2016 conference: Limits

Conference write-up from one of our speakers, Edward Mills: here

Conference Storify, by Edward Mills: here

Call for Papers: ‘Approaching the Medieval’ postgraduate conference

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Newnham College, Cambridge, 4^th May 2016

With keynote speaker Robert Mills (University College London)

We are delighted to open the call for papers for the inaugural conference hosted by ‘Approaching the Medieval’, a cross-disciplinary postgraduate reading group at the University of Cambridge.

We welcome 20-minute papers from graduate students and early career researchers in all areas of medieval studies, across languages, cultures and disciplines: history, history of art, philosophy, theology, history of science, musicology, palaeography and codicology, archaeology, literature, philology and linguistics. Papers should be given in English. Please submit 250-word abstracts to approachingthemedieval@gmail.com by 1^st February 2016.

Our keynote speaker, Robert Mills will give an address entitled ‘How to Do Things with Fur’. Dr Mills is Reader in Medieval Art and Director of the LGBTQ Research Network at University College London.

Topics may include, but are (of course) not limited to:

Methodological limits: the practical, philosophical, ethical limitations of methods and research practices

Geographical limits: borders, contested borders, border crossings

Physical/bodily limits: definitions of the body, bodily extremities, the limits of the human

Moral limits: judicial, social, military, taboos and the unspeakable

Sexuality and gender: discourses of enforcing or erasing limits

Religious limits: orthodoxies and heresies, sanctity and profanity, transcendence

Textual limits: the limits of the text/page/codex/image, diffusion and reception