New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (10/1/09: 3/11-13/2010) | cfp.english.upenn.edu

*****CALL FOR PAPERS******

The seventeenth biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will take place March 11-13 2010 in Sarasota, Florida. The program committee invites one-page abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are welcome.

The conference will be held on the campus of New College of Florida, the honors college of the Florida state system. The college, located on Sarasota Bay, is adjacent to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, which will offer tours arranged for conference participants. Sarasota is noted for its beautiful public beaches, theater, art and music. The average temperatures in March are a pleasant high of 77F (25C) and a low of 57F (14C).

More information will be posted on the conference website as it becomes available, including plenary speakers, conference events, and area attractions:

http://faculty.ncf.edu/medievalstudies

The deadline for abstracts is October 1, 2009. Send inquiries and abstracts (email preferred, no attachments please) to:

nmyhill@ncf.edu

Nova Myhill

Associate Professor of English

Division of Humanities

New College of Florida

5800 Bay Shore Road

Sarasota FL 34243

via New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (10/1/09: 3/11-13/2010) | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

Call for Contributors: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture | cfp.english.upenn.edu

Papers on any aspect of friendship in the broadest sense during the Middle Ages or early modern period are welcomed for an upcoming volume published by Walter de Gruyter Press. E-mail an abstract by July 15 to:

msandidge@wsc.ma.edu

Marilyn Sandidge

Professor of English

Westfield State College

Westfield, MA 01086

via Call for Contributors: Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

New from Oxford Journals: Classical Receptions Journal | cfp.english.upenn.edu

CALL FOR PAPERS

Classical Receptions Journal

Edited by Professor Lorna Hardwick

LAUNCHING IN 2009!

Classical Receptions Journal covers all aspects of the reception of the texts and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome from antiquity to the present day. It aims to explore the relationships between transmission, interpretation, translation, transplantation, rewriting, redesigning and rethinking of Greek and Roman material in other contexts and cultures. It addresses the implications both for the receiving contexts and for the ancient, and compares different types of linguistic, textual and ideological interactions.

Classical Receptions Journal is edited by a prestigious, international team. Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3638/1 for details.

NOW INVITING SUBMISSIONS

The journal promotes cross-disciplinary exchange and debates at the interface between subjects. It therefore invites submissions from researchers in Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Comparative Literature, Film, Intellectual History, History of Scholarship, Political Science, Theatre Studies and Translation Studies as well as from those in Classics and Ancient History.

In addition, the editorial team welcomes proposals for ‘Special Editions’ on topics that involve cross-disciplinary collaborations.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Full guidelines for authors are available at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3638/2

To submit your paper online go to http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3581/3

DON’T MISS THE FIRST ISSUE!

The journal will publish its first issue in November 2009. This issue will be free online from the outset.

Visit http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3638/4 to sign up for email table of contents alerts so that you are notified as soon as the issue is online.

MORE INFORMATION

For further details visit the journal homepage at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/3638/4

via New from Oxford Journals: Classical Receptions Journal | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

GEMCS 2009 Call for Papers | cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies (GEMCS)

“Tracing Footprints”

October 22-25, 2009

Dallas, Texas

Deadline extended to July 14.

GEMCS was formed in 1993 to promote the study of literature, history, art history, and material culture from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries.

This year’s theme, “Tracing Footprints,” is intended to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. As always, GEMCS welcomes panels and proposals on all aspects of culture between 1450 and 1850.As always, GEMCS is interested in all aspects of early modern culture, and will welcome papers and panels on any topic relevant to the broadly defined concerns of the Group. The theme for this year’s conference is “Tracing Footprints,” and so we would like to encourage proposals that focus on the different valences and metaphorical possibilities of the footprint. We are especially concerned with exploring the many meanings of the footprint and expanding it as a paradigm for early modern representation. The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on ecosystems; the representational footprint may be a measure of a variety of demands on and by a text-social, historical, institutional, and textual. The “carbon footprint” questions the global space that a city, an automobile industry, or a single individual occupies; it thus complicates differences and demarcations between built and wild spaces, technology and climate, people and nature. How does tracing a text’s footprint challenge existing definitions and boundaries of the space it occupies? How do we trace the genealogies of texts? What sorts of competing histories are embedded in objects of representation?

Send one-page proposals for individual papers or fully constituted panels to rsudan@smu.edu by July 14, 2009. We encourage proposals for pre-constituted panels or workshops of no fewer than four and no more than five participants, and in order to allow the greatest possible amount of discussion, will ask that presenters in these panels limit their comments to ten minutes each.

