Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Dear colleagues,

Please consider submitting an abstract for the upcoming graduate conference of the Italian Department at Columbia University, to be held on February 3-4th, 2017. 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Department of Italian 
GRADUATE CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
Great Incompletes: Italy’s Unfinished Endeavors
3-4 FEBRUARY 2017Keynote speaker: Professor Thomas Harrison (UCLA)
This conference will investigate the question of incompleteness in Italian cultural and social history through an array of theoretical perspectives and case studies. From the unfinished works of Dante to Puccini’s Turandot, from Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere to the grandi opere of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria, the list of “great incompletes” is as long as it is diverse. What do incomplete projects have in common? How does an unfinished film differ from an unfinished bridge or novel? How can a text be deemed complete? Are our expectations as readers, viewers and witnesses influenced because of this purported unfinished-ness?
The history of Italian art, philosophy and politics is also brimming with works that deploy incompleteness as a deliberate narrative device. Michelangelo’s poetics of non-finito and the aesthetic debate on the possibility/impossibility of reaching perfection in art, reappears in Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore. The openness of Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana challenges the limits of a literary genre, just as Antonioni’s inherently incomplete plots inform his spatial and temporal filmic aesthetics. Many have noticed a connection between unfinished infrastructure projects, clientelism, corruption, and organized crime: the works’ ability to remain perpetually “in progress” is precisely their point.
We welcome papers in English that explore the viability of incompleteness as a theoretical notion across media, its scope as a technique that may or may not solicit a specific hermeneutical strategy, and finally its implications as a political and philosophical concept.
Possible topics may include:
  • -  Unfinished works and their textual tradition
  • -  Infrastructural incompleteness and organized crime
  • -  A poetics of non-finito
  • -  Reaching perfection in art
  • -  Incompleteness across media
  • -  Incompleteness as a narrative device
  • -  Pastiche/Patchworks vs. Incompleteness
  • -  Hermeneutical strategies facing incompleteness
  • -  Incomplete plots/spaces/times
  • -  Incompleteness vs. Failure
    Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio (50-60 words) in English no later than December, 11th to: graditalian.columbia@gmail.com
    The conference organizers:
  • Carlo Arrigoni
  • Nassime Chida
  • Massimiliano Delfino
  • Matteo Pace
In 1967, during a period of intense student protests, the AAUP and four other groups issued a Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students. Many issues covered in the statement are as pertinent fifty years later as they were in 1967. The AAUP invites proposals for presentations focused on these issues for our 2017 Annual Conference, to be held June 14–18 in Washington, DC.
The issues include the following:
  • Freedom of access to higher education
  • Rights of students in the classroom
  • Student rights outside the classroom (for example, in forming student groups or participating in protests)
  • The right to be free from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, national origin, and sexual orientation
  • Evaluation of students
  • The roles of faculty advisers of student groups
  • Student-invited speakers
  • The intersection of institutional disciplinary authority and the law
  • Freedom of student press and other publications
  • Student participation in institutional government
  • Procedural standards in disciplinary proceedings
Presentations might also:
  • Explore student protest movements of the past
  • Analyze current student activism on race, student debt, gender, labor justice, or other issues
  • Comment on the joint statement itself
  • Discuss the rights of students to organize labor unions
  • Explore the possibilities for student activism opened up by digital tools
Presentation proposals on other topics of interest to a diverse, multidisciplinary higher education audience are welcome. We encourage proposals that raise questions, engage conference participants in discussion, and foster dialogue. Proposals will be accepted through December 13, 2016. See our website for complete submission details: https://www.aaup.org/CFP-2017
Activism and Art
Have student activists on your campus created posters, puppets, or other types of compelling protest art? We’d like to hear from you! Please send a description or photos along with contact information to gbradley@aaup.org.
Call For Papers:
Medieval Rites: Reading the Writing, Yale University, New Haven, CT
April 21-23, 2017
 
CFP Deadline: January 1, 2017
 
 
To study the history of the Christian liturgy is usually to study texts. Though some
texts survive even from the period of the early Church, it was mostly during the Middle Ages that thousands of texts—prayers, hymns, and lections—were compiled and organized into large and complex liturgical books. Some of these medieval liturgical books continued to be used by worshippers even into modern times, or served as modelsor anti-models for compilers of post-medieval liturgical books.
 
Moving beyond the notion that writing was simply a means of coordinating ritual
activity, or an alternative to oral transmission, Medieval Rites: Reading the Writing will explore the breadth of possible literate interactions with Christian liturgy during, before, and after the Middle Ages, in both Eastern and Western traditions.
 
Anyone interested in reading a 20-minute paper at the conference may send a 300-word abstract toismevents@yale.edu, by 1 January 2017.
 
Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by email no later than the end of January.
 
Conference organizers:
Henry Parkes (Yale Institute of Sacred Music)
Peter Jeffery (University of Notre Dame)
 

Monday, November 21, 2016

Sunday, November 20, 2016

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
Department of Italian 
GRADUATE CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
Great Incompletes: Italy’s Unfinished Endeavors
3-4 FEBRUARY 2017
Keynote speaker: Professor Thomas Harrison (UCLA)
This conference will investigate the question of incompleteness in Italian cultural and social history through an array of theoretical perspectives and case studies. From the unfinished works of Dante to Puccini’s Turandot, from Gramsci’s Quaderni del carcere to the grandi opere of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria, the list of “great incompletes” is as long as it is diverse. What do incomplete projects have in common? How does an unfinished film differ from an unfinished bridge or novel? How can a text be deemed complete? Are our expectations as readers, viewers and witnesses influenced because of this purported unfinished-ness?
The history of Italian art, philosophy and politics is also brimming with works that deploy incompleteness as a deliberate narrative device. Michelangelo’s poetics of non-finito and the aesthetic debate on the possibility/impossibility of reaching perfection in art, reappears in Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore. The openness of Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana challenges the limits of a literary genre, just as Antonioni’s inherently incomplete plots inform his spatial and temporal filmic aesthetics. Many have noticed a connection between unfinished infrastructure projects, clientelism, corruption, and organized crime: the works’ ability to remain perpetually “in progress” is precisely their point.
We welcome papers in English that explore the viability of incompleteness as a theoretical notion across media, its scope as a technique that may or may not solicit a specific hermeneutical strategy, and finally its implications as a political and philosophical concept.
Possible topics may include:
  • -  Unfinished works and their textual tradition
  • -  Infrastructural incompleteness and organized crime
  • -  A poetics of non-finito
  • -  Reaching perfection in art
  • -  Incompleteness across media
  • -  Incompleteness as a narrative device
  • -  Pastiche/Patchworks vs. Incompleteness
  • -  Hermeneutical strategies facing incompleteness
  • -  Incomplete plots/spaces/times
  • -  Incompleteness vs. Failure
    Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio (50-60 words) in English no later than November, 27th to: graditalian.columbia@gmail.com
    The conference organizers:
    Carlo Arrigoni 
  • Nassime Chida 
  • Massimiliano Delfino 
  • Matteo Pace 



Matteo Pace
Ph.D. Candidate - Teaching Fellow
Department of Italian
Columbia University

Sunday, November 13, 2016

CFP: Concealment and Revelation in the Art of the Middle Ages (Nicosia, 22-24 September 2017)

CFP Deadline:  30 April 2017

‘To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim’ – thus Oscar Wilde in his aphoristic Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). In the western intellectual tradition, art has repeatedly been conceived and understood as existing at the intersection of the antithetical notions of concealment and revelation – from the old unattributed adage that ‘it is true art to conceal art’ (ars est celare artem) to Robert Rauschenberg’s lapidary statement about the ability of a work of art to reveal something beyond itself (‘A light bulb in the dark cannot show itself without showing you something else too’, scribbled in pencil on the photo collage entitled Random Orderc. 1963). Veiled or unveiled, obscured or illuminated, opaque or transparent, works of art are often invested with meaning(s) and function(s) at the liminal moment of transition from the one state to the next; after all, to resort again to Wilde’s witty prose, ‘the commonest thing is delightful, if one only hides it’.

Recent scholarship on medieval art has brought such considerations to the fore, by tackling issues of screening, veiling / unveiling, temporal and performative transformations, the permeability of barriers and the movement of objects in space, among others. The visibility of sacred relics and their reliquaries, the metal revetments and textile curtains of miracle-working icons, the folding wings of northern European altarpieces, the parting womb of the Vierges ouvrantes or Schreinmadonnen and the porosity of choir screens East and West have all received fairly extensive treatment in monographic studies and specialist articles. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of these individual phenomena within a broader framework, encompassing both the religious and secular sphere, as well as several different religious traditions, has only seldom been attempted.

The present conference aspires to explore the role of the concept and the act of concealment and revelation in the arts of the Latin West, Byzantium, Islam and Judaism in the course of the Middle Ages (defined chronologically as c. 500-c. 1500). Subjects to be broached include, but are not limited to, the use of curtains or veils in screening objects or spaces; the function of permeable screens (in a variety of materials and media) in structuring accessibility, whether physical, visual, aural or spiritual; the performative aspect of concealing and revealing in all its civic and private manifestations, and the issues of emotional manipulation thereby raised; the role of gesture and spatial motion in the performance of concealment and revelation; the hierarchy of sacred and secular space as the outcome of its compartmentalisation; and the representation of these practices in the pictorial arts.

