12th Annual PKMS Graduate Student Conference CFP
Pre-Modernisms: Friday, October 28th, The Graduate Center, CUNY
As the famous sayings go, everything old is new again, and history repeats itself. How many times have we heard someone described as a Renaissance man or woman, or something that seems old-fashioned called “medieval?” Scholars of these periods often find, of course, that such evaluations are, at best, inaccurate. However, trans-temporal approaches to study and even historical anachronisms can produce fruitful new inquiries into our fields, from contemporary children’s literature that engages in medievalisms to produce new fantasy worlds to queer and transgender studies that attempt to see the past from non-normative perspectives. This conference aims to bring together a wide variety of scholars of different disciplines and especially different time periods to pair what we know about the classical, medieval, and early modern periods with what later times perceive about these periods and how they manipulate the past for present agendas. As such, this conference is aimed not only at pre-modern scholars, but also at scholars of later and contemporary periods whose work engages in envisioning the past.
Please submit a 300-word abstract no later than September 15 at 5 PM.
E-mail: [email protected]
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Arthurian Tradition
Early Book Collections
Architectural Styles
Medieval TV and Film
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Historical Fiction
J.R.R. Tolkien
Historically Based Political Rhetoric
History of Marginal Perspectives
Law and the Legal Tradition
Renaissance Humanism
Philosophical Traditions
Renaissance Faires and Period Dress
Medieval and Early Modern Adaptations of Classical Texts
Premodern Recipes and Remedies
Contemporary Classroom Approaches
Linguistic Developments
Premodern Historiography (including history plays)
Conference Livestreaming
To view a livestream of the conference, visit http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/
and click on the Medieval Graduate Student Conference.
“Sanctity and Sinfulness: Hagiographical Studies in Memory of Thomas Head” – 2016 Conference Schedule
We are pleased to announce the schedule for the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study’s upcoming annual graduate student conference, “Sanctity and Sinfulness: Hagiographical Studies in Memory of Thomas Head.” The conference will be held on Friday, February 26 from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Room 9204 of the CUNY Graduate Center.
10:30 Registration
11:00 Panel 1: Embodiment and Evidence in the Lives of Holy Women
- Alexander Baldassano, CUNY Graduate Center – The Life of Saint Eugenia: Beyond Gender in the Legenda Aurea
- Alicia Cannizzo, CUNY Graduate Center – The Case of Margherita of Città di Castello and the Burden of Proof for Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages
12:00 Lunch Break
1:00 Roundtable: Hagiography and the Work of Thomas Head: The Legends and the Legacy
- Marlene Hennessy, CUNY Hunter
- Paul Freedman, Yale University
- Cynthia Hahn, CUNY Graduate Center & Hunter
2:30 Exploring the Kinship of the Sacred and the Secular
- Stephanie Petinos, CUNY Graduate Center – Relicized bodies in Le Roman de la Manekine
- Alyssa Coltrain, Rutgers University – “Now art thus Goddus child”: Appropriating Hagiography and Rewriting Family in Sir Gowther
- David A. Heayn, CUNY Graduate Center – Byzantine Monasticism in Two Anatolian Provinces, ca. 500-700
4:15 Reception, room 5105
Call for Papers for 11th Annual PKMS Graduate Student Conference
“Sanctity and Sinfulness: Hagiographical Studies in Memory of Tom Head”
11th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, the CUNY Graduate Center’s student-run organization for medieval studies, announces its eleventh annual Graduate Student Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, February 26, 2016. This year’s conference is dedicated to the work and legacy of Thomas Head. We invite grad students to submit proposals.
The conference will look at how saints and their cults and relics were used to support and/or oppose political ambitions; examine how members of the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies attempted to balance a desire for God’s peace with the realities of lordship; and explore the patronage of saints, ideals of sanctity, and issues of episcopal influence and its effect on local saints.
