Conferences

21 September 2023

Royalty has often been accompanied by spectacle, ritual, and excess. Monarchs have exploited public space to exert authority, express anger or encourage love, deploying high-profile and fantastic rituals or displays to communicate with their publics. Clothing, accessories, gifts, food, and other materials have been used to build friendships, negotiate social hierarchies, or to convey displeasure. Art, statuary, monuments and buildings, as well as the more ephemeral prints, ribbons, or household goods, have been used as propaganda and to further a performance of power. Art and material goods were often part of elaborate performances at court, on stage, in the press, or on the street, where spectacle was embodied and communicated as identity, power and privilege. Such activities were replete with emotion, as courtiers sought to build or negotiate relationships, encourage awe or affection, and promote appreciation of systems of monarchical power and divine right. This workshop explores royal spectacles and court performances in the medieval and early modern world and now calls for papers that speak to this theme.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
Displays of monarchical power or identity
Court performances and interactions
Fashion diplomacy and dress
Gift-giving, hospitality and generosity
Abundance and excess
Ephemeral displays
Print power and the monarch in the public sphere
The audiences for monarchical displays and court performances
Displays of emotion and the capacity of performance to promote feeling
Drama, theatre, and literary court performances
Medieval and Early Modern spectacles in the modern era
Gender, race, class as spectacle

Deadline for proposals 30 April 2023.
Please email proposals to courtlyperformances@gmail.com.

The Natural and the Unnatural in the Early Medieval World

The Eighteenth International Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association

28–29 September 2023

The University of Sydney and Online

In the largely rural and agrarian landscape of the medieval world, fauna and flora were highly regarded, as is evidenced by the importance of agriculture, the popularity of bestiaries, and the legacy of the elder Pliny’s Naturalis historia. The dynamics of the natural environment and social life has become an increasingly important topic in scholarship in recent years as we grapple with the impact of climate change.

For most people in the early Middle Ages, a supernatural world existed alongside the natural one and interacted with it. Indeed, the presence of the unnatural, whether in terms of bizarre creatures or disease and other environmental disasters, was taken as proof of the impact of the supernatural on the natural world and fed into philosophical and religious discourse.

Was nature cruel and heartless? Was it a manifestation of the divine? Was it there to be harnessed and exploited or was it wild and uncontrollable?

Potential themes include:

• Cosmology and astrology
• Climate and natural disasters
• Disease and medicines
• Technologies and superstitions
• Paganism and Christianity
• Biological cycles and human culture
• The natural and the supernatural
• Wilderness and domestication
• Life and the afterlife
• Daylight and darkness
• Monsters and totems
• Art and the imagination

Papers that focus on the dimensions of any or all of these worlds and their interplay in the early medieval period (c. 400 – 1100 CE), which either confirm or challenge this notion are invited to be presented at our annual conference to be held in September 2023 in hybrid mode.

Submissions may be in the form of individual papers of 20 minutes duration, themed panels of three 20‐minute papers, or Round Tables of up to six shorter papers (total of one hour). All sessions will include time for questions and general discussion.

Please send proposals (150–200 words per paper), along with author’s name, paper or panel title, and academic affiliation (if any) to conference@aema.net.au. Please also provide a note in your submission as to whether you intend on presenting in person or online.

Current AEMA graduate and ECR members (located outside of Sydney, Australia) are eligible to apply for a travel bursary up to the value of $300 AUD. For more details, or to apply for a bursary, please contact the AEMA committee at conference@aema.net.au.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 15 July 2023.

2023 Conference Convenors:

• Ms Erica Steiner (University of Sydney)
• Professor Daniel Anlezark (University of Sydney)
• The AEMA Committee

2024 ANZAMEMS Biennial Conference

Conference web site.

The conference theme is Legacies and Relevance: Exploring the Medieval & Early Modern World Beyond Europe.

The conference will be held in person in Ōtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand from 8-11 February 2024 and will be followed by a 2-day ANZAMEMS Seminar hosted by the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand from 13-14 February 2024.

The conference co-convenors are: Dr Madi Williams (University of Canterbury, Aotahi) and A/Prof Chris Jones (University of Canterbury, History).

