The View From Kalamazoo

ASE 2012 Conference Call for Papers

Association for the Study of Esotericism
Fourth International Conference
Call for Papers: Esotericism, Religion, and Culture
June 14-17, 2012

The Association for the Study of Esotericism (ASE) is seeking paper and panel proposals for its fourth International North American Conference on Esotericism to be held at the University of California, Davis.

We are seeking proposals on topics in Western Esotericism, particularly related to themes exploring the relationships between esotericism, religion, and culture. Papers may focus on any one of these topics, or on a specific conjunction of topics, especially as it relates to esotericism, and we encourage papers that feature intellectual history or history of ideas. We invite proposals on magic, alchemy, astrology, ritual practice, mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, hermeticism, neo-paganism, contemporary esoteric movements and teachers, Asian influences on Western traditions, and other related topics.

In addition to the broad theme of culture-which includes literature, art, philosophy, and drama, as well as religion-we would like to feature a methodological discussion (Esotericism Across the Disciplines). We also are interested in panels specifically on mysticism. ASE regards esotericism as an interdisciplinary field of research and we invite scholars from all disciplines to share their research and writings in support of a cross-fertilization of perspectives. We welcome scholars from a wide range of areas, including anthropology, American studies, art history, history, intellectual history, religious studies, literature, philosophy, psychology, medieval studies, sociology-the full range of academic disciplines and fields.. In order to encourage graduate study in the field, we will offer a modest prize for the best graduate student paper presented.

Our initial deadline for panel or paper proposal submission is 30 December, 2011.

If you wish to submit a paper proposal or a thematically focused panel proposal (with three presenters and short descriptions included) for review and possible presentation at the conference, please send it by regular email to

ASE2012Conference@gmail.com

No attachments, please: simply copy and paste your abstract into plain text email. Individual abstracts should be limited to one or two paragraphs, and must indicate academic affiliation and/or other academic qualifications. Independent scholars are welcome to submit proposals. Please note that our previous conference was at maximum capacity, so it is best to submit your proposal sooner rather than later. We hope to post a preliminary list of accepted proposals early in 2012. Possible venues for the publication of conference papers include the book series Studies in Esotericism (this will be the fourth volume in the series).

For more information on the ASE and this conference, see our website at www.aseweb.org

UNIVERSITY OF WALES TRINITY SAINT DAVID
The Sophia Centre, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology

Call for Papers
Astrology in Time and Place: Cross-Cultural Questions in the History of Astrology

The Sophia Centre, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Venue: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, England
Date: 23-24 June 2012

http://www.historyofastrology.org.uk/conferences/TimeAndPlace/

Conference Chairs: Nicholas Campion and Dorian Greenbaum
Contact: Nicholas Campion, n.campion@tsd.ac.uk

Call for Papers

We invite abstracts for this academic conference which will consider the questions which arise from the transmission of ideas in the theory and practice of astrology. Such transmission may be between cultures, or through time in the same culture. Issues may also be addressed of comparison between cultures.

Astrology has been practiced in some form in most cultures. In some it is rudimentary, in others complex. It may be considered magical, religious or scientific, or it may defy categorisation. There is evidence of the transmission of ideas in the near east between Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia, and between the Near East, India and East Asia. In Mesoamerica and China technical forms arose which were entirely different to the Near Eastern tradition. Syncretism has been a major feature of astrology in India, Persia and Europe down to modern New Age culture and the globalisation of alternative spiritualities.

This conference will consider questions surrounding the exchange of astrological ideas or practice between cultures, issues arising from their transmission from one period to another, or consider comparisons between the astrologies of different cultures. Papers may focus on iconography, literature, theory, practice, philosophy or cultural context.

Our keynote speakers will be

Professor David Pankenier, whose books include East Asian Archaeoastronomy: Historical Records of Astronomical Observations of China, Japan, and Korea, (with Xu, Zhenoao and Yaotiao Jiang, Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 2000) and Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Celestial Foundations of Chinese Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Professor Francesca Rochberg, one of the foremost authorities on Mesopotamian astrology and its transmission to the Hellenistic world, and author of The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) and In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and its Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

Professor Michael York, former Professor of Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at Bath Spa University, and author of The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements (London: Rowan and Littlefield, 1995) and Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion, New York: New York University Press, 2003).

Proposals are invited for papers of 30 minutes, to include discussion. All papers will be plenary sessions.

Abstracts should be around 150 words.

Speakers will not have to register for the conference.

