Following the Chaucer: Here and Now exhibition (2023-2024) at the Bodleian Library, this conference - sponsored by the Modernités Médiévales association and the New Chaucer Society - aims to continue the reflection on the medievalist dimension of Geoffrey Chaucer's work and its persistent influence in contemporary culture.

Please see the call for papers for further information.

Call For Contributions:
Conjuring Identity: Rethinking Magic in the Global Middle Ages

‘Zodiac man’ from Nicholas of Lynn’s astronomical calendar (c.1424).
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 370, fol. 27v.

Volume Editors: Dr. Kersti Francis (Boston University), Dr. Misho Ishikawa (New York University), and Dr. Anne Le (University of Notre Dame)

ACMRS Press, the publications division of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University, expresses strong interest in this proposed volume.


Editors’ Introduction and Abstract:
Taking a broad approach to “magic,” the proposed volume explores premodern identity
formation through narratives that test the very boundaries of the real. The collection
intervenes in the burgeoning fields of medieval magic, identity studies, and the global
Middle Ages by examining magic as a transcultural literary aesthetic closely linked to
identity production. Magic, widely conceived, also offers scholars and students of the
Middle Ages a methodology for reading against the Eurocentrism that has thus far
dominated the discussion of medieval magic. While the collection resists the adoption of
an abstracted, universal understanding of “magic,” the essays, when read together, assert a
common structure to the use of magic in premodern texts: magic signals an aesthetic
terrain that allows writers (and readers) to question not only nature and the natural world,
but the normative modes of being that have been interpolated as natural.
We are strongly committed to the global scope of this project, and we especially seek case
studies originating outside of Europe and the Mediterranean roughly between 500 CE to
1600 CE (e.g. Mesoamerican magical materiality, pre-colonial Ghanaian witchcraft, māyā
within and beyond the Vedas). While this period generally corresponds to “the European
Middle Ages,” this volume seeks to expand the geographies considered medieval through
carefully-contextualized global examples. This comparative mode allows us in turn to
question the very meaning of the “Middle Ages” itself.

Deadline:
Abstracts no longer than 300 words are due by September 20, 2024.
We welcome contributions from early career scholars and advanced graduate students.
Please send submissions to Dr. Francis (kerstif@bu.edu),
CCing Dr. Le (ale4@nd.edu) and Dr. Ishikawa (mi2501@nyu.edu)

9 November 2024
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA
Local organizing committee: Tina Montenegro and Eric Weiskott

This conference will provide an opportunity for medievalists working across a range of disciplines and geographic areas to join in conversation about premodern cultures of the book, boundarycrossing, and the law and other normative cultural expressions. Given this year’s conference location
at a Jesuit, Catholic university, and our keynote speakers, we particularly (but not exclusively) invite submissions focused on regions other than England, including the Middle East; language traditions other than English; and religious cultures.

We interpret “transgressions” broadly, including the notions of access, trespass, and desire. Accordingly, we welcome papers from medievalists in any discipline, concerned with any region or polity of Europe, Asia, or Africa. Papers might consider any of the following subtopics, or others:

               ● books whose form, content, or provenance is transgressive;
               ● textual cultures: books, authors, texts, audience expectations;
               ● the codification of law and law-books;
               ● transgression and sin in medieval philosophy and theology;
               ● etiquette, diplomacy, or cultural norms, or remediations
                   or contestations of these in written texts;
               ● stylistic norms (e.g., poetic and rhetorical precepts) and    
                   their transgressions in writing or the visual arts;
               ● modern theoretical or methodological approaches to medieval texts;
               ● vernacularity in literature, religion, or the visual arts as a mediation of cultural                               transgression;
               ● the transgressive potential of medieval studies in the present day;
               ● heterodoxy, heresy, or the function of the written word in regulating  the boundaries                     of orthodoxy.

We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers. Please send abstracts of 300 words to medieval2024@gmail.com by 15 June 2024.

Our keynote speakers are Dr. Ariane Bottex-Ferragne and Dr. Ahmed El Shamsy. Professor Bottex-Ferragne is Assistant Professor of French at New York University. Her presentation is provisionally entitled “Rules of Transgression in Medieval Poetry: Lessons from a Forgotten Bestseller.” Professor El Shamsy is Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago. His presentation is provisionally entitled “Authors and their Audiences in Medieval Arabic Book Culture.”

The 2024 conference marks the quinquagenary (fiftieth anniversary) of the founding of the NEMC. As the conference returns to Boston College for the first time since 1981, we hope to make it an especially festive occasion. With our theme of “Books and Transgressions” and with our two invited keynotes, we also propose to expand, geographically, disciplinarily, linguistically, and
conceptually, what “the Middle Ages” has signified to our colleagues and students. Boston College is located in Chestnut Hill, MA, and is easily accessible by car, plane, or bus. To learn more about the campus and its environs, see
https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/about/maps-and-directions/directions.html.

Boethius: The 1500 Year Memorial Conference

@ The Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

In 524, Boethius authored the Consolation of Philosophy on the eve of his unjust execution. Fifteen centuries later, Boethius remains a figure of inspiration and fascination in his own right, and as a profoundly influential figure through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. This memorial conference will consider that wide ranging legacy, hosted at the Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies held annually at St. Louis University in June. The International Boethius Society has had a presence at the SMRS since the symposium started and is pleased to organize this memorial to the life, works, and influence of a writer who shaped medieval and Renaissance thinkers so profoundly.

Abstracts of 250-300 words for proposed papers should be sent to the International Boethius Society’s liaison to the SMRS, Anthony G. Cirilla acirilla@cofo.edu, and uploaded to the SMRS Boethius 2024 submission portal by December 31^st, which opens here https://www.smrs-slu.org/ on November 1^st. Papers should be 15 to 20 minutes in length. All relevant disciplines are welcome. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Fresh examinations of any of Boethius's works, including his theological writings, work in the liberal arts, and The Consolation of Philosophy
• Consideration of the influence of those texts in medieval authors and genres, such as:
  • The early Middle Ages, such as Notker Labeo, Alcuin, and the Old English Boethius
  • The 12th century revival in writers such as Bernardus Silvestris, Adelard of Bath, and Alan de Lille
  • Chaucer and the Chaucerians or other Middle English literature
  • Arthuriana and medieval romance
  • Personification allegory, dream visions, and dialogues
• Boethius in Renaissance figures such as Thomas More, Edmund Spenser, or William Shakespeare
• Translation studies of any of the many translations of The Consolation of Philosophy
• Studies of Boethius as represented in art and music
• Boethius in later periods (Romantic, Victorian, Modern, etc.), especially as connected to medievalism

The International Boethius Society and the Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies welcome you to join us for this special memorial celebration of the last of the Romans and first of the scholastics! For more information about the Society, go to our blog: http://boethius.blogspot.com/