CFP: Telliing Tales: Manuscripts, Books and the Making of Narrative

The biennial conference of the Early Book Society 2015

The next biennial conference of the Early Book Society will take place at the University of Oxford, from lunchtime on Thursday 2 July 2015 to early afternoon on Sunday 5 July 2015. Abstracts of 300 words or fewer for 20-minute presentations should be sent to the organizers by 30 November 2014 to the conference e-mail address. Abstracts should include your name, affiliation (where relevant) and email address. Computers and data-projectors will be available for all sessions; speakers would need to bring presentations on a memory stick / USB plug-in device. People who have other AV needs should specify this on their abstract.

The theme, which may be interpreted narrowly or broadly, invites special attention to the material records of different genres of narrative, such as verse, romance, chronicle, biography or history. It might consider the ways that manuscripts, printed books and other media serve a narrative function: whether page layouts were modified for chronicles and annals, whether collections of documents were compiled to tell stories, whether images in books are important components of storytelling, whether poems on monuments recount lives.

The topic also invites participants to tell different kinds of stories about early books. In particular, we may reflect on our storytelling as scholars. What is the role of biography – of the author, of the ‘celebrity’ scribe, of the idiosyncratic reader – in the study of early books? How sure can we be of cause and effect, of chronology and dating, of different kinds of paleographical, codicological and bibliographical evidence, in studying these books? Are history and narrative the best models for ‘book history’ or might studies of manuscript and print serve literary criticism, linguistics or philology in other ways?

Finally, papers which concern books in or around Oxford are also encouraged. But, in general, proposals for papers on any aspect of the history of manuscripts and printed books from 1350 to 1550, including the copying and circulation of models and exemplars, style, illustration, and/or the influence of readers and patrons, artists, scribes, printers, are welcome.

Accommodation and most meals will be available at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Most lectures will take place there too, but part of the conference will take place in the newly renovated Weston Building of the Bodleian Library, which reopens officially in March 2015. There will be ‘masterclasses’ with manuscripts on show, a visit to the exhibition and some optional visits, on a first-come-first-served basis, ‘behind the scenes’ to departments of the library. We are grateful to the Centre for the Study of the Book in the Bodleian for co-hosting the conference and sponsoring these events.

The website with details of registration and accommodation will go live later this winter and will be announced on the EBS listserv, Facebook, and also on the EBS website.

For those making travel plans, there are some preliminary points to bear in mind.

Depending on availability, accommodation might be in St Anne’s or other Colleges for extra nights before or after the conference. Oxford is about an hour from central London by rail. The closest international airport is London Heathrow, and from there and from London Gatwick there is a convenient coach service, The Airline, which can be booked in advance. Birmingham International Airport is also close and has direct train connections to Oxford every half an hour.

People planning to combine the conference with a research trip might be reminded that the Special Collections department at the Bodleian Library and the Colleges’ libraries tend to be busy with visitors in the summer months, so planning is advised, given that dozens of early book enthusiasts will be in town!

Also, Leeds International Medieval Congress begins the day after our conference, on Monday 6 July 2015. Travel from Oxford to Leeds on Sunday evenings takes three and a half hours by rail, direct or with one change, and if booked far enough in advance (up to three months in advance) can cost (at this year’s rates) as little as £45.

Winchester Seminars on Comparative Medieval Cultures 2014-2015

The Winchester Seminars on Comparative Medieval Cultures is organized and sponsored under the aegis of the Centre for Applied Archaeology and Heritage Management, Department of Archaeology, University of Winchester. This series seeks to foster a greater dialogue from a broad range of researchers working in the medieval period.

Please find below and attached the 2014-2015 schedule for the Winchester Seminars on Comparative Medieval Cultures. All sessions are free and open to the public. Feel free to pass along this schedule to your friends and colleagues.