Please submit abstracts and full contact information to Dr Nicholas Campion n.campion@tsd.ac.uk

Deadline 1 December 2011

Call for Papers: Kings and Queens: Politics, Power, Patronage and Personalities in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy

To be held at Corsham Court in conjunction with Bath Spa University on April 19th & 20th, 2012

The institution of Monarchy was absolutely central to the political developments and events of the medieval and Early Modern world. This conference aims to celebrate monarchy in all of its various aspects, from examining the institution itself to assessing the impact of particular monarchs in their own realms and beyond. Historic Corsham Court, located just outside of Bath, is a beautiful and appropriate setting for this conference, with its origins as a summer palace for the Kings of Wessex.

We welcome papers and/or panels on any theme which connects to monarchs or monarchy in any way including (but not limited to):

Kingship/queenship/rulership

The relationship between monarchs and consorts

The relationship between monarchs and their subjects

The involvement of monarchs in politics, religion and war

The patronage and representation of monarchs

The monarch and their court

We encourage a multi-disciplinary approach including papers which draw on gender studies, art, military, political and/or cultural history. Graduate students and early career researchers are particularly invited to submit a proposal. We hope to produce a published volume of the papers generated by the conference.

Please submit a proposal of approximately 250 words for a paper OR a panel of three papers to the organizers at monarchyconference@gmail.com by October 31, 2011.

For more information or any additional queries, please email the above address or e.woodacre@bathspa.ac.uk.

Elena (Ellie) Woodacre
Department of Humanities
Bath Spa University
Newton Park, Bath
BA2 9BN

http://bathspa.academia.edu/ElenaWoodacre

Science and Magic: Ways of Knowing in the Renaissance

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

April 29-30, 2011

Keynote Speaker: Bruce Moran, Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno

In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandola described two forms of magic. There was that branch of sorcery consisting “wholly in the operations and powers of demons,” as well as a more benign craft pertaining to none other than “the highest realization of natural philosophy.” To many Renaissance thinkers, magic was a legitimate field of study as well as a potential threat to established orthodoxies. Inspired by this formulation, this interdisciplinary conference aims to consider scientific thought alongside magic and domains that modern vocabulary would describe as pseudoscience, such as alchemy and astrology, and invites papers related to diverse ways of magical and scientific knowing in the early modern world.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

· Distinctions between magic, science and pseudoscience in theory and practice.

· Forms of scientific literature and art, magical texts and artifacts.

· The transmission of licit and illicit magic; the role of natural philosophy and magic in education.

· The attitudes and policies of secular and ecclesiastical authorities.

· Practical magic: fortune-telling, amulets, etc.

· Early modern European and American witch-hunts and witchcraft trials.

· Alchemical theory and practice.

· The articulation and reception of prophecies.

· The commerce of magic, the financial circumstances of men of science or magicians.

· Fraudulent magic or science, cons and hoaxes.

· Encyclopedic texts, indexing schemes and the organization of knowledge.

· Artistic, literary or musical representations of magic, science or the thirst for knowledge.

· Gender in magic, science, or pseudoscience.

· Magic in the New World and beyond; extra-European influences on Renaissance magic and science.

This conference is conducted under the auspices of the Renaissance Studies Program at Princeton University. Please submit abstracts of no more than 350 words to Scott Francis (smfranci@princeton.edu) and Jebro Lit (jlit@princeton.edu) by January 15, 2011. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes.

General information about all aspects of the Societas Magica is available at http://www.societasmagica.org. If you have a question about your membership status or wish to submit to one of our publications, please seek there under “contact the Societas” for email addresses of current officers and editors.

Call for Papers for the 2011 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2010

Conference dates: January 27-29, 2011

www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/gradstudents.html

We invite abstracts for 15-minute papers from master’s or Ph.D. students on any medieval, Renaissance, or early modern topic in Europe or the Mediterranean or Atlantic worlds. We encourage submissions from disciplines as varied as the literature of any language, history, classics, art history, music, comparative literature, theater arts, philosophy, religious studies, transatlantic studies, disability studies, and manuscript studies.

We hope to include at least one panel of papers dealing with the digital humanities.

Priority is given to students from member institutions of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium.

Faculty and graduate students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium schools are eligible to apply for travel funding to attend Center for Renaissance Studies programs or to do research at the Newberry Library. Contact your school’s faculty representative for details: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/exec.html. The Center’s main web page is: www.newberry.org/renaissance.

Karen Christianson, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Center for Renaissance Studies
The Newberry Library
60 W. Walton St.
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
phone: 312-255-3539
fax: 312-255-3502
christiansonk@newberry.org
www.newberry.org/renaissance

The Department of English at Ohio University invites applications for an assistant professor of Medieval Literature. Ph.D. in hand by September 1, 2010, required. The successful candidate is expected to teach; pursue, direct, and publish research; and participate in departmental/university governance. Must be qualified to teach History of the English Language. Position available September 7, 2010.

