Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

CFP: Old and Middle English Studies: Texts and Sources

3-5 September 2014
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, University of London
A joint international conference with Keio University, Tokyo

Call for Papers

The study of Old and Middle English sources is critical for an understanding of medieval language and literature in the British Isles. This joint conference aims to open up and explore new ways for intellectual exchange and collaboration between scholars working in any aspect of medieval English, in London and Japan especially. The theme for the 2014 conference is ‘Texts and Sources’. Papers will be selected for their ability to link various branches of learning that touch upon Old and Middle English studies, including such topics as history, language, literature, philology, to name just a few. The conference will be accompanied by a special exhibit of manuscripts from medieval and early modern times curated with a view to illustrating the central theme of the proceedings.

Conference organizers, Keio University (Tokyo) and the Institute of English Studies (London), invite scholars to submit abstracts of up to 250 words directly to ieskeio.conference@gmail.com, not later than 1st December 2013.

Papers on the following topics with special emphasis on Japanese and/or British research will be encouraged, although papers with wider scope will not be excluded:

- Digital humanities and virtual libraries
- Interconnections between Old and Middle English scholarship
- Manuscript studies
- Medievalism
- Teaching Old and Middle English
- Translating Old and Middle English into modern languages

Other general topics might include:

- Multiculturalism/multilingualism in the Middle Ages
- Old and Middle English literature and literary culture
- Old and Middle English philology: texts and contexts
- Old and Middle English: synchronic and diachronic studies
- Old and Middle English translations and their sources
- Sources for Old and Middle English culture

The School of Advanced Study is part of the central University of London. The School takes its responsibility to visitors with special needs very seriously and will endeavour to make reasonable adjustments to its facilities in order to accommodate the needs of such visitors. If you have a particular requirement, please feel free to discuss it confidentially with the organiser in advance of the event taking place.

Enquiries: Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; email.

Friday, 29 March 2013

Birkbeck Medieval Seminar: Landscape and Belief

Saturday 27 April, 2013
10am–5pm
Rooms G15 and G16, Main Building, Birkbeck
Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX

Birkbeck Medieval Seminar 2013

featuring
John Blair (Queen’s College, University of Oxford)
Catherine Clarke (University of Southampton)
Stefan Brink (University of Aberdeen)
Alfred Hiatt (Queen Mary, University of London)

This event is free, and all are welcome to attend.
To reserve a place, email the organizers.
To learn more, visit the website.

Saturday, 14 August 2010

Vampire Conference in London (November 2011)

Vampires: Myths of the Past and the Future

An interdisciplinary conference organised by Simon Bacon, The London Consortium in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London

Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2011
Conference dates: 2nd-4th November 2011
Venue: Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London


Myths of vampires and the undead are as old as civilisation itself, wherever humans gather these 'dark reflections' are sure to follow. Whether as hungry spirits, avenging furies or as the disgruntled dearly departed, they have been used to signify the monstrous other and the consequences of social transgression. Embodying the result of a life lived beyond patriarchal protective proscription that quickly changes from dream to nightmare and from fairy tale to ghost story.
However their manifold and multifarious manifestation also provides a point of opposition and resistance, one that subverts majority narrative and gives agency to the disenfranchised and oppressed within society. This is seen most clearly in the late twentieth century where, in a plethora of filmic and literary texts, amidst a growing 'sympathy for the devil' the vampire is constructed as a site of personal and social transition. Here alternative narratives (e.g. feminist, ethnic, post-colonial discourses etc) find expression and ways in which to configure their own identity within, or in opposition to, the dominant cultural parameters revealing hybridity as the catalyst for future myth making.
In the course of the past century the vampire has undergone many transformations which now see them as a separate evolutionary species, both genetically and cybernetically, signifying all that late capitalist society admires and desires thus completing its change from an adhorational figure to an aspirational one; the vampire is no longer the myth of a murky superstitious past but that of a bright new future and one that will last forever.
This interdisciplinary conference will look at the various ways the vampire has been used in the past and present to construct narratives of possible futures, both positive and negative, that facilitate both individual and colelctive, either in the face of hegemonic discourse or in the continuance of its ideological meta-narratives.

Keynote speakers include:

Stacey Abbott
Milly Williamson
Catherine Spooner

We invite papers from a wide range of disciplines and approaches such as: anthropology, art history, cultural studies, film studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, psychology, theology, etc.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

  • Myths, fairy tales and urban legends
  • Cross cultural colonisation, vampiric appropriation and reappropriation
  • Cinema, Manga/Anime and gaming

  • Fandom, lifestyle, 'real' vampires and identity configuration

  • Minority discourse and the transcultural vampire

  • Genetics, cybernetics and the post human

  • Blood memory, vampiric memory and the immortal archive

  • Dracula vs. Nosferatu; Urban vs. Rural

  • Globalisation, corporations and 'Dark' societies

  • Immortality, transcendence and cyberspace

  • Old World/New World and vampiric migration

  • From stakes to crosses to sunlight

  • Blood Relations and the vampiric family

  • Abjection, psychoanalysis and transitional objects


Papers will also be considered on any related themes. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to Simon Bacon no later than April 30th 2011.