2014-2015 Schedule

November 20, 2014; 6pm, Medecroft 15: Controlling the Past
Dr Eric Lacey (Winchester): The Vera Lex Historiae: Remembering and Recounting Edwin’s Conversion in Anglo-Saxon England
Dr Katherine Weikert (Winchester): Narration and Curation: Objects and Memory in the Central Middle Ages

December 4, 2014; 6pm, Medecroft 16: Towns and People
Dr Matt Tompkins (Leicester): The Material Possessions of Late Medieval Peasants: Felons’ Chattels in the Escheators’ Rolls
David Ashby (Winchester): A Collapsed Medieval Town of Modern Oxfordshire: Stanford in the Vale

February 19, 2015; 6pm, Medecroft 15: Space and the City
Prof. Catherine A.M. Clarke (Southampton): Walking in the Medieval City: Spatial Encounters in the Middle Ages and Today

March 26, 2014; 6pm, Medecroft 15: Gendering Spaces
Gabriela Cavalheiro (King’s College London): The Materialities of Intimacy: Men, Women and Space in Medieval Insular Romances
Dr Amanda Richardson (Chichester): A Woman’s Place? Space, Place and Gender in Late Medieval History and Historiography
*this session is organized in conjunction with the University’s Centre for Gender Studies

Special session: April 30, 2015; 10am-4pm, West Downs 2
University of Winchester Medieval Research Day
Staff and research students at the University of Winchester will be presenting short papers on current research and research-in-progress on medieval topics. Schedule tba.
*this session is organized in conjunction with the University’s Research & Engagement Week

Capstone lecture: April 30, 2015; 6pm, Stripe Lecture Room
Dr Paul Readman (The Redress of the Past Project, King’s College London): Performing the Medieval Past: Historical Pageantry in Twentieth-Century Britain

All lectures will take place in the Medecroft building at the King Alfred Campus of the University of Winchester except when noted. Please email Katherine Weikert for further information or to be added to our email list. Find us on Facebook. 

Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar (Queen Mary, University of London)

Please find below the 2014-15 programme of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar at Queen Mary, University of London.

For more information about the MHRS, see our website.

All sessions are held in ArtsOne 1.36, (Mile End Road, London E1 4NS), with refreshments served from 3pm in the gallery and talks beginning at 3:30pm.

Semester One

Friday 21st November 2014
Kati Ihnat, University of Bristol
'Mother of the Visigothic “Nation”: The Virgin Mary in Early Medieval Iberia'

Friday 12th December 2014
Francisco Bautista, Universidad de Salamanca/Cambridge University
‘Don Juan Manuel y la herencia literaria de Alfonso X’

Semester Two

Friday 23rd January 2015
Aengus Ward, University of Birmingham
‘Digital editing and the Estoria de Espanna: of xml and crowdsourcers’ Friday 27th February 2015
Sizen Yiacoup, University of Liverpool
‘Movement, Stasis and the Translation of Power in El Viaje de Turquía’

Friday 6th March 2015
Rosanna Cantavella, Universitat de València/Cambridge University
‘The concept of “worthy rhymes” within the Troubadour poetic tradition’

Friday 27th March 2015
Rachel Scott, QMUL
‘“Esenta y señora”: The Paradox of the Prostitute in Celestina’

CFP: Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, c. 900-1500

Keltologie, Philipps-Universität Marburg
8-10 April 2015

Keynote speakers: Prof. Helen Fulton (University of York), Prof. Dr. Erich Poppe (Philipps-Universität Marburg) and Dr Sif Rikhardsdottir (University of Iceland)

We are delighted to announce a symposium at Philipps-Universität Marburg on the role of cross-border literary borrowings in the construction of political, national, regional and cultural identities in the British Isles, Ireland and Iceland across the long period c. 900-1500. Proposals for papers are invited on processes of translation and adaptation across insular vernacular languages and/or Latin; discussions of broader cross-border thematic influences and correspondences; lines of transmission and textual distribution; the role of ecclesiastical and secular institutions in cross-border insular literary contact; perceptions of other insular peoples and constructions of otherness/ similitude; cross-border manuscript and book circulation; literary engagements and intersections with cross-border material and visual culture; linguistic borrowings across insular languages.

This is intended to foster discussion about contemporary methodologies in comparative literary studies by international scholars working in Celtic Studies, English and Norse. We hope that these conversations will make an important contribution to a growing field of research into the shape of pre-modern cultural and political mentalities.

Proposals are also welcomed from doctoral students and early career scholars, and we hope to have small subsidies available for accommodation costs.

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words by 2 January 2015 to Dr Victoria Flood.