Announcements
Job Opportunity: Professor of English Literature, Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy
Following the University's acquisition of the Cardiff Rare Books Collection,
the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University
invites applications for a Professorship in English Literature, tenable from
1st September 2012, or as soon as possible thereafter.
The successful candidate will be a leading expert in the History of the Book and Material Culture and in Digital Humanities, with an international portfolio of research publications in English Literature. You will be expected to make a substantial contribution to the School's Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research by pioneering the development of initiatives relating to the Rare Books Collection (http://tinyurl.com/cardiffrarebooks).
English Literature was rated 5* in the 2001 RAE exercise and 7th nationally in terms of 'Research Power' in the 2008 exercise. The School is one of the largest schools in Cardiff University and enjoys an excellent reputation for both specialist and interdisciplinary research in Wales's only Russell Group university.
Salary for the post will be a point on the Cardiff professorial scale.
For informal enquiries regarding this post, or to find out more about the Rare Books Collection, please contact the Head of School, Professor Martin A. Kayman on +44 (0)29 2087 6049/KaymanM@cardiff.ac.uk or the Director of the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Dr Julia Thomas on +44 (0)29 2087 6491/ThomasJ1@cardiff.ac.uk
To work for an employer that values and promotes equality of opportunity,
visit www.cardiff.ac.uk/jobs
Closing date: 5.00pm on Friday 24th February 2012.
CFP: Writing Europe before 1450: A Colloquium After the success of the Writing England Conference in 2010, Writing Europe: A Colloquium aims to draw on a range of approaches and perspectives to exchange ideas about manuscript studies, material culture, multilingualism in texts and books, book history, readers, audience and scribes across the medieval period and beyond.
Plenary speakers: We welcome proposals from scholars working on writers, book production and use, and responses to texts in any language up to 1450. Abstracts (300 words or less) for papers (20 minutes) should be submitted on-line using the form provided at the conference web site for additional information. To encourage participation from a range of individuals and institutions, a limited number of bursaries will be available to assist in covering travel expenses for participants with limited institutional support.
Places are limited to allow us to subsidise costs, including registration, accommodation and meals. Please send your abstract by 31 January 2012. For further information please contact one of the organisers at the e-mail below.
Conference web site: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/news/conferences/writing-europe
Writing Europe before 1450 is a collaboration between the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen and the School of English at the University of Leicester, and is generously subsidised by the Centre for Medieval Studies and by the School of English.
Late Medieval English Scribes website launched Late Medieval English Scribes is an online catalogue of all scribal hands (identified or unidentified) which appear in the manuscripts of the English writings of five major Middle English authors: Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Trevisa, William Langland and Thomas Hoccleve.
Harlaxton Medieval Studies Index now available The newly-published index volume which runs to an impressive 841 pages Now available from:
Shaun Tyas Publishing T: + 44 (0)1775 821 542 The cost is £35.00 (post free for UK orders) Thirty-Eighth Annual Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies Registration, accommodations and program information: http://libraries.slu.edu/special/vfl/conference/index.html; for inquiries, contact Barbara Channell: tel: (314) 977–3090; fax: (314) 977–3108; email: channellbj@slu.edu.
29th Annual Illinois Medieval Association Conference:
Re-Making the Classical:
Appropriation and Transformation From Anglo-Saxon poetic views of Roman ruins to Italian artists’ classically-inspired subjects, the Middle Ages regularly recycled both textual and physical elements of the ancient world. But the ruins were supposed to be those of giants, the classical image might be infused with Gothic perspective, and heroes such as Alexander the Great used armor and equipment familiar to medieval writers and illustrators. When the “classical heritage” undergoes such changes, how classical is it, and what are its real effects on medieval Europe?
Proposals for individual papers and for complete sessions are welcome. Sessions will typically be scheduled for 90 minutes, with 20 minutes for each of three papers plus time for discussion. Proposals should include a short abstract (250 words or so) of the proposed paper(s) and/or complete session as well as contact information for the individual submitting the proposal.
Please submit proposals by October 15, 2011.
Nicole Clifton, nclifton@niu.edu or
Northern Illinois University
Attn: Nicole Clifton
Department of English
De Kalb, IL 60115
Selected essays will be published in Essays in Medieval Studies. For more information on EMS, go to http://www.illinoismedieval.org/EMS/.
NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers:
John N. King of The Ohio State University and Mark Rankin of James Madison University will direct a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers on the manufacture and dissemination of printed books and the nature of reading during the era of the Tudor monarchs (1485-1603). In particular, they plan to pose the governing question of whether the advent of printing was a necessary precondition for the emergence of new reading practices associated with the Renaissance and Reformation. Participants will consider ways in which readers responded to elements such as book layout, typography, illustration, and paratext (e.g., prefaces, glosses, and commentaries). Employing key methods of the history of the book and the history of reading, this investigation will consider how the physical nature of books affected ways in which readers understood and assimilated their intellectual contents. This program is geared to meet the needs of teacher-scholars interested in the literary, political, or cultural history of the English Renaissance and/or Reformation, the history of the book, the history of reading, art history, women’s studies, religious studies, bibliography, print culture, library science (including rare book librarians), mass communication, literacy studies, and more. This seminar will meet from 18 June until 20 July 2012. During the first week of this program, we shall visit 1) Antwerp, Belgium, in order to draw on resources including the Plantin-Moretus Museum (the world’s only surviving Renaissance printing and publishing house) and 2) London, England, in order to attend a rare-book workshop and consider treasures at the British Library. During four ensuing weeks at Oxford, participants will reside at St. Edmund Hall as they draw on the rare book and manuscript holdings of the Bodleian Library and other institutions.
Those eligible to apply include citizens of USA who are engaged in teaching at the college or university level, graduate students, and independent scholars who have received the terminal degree in their field (usually the Ph.D.). In addition, non-US citizens who have taught and lived in the USA for at least three years prior to March 2012 are eligible to apply. NEH will provide participants with a stipend of $3,900.
Full details and application information are available at http://www.jmu.edu/english/Tudor_Books_and_Readers. For further information, please contact Mark Rankin (rankinmc@jmu.edu). The application deadline is March 1, 2012. New Blog from St Andrews: Echoes from the Vault Echoes from the Vault is the official blog of the Rare Books Collection of the University of St Andrews. Here you can find posts about unique or exciting finds amongst the vaults in our day-to-day work, bringing to light voices that have remained quiet for many years. This blog will also feature news and events happening within the Special Collections Department and the University Library.
The Rare Books Collection of the University of St Andrews is estimated at over 200,000 volumes, and almost half of these have not been catalogued online, with only a portion of it having been recorded in the old Page Catalogue and reported to the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) and other bibliographies. Most of the unique items are not completely unknown to previous and existing Special Collections staff, they have just lain dormant for centuries. It is our hope that we can reawaken the potential of these books as research and educational resources by getting them in the hands of students, staff and researchers.
As part of its launch, Echoes from the Vault is showcasing bookbindings in St Andrews' collection with a special feature "52 Weeks of Fantastic Bindings," adding photos and discussion of one new fantastic binding each week. Follow the blog here: http://standrewsrarebooks.wordpress.com/.
Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (OSTMAR) For more information or to view a sample edition, go to opuscula.usask.ca or write Frank Klaassen, General Editor at editor@opuscula.usask.ca.
OSTMAR is an on-line and open-access journal published by Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies at the University of Saskatchewan under a creative commons license. All submissions are subject to a double-blind peer review and must be accompanied by readable digital facsimiles of the original documents.
Announcing a new series from Ashgate Publishing Company— Proposals should take the form of either 1) a preliminary letter of inquiry, briefly describing the project; or 2) a formal prospectus including: abstract, brief statement of your critical methodology, table of contents, sample chapter, estimate of length, estimate of the number and type of illustrations to be included, and a c.v.
Please send a copy of either type of proposal to each of the two series editors and to the publisher:
Dr James Daybell, james.daybell@plymouth.ac.uk; Dr Adam Smyth, adam.smyth@bbk.ac.uk; Erika Gaffney, Publisher, egaffney@ashgate.com.
THE MEDIÆVAL JOURNAL
The Mediæval Journal is a distinctively European-based cross-disciplinary and multinational journal of Mediaeval Studies published in English in both print and online formats. Featuring the work of specialists in all areas of Mediaeval Studies, it offers wide disciplinary coverage in every issue and welcomes submissions from the worldwide community of mediaevalists in traditional disciplines such as Art History, History, Archaeology, Theology, European Languages/Literatures (including English), as well as burgeoning areas such as Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Manuscript Studies, Mediaevalisms, Material Culture, History of Medicine and Science, History of Ideas, Queer Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Musicology, to name a few. Each issue of The Mediæval Journal also contains timely and expert reviews responding to the variety and energy of scholarship across the world of Mediaeval Studies.
The editors are pleased to receive submissions in any of the above areas, and to respond to queries from potential contributors. Please send submissions, in the form of email attachments, to the General Editors: Dr Ian Johnson (irj@st-andrews.ac.uk) and Dr Margaret Connolly (mc29@st-andrews.ac.uk).
Ordering Information: To order a copy of The Mediæval Journal contact our Customer Care Department at periodicals@brepols.net or tel. +32 14 44 80 35.
Harry Ransom Center's Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Collection Now Accessible Online
AUSTIN, Texas --The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has introduced an online database for its medieval and early modern manuscripts collection. The database includes more than 7,000 digital images and can be accessed here http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/pubmnem/ The medieval and early modern manuscripts collection contains 215 items dating from the 11th to the 17th centuries. It comprises items from various collections, including those of George Atherton Aitken, W. H. Crain, Carlton Lake, Edward A. Parsons, Sir Thomas Phillipps, Walter Emile Van Wijk, Evelyn Waugh, John Henry Wrenn and others. The Ransom Center is digitizing all of the collection items, which will be added to the database as they are completed. At present, digital images are available for 27 of the items for a total of 7,288 pages. The database contains item-level descriptions for all 215 items, and the collection is searchable by keyword and any combination of the following categories: name, country of origin, century, language, format (such as charters or diaries), subject and physical features (such as musical notation or wax seals). The medieval and early modern manuscripts collection is a rich resource for many areas of research. Scholars may use the collection to trace typographical developments in printing, compare different versions of the same text or examine a manuscript's composition, decoration and binding to study the history of the book. The collection may also be valuable for those studying the history of liturgy and music. "The new database for the Ransom Center's medieval and early modern manuscripts collection is a wonderful resource for students and teachers here at the university and for scholars everywhere," said Marjorie Curry Woods, professor of English and comparative literature at The University of Texas at Austin. "The detailed descriptions will help researchers working on individual manuscripts, provide a model for students learning palaeography and codicology, and allow scholars elsewhere to explore possible connections between the Ransom Center's manuscripts and those in other collections. "The complete digitized versions of manuscripts are invaluable. Manuscripts that are now too fragile to be handled are still available for research and teaching, and those that have small, difficult-to-read glosses and marginalia now can be deciphered with relative ease. In addition, digitized manuscripts can be projected for class presentations and can be consulted by scholars working collaboratively but in different locations. Access to the Ransom Center's valuable early holdings is increased exponentially while at the same time reducing wear and tear on the manuscripts themselves." The collection is particularly strong in humanistic manuscripts, vernacular literature and religious documents. Other represented subjects include alchemy, architecture, astronomy, botany, cartography, classical literature, diplomacy, drama, genealogy, government, heraldry, history, kings and rulers, law, mathematics, medicine, monasticism and religious orders, music, philosophy, poetry, science and war. The earliest item in the collection is the Tegernsee Miscellany manuscript, an 11th-century Austrian codex of various texts compiled by Abbot Ellinger of Tegernsee. Other highlights include 11 Books of Hours, most notably the "Belleville Hours," and a 15th-century German ferial psalter and hymnal, significant because of its possible stylistic relationship to the Gutenberg Bible and early printed psalters. The collection contains classical texts, including copies of works by Cicero, Horace, Ovid and Plato, and medieval literary works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante and Petrarch. The historical documents in the collection represent numerous European monarchs, such as Henry VIII of England, Louis XIII of France and Philip III of Spain. Notable historical figures represented in the collection include Oliver Cromwell, Martin Luther, John Milton, Sir Isaac Newton, Abraham Ortelius and Sir Walter Raleigh. Document types include charters, commonplace books, contracts, correspondence, decrees, deeds, diaries, government records, indentures, letters patent, minutes, notarial documents, notes, papal bulls, petitions, pontificals, receipts, reports, speeches and writs. The manuscripts represent numerous countries and historical regions, including Austria, Bohemia, Bolivia, Byzantium, England, Flanders, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Spain and the United States. The represented languages include Dutch, English, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Middle English, Old English and Spanish. Other holdings at the Ransom Center that contain early manuscripts include the George Atherton Aitken, Eastern manuscripts, clay tablets and cones, Kraus maps, Lanza-Acosta Bolivian, Arthur Livingston, papyri, Pforzheimer, Ranuzzi, Shelley family and the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary collections. High-resolution press images from the collection are available. New Project-- This project is concerned with the relationship between written culture and society, specifically how innovations in the technology of the medieval manuscript relate to cultural change. The primary period of investigation is the age of renewal (renovatio) known as the “Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (c. 1075 - c. 1225). The project focuses on the new codex that emerged in this period: the “pregothic” manuscript, for lack of a better term. The new book format included new scripts, new page layouts and new reading aids, including running titles, paragraphs, “footnotes,” cross references and diagrams. These and other innovations dramatically changed the reading experience of medieval individuals: it helped to organize knowledge, convert words into arguments, open a dialogue between author and reader, and facilitated better comprehension and speedier access of information.
The emergence of the pregothic manuscript raises important questions. What physical traits were introduced on the page and how did they precisely aid the reader? How quickly were these new features disseminated and which ones were most popular? Can their introduction be tied to particular institutions, schools or groups of intellectuals? Did certain texts come with certain physical attributes? To address such queries, the research project will relate the material format of the twelfth-century book to the historical context of its production and use. The affiliated researchers will focus on three dimensions: 1) Codicological and paleographical innovations (Coordinator, starting 1 May 2010); 2) Relationship between the material book and the cultural background of their users (Junior Researcher, to be appointed in 2010); 3) Relationship between the material book and the texts and genres it contains (Postdoctoral Researcher, to be appointed in 2011). The project leans heavily on manuscripts included in the Catalogues des Manuscrits Datés and will be based on in-situ study of a high volume of manuscripts. Palaeography at King's College (a note forwarded from AMARC) "Dear AMARC member, Sign the petitition to save Palaeography at King's College here: http://www.petitiononline.com/spkcl10/petition.html "Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video
Showcase" Timmie (E.B.) Vitz, New York University
ebv1@nyu.edu
University of Bergen, 3rd-5th June 2012.
-- William Johnson (Duke University)
-- Kathryn A. Lowe (University of Glasgow)
-- Marilena Maniaci (Universita` di Cassino)
Linne Mooney, Estelle Stubbs, and Simon Horobin have now launched the Late Medieval English Scribes website at http://www.medievalscribes.com/.
Over the course of the twenty-five years of its existence, the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium has published proceedings of its annual gatherings containing some 462 articles by 293 authors extending over 7682 pages. To mark the symposium’s quarter-century, the steering committee has now commissioned a cumulative index covering the first twenty-five volumes of the Harlaxton Medieval Studies, most of which were originally published without an index.
1 High Street
Donington
Lincolnshire
PE11 4TA
United Kingdom
E: pwatkins@pwatkinspublishing.fsnet.co.uk
14-15 October 2011
Lowrie J. Daly, SJ Memorial Lecture on Manuscript Studies: "Peopling Paternoster Row: Recovering the Artist of the Holkham Bible Picture-Book"
Northern Illinois University, February 17-18, 2012
We invite abstracts from a variety of disciplines that examine both material and intellectual aspects of the medieval re-interpretation of ideas, texts, images, and objects from the ancient world.
