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Appel à contribution – International Congress of Medieval Studies, Leeds (2-5 July 2018)

Call for papers

International Congress of Medieval Studies, Leeds (2-5 July 2018)

(Deadline 8 September 2017)

We invite scholars at all career stages to submit proposals for twenty-minute papers for special sessions at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Leeds (2-5 July 2018) connected with the main topics of “Moving Byzantium” Project, with a particular focus on aspects of geographical, social and cultural mobility within and beyond the Byzantine Empire.

Please send paper proposals (300 words max.), in English, accompanied by a short CV including affiliation, career stage and research interests, by 8 September 2017 to Ms. Paraskevi Sykopetritou, Project Coordinator: paraskevi.sykopetritou@univie.ac.at.

Papers will be selected by 15 September 2017 through an anonymous review process by the Moving Byzantium Team, headed by Professor Claudia Rapp.

Your abstract will be evaluated based on: 1) relevance to the topic (« geographical, social and cultural mobility »), 2) new material provided, 3) novel interpretations, and 4) innovative methods used.

Successful candidates (for whom we can offer reimbursement of the registration fee) must confirm their participation by 22 September 2017.

Further information about the Call for Papers can be found here and about the Moving Byzantium Project at http://rapp.univie.ac.at/

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Appel à contribution – Presbyters in the Late Antique West (International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo)

Behind the bishop’s back

Presbyters, deacons, and the lower clergy in Late Antiquity

At the forthcoming International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (10-13 May 2018) the Presbyters in the Late Antique West project is organising a session on the role of the lower and middle clergy in the ecclesiastical and social life of the late antique West. In spite of the continuous development of studies on the religious history of Late Antiquity, the research on the development and function of clergy seems surprisingly underdeveloped and the scholarly interest in this group has been hitherto focused mostly on bishops (Rapp 2005). This, of course, is understandable. The impact of bishops on ecclesiastical politics, doctrine, and Christian literature was more important than that of the lower echelons of the clergy. Moreover, bishops are much better represented in the evidence. But by the end of the 7th century in several parts of Christendom, the bishop had become a rather distant figure and most people could have been in day-to-day contact only with presbyters, deacons, and lower clerics, who were the rank and file of the Church hierarchy. A trail of research on these people has been already blazed by scholars focusing on specific regions of the Christian world (Wipszycka 1972 and 1996, Rebillard/Sotinel 1998, Godding 2001, Hübner 2005, Patzold/van Rhijn 2016). A number of questions, however, remain unanswered or even unasked. Thus far, we can say very little with a sufficient degree of certainty on the position of clerics in the local community, their social background, property and sources of income, their lodgings, professional (and non-ecclesiastical) activities, the connections between them and the rest of society and the barriers which set them apart from other people. Even their functions in liturgy remain obscure. The estimations of their number are largely intuitive, and their role is often judged on the basis of well-known, but fairly untypical examples.

This session will be sponsored by the Presbyters in the Late Antique West project, based at the University of Warsaw (https://projectpresbyters.wordpress.com). It will seek to answer questions concerning the role and activity of clerics in four areas: ecclesiastical, social, economic, and in the field of mentality. We welcome papers dealing with any of the aspects named above in a broad geographical perspective covering all the regions of late antique Christendom in the period until the year 700.

Those interested in presenting paper at this session are requested to send title and short abstract (100 words) to Robert Wiśniewski (r.wisniewski@uw.edu.pl) before 15 September. Please note that the project, sadly, cannot cover conference fee and travel expenses.

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Appel à contribution – Remembering and forgetting saints in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (IMC, Leeds, 2-5 July 2018)

Call for papers

Remembering and forgetting saints in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (IMC, Leeds, 2-5 July 2018)

 

The Cult of Saints is a major ERC-funded research project, which is investigating the origins and early development of the cult of saints in all the cultural zones of ancient Christianity. The forthcoming International Medieval Congress in Leeds (2-5 July 2018) has ‘Memory’ as its special thematic strand. The Project will therefore be running a series of sessions on how saints were remembered in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. As specific topics for these sessions, we have chosen: ‘Adapting Memory’, on how the hagiography of some saints evolved in response to changing circumstances and needs; ‘Annual Remembrance’, focused on the regular annual cycle of remembering the saints, as documented in texts such as Martyrologies; and, finally, ‘Forgetting’, on saints who once attracted cult, but then slipped quietly into oblivion. Those interested in presenting papers at these sessions, particularly if focused on the period before c. AD 1000, are requested to send a short abstract (100 words) to Robert Wiśniewski (r.wisniewski@uw.edu.pl) and Bryan Ward-Perkins (bryan.ward-perkins@history.ox.ac.uk) by 15 September. Please note that the project, sadly, cannot cover conference fee and travel expenses.

