Conferences Elsewhere

Conferences Outside of Cambridge

The University of Pennsylvania has a very useful website for Calls for Papers, which lists conference and journal requests for papers on English literature by subject and period. The Medieval section has a good selection of conferences and journals around the world.

If you would like to notify us of a conference that will take place outside of Cambridge, please contact Ruth Ahnert (rrr26@cam.ac.uk), who is responsible for our Conference pages. For information regarding conferences at Cambridge, please see our Cambridge Conferences page.

last updated - 23 April 2008

Calls for Papers, by Date

Deadline	Title	Email
20 May 2008	MEDIEVAL SKIN: An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany	katie.walter@rub.de

Conferences - Latest Posted

Medieval Skin: An interdisciplinary conference
to be held at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, 4 August 2008

‘This troubly liif hath al to longe endurid,
Not haue I wist hou in my skyn to tourne’

Thomas Hoccleve, My Compleinte

Skin is a multifarious image in medieval culture: the literal surface for inscribing texts and illuminating images, human skin (and Christ’s in particular) also becomes a ‘text’ to be read; wounds in the skin bespeak the vulnerability of bodily boundaries and become points of entry (sacred, mundane, and profane) in which bodies and selves mingle and blur. So too is skin implicated in medieval thinking about the conditions of being human and the production of subjects and selves, as Hoccleve’s image of turning in his skin suggests. Recent scholarship has begun to address these (and other) uses and representations of skin in medieval contexts in stimulating ways; this conference seeks to bring together current scholarship from across the disciplines (history, literary studies, art history, the history of medicine, etc) to invite new readings of and reflections upon skin.

We welcome proposals for papers (in English) that take up a wide variety of responses and methodologies, but proposals may like to consider any of the following themes:

- Manuscript production, parchment-making, and material culture
- Medicine, surgery, and barber-surgery (including anatomy and dissection)
- The sense of touch (and the experiences of pleasure/pain)
- Religious and literary images
- Legal and punitive contexts (e.g. branding, flaying, torture)
- Art historical representations
- Animal skin
- Aesthetics and cosmetics
- Clothing
- Race and skin-colour
- Modern theories of skin

Abstracts (300 words) for proposed papers (20 mins) should be submitted to Dr Katie Walter (katie.walter@rub.de) by 31st October 2008. Queries regarding the conference may also be addressed to Katie Walter.

Mapping the Medieval Anchorhold: Dialogue between East and West, 15-17 September 2008
The 3rd International Conference for the International Anchoritic Society at Hiroshima Shudo University, Hiroshima, Japan

This conference seeks to develop the informal links already established between international scholars working on the subject of medieval enclosure - and anchoritic religious enclosure in particular. More specifically, it aims to strengthen collaboration between east and west in this area by examining the phenomenon of medieval traditions of solitary religious enclosure more widely and to identify both contrasts and comparisons between expressions of religious solitary enclosure in a range of different geographical regions and religious contexts.

To see the programme, and for details of how to register, go to http://comm.shudo-u.ac.jp/~ias3/Welcome.html

Being Human: Postgraduate Conference in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 4 August 2008, Durham University

Durham University’s Medieval and Renaissance Postgraduate Discussion Group will be hosting a postgraduate conference on 4th August 2008, on the theme of ‘Being Human’ in the medieval and renaissance periods. The aim of the conference is to explore aspects of human experience and the human condition from a strongly interdisciplinary perspective, and we welcome contributions from any branch of medieval and renaissance studies. The keynote speaker will be Helen Cooper, Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Possible topics for papers might include: the physical body; birth and death; spirit and flesh; humanity created, fallen, redeemed and restored; humanity and divinity; mind and consciousness; masculinity, femininity and sexuality; magic; superhumanity and subhumanity; madness, illness and disfigurement; real people and lived experience; fashioning ‘the self’; man’s place in the world and woman’s place in the world.

The conference will be held in Bishop Cosin’s Library on Palace Green, a magnificent location between Durham Cathedral and Castle. Due to generous funding from the CMRS in Durham, there will be no conference fee.

Papers should last no more than twenty minutes.

Please send abstracts of approximately 250 words to laura.jose@durham.ac.uk by 20th May 2008.

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