The conference is planned as a three-day event, to take place at the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, in 22-24 September 2017. Due to budgetary constraints, the speakers’ travel and accommodation expenses cannot be covered, but every effort will be made to secure conference rates at hotels near the conference venue. There is no registration fee for participation or attendance.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit electronically a title and a 300-word abstract (in either English or Greek) for consideration by 30 April 2017. Please send all materials and address all queries to the conference convenors, Michalis Olympios (olympios.michalis@ucy.ac.cy) and Maria Parani (mparani@ucy.ac.cy).

Friday, November 11, 2016

Global Digital Humanities Symposium at Michigan State University
March 16-17, 2017
Call for Proposals Deadline to submit a proposal: Friday, December 9, 11:59pm EST

Digital Humanities at Michigan State University is proud to continue its symposium series on Global DH into its second year. Digital humanities scholarship continues to be driven by work at the intersections of of a range of distinct disciplines and an ethical commitment to preserve and broaden access to cultural materials. The most engaged global DH scholarship, that which MSU champions, values digital tools that enhance the capacity of scholarly critique to reflect a broad range of literary, historical, new media, and cultural positions, and diverse ways of valuing cultural production and knowledge work. Particularly valuable are strategies in which the digital form expresses a critique of the digital content and the position of the researcher to their material.
With the growth of the digital humanities, particularly in under-resourced and underrepresented areas, a number of complex issues surface, including, among others, questions of ownership, cultural theft, virtual exploitation, digital rights, and the digital divide. We view the 2017 symposium as an opportunity to broaden the conversation about these issues. Scholarship that works across borders with foci on transnational partnerships and globally accessible data is especially welcome.
Michigan State University has been intentionally global for more than 60 years, with over 1,400 faculty involved in international research, teaching, and service. For the past 20 years, MSU has developed a strong research area in culturally engaged, global digital humanities. Matrix, a digital humanities and social science center at MSU, has done dozens of digital projects in West and Southern Africa that have focused on ethical and reciprocal relationships, and capacity building. WIDE has set best practices for doing community engaged, international, archival work with the Samaritan Collections, Archive 2.0. Today many scholars in the humanities at MSU are engaged in digital projects relating to global, indigenous, and/or underrepresented groups and topics.
This symposium, which will include a mixture of presentation types, welcomes 300-word proposals related to any of these issues, and particularly on the following themes and topics by Friday, December 9, 11:59pm EST:
  • Critical cultural studies and analytics
  • Cultural heritage in a range of contexts
  • How identity categories, and their intersections, shape digital humanities work
  • Global research dialogues and collaborations
  • Indigeneity - anywhere in the world - and the digital
  • Digital humanities, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism
  • Global digital pedagogies
  • Digital and global languages and literatures
  • The state of global digital humanities community
  • Digital humanities, the environment, and climate change
  • The practice of digital humanities across textual, historical, and media divides
  • Innovative and emergent technologies across institutions, languages, and economies
  • Open data and open access policies in a global, postcolonial context
  • Scholarly communication and knowledge production in a global context

Presentation Formats:
  • 3-5-minute lightning talks
  • 15-minute papers
  • 90-minute workshop proposals

Proposal form: https://goo.gl/forms/ClMqfXNSi9bAHURl1

Kristen Mapes
Digital Humanities Coordinator
College of Arts and Letters
Michigan State University

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Call for Chapter Proposals for The Edinburgh History of Reading

