CFP “Re-imagining the Christian Body” Univ. Turku (Finland) 2-3 Nov. ’17.

Re-imagining the Christian Body
Interdisciplinary Conference University of Turku 2-3 November 2017

This conference concentrates on the ways in which the human body has been imagined and re-imagined in different Christian cultures at different times from Late Antiquity to present day. In Christianity the human body is often perceived as a privileged site not only for the God-Man relationship but also for the formation of and relationships within and between, communities of believers. These perceptions emerge from and generate different imaginaries of the body. Imagination can be understood as a human faculty that in many ways plays a central part in people’s religious lives and experiences. The notion does not imply something that is false or untrue but rather denotes the ways people go about constituting and perceiving their lived world and their immanent and transcendent environments and relationships. Therefore, Christian imaginaries of the body are not static but depend on the Christian culture in question and are subject to negotiation and change. They also are often central to religious schisms and conflicts but shared imaginaries of the body also have the capacity to unite.

This conference focuses especially upon changes and alterations: how and why does the Christian body become re-imagined in different Christian cultures? What is the role of such imaginations of the body in religious practice, art, museums, and science, for example? What are the methods and technologies for imagining the body in these contexts? What ethical and other consequences do different imaginations of the body and alterations in them have for Christians and for society at large?

 

Keynote speakers in the conference are:

Bonnie Effros, Department of History, University of Florida http://history.ufl.edu/directory/current-faculty/bonnie-effros/

Annelin Eriksen, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen http://www.uib.noien/persons/Annelin.Eriksen
We encourage submissions from different disciplines and from a variety of perspectives. Potential topics include, but are not restricted, to the following:

  • Historical imaginations of the body
  • Saints and relics
  • Body and identity
  • Gender, sexuality and imagination
  • Illness and health
  • Power and authority in limiting or expanding the imagination of bodies
  • Body in religious art
  • Christian utopias and dystopias and the body
  • Limits of imagining the body
  • Methods, practices and technologies for imagining the body
  • Epistemology and imagination of the body
  • Imagination as researcher’s tool

Proposals for individual papers should be sent to cscc@utu.fi by 20 June 2017. Please include in the submission a paper abstract of no more than 250 words and your name, affiliation and e-mail address.

Notifications of abstract acceptance will be sent by June 30.

The conference fee is 50 euros (reduced fee available for graduate students). This covers the programme, coffees and banquet on Thursday evening.

Conference homepage can be found at: reimagining.utu.fi.

The conference is organised by the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), the Centre for the Study of Christian Cultures (CSCC) and the Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (TUCEM EMS).

Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period

Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period

Edited by Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider, University of Exeter, Brill edition.

Table of contents

Introduction, Siam Bhayro and Catherine Rider
Antiquity
Shifting Alignments: The Dichotomy of Benevolent and Malevolent Demons in Mesopotamia, Gina Konstantopoulos
The Natural and Supernatural Aspects of Fever in Mesopotamian Medical Texts, András Bácksay
Illness as Divine Punishment: The Nature and Function of the Disease-Carrier Demons in the Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts, Rita Lucarelli
Demons at Work in Ancient Mesopotamia, Lorenzo Verderame
Late Antiquity
Demons and Illness in Second Temple Judaism: Theory and Practice, Ida Fröhlich
Illness and Healing through Spell and Incantation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, David Hamidović
Conceptualizing Demons in Late Antique Judaism, Gideon Bohak
Oneiric Aggressive Magic: Sleep Disorders in Late Antique Jewish Tradition, Alessia Bellusci
The Influence of Demons on the Human Mind According to Athenagoras and Tatian, Chiara Crosignani
Demonic Anti-Music and Spiritual Disorder in the Life of Antony, Sophie Sawicka-Sykes
Over-eating Demoniacs in Late Antique Hagiography, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe
Medieval
Miracles and Madness: Dispelling Demons in Twelfth-Century Hagiography, Anne E. Bailey
Demons in Lapidaries? The Evidence of the Madrid MS Escorial, h. I. 15., Carolina Escobar-Vargas
The Melancholy of the Necromancer in Arnau de Vilanova’s Epistle against Demonic Magic, Sebastià Giralt
Demons, Illness and Spiritual Aids in Natural Magic and Image Magic, Lauri Ockenström
Between Medicine and Magic: Spiritual Aetiology and Therapeutics in Medieval Islam, Liana Saif
Demons, Saints, and the Mad in the Twelfth-Century Miracles of Thomas Becket, Claire Trenery
Early Modernity
The Post-Reformation Challenge to Demonic Possession, Harman Bhogal
From A Discoverie to The Triall of Witchcraft: Doctor Cotta and Godly John, Pierre Kapitaniak
Healing with Demons? Preternatural Philosophy and Superstitious Cures in Spanish Inquisitorial Courts, Bradley J. Mollmann
Afterword: Pandaemonium, Peregrine Horden

 

CFP – Medieval Academy Graduate Students · The Program in Medieval Studies, Princeton University “Vulnerability in the Middle Ages”