Submit a 300-word abstract by December 14th to [email protected]
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
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Hagiography and hagiographers
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Cults of saints
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Ideals of sanctity
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Peace and Truce of God
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Secular appropriation of saints
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Canonization and its process
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Patronage of saints
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Frankish lordship
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Relics
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Episcopal influence on local saints
We encourage papers to engage Tom’s scholarly legacy.
Paleography and Manuscript Studies Workshop
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study
Publishing for Graduate Students: A Recap
PublishingforGraduateStudents Chad Turner’s comprehensive notes
Karl Steel’s Facebook post https://www.facebook.com/karl.steel/posts/10205622561577917
Panelists: Karl Steel, Associate Professor of English Literature at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center
Jennifer Ball Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center
Moderator: Mary Catherine Kinniburgh
- Both panelists admitted to unusual first publication experiences: Karl Steel’s first article as a Master’s student was a translation of French travel literature from a West African who traveled to the Soviet Union; Jennifer Ball’s first publication was her book, which she completed in a post-doc
- Jennifer Ball never published in grad school, though from her experience on search committees, many more graduate students have publications on their resumes now.
- Other publications besides articles in peer-review journals are book reviews, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, catalogs [for Art History]
- Keep priorities–don’t let publishing distract from dissertation writing
- Karl Steel suggested, after chapters are complete, to take 7000 words of the bulk and submit (Standard journal articles are 6-7000 w0rds)
- Journal articles are “pithy,” (often stronger) arguments get straight to the point, more condensed that a book, not need to burden with background from the filed
- Recommended reading Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks Wendy Belcher, Getting It Published and From Dissertation to Book William Germano
- Book reviews: less important than other genres, suggested mainly if it’s useful to your work
- How to write a book review: describe the argument in 2-3 paragraphs, end discuss what would have liked to be in it, although for grad students, this should just be evaluation instead
- How to publish things: people ask; conference networking is important(Often writing projects can be solicited by others as one becomes known in the field)
- For articles, don’t meander, have a strong central argument; shouldn’t feel like a seminar paper
- Why an article might be rejected: argument doesn’t hold up because of incorrect facts, weak writing (lacks clarity or organization)
- blog posts–not as popular as used to be, but still useful for writing, get people to read things
- Reading your paper like a blog post is a good way of gauging how readers might react
- Writing groups are useful, having both insiders and outsiders read it
- Karl Steel suggests writing for 15-20 minutes a day (or banking that time for longer sessions)
- Getting straight to the point with articles–start with an anecdote
- Editing other people’s work will help you in your own work (as well as helping them)
- If your professor tells you that you should publish something, you should take their advice on revisions and submit it
- Conference questions help expand your argument, can be included in drafts
- Mostly contraction is necessary for revision; focus in on your central argument
- Publishing early doesn’t mean that you will run out of ideas
- When submitting to a journal, a cover letter will tell what it’s about
- Dissertation embargo: Putting dissertation online may not be the problem that it is often feared–so far there has not been a case where it’s prevented something from being published
- Journals, particularly second-tier publications, are hungry for content–submission is doing them a favor
- Submission etiquette: Can’t submit to more than one journal at a time
- usually editors will tell you when to expect it back, generally 2-3 months; it’s okay to ask after 4 months or more (it may be that the reviewer has not gotten back to the editor)
- Peer reviewers are people in the field outside of the journal
- The importance of gossip–useful to know the status of journals to be sure if your work will actually be published
- Peer review is the gold standard
- Kalamazoo and other conferences are good to meet people–introduce yourself to panelists, follow them on Twitter, send emails, etc.
- Co-authored works–not the same as a monograph on a CV but still useful–if have a more established person in the field writing with you, it looks good (see Karl Steel’s recent co-authored review essay in postmedieval with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen https://www.academia.edu/11985941/Race_Travel._Time_Heritage_a_review_essay)
- Rejection is inevitable: get used to it
- Usual responses: Accepted as is (rare), accepted upon revision, revise and resubmit, rejected
- Try to follow their submission requirements as closely as possible (formats, etc.)
