CV should be submitted electronically to Jesús Solórzano and Jelle Haemers.

The deadline for submissions will be September 1st, 2019. More information about the topic of the conference and practical details can be found in the following file: Najera meetings call for papers 2019.

CfP “The Literature, Literary Culture and Historiography of the Middle Ages” (Paris, 4.-7. November 2019)

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.

CfP “Les imaginaires dans les villes du monde méditerranéen (XIIe-XVe siècle)”, San Gimignano (Siena), 17-21 juni 2019

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.

Working women in pre-industrial Europe. Perspectives on the gendering of urban labour markets (Leuven, 14-15 November 2019)

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)