Vulnerability in the Middle Ages

Princeton University, Medieval Academy Graduate Students

At a moment that has brought economic, political, and physical vulnerabilities (new and old) abruptly to the surface, we invite papers on the topic of vulnerability and insecurity in the Middle Ages. Recent scholarship in medieval poverty, gender, disability, and racial difference has greatly enhanced our sense of the variety of vulnerable experiences, and we seek to connect these conversations through their shared perspective on power. We welcome proposals from a variety of disciplines on vulnerability and the concepts that surround it, including weakness, insecurity, injury, disability, and difference. Papers might consider both the portrayal and the experience of the vulnerable life, as well as the systems that lead to vulnerability. We are interested both in the conditions that made individuals vulnerable within communities, and in those that threatened communities within larger polities. In a period where vulnerability typically precluded creating and maintaining records, unfamiliar readings of familiar sources are especially necessary, as are approaches that access vulnerable experiences in imaginative ways. Such approaches might challenge more conventional relationships between scholars and their objects of study, and ask how scholarship itself can perpetuate, create, or mitigate vulnerabilities in the past and present.

Some themes might include, but are not limited to:

– Contradictory perspectives on vulnerability (sympathy/revulsion, admiration/contempt)
– How difference (racial, gender, physical, economic, geographic) contributes to vulnerability
– Vulnerabilities specific to catastrophes, including war, famine, disease, and panic
– The relationship of systems of power to vulnerability
– The experience and portrayal of physical vulnerability
– The treatment (medical or otherwise) of vulnerable conditions
– Religious practices and perspectives on weakness
– “Vulnerability” in other words, such as vernacular translations and terminologies
– Documenting vulnerability and (materially, philologically, hermeneutically) vulnerable documents
– Populations vulnerable to scholarship, via origin or identity myths, institutions, and ideologies

Please submit your abstract (250 words) for a fifteen-minute presentation to the conference organizers (medievalvulnerabilities@gmail.com) by February 15th, 2017.

All abstracts should be in English, and include your name, contact information, and academic affiliation.

CFP – Lived religion and everyday life through earlymodern catholic hagiography – Finland Institute in Rome

Lived religion and everyday life through earlymodern catholic hagiography – Finland Institute in Rome

Final submission of articles: Autumn 2013

Studies on medieval social and cultural history have already for several decades demonstrated the rich possibilities hagiographic material can offer the historian interested in everyday life, lived religion and society. Since the late fifteenth century, this material has experienced an unprecedented growth in volume. Nevertheless. there is still a great need for studies on lived religion and everyday life portrayed through early modem catholic hagiographic material.

To address this need. we invite abstracts for contributions on the subject from scholars worthy with early modem (ca. 15km” centuries) hagiographic material. such as beatification and canonisation processes. other miracle accounts. art, vitae. and other spiritual (autobiographies. The aim is to produce a high-quality collection of articles, which offers cutting-edge and fruitful insights into early modern social and cultural history, using hagiographic texts and art as sources. We especially welcome communications, which have a sensitive approach to gender, age, health and social status.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is the end of February 2017. Twelve most promising abstracts will be selected. it funding cm be secured, the article drafts will be discussed it May 2018 in a workshop organised at the Finnish Institute in Rome (Vita Lante). The collection of articles will be submitted to an international publisher following the peer-review process soon after the meeting, in autumn 2018.

Suitable article topics for the collection will include. but are not limited to:

  • family and household, gender roles
  • health, body, dis/ability, illness, and cure
  • death and salvation
  • religious practices and materiality of religion
  • identity and community

    Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words for an English article and a short biography including name, affiliation and the most important publications, to earlymodernhagiography@gmail.com by Tuesday February 28th. 2017.

Editors and contact informations:
Jenni Kuuliala
PhD. Postdoctoral Researcher (Academy of Finland)
University of Tampere

Podcast – Musique et folie au Moyen Âge – Martine Clouzot

Musique et folie au Moyen Âge – Martine Clouzot

Un air d’histoire Par Karine Le Bail

Vivant décalé de la société, le musicien du Moyen Âge est un marginal. Sujet à instabilité et pauvreté, la folie lui est souvent associée par les instances religieuses, politiques, culturelles, et plus particulièrement encore dans les enluminures datant de 1200 à 1500, à destination des laïcs.

 

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Martine Clouzot, professeure en histoire du Moyen Âge à l’Université de Bourgogne à Dijon. Spécialisée notamment sur la question musicale et des “fous” de l’époque, elle a été co-commissaire de l’exposition “Moyen Âge, entre ordre et désordre”, présentée en 2004 à la Cité de la Musique à Paris. Auteure de Musique, folie et nature au Moyen Âge. Les figurations du fou musicien dans les manuscrits enluminés (XIIIe-XVe s.), elle est notre invitée pour nous dévoiler une partie de cet univers riche, déconcertant et passionnant.
Vous pouvez retrouver sa biographie complète ici.

 

Plus d’informations sur le Podcast ici.

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