- Image rights (manuscripts as well as art)–usually get from libraries, write to them
- Make sure images are in a TIF file, not JPEG
Publishing for Graduate Students: A (Premodern) Panel
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study is pleased to announce an interdisciplinary faculty panel on publishing for graduate students, to be held Wednesday, April 15, 3:30pm-5:00pm at The Graduate Center, CUNY, Room 5409.
Students will hear from Karl Steel (Assistant Professor of English, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY), Jennifer Ball (Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY), and Anne Stone (Associate Professor of Music, The Graduate Center, CUNY), who will address a variety of questions on digital versus print publications, manuscript preparation, journal selection, and beyond.
We look forward to seeing you there.
Event Honoring Gordon Whatley – Nov. 21
On November 21, 2014, starting at 3 p.m., the Ph.D. Program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center will host an event honoring Gordon Whatley on the occasion of his retirement.
At 3 p.m., students and colleagues will speak about Gordon’s work at CUNY, and at 4 p.m., there will be a lecture:
Robert Upchurch, University of North Texas …
“An Anglo-Saxon Bishop and his Book: Liturgical Performance as Pastoral Care in the Wake of the Norman Conquest.”
The talk tells a story of Bishop Leofric of Exeter and a book of pastoral materials he used to navigate the regime change of 1066. Both book and bishop weathered the Norman Conquest, and I suggest the former aided the latter in doing so. As spiritual head of a city that found itself in a precarious political position in the wake of William’s victory, Leofric put to practical use a set of episcopal rites for public penance that had been earlier compiled for study. The bishop’s performances of highly-orchestrated, dramatic Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday services helped him to mend the frayed social fabric of his city and to shepherd a motley flock through the aftermath of extraordinarily tumultuous times.
The lecture will be followed by a reception.
The event will take place at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, in room 4406 (English Program).
“Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages” – Grad Student Conference, Nov. 7, 2014
10th Annual Graduate Student Conference in Medieval Studies
Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages
November 7, 2014
Graduate Center – CUNY
Room 9205
9:30 — Registration
10:00 — Panel one
Esther Bernstein “Enmity and Amity: The Ambivalent Nature of Medieval Jewish-Christian Religious Borrowings”
David Heayn “Urban Violence: Riot Culture and Dynamics in Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean Cities”
Nicolas Bergamo “The Constantine V persecution: ‘Building a new imperial elite'”
Moderator: Clare Wilson
11:30 — Panel two
Sian Webb “Untitled”
Rachel Wagner “Acting Like Jesus: St. Margaret of Ypres’s Holy Performance”
Moderator: Jennifer Alberghini
12:30 — Lunch break
1:30 — Roundtable
Jay Gates
Christopher Leydon
Lauren Mancia
Haruko Momma
Moderator: David Greetham
3:30 — Panel three
Deidre Riley “Purgatories of the Mind: Punishment and Self-Knowledge in Robert of Cisyle”
Rebecca Fullan “Untitled”
Kristen Streahle “E bem cavalca a guiza de barone: Elena the Executioner”
Moderator: Chad Turner
This event is co-sponsored by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, the Doctoral Students’ Council, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program, the Henri Peyre French Institute, the French Department, the English Department, the Comparative Literature Department, and the Music Department.
“Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Making of Surgery in Medieval Europe” – lecture by Leah DeVun, Friday, Oct. 3
Please join us for a lecture by Leah DeVun on Friday, October 3, 2014 at 6:00 PM in Room 5409 of the Graduate Center, CUNY. Reception to follow!
Dr. DeVun is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender History at Rutgers University.
“Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Making of Surgery in Medieval Europe”
In this paper, DeVun focuses on ‘hermaphrodites’ and the emerging profession of surgery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During this period, surgeons made novel claims about their authority to regulate sexual difference by surgically ‘correcting’ errant sexual anatomies. Their theories about sex, she argues, drew upon both ancient roots and contemporary conflicts to conceptualize sexual difference in ways that influenced Western Europe for centuries after. She argues that a close examination of medieval surgical texts complicates orthodox narratives in the broader history of sex and sexuality: medieval theorists approached sex in sophisticated and varied manners that belie any simple opposition of modern and premodern paradigms. In addition, because surgical treatments of hermaphrodites in the Middle Ages prefigure in many ways the treatment of atypical sex (a condition now called, controversially, intersex or Disorders of Sex Development) in the modern Western world, she suggests that the writings of medieval surgeons have the potential to provide new perspectives on our current debates about surgery and sexual difference.
This event is co-sponsored by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study and the Doctoral Students’ Council.
ICMS (Kalamazoo) 2015 Call for Papers: “Medieval Celebrations”
ICMS 2015 Panel
Medieval Celebrations
The people of the medieval world found plenty of reasons to celebrate and many ways to do so. They celebrated the seasons and the passage of time. They celebrated the life and resurrection of Christ and His host of saints. They celebrated kings and fools. They celebrated with formal ritual and with chaotic debauchery. This panel aims to identify the many forms of medieval celebration. Topics for presentations include but are not limited to:
• Festivals, feasts, and food
• Holy days and saints days
• Forms of ritual
• The Mass
• Coronation
• Baptisms, weddings, and funerals
• Entertainment and performance
• Agriculture and pagan vestiges
• Markets
• Mockery and foolery
Please submit your abstract of no more than 300 words by September 15, 2014.
Include your name and affiliation.
Papers must be 15-20 minutes in length.
Submissions should be emailed to [email protected]
Call for Papers: “Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages”
10th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference
CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
November 7, 2014
Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, the CUNY Graduate Center’s student-run organization for medieval studies, announces its tenth annual Graduate Student Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center on Friday, November 7, 2014. This year’s theme, Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory, is designed to address a number of methodological, historical, and theoretical issues within the diverse fields of medieval studies ranging from late antiquity to the early modern period. We invite grad students to submit proposals.
Submit a 300-word abstract by September 5th to [email protected]
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Origins and uses of persecution
- The result of religious and ethnic pogroms
- Forced conversions and expulsions
- Persecution as a method of socio-cultural nation and identity formation
- The character of legal and extra-legal punishment,
- Punishment as a form of discipline
- Self-inflicted punishment
- The role of punishment in the family
- The variations of punishment based on class, status, and gender
- Punishment as social control
- Concepts of the afterlife
- The relationship between sin/punishment and the afterlife
- Liminal spaces
- Peripheries
Medieval Congress (K’zoo) Run Through
We are planning a run-through for anyone that is giving a paper at Kalamazoo (or anywhere, really). We are meeting in the medieval study (room 5105) on Friday, May 2, at 4:00pm. At 4:45, we will hold an official group meeting. Following the meeting, everyone is welcome to stay for pizza and a medieval-themed movie!
We hope to see you there!
SYMPOSIUM To commemorate the retirement of DAVID GREETHAM
SYMPOSIUM
To commemorate the retirement of DAVID GREETHAM
from the doctoral faculty of the CUNY Graduate Center.
FRIDAY APRIL 11
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, ROOM 4406
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
Schedule of Events
12:00: Welcome: Carrie Hintz, Deputy Executive Officer; Master of Ceremonies: Ammiel Alcalay, Deputy Executive Officer.
12:15: Textual Workshop, Thesis Room, 4th Floor: Randall McLeod, University of Toronto: “Fiatflux”
A light lunch will be served. Limited to 15 participants: RSVP to [email protected].
Opening Poem: Joyce Ashuntantang (University of Hartford)
1:30-3:30: Panel Discussion: Autopsies: The Textual Body after David Greetham
Marta Werner, Moderator (D’Youville College)
Panelists: Emily Lauer (Suffolk County Community College). “Judge a Book by its Cover: Textual Scholarship of Pop Culture.”