Deadline for applications: July 11, 2010. Women and other minorities are encouraged to apply. Ohio University is an EEO/AA employer. Ohio University is a Research-Extensive institution, enrolling 19,500 students on the Athens campus and more than 8,000 students on five regional campuses. The College of Arts and Sciences includes 340 tenured and tenure-track faculty and contains 19 departments, 7 of which offer the doctoral degree. Further information may be found at the University’s web site: http://www.ohio.edu. To apply: www.ohiouniversityjobs.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=56869

The successful candidate is expected to teach 7 course load, must be able to teach History of the English Language, will also include some writing and/pr lower level literature classes; pursue, direct, and publish research; and participate in departmental/university governance. Position start date, September 7, 2010.

We seek a candidate with a commitment in working effectively with students, faculty and staff from diverse backgrounds.

Send letter of application, C.V., and three current letters of recommendation to the following address:

Marsha Dutton, Chair
ATTN: Medieval Literature Search
Department of English
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701

EMBODYING POWER: WORK OVER TIME

JOINT CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THEATRE RESEARCH, THE THEATRE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, AND THE CONGRESS ON RESEARCH IN DANCE

Seattle, WA
18-21 November 2010
The Renaissance Seattle Hotel

CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPANTS FOR WORKING SESSIONS
DEADLINE: May 31, 2010*

Call for Papers for the Working Session entitled REVISITING MEDIEVAL PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE, THEORY, PRAXIS
Conveners: Lofton Durham, Western Michigan University, and Jenna Soleo-Shanks, Briar Cliff University

The thousand years between the Roman theatre and Shakespeare’s stage was an extraordinarily fertile time in the history of Western performance, yet this era suffers from comparison with the adjoining periods. Still dogged generally by the problematic inheritance of 19th century philology and, more specifically, by the evolutionary paradigms established by medieval theatre scholars in the early 20th century, the study of medieval performance is ripe for new scholarship. As Carol Symes has argued, “the medieval theatre was more multifaceted, more immediate, and more representative (in every sense) than that circumscribed by the playhouses of the Renaissance. This is the medieval theatre we need to be studying.” Although scholars from various disciplines have made valuable and important contributions to the study of medieval performance, the future of medieval performance studies depends on the unique perspectives and specific theoretical tools of theatre scholars. Such scholarship contributes to our appreciation of performance as a dynamic cultural form by considering, among other ideas, how performance related or reacted to existing power structures and how the bodies of performers existed in and interacted with spaces that were not exclusively meant for performance. Theatre scholars also offer new perspectives on the limits and definitions of performance evidence.

This working group will bring together various theoretical perspectives and broad definitions of evidence, in order to explore the unique function and importance of performance in medieval cultures. We are particularly interested in three aspects of this topic: new primary source evidence or alternate applications of evidence; new or revised methodologies for approaching medieval performance practices; and theoretical applications that draw connections among disparate cultural phenomena, illuminate new bodies of evidence, and/or alter conventional understandings of medieval performance, theatre, and drama.

Session Format and Guidelines:
Session chairs will group papers in clusters. Each member of the cluster will be responsible for reading all papers in the cluster. At the conference, each cluster will receive a set of questions from the session chairs, which the cluster will consider as a group during a break-out session. After these break-out sessions, the clusters will give a summary report of their discussion to all session participants. The session chairs will facilitate the reporting session in order to create a summary report of the questions raised, lessons learned, and possible future actions or avenues of scholarship and dissemination.

To apply, send a 200-word abstract and a brief bio by MONDAY, MAY 31st to BOTH lofton.durham@wmich.edu and jsoleo@gmail.com. All participants will be required to join ASTR or CORD and register for the conference. Please visit http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx for more information on participants’ responsibilities.

Medievalists: pre-registration deadline is the 28th, after which a late fee will be applied.

Register  now, save that late fee to buy me a beer.  (lol)

I was recently reminded that although I have told this story to friends, in three weeks I’m going to encounter a lot of people (at the Congress) who haven’t heard it, and there will be those who ask about the tattoo on my wrist.

And after reflection I decided to post the story here, too, since I’ve used this platform for other parenting discussions. And also since I don’t want to repeat this, all or in part, multiple times.

Twenty years ago last month (on 3/16) I attended a Jesus and Mary Chain concert in Detroit; opening for them was Nine Inch Nails – I came in mid-set. I was 19 and burning out in art school and it was a fucked-up evening fucked-up by interpersonal fuckwittery—suffice to day, one I would have been happy to forget (and looking back, it was probably the opening death knell of an engagement that was through less than a year later). Except not quite… I came in, slunk against the wall and cold and pissed and looking like something the cat dragged in (with freckles) …and I was transfixed.