The Call for Papers will be circulated in mid-2023.

ASCS 45 Call for Papers

The Organising Committee is pleased to release the Call for Papers for the ASCS (Australasian Society for Classical Studies) 45th Annual Meeting and Conference. This event will be hosted at Australian Catholic University’s St Patrick’s campus, located in the heart of Melbourne, in the newly built Saint Teresa of Kolkata Building. It will begin on Monday 12 February and conclude with the conference dinner in the evening of Thursday 15 February, 2024.

The conference will include a Higher Degree Research (postgraduate) student masterclass on Monday, the Trendall lecture by Dr Emma Cole (UQ) on Tuesday evening, a keynote lecture by Prof. dr. Hartmut Leppin (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) on Wednesday evening, followed by the conference dinner on Thursday evening. Attendees should look to arrive on Monday morning and depart on Friday.

There is a .docx form for those who wish to submit an individual proposal and a .docx form for those who wish to submit a panel proposal. Abstracts should be for papers of 18-20 minutes in length. Panels should comprise three papers. Each abstract should include a bibliography of between one and three items that you deem most relevant to your argument; do not list ancient sources.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 August, 2023. All completed forms should be emailed to abstracts@ascs.org.au. You will receive an email confirmation of receipt in due course; please enquire if you do not get one.

Given the size of the conference, it is expected that any delegate should deliver no more than one paper. However, this does not preclude a panel moderator (who does not deliver a paper in their panel) from delivering an individual paper elsewhere.

On the proposal forms, you should indicate whether you (or the members of your panel) intend to deliver a paper in person in Melbourne, or deliver online, or are unsure. This will help the convenors make appropriate plans. We would like to encourage presenters and attendees to attend the conference in-person, but we recognise that travelling to Melbourne is not a possibility for everyone. To that end, every panel will have hybrid options available, although we ask that you only select the online presentation mode if you must. The cost of enabling virtual papers and audience engagement means it is not possible to offer a discount to online presenters.

Abstracts will be vetted anonymously by teams of at least two qualified experts. These experts will determine whether the topic of the abstract meets ‘The aim of the Society’, which is ‘the advancement of the study of ancient Greece and Rome and related fields’ (which over the years has come include Egyptology, Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies, Archaeology, Art History, Museums & History of Collections, Reception Studies, etc.); and, whether the abstract is of a suitable academic quality. You might be contacted by an abstract vetting team with questions about your abstract or bibliography, and it is possible that you might be asked to resubmit as a condition of acceptance. In any case, it is hoped that all applicants will receive a formal conference acceptance or rejection between 15–30 September 2023.

Inquiries regarding the conference itself (but not abstracts) may be sent to: ASCS45@acu.edu.au.

Inquiries regarding the abstract proposal process may be sent to abstracts@ascs.org.au, and they will be handled by Assoc. Prof. K.O. Chong-Gossard (University of Melbourne, ASCS Vice President)

Melbourne is a global city and as such routinely holds major events. We encourage you to book your travel and accommodation early, since the conference immediately precedes Taylor Swift’s concert tour in Melbourne. Airfare and hotel prices might rise, and availability might shrink.

Dr Dawn LaValle Norman
Dr Michael Hanaghan
Assoc. Prof. Michael Champion
Dr Sarah Gador-Whyte
Dr Katherine Krauss

Leeds IMC 2024: Crisis

1-4 July 2024

Congress website and call for papers.

Paper proposal deadline: 31 August 2023
Session proposal deadline: 30 September 2023

The IMC provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome, while every year the IMC also chooses a special thematic focus. In 2024 this is ‘Crisis’.

2024 NCS Biennial Congress Call for Papers and Presentations

NCS Congress, Pasadena, California, 15-18 July 2024

Abstracts should be no longer than 200 words. You may submit to only one session, including the Poster Expo, and session organizers may not present work in their own session. You must be an NCS member to present at the conference. Please refer to the CFP, linked here, for more detailed information.

After submitting this form, please also email your abstract to your chosen session’s organizer(s). Your submission is not complete until the email has been received.

Submissions (form and abstracts) are due by 22 September 2023.