Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350-1550 | cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Early Book Society will hold its twelfth biennial conference in collaboration with the York Manuscripts Conference, at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, from the 3rd to the 7th of July 2011. The theme of this year’s conference will be Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350-1550. This theme may be interpreted literally or figuratively: papers might consider unbound or rebound MSS and books, or MSS and books without bindings rolls, or marginalia beyond the boundaries of the text, orthe ways in which such boundaries might be created, or even MSS and books that travel from their place of origin. Secondary threads running through the conference will be related to Prof. Takamiya’s manuscripts or Nicholas Love the conference includes a visit to Mount Grace Priory. Please submit proposals for 20-minute papers relating to the conference themes either to Martha Driver or Linne Mooney by 1 December 2010. Proposals sent via email should be copied to bothLRM3@york.ac.uk and MDriver@pace.edu or by post to Martha

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via Out of Bounds: Mobility, Movement and Use of Manuscripts and Printed Books, 1350-1550 | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

UPDATE: UVA-Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXIV–Deadline extended 6/28; 9/16-18 | cfp.english.upenn.edu

The University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts. Abstracts for papers should be 300 or fewer words. Proposals for panels should include: a title of the panel; b names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c abstracts for papers to be presented 300 or fewer words. A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia.

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via UPDATE: UVA-Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXIV–Deadline extended 6/28; 9/16-18 | cfp.english.upenn.edu.

Silent and Ineffable: Functions of the Unsaid in Literature and the Humanities. Nov. 26-27th, 2010 | cfp.english.upenn.edu

“Love, and be silent,” Cordelia says in Act One. To some, Cordelia’s verbal intransigence toward Lear marks her as proud and stiff-necked, to others as truth incarnate. Without doubt, it is her silence that sets the drama into motion, and the question of whether it issues from a refusal or from an inability to speak constitutes an interpretive crux of Shakespeare’s play. Cordelia’s silence can be taken to exemplify countless other instances where the meaning, structure and intensity of a literary work hinge on the significance of that which remains unsaid. It is also closely related to a long line of thinking which regards silence as a particularly effective gesture at ultimate meanings, a line that is continued today in the ritualized silences by which we commemorate the victims of wars or disasters, but which also harks back to the various forms of monastic silence and early religious taboos. If silence can be a form of respect, it can also be the sign of a pathology, and in the contemporary field of trauma studies, the failure to speak is considered as crucial to the psychological mechanisms by which anguish propagates itself from one generation to the next. Modernist poetics assigned a central role to silence, as did 20th-century philosophy. Wittgenstein’s famous conclusion to the Tractatus—“Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”—is an example of silence functioning either as an index of the Ineffable or as a willfully disciplined limit to philosophic thinking for moral purposes. Heidegger’s silent “call of conscience” is another example of an ambiguous silence since he describes it as a “mode” of speech.

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via Silent and Ineffable: Functions of the Unsaid in Literature and the Humanities. Nov. 26-27th, 2010 | cfp.english.upenn.edu.