It seemed like a good date to get this, my first tattoo.

16 March 2010, immediately after tattoo was finished. (Pardon the lousy cellphone photo.)

The line is taken from a NIN song, but this isn’t about NIN nor about Trent Reznor (not really):

Lights in the Sky

She’s mostly gone
some other place.
I’m getting by
in other ways.

Everything they whispered in our ears
is coming true.
Try to justify the things
I used to do.
Believe in you.

Watching you drown.
I follow you down.
I am here,
right beside you.

The lights in the sky
finally arrive.
I am staying,
right beside you.

I tried to stay away,
just in case.
I’ve come to realize
we all have our place.

Time, time has a way you know,
to make it clear.
I have my role in this.
I can’t disappear,
or leave you here.

Watching you drown,
I’ll follow you down.
And I am here right beside you.

The lights in the sky
are waving goodbye.
I am staying right beside you.

Listen… it’s a quiet one, just piano:

There are a lot of NIN songs, through the years, that have resonated with me for one reason or another. Some still do, and others simply remind me of the time they did (and which I am happy not to be living, anymore).

When I first heard this one I sobbed. Still do, actually.

To understand why I need to tell you a story.

You see, I was a first-gen university student. There was the weight of expectations and the weight of culture-shock and the weight of a total lack of understanding by my parents of this different planet, this academia. I had Responsibility to Do The Right Thing and Make Them Proud (even in the face of being, personally, a pretty odd damn duck). I started in art but switched to humanities double majors/ double minors, got my BA, I stayed for an interdisciplinary MA… I had plans, potential… I gave conference papers, I worked hard (I worked through both degrees, at one point simultaneously half-time university staff, student, and teaching as a grad assistant). I applied for Ph.D. programs; I was accepted into my top choice. But. But it was without the funding needed to move a family out of state. I had money… enough to move just me. But. But I had two children, one of whose impairments we were just beginning to plumb the depths of. And I had a clear choice, one I had to make that I considered one that I could not un-make and I’d better fucking get it right the first time.

Work to reach my full potential, or sacrifice my dreams so Em could have any chance at reaching hers.

Let everyone down—my family, advisers, friends still in the field… even and especially myself—or let her down. All or one.

Watching you drown. I follow you down.
I am here, right beside you.

My choice was for the one.

Time, time has a way you know, to make it clear.
I have my role in this. I can’t disappear, or leave you here.

And as we’ve learned more and she’s worsened in so many ways and the way before us is clearer (but with information comes a lack of room for hope, sometimes) I remind myself that I made a decision. A choice. What happened to her chromosome might have been random, but nothing I could—can—do can be. I was not tricked, I was not trapped, I do not sit around feeling sorry for myself (although I deeply wish she didn’t have these challenges and limitations, and I certainly have days that make me wonder if I have the strength and emotional wherewithal to do this), I made a choice.

I chose her.

And now in addition to that imprint on my heart and mind, it’s on my skin as well.

Certainly there are other layers of meaning for this line I now have on my wrist… in my marriage there has been some very bad, very trying times—times that are past and that we are stronger for having survived. I have another child who struggles for a sense of normalcy in the face of instability, a shortage of ‘normal’. We all have our place.

And yeah, there is this band (this guy who is this band), whose music lent me sanity when I needed it, was the screaming I couldn’t vocalize, was hope (yes, I said hope) that is only possible after recognizing Things Are Very Wrong and, once recognized, opens a way. Who makes me cry, in whose instrumentals I find peace (in the inner landscapes they invoke), whose own journey was so clearly and painfully mapped from album to album (not the same road I was on, but the two sure ran parallel a lot of the time)… and so when I needed out of the bad places I had built inside myself to convince me of my own lack of worth there was a song, a line, a chord to lead the way, shine a light, kick me in the ass. I am loyal, long-term, to very, very few things… so when I realized that very nearly all of my adult life has had this one—one—constant I had to honor that.

And that is my tattoo.
Maybe for my birthday (40!) I’ll do the other wrist – for balance.

The International Congress on Medieval Studies has a Twitter account:

@KzooICMS

If you’re a Twitter-using medievalist, please follow!

There’s also a designated a hashtag #Kzoo2010 for use before, on-site, and after Congress for Congress-related tweeting and micro-blogging for searching ease.

Let the tweets begin!

(Yes, it’s me tweeting in my significantly more boring official capacity.)