CFP: Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages

2nd - 4th May 2013

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages 2013, a three-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate and early career researchers hosted by The University of St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies (SAIMS). Now in its fifth year, the conference aims to create a lively and welcoming forum for speakers to present their research, make contacts, and participate in creative discussion on the topics of gender and transgression in the Middle Ages.

This year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Pauline Stafford, Emeritus Professor in Early Medieval History at the University of Liverpool, who will be speaking on reading gender in chronicles, with special reference to the old English vernacular. We invite postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers from departments of History, Modern and Mediaeval Languages, English, Art History, Theology and Divinity, in addition to scholars working in any other relevant subject area, to submit a paper of approximately 20 minutes that engage with the themes of gender and/or transgression in the mediaeval period. Possible topics for papers might include, but are by no means limited to gender and/or transgression in the fields of:

• Politics: kingship, queenship, the nobility, royal/noble household, royal favourites and mistresses, royal ritual, display and chivalry.

• Legal Studies: men, women and the law, court cases, law-breaking, marriage and divorce.

• Social and economic history: urban and rural communities, domestic household, motherhood and children, widows, working women, prostitution and crime.

• Religion: monastic communities, saints and saints' lives, mysticism and lay religion.

• Literature: chivalric texts, romances, poetry, vernacular works.

• Visual culture: depictions, architecture, art, material culture and patronage.

• Masculinity and femininity in the middle ages and their application in current historiography.

• Homosexuality, sexual deviancy and cross-dressing.

To mark the launch of St Andrews Centre for Mediaeval and Early Modern Law and Literature (CMEMLL) we shall be holding a session on medieval law and literature within the broader conference theme of gender and transgression and therefore particularly welcome papers within this field.

Those wishing to give a paper please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the conference convenors by Monday 11 February 2013. Your abstract should be attached to your email as a Microsoft Word or PDF file and include your name, home institution and what stage of your postgraduate or postdoctoral career you are currently at.

Registration for the conference will be £5 for students/unwaged, £10 for staff, which will cover tea, coffee and lunch on two days, and two wine receptions. All delegates are also warmly invited to the conference meal on Friday 3 May, the cost of which will be covered for speakers. Further details can be found at our website as they come available and we can be followed on Twitter.

CFP: The Middle Ages in the Modern World

University of St Andrews, UK
25-28 June, 2013

Preliminary Call for Papers

A multidisciplinary conference on the uses and abuses of the Middle Ages from the Renaissance to the 21st century

Provisional Keynotes

Carolyn Dinshaw (New York University): The Green Man and the Modern World
Patrick Geary (Princeton): European ethnicity: Does Europe have too much past?
Seamus Heaney (Nobel Prize-winning Poet): Translating medieval poetry
Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia): The politics of medievalism
Felicitas Hoppe (Author and Translator): Adapting medieval romance
Terry Jones (Author and Broadcaster): Columbus, America and the flat earth

Medievalism – the reception and adaptation of the politics, history, art and literature of the Middle Ages – has burgeoned over the past decade, and is now coming of age as a subject of serious academic enquiry. This conference aims to take stock and develop directions for the future. We hope to address questions such as:

- Why and how do the Middle Ages continue to shape the world we inhabit?
- Did the Middle Ages ever end?
- Did the Middle Ages ever happen?
- Is there a difference between medievalism and medieval studies?
- Does the medieval past hold the key to understanding modern nations?
- What does “medieval” mean to non-medievalists?
- How has medievalism developed over the past 600 years?
Medievalists and modernists in all areas of the sciences and humanities, librarians, artists, curators are invited to submit proposals for papers, panels, public talks, exhibits, posters, concerts etc. The conference will be held during the climactic period of the University of St Andrews’s 600th anniversary celebrations.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

- the reception of the Middle Ages in literature, art, architecture, music, film, politics, economics, theology, popular culture, universities, sciences;
- periodization and the invention of the Middle Ages;
- modern misconceptions of the Middle Ages;
- the politicization of the Middle Ages and neo-medievalism;
- twenty-first century medievalisms;
- revivalism and re-enactment;
- medievalism, science fiction, fantasy and cyberspace;
- translating medieval texts;
- the legacy and influence of the University of St Andrews and other medieval institutions
- a special celebratory 600th anniversary session on the reception and representation of St Andrew himself.

Early bird proposals are welcome now to the conference convenors to assist planning, anytime before 31 August 2012.

Organisers: Dr Chris Jones, School of English and Dr Bettina Bildhauer, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews.