The View From Kalamazoo

Interesting posts with subsequent discussion re: tenure, graduate school, and expectations over at Blogenspiel.

Post 1
Post 2

The Program for the International Congress on Medieval Studies–online for a month–is printed and has been winging its way through (priority) US and international mail for a week. US bulk is going out in waves (so many thousands of books to process!) and should be complete this week.

Don’t forget to register. See you all in May.

CALL FOR PAPERS:
The Supernatural in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (GSA 2010)

German Studies Association Conference, October 7-10, 2010, Oakland, California.

Scholars have described Germany as the ‘heartland of the witch craze’ that afflicted Europe in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Alpine communities in Switzerland and southern Germany experienced early witch panics in the age of the Malleus Maleficarum, helping to spawn the mass witch-hunts that followed. Some of the most virulent witchcraft prosecution in European history took place in Germany’s Prince-Bishoprics during the Wars of Religion, as mass panics claimed thousands of victims. During the early modern period, the Holy Roman Empire was also a center of learned magic, astrology, and alchemy, as princely courts attracted magical practitioners. The organizer intends to feature a series of five or six panels on the supernatural in late medieval and early modern German-speaking Europe and is seeking
proposals.

Possible topics and themes include, but are not limited to: folklore and popular magical practices; learned sorcery and alchemy; ghosts and apparitions; possession and the diabolical; witchcraft beliefs and witch-hunting; astrology and fortune telling; the supernatural and the state; gender and the supernatural; the supernatural and witchcraft in literature and drama; witch-hunting manuals and demonological treatises; and skepticism and disenchantment.

Please email an abstract (maximum 250 words) and a brief CV with institutional affiliation by Monday, February 15 to the panel series organizer:
Jason Coy
College of Charleston
coyj[at]cofc.edu

The University of Auckland
Centre for Medieval and Early Modern European Studies
10th Annual Conference
10 – 11 April 2010

Miracles, Medicine and Magic: Explaining the Natural, the Unnatural and the Supernatural in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Keynote Speakers: Alexandra Barrett (English, Waikato), Karen Jillings (History, Massey)

Papers are invited from all disciplines on any topic that is broadly covered by the conference theme. Post-graduate students are especially encouraged to submit a paper. Please send a brief abstract for a twenty-minute paper (100-200 words) by Friday 26th February 2010 together with any AV requirements. Proposals should be sent to the Conference Committee c/o Michelle Smith: medievalscot at xtra dot co dot nz

Today I ended up in conversation with a couple of the grad students about when I first started attending the Congress, as an undergrad (1990).

They called me an old fart. o_O

I regaled them with Back In The Day tales that included that of a thrice-dammed full-sized traction trebuchet I was conscripted to help assemble and demonstrate, and the infamous dance, as it had been (held in a cafeteria, open bar, Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball).

And I told them of the first time I had attended the dance… it was 1992, a few months before Nine Inch Nails’ Broken came out.

This is important.

You see, I walked into that dimly-lit cafeteria (but the academics inside were already well-lit, I assure you) to see two nuns (Remember, these are medievalists—there are members of many of the orders present every year… in fact, there are staff members who persist in the idea that we’re a Renaissance Festival because they see monks walking around. Rly. Srsly.) on the outskirts of the dance floor (such as it was) dancing—you know, the classic stand-and-sway while moving the arms in a vaguely robot-fashion kind of dancing—to NIN’s Sin.

I turned around and walked out of that cafeteria.

Despite how very much I needed that open bar at that moment (you can imagine how my brain and soul cried for blessed oblivion), I just couldn’t take one more step forward.

I was so very happy when Broken was released—I hadn’t been able to listen to PHM (since that moment in May when my brain broke) without going into blink-blink-shudder-AAAaaaagh every time that song came on.

So I leave you with the cognitively dissonant image of nuns doing the white-people-boogie to the voice of Trent Reznor.

You’re welcome.

There is a discussion in a community on Facebook that medievalists/attendees of the International Congress on Medieval Studies might find interesting. Or not – in which case there’s always scrabble.

COMITATUS: A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES, published annually under the auspices of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, invites the submission of articles by graduate students and recent PhDs in any field of medieval and Renaissance studies. We prefer submissions in the form of e-mail attachments in Windows format; paper submissions are also accepted. Please include an e-mail address.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VOLUME 41 (2010): 1 FEBRUARY 2010.

The editorial board will make its final selections by early May 2010.

Please send submissions to sullivan@humnet.ucla.edu, or to Dr. Blair Sullivan, Publications Director, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 302 Royce Hall, Box 951485, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485.

Session Organizer paperwork for the International Congress on Medieval Studies is due Oct. 1.

Get on it!

I’ve been occupied with that thing called real life, but ran across this info and thought one of you might be interested:

The American Council of Learned Societies offers several outstanding
fellowship opportunities (http://www.acls.org/programs/comps/), including the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship for students at the dissertation stage. These one-year fellowships for students in the humanities and social sciences, to begin summer 2010, offer a stipend of $25,000 plus funds for research costs of up to $3,000 and for university fees of up to $5,000. Completed applications must include a 25-page excerpt from a completed dissertation chapter (other than the introduction, conclusion, or literature review) and are due online no later than 9 p.m. on
Nov. 11, 2009.

Please bring this opportunity to the attention of eligible students. More information is available at: http://www.acls.org/grants/Default.aspx?id=512

Call for Papers: Midwest Medieval History Conference

The 48th annual meeting of the Midwest Medieval History Conference will be held on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana on 25-26 September, 2009. The conference will commence on Friday afternoon with graduate student papers. Saturday’s meeting will feature a keynote address (Prof. Giles Constable) as well as scholarly papers on a wide range of topics. Paper proposals are welcome on any area of medieval history. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals and those presenting will receive a $100 honorarium. Abstracts of 200-300 words should be sent by email to lhaas@mtsu.edu or by snail mail to Louis Haas, Program Chair MMHC, Department of History, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132. Questions regarding the conference can be directed to either Remie Constable, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and host for this year’s MMHC (constable.1@nd.edu), or Louis Haas, MMHC Program Chair (lhaas@mtsu.edu).

Deadline for submission is 15 July, 2009.