Program

                                                               NEMSC 2014 Islands of the Medieval World:
                                                                     Stories of Isolation and Connectivity
                                                                                   Saturday, March 15
                                                                              Smith-Buonanno Hall 106

10-10:20am        Breakfast

10:20-10:30        Welcome Note

 

 

10:30-11:50        Session I- Rhetorical Islands
         10:30-10:50            Borja Gama de Cassío
                                       “Arboleda de los enfermos (Grove of the Infirm): Teresa de Cartagena’s Mystic-Feminist Island”
         10:50-11:10            Samantha Berstler
                                       “Lokasenna and Beowulf: the Case for Cain in Old Norse-Icelandic Mythology”
         11:10-11:30            Katherine Rose
                                       “The Invisible City of Kitezh and the Alienation of Medieval(ist) Russia”
         11:30-11:50            Q & A Session

12-1pm                        Lunch break
1-2:20                Session II- Islands and Material Culture
         1-1:20                     Fabio Cusimano
                                        “The Legacy of Norman Sicily through the Memory of Monreale”
         1:20-1:40                Suela Xhyheri
                                        “New Data on the Medieval Village of Kamenica (Albania), the suburb called Fiqt ‘e Lape”
         1:40-2                     Melissa Hudasko
                                        “The “Stuff” of Exile: Shifting Human-Object Relationships in Anglo-Saxon England”
         2-2:20                     Q & A Session
2:20-2:40             Coffee Break
2:40- 4               Session III- Travelers and Landscapes
         2:40-3                     Svetlana Belorussova
                                        “Southern European Travelers’ Visions of “Our” and “Other” World in 15th Century”
         3-3:20                      Johanna Miller
                                        “The Construction of a Medieval Landscape in the Map of the Isle of Thanet”
         3:20-3:40                 Michael Meichsner
                                        “Constituting Space in the Baltic Sea Area: A Case Study on Gotland, Bornholm and Rügen”
         3:40-4                     Q & A Session
4-4:30                  Coffee Break

4:30-5:30             Keynote: Joel Walker
                            Island Hopping: Trade, Ethnicity and Connectivity
                            in the Indian Ocean World of Late Antiquity
5:30- 6                 Reception

Call for Papers

31st Annual New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference

“Islands of the Medieval World: Stories of Isolation and Connectivity”

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

The 31st Annual New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Student Conference is requesting submissions for its annual conference that will take place at Brown University on Saturday, March 15th, 2014. In the spirit of connectivity, the conference encourages dialogue across and between disciplines by bringing together scholars with widely varying interests.

The keynote address, “Island Hopping: Trade, Ethnography, and Religion in the Indian Ocean World of Late Antiquity” will be presented by Joel Walker, the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington. His lecture will explore the intertwined ethnographic and mercantile traditions of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean from the Hellenistic era into the medieval Islamic world.

This year’s conference will engage with issues of isolation and connectivity, both real and imagined, from Late Antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Contributors are encouraged to interpret this theme broadly. We encourage papers from a variety of disciplines, including:

Anthropology – Archaeology – Art History – Byzantine Studies – Classical Studies – Comparative Literature – History – History of Science – Islamic Studies – Language Studies – Literary Studies – Musicology – Philosophy – Religious Studies – Syriac Studies – Theology – Urban Studies – Woman’s and Gender Studies

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Culture, society, economy, religion, and other aspects of life on actual islands in the Middle Ages (Crete, Cyprus, Sicily, Prince’s Islands, Aegean Islands, Britain, etc.)
• Physical and social isolation: pockets of sub-cultures, minorities
• Religious isolation: holy mountains, asceticism, monastic “islands”, and desertum
• Islands of languages, such as particular dialects that emerge and are used only in specific contexts
• Reaching the isolated: medieval missionaries, travelers’ accounts
• Connectivity: social networks, trade/shipping networks and routes
• Urban islands in feudal seas: town and countryside
• Legal isolation: laws enforced on various social groups
• Literary depictions and descriptions of isolation
• Archaeological approaches to isolation: GIS-based studies, topographical surveys

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for 15-20 minute papers should be emailed to Alexis Jackson at nemsc2014@gmail.com. In addition to the abstract, please include a Curriculum Vitae with full contact information. Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, November 20th, 2013. Participants will be notified by December 10th.

For more information, please contact Alexis Jackson at nemsc2014@gmail.com.