Tudor Books and Readers: 1485-1603
In an age where books have become an increasingly rare item to find in libraries, and as libraries themselves are experiencing their largest sea-change since electronic cataloguing was introduced, special collection departments are slowly becoming what defines one library from another.
The Editorial Board of Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (OSTMAR) is pleased to announce the official launch of its website:
http://opuscula.usask.ca. We seek single-witness editions of Medieval and Renaissance texts under 6,000 words accompanied by a brief introduction (1000-1500 words) and translation. We invite submission of a broad range of pre-modern texts including but not limited to literary and philosophical works, letters, charters, court documents, and notebooks. Texts should be previously unedited and the edition must represent a discrete text in its entirety.
Material Readings in Early Modern Culture
Series Editors:
James Daybell, University of Plymouth; and
Adam Smyth, Birkbeck College, University of London
This series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as part of an investigation into early modern culture. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research with an attention to the theoretical models that might illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms the kinds of primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the questions that have yet be to asked about writing in its various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read, interpreted and situated?
Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays.
The range of topics covered in this series includes, but is not limited to:
Brepols Publishers and the St Andrews Institute of Mediæval Studies are delighted to announce a forthcoming journal for 2011, beginning with two issues.
Turning over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance
Coordinator: Erik Kwakkel (e.kwakkel@hum.leidenuniv.nl), Leiden University
Institute for Cultural Disciplines (LUICD); Funding: NWO VIDI-Scheme; Period: 1 May 2010 to 1 May 2015; Project Members: Coordinator; Junior Researcher; Postdoctoral Researcher.
The project aims to show why the new format emerged and how it developed over the course of the period 1075-1225. It traces the roots of the manuscript in the institutional homes of a new breed of European scholars, and relates its creation to changes in the profile of readers and the texts they read. The Twelfth-Century Renaissance is seen as a movement that gave alacrity and optimism to educated society, whose members sensed they were living in a time different from their immediate past. Scholars all over western Europe — lacking cohesion other than a shared background (a “career,” perhaps) in higher education and a deep yearning for knowledge — started to exchange new ideas and outlooks on the world through newly designed books, which were disseminated through the main intellectual centers, monasteries, cathedral schools and (ultimately) universities.
You may already have heard that King’s College London is planning to abolish its Chair of Palaeography, as part of wider staffing economies. I’m writing to let you know that Christopher de Hamel, chairman of AMARC, has written to King’s on behalf of the society, in response to this news, and to request that King’s consider alternative plans to abolishing the post.
Individual letters from professionals and others in the field will doubtless be most effective; should members wish to write to King’s on this issue, letters should be sent to Professor Rick Trainor, The Principal, King's College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS and copy to Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.
Best wishes,
Rachel Freeman (AMARC membership secretary)"
This website (http://euterpe.bobst.nyu.edu
/mednar/), produced through the Studio for Digital Projects and
Research at New York University, offers resources for scholars,
teachers, students, and performers to explore the performance of
medieval narrative. Our purpose is to see how medieval stories can be
brought to life in performance for modern audiences, and how performance
can be used to teach medieval literature in the classroom. We hope as
well to promote a better understanding of ways in which medieval
narratives may have been performed for their original audiences.
Video clips constitute the primary resource on the website. The clips
feature a variety of actors, storytellers, singers, musicians, mimes,
puppeteers, and dancers, among them professionals, teachers, and
students. They perform scenes drawn from a range of medieval narrative
genres, including epics, romances, lais, tales, fabliaux, and others.
Some performances of narratives from analogous traditions (such as the
Egyptian Hilali epic) are also represented.
In the future, we
plan to expand the site's holdings and add other resources to the site,
including further information bearing on pedagogical uses of
performance, and videoed interviews with performers and with faculty and
students who work with performance.
We hope you will visit, and
use, the website. We welcome your feedback, which may be sent to perf-med-narr@forums.nyu.edu
Marilyn Lawrence,
New York University lawrence@alumni.princeton.
edu
Project Directors