One-page abstracts for individual papers must include presenter’s name, complete mailing address, institutional affiliation, phone number, and email address; proposals for panels must identify a designated panel chair and include one-paragraph abstracts for each presenter, as well as his or her name, complete mailing address, institutional affiliation, phone number, and email address. Panels of four or five participants will be given preference. Participants will be notified of their acceptance to the conference by email.

via GEMCS 2009 Call for Papers | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

Representation of the Cultural, Political and Natural World in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Nov 13-14, 2009 (due August 31) | cfp.english.upenn.edu

CFP: 38th Annual Medieval Studies Workshop, University of British Columbia

Vancouver, Canada, 13-14 November 2009

Writing the World: Representation of the Cultural, Political and Natural World in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

‘What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our birth and our death? How many square centimetres of Planet Earth will the soles of our feet have touched?’ (Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, p. 78).

‘… perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.’ (Georges Perec, Species of Space, p. 79).

Geography is, literally, the writing of the earth. Texts – literary, historical, visual, musical and others – construct the world and its inhabitants for their audiences, permitting vicarious experience of places and spaces both known and unknown. From the Hereford Map to Shakespeare’s “fair Verona”, such representations are never neutral, never uninflected by cultural discourse. Rather they articulate worlds awash in ideological discourse, resplendent in the wonder of difference. From the accounts of real-world travellers to imaginary fictions of distant lands, European literature, art and historical discourse engages with the perpetual production of people and places both near and far, quotidian and exotic.

Papers dealing with any aspect of ‘writing the world’ through text, image, music or any other form of art are solicited, especially those which engage with the continuities and differences in the manner in which the world is ‘written’ in the various periods and loci of Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Topics of interest might include, but are in no way limited to: depictions of / interactions with nature; geography; ethnography; travel literature; ecocriticism; animals; cultural difference; the other; cartography / mapping; etc.

Selected papers from the workshop will be collected as part of a thematic volume of proceedings to be published with a major North American University Press.

***

The Committee for Medieval Studies at the University of British Columbia solicits contributions for the 38th Annual UBC Medieval Workshop, to be held on Friday the 13th and Saturday 14th November 2009. The conference will be held in the verdant environs of Green College on the beautiful UBC campus in Vancouver, Canada.

Proposals should be sent to Robert Rouse (robert.rouse@ubc.ca) by August 31st, 2009.

via Representation of the Cultural, Political and Natural World in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Nov 13-14, 2009 (due August 31) | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

Essay Collection: Representations of Beauty and Violence | cfp.english.upenn.edu

We are seeking essays that theorize the relationship between and inter-implication of beauty and violence in literature, film and art. While inquiring into the discursive constructions and multi-layered cultural re-enactments of the “violence mythos” (Whitmer), we are interested in the mechanisms of conversion whereby the seductive powers of aestheticized violence allow a reader/viewer to move past a “front-line vocabulary of cruelty” (Ackley) and become captivated by the beauty of such representations. How, in other words, do aesthetics intersect with violence?

Questions we would like the contributors to consider include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How do we theorize the beautiful representation of violence, or, indeed, the violent representation of beauty?

• How do we define beauty in the context of representations of violence?

• What makes violence—or the representation of it—beautiful?

• Is violence itself beautiful? Is beauty a “value added” product of representation?

• Is representation violent? Is representation beautiful?

• Is the virtuoso “performance” of violence in representation beautiful in so far as excellence might be considered beautiful? What is the relationship between form and content, skillful representation and the subject matter of represented violence? How is approbation solicited or deflected and to what end?

• How does beautiful violence engage with pleasure, disgust, enlightenment?

• Is beautiful violence regulatory, cathartic, subversive?

• What are the politics of beautiful violence?

• What is the history of beautiful violence?

• How does beautiful violence engage with categories of difference (race, class, gender, sexuality) and artistic value (high versus low art)?

Essays should provide concrete readings of particular works or a range of works supported by a strong theoretical framework. Essays should not have been published anywhere else. Please include a brief biography with your abstract stating your affiliation, specializations and any relevant work in this area of inquiry.

Send queries or 500w abstracts by AUGUST 31, 2009 to

Lisa Dickson

Associate Professor, English Program

University of Northern British Columbia

dicksonl@unbc.ca (please note that the “l” is a lower-case “L,” not a numeral 1)

or

Maryna Romanets

Associate Professor, English Program

University of Northern British Columbia

romanets@unbc.ca

via Essay Collection: Representations of Beauty and Violence | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

Women Devotional Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries | cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Fall 2010 issue of ANQ: American Notes and Queries will treat the topic of Women Devotional Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Notes and short articles (5,000 words max.) are invited that address sources and allusions, that report newly discovered manuscript texts or offer print text emendations, or that analyze fluctuations in literary reputation. Guest editors: Kate Narveson (Luther College) and Anne Lake Prescott (Barnard College). Deadline for submission: May 15, 2010.

via Women Devotional Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries | cfp.english.upenn.edu.