The Editors of the forthcoming Edinburgh History of Reading: A World Survey from Antiquity to the Present invite chapter proposals in English from both new and established scholars working on the global history, methodology and theory of reading and readerships in any period. The Edinburgh History of Reading will be a single-volume reference work of thirty to forty newly commissioned illustrated 8000-word chapters. Each will present innovative, previously unpublished work that connects with other disciplines. Chapters must showcase new research or scholarship, and should also ideally demonstrate theory or methodology in practice; we will not reprint frequently anthologised examples of established scholarship in the field.
Chapter proposals on any period and any national or regional context should be no more than 500 words, and may include (though are not confined to) the following broad topics:
  • Contexts for reading (national/regional/sociological/demographic)
  • Relative access to reading material/literacy (including prohibitions of any type)
  • Mediated reading (reading aloud; listening alone or in a group)
  • Changes in reading practices during any defined period and/or national/regional/sociological context)
  • Individual reading practices (where these can be used to point to larger patterns)
  • Reading while travelling
  • Reading in non-native languages, in translation, or in non-standard formats (e.g. Braille, musical notation)
  • The sociology of reading audiences
  • Quantitative studies of readers and reading
  • Group reading and discussion
  • Modes of reading (intensive/extensive/close/selective/scanning/guided/self-directed/silent/random)
  • Reading education and self-education
  • Reader response
  • Skeptical/credulous reading
  • Decoding, misreading, and contested readings
  • The history of literary criticism and reviewing
  • Reading in schools, universities, prisons, asylums, churches, camps, military units, and other institutions
  • Reading disabilities and bibliotherapy
  • Highbrow/lowbrow/middlebrow reading
  • Reading in marginalized communities
  • The “common reader”
  • The history of the historiography and sociology of reading
  •  
Please send proposals to both editors, Professor Mary Hammond (E.M.Hammond@soton.ac.uk) and Professor Jonathan Rose (jerose@drew.edu) to arrive no later than 31 January 2017. Proposals must include a CV and full author contact details including both postal and email addresses, indicate whether the chapter is likely to be accompanied by B&W or colour illustrations (and specify roughly how many) and be accompanied by an assurance that the work has not been previously published in any form, either electronically or in print.  Contributors will be notified of the outcome no later than 1 March 2017, and chapter drafts will be due on 1 December  2017, with a planned final publication date of late 2019.
  

Friday, November 4, 2016

Winchester: An Early Medieval Royal City. 10-12 July, 2017

A conference on the development of the city of Winchester, its cultural and political life, and its place in the early medieval world. Hosted by the Winchester, The Royal City project team in association with the University of Winchester.
We are looking for papers and paper sessions on aspects of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman city of Winchester from the sixth to the twelfth centuries. These may include the structures of power and Winchester's place in local/regional/national/global histories (eg the 'Second Viking Age' or the 'Anarchy'), Winchester's minsters, representations of the Anglo-Saxon city in (early) medieval literature, the role of the city in the development of language and literature, comparative work on other early medieval royal cities (e.g. Laon, Cordoba), urban topography, the Anglo-Saxon heritage of Winchester since the middle ages, and more... The aim of the conference is to be both multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary, to think about the position of a city within a wider community, the communities of the city itself, and the perceptions of the city.

Ryan Lavelle
Carolin Esser-Miles
University of Winchester


The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross is pleased to announce an upcoming symposium “Liturgical and Paraliturgical Hymnology in East and West” to be held a Hellenic College Holy Cross, 50 Goddard Avenue, Brookline, MA, on November 11, 2016, from 9:30am–1:30pm.
In this symposium, liturgical scholars and musical practitioners present papers discussing themes of poetry and song in the medieval and contemporary religious and musical traditions of Judaism and Christianity.
A full schedule of papers and abstracts are available at http://www.maryjahariscenter.org/events/hymnology-in-east-and-west.
The event is open to the public.
Contact: Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture
CALL FOR PAPERS

The deadline for abstracts for Vagantes 2017 (University of Notre Dame, 9-11 March 2017) has been extended through Thursday, 10 November. Submit 300 word max abstracts and CV toorganizers@vagantesconference.org. For more information, visit the website at http://vagantesconference.org/2017cfp

About Vagantes:

Since its founding in 2002, Vagantes has nurtured a lively community of junior scholars from across the disciplines. Every conference features approximately thirty papers on any aspect of medieval studies, allowing for exciting interdisciplinary conversation and the creation of new professional relationships between future colleagues. Vagantes travels to a new university every year, highlighting the unique resources of the host institution through keynote lectures, exhibitions, and special events. Vagantes doesn't charge a registration fee, and limited bursaries are available for students without travel funding from their universities.

Please direct any questions to organizers@vagantesconference.org.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

CFP: Antisemitism Studies

by Catherine Chatterley

Antisemitism Studies



Antisemitism Studies welcomes the submission of manuscripts in Medieval History that contribute to the scholarly study of antisemitism.

We will consider articles on specific antisemitic episodes, and their historical significance and impact on society, as well as more thematic and theoretical studies of the phenomenon. Authors may work from any disciplinary perspective and address any cultural, national, or religious context. We are particularly interested in articles that appeal to a broad international audience of scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

Antisemitism Studies adheres to a double–blind peer review process in which the identities of the author and reviewers remain confidential. Please note that the formal evaluation process on all submissions takes approximately two to three months, and the period between acceptance of an article and its publication is between nine months and one year.

Book reviews are generally solicited by the editor; however, suggestions for possible book reviews on our subject matter in Medieval History are welcome.

All submissions must adhere to our author guidelines.

Any questions about the journal or its submissions process may be directed to the editor: antisemitismstudies@icloud.com