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Appel à contribution – ‘Between Lust and Chastity’, Buenos Aires, 28-29 August 2017

SECOND BYZANTINE COLLOQUIUM OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BUENOS AIRES

  “ Between Lust and Chastity: the Byzantines on Love and Sex”

 

Buenos Aires

28–29 August 2017

(see attachment or www.arts.kuleuven.be/byzantium)

 

Rivers of ink have flown since A. Kazhdan’s seminal contribution, “Byzantine Hagiography and Sex in the Fifth to Twelfth Century” (1990), including V. Burrus’ The Sex Lives of Saints (2004). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge no study to date covers in a comprehensive way divine and human love, the codification of the relation between sexes, the interaction between an avowed morality and the real practice of sexuality. This colloquium aims to put together a number of works tackling these and similar issues

 

A historical, anthropological or sociological perspective still has a fair job to do in this area. The UBA research team, with its focus on narratology, will pay special attention to love as a dynamic principle in Byzantine storytelling, either hagiographical, historical, or of other kind. Indeed, the centrality of love, which can take myriad forms (as a topos, as a target towards which a given plot aims, as a powerful tool towards meaningful characterization, as a social expectation horizon, etc.) should be evaluated in the framework of the evolution of narrative forms. We believe that a dynamic analysis of erotic motifs can be so productive for diachronic narrativity as the spatiality, temporality, or the studies of narrators and narratees.

 

At the same time, any other point of view is welcome: from a presentation on the Song of Songs, to a study of Byzantine marriage; from the love poetry in the Anthology to the apparent desacralization of erotism studied by H.-G. Beck in his Byzantinisches Erotikon; from the ever-lasting reading of the Greek novels to the erotic connotations – or not – of virginity and mystical experience. More metaphorical subjects such as the “love of learning” are also welcome.

 

Please send your abstract, no later than May 31st, 2017, to Tomas.Fernandez@conicet.gov.ar, pablo.a.cavallero@gmail.com. Any query or comment will also be more than welcome.

Affiche ici.

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Call for papers – Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud

Call for papers

Society for Biblical Literature International Meeting/ European Association of Biblical Studies (ISBL/EABS), Berlin, 7-11 August 2017

Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud (EABS)

Final Submission Date for Proposals: 1 February 2017.

Call For Papers: (For the complete text of the 2017 CfP, see https://eabs.net/site/medicine-in-bible-and-talmud/.)

Papers are invited on the comparative theme “Literary and discursive framing and concepts of (medical) knowledge in (Late) Antiquity”, from biblical and apocryphal texts, into later Jewish, Rabbinic-Talmudic traditions and beyond. The organizers explicitly welcome papers by scholars working on these questions as in neighboring or adjacent traditions (ancient Babylonia or Egypt; Graeco-Roman culture(s); Iranian traditions, early Christianity; Syriac traditions; early Islam etc.). Recent studies into ancient scientific traditions have emphasized the craft and artifice of those texts. On the one hand, these works can be characterized by a rather astonishing degree of literary expertise, discursive versatility and rhetorical sophistication. Ancient scientific authors were well versed not only in their very field of expertise but deployed compositional techniques from their respective cultural milieu. On the other hand, one notices also the complex framing of scientific knowledge in texts whose primary focus was religious, poetic, historiographic, or literary. Based on this, we welcome presentations on the representation and embedding of medical (and other) knowledge in particular texts and contexts. Papers may address the special design of such knowledge discourses. How does the use of rhetoric strategies, literary structures, or genres in `scientific texts’ affect the ideas conveyed? Could a specific hermeneutic (Listenwissenschaft/ encyclopaedism/ linguocentrism) not only serve as a ‘container’ but also as a method for knowledge acquisition? One might ask further: who constructs this discourse for whom, and with which (implicit/explicit) intention? How can the adoption of certain textual strategies and compositional techniques be seen as a vital venue for (structural/discursive) knowledge transfer, rather than the actual content of the passage?

See more at: https://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/Congresses_CallForPaperDetails.aspx?MeetingId=30&VolunteerUnitId=720#sthash.ak1PmwrG.dpuf

Program Unit Chairs:

Markham Geller (mark.geller@fu-berlin.de)
Lennart Lehmhaus (lennart.lehmhaus@fu-berlin.de)

Propose a Paper for this Program Unit

If you are a SBL member, you must login before you can propose a paper for this or any other session. Please login by entering your SBL member number on the left in the Login box. If you are a member of the European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS), but not of SBL, please click here to propose a paper.

For all other persons wanting to propose a paper, you must communicate directly with the chair of the program unit to which you want to propose. Chairs have the responsibility to make waiver requests, and their email addresses are available above. SBL provides membership and meeting registration waivers only for scholars who are outside the disciplines covered by the SBL program, specifically most aspects of archaeological, biblical, religious, and theological studies.

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