News Archive

7 September 2023: CFP
Call for Proposals

ITALIAN ART FOR A PERSECUTING SOCIETY

Session sponsored by the Italian Art Society

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-11, 2024

Session Organizer

Theresa Flanigan, Texas Tech University, Theresa.Flanigan@ttu.edu

Session Abstract

R.I. Moore's The Formation of a Persecuting Society (2007) argued that late medieval Europe experienced the systematic, targeted persecution of diverse minority groups (i.e., heretics, Jews, lepers, and supposed sexual deviants), which society proclaimed “dangerous,” thereby legitimizing violence against them. Notable about this period was the creation of a “rhetoric and apparatus of persecution capable of being turned at will from one category of victim to another, including, if necessary, those invented for this purpose,” establishing “patterns of persecution that endure in our own times” (pp. 145-51). 

This session explores the role of medieval Italian art in the construction and reinforcement of persecuting systems and seeks to test Moore's theory about the relationship between medieval visual systems of persecution and those of the modern day.

Proposals for papers can be submitted via the congress website wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call. Official proposals can only be made and accepted through the Confex proposal portal (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi). 

Proposal Submission Deadline: 10 September 2023
23 August 2023: CFP: Marking the Body: Medieval Adornment & Tattooing
59th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 9–11, 2024), Kalamazoo, MI

Seeking Paper proposals for the session: "Marking the Body: Medieval Adornment and Tattooing."  

Popular forms of body modifications have been shared by many postindustrial cultures. Tattoos and other body modification have been practiced as method of expressing pilgrimage, rite of passage, identity, folk medicine, ancestral connections, and marks of difference. This session will center on the practice of marking the body with the goal to uncover impetuses behind body marking, the meaning of the corporeal body, as well as myth and bias associated with the practice. This session would encompass discourse surrounding the tradition from antiquity to the height of peregrination. All societal, cultural performative ethnic, and regional practices will be given consideration. 

**Please Note: The symposium will be planned as an in-person session. 

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and CV for consideration to katharine.d.scherff@ttu.edu. Be sure to list “Kalamazoo CFP, Body Marking” as your subject line. The paper proposal deadline is September 15. 

Please direct all paper submissions and questions to: 

Session Chair: Katharine D Scherff 

Texas Tech University | Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center 

School of Art 

Katharine.d.Scherff@ttu.edu 

23 August 2023: The MRSC Welcomes its newest affiliated faculty member, Jacob Bell! Dr. Bell specializes in the history of slavery, gender, and sexuality in the medieval world. He joins the Department of History as assistant professor this fall.

The Centers & Peripheries Conference Program has been published. Please find it here: Centers & Peripheries
John van Engen (Notre Dame) and James Turner (Notre Dame) to deliver the TTU Centennial lecture, "Learning Institutionalized: The Making & Re-Making of University Education from Medieval Bologna and Paris to Modern Lubock," on Thursday, 20 April, 2023, in conjunction with the MRSC Centers & Periperies conference. 
 

Congratulations to Dr. Abigail Swingen (MRSC Affiliated Faculty, History) on winning an NEH Faculty Grant! This award specifically recognizes faculty at HSI and other Minority-serving institutions. Dr. Swingen will use this grant to finish her next book, The Financial Revolution and the Politics of Moral Crisis in Early Modern Britain. For more information on Dr. Swingen and her research, visit her profile page here: Swingen Profile.

Congratulations to Dr. Katharine Scherff (MRSC Graduate Certificate, Lecturer in Art History) on the publication of TWO new books! Dr. Scherff has published The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Routledge, 2023), and (with Dr. Lane Sobehrad), the co-edited volume Media Technologies and the Digital Humanities in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Routledge, 2023). Follow these links to the publisher's pages for more detail: Virtual Liturgy. Media Technologies.

Congratulations to Matthew Hunter (MRSC Affiliated Faculty, English), who recently published The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2022)! Follow this link to the publisher's page for more detail: Hunter, Pursuit.

____________________________________________

John M. Howe Inagural Lecture in Medieval & Early Modern History. 30 September 2022, 6pm (Escondido Theatre, SUB).

The Department of History is pleased to announce the inaugural Howe lecture will be given by Dr. Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University), a leading historian in the medieval history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Please see the flyer, below, for details.

 

_________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Centers & Peripheries Conference Program has been published. Please find it here: Centers & Peripheries

John van Engen (Notre Dame) and James Turner (Notre Dame) to deliver the TTU Centennial lecture, "Learning Institutionalized: The Making & Re-Making of University Education from Medieval Bologna and Paris to Modern Lubock," on Thursday, 20 April, 2023, in conjunction with the MRSC Centers & Periperies conference. 

Congratulations to Dr. Abigail Swingen (MRSC Affiliated Faculty, History) on winning an NEH Faculty Grant! This award specifically recognizes faculty at HSI and other Minority-serving institutions. Dr. Swingen will use this grant to finish her next book, The Financial Revolution and the Politics of Moral Crisis in Early Modern Britain. For more information on Dr. Swingen and her research, visit her profile page here: Swingen Profile.

Congratulations to Dr. Katharine Scherff (MRSC Graduate Certificate, Lecturer in Art History) on the publication of TWO new books! Dr. Scherff has published The Virtual Liturgy and Ritual Artifacts in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Routledge, 2023), and (with Dr. Lane Sobehrad), the co-edited volume Media Technologies and the Digital Humanities in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Routledge, 2023). Follow these links to the publisher's pages for more detail: Virtual Liturgy. Media Technologies.

Congratulations to Matthew Hunter (MRSC Affiliated Faculty, English), who recently published The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2022)! Follow this link to the publisher's page for more detail: Hunter, Pursuit.

____________________________________________

John M. Howe Inagural Lecture in Medieval & Early Modern History. 30 September 2022, 6pm (Escondido Theatre, SUB).

The Department of History is pleased to announce the inaugural Howe lecture will be given by Dr. Christian Raffensperger (Wittenberg University), a leading historian in the medieval history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Please see the flyer, below, for details.

_________________________________________________