Katherine D. Harris (San José State University), “Marking the Body, Marking the Text: David Greetham’s ‘Archive Fever’ ”
Jeffrey Drouin, (University of Tulsa), “Iconoclastic Textuality: The Ecclesiastical Proust Archive”
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland), “.txtual Forensics”
3:30-4:00: Open session for comments, embarrassing recollections, brickbats, etc.
4:00-5:30: Friday Forum Lecture(s): Randall McLeod, “It’s Greek to David: Two Demi-Talks”
Closing Poem: Joyce Ashuntantang.
6:00—on: Post-symposium Party in Thurgood Marshall events room at 80 LaSalle Street, Morningside Gardens: No. 1 train to 125 Street. RSVP to [email protected].
This event is not organized by the PKMS, but so many of us have been influenced by Professor Greetham that it is important we show our appreciation. (Remember how he moderated our roundtable last fall..?)
More Medieval Studies Events
Annual IUDC Graduate Student Colloquium
The Annual Graduate Student Medieval New York Colloquium
SUNY Stony Brook Manhattan Campus
Friday, March 14, 2014 – 9:30 – 4:30
http://medren.columbia.edu/events/annual-iudc-colloquium/
The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean
34th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
Saturday, March 29-30, 2014
http://www.fordham.edu/mvst/conference14/
http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/medieval_studies/french_of_outremer/
Medieval Congress
The 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University
May 8-11, 2014
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/
Medieval Celebrations — Ninth Annual PKMS Interdisciplinary Student Conference
Friday, February 28: 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
CUNY Graduate Center, room 9207
10:30 Registration
11:00 Panel 1:
“The Uses of Rhetoric, Ritual and Wood in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale” Jason Hoelzel (Brooklyn College)
“Medieval Festivals” Margaret Stella (University of Virginia)
12:00 Lunch Break
1:00 Roundtable: Medieval Celebrations
Richard Gyug (Fordham University, History)
Francesca Sautman (Graduate Center & Hunter College, French)
Maureen Tilley (Fordham University, Theology)
2:30 Panel 2:
“Aelred of Rievaulx and the Legitimizing Role of the Sacraments” Chad Turner (Graduate Center-CUNY)
“The Via Sacra as venue of negotiated power in Rome” Chris Petitt (Graduate Center-CUNY)
3:30 Reception
The Ninth Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Interdisciplinary Student Conference
with the generous support of the Doctoral Students Council, Henri Peyre French Institute, Medieval Studies Certificate Program, and History, English, Music, Art History, Philosophy, and Theatre departments.
Boccaccio’s 700th Birthday Party
Greetings, friends of the medieval and early modern eras!
2013 is the 700th birthday of our boy Giovanni Boccaccio, and before the year is out, we’d would like to throw him a party.
The party will be co-chosted by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study and the Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group.
Monday, December 16 (reading day)
5:00 pm
GC, room 5414
The party is potluck. We encourage you to try a period or themed recipe, but that is not at all required. (If everyone brought an authentic dish, we might end up with another evening of six pies and three versions of carrots.) Check out www.godecookery.com for ideas.
If you know what you might bring, please comment below. If you plan to come but don’t know what you might bring, comment below.
We hope you can join us in celebrating the birthday of a famous plague survivor. Oh, and author, poet, and humanist.
New Directions in Medieval Scholarship – Roundtable
Friday, November 15, 3:00pm
CUNY Graduate Center, room 5409
New Directions in Medieval Scholarship
Fifth Annual Roundtable
Pearl Kibre Medieval Study
Moderator: David Greetham, Graduate Center, English
- Lauren Mancia, Brooklyn College, History
“Affective Devotion as Emotional Reform in the Eleventh-Century Benedictine Monastery” - William McClellan, Baruch College, English
A reading of the Clerk’s Tale and the Man of Law’s Tale using Al Shoaf’s “reading history-as-ethical-meditation” - Katharine Goodland, College of Staten Island, English
“Medieval Drama in Black and White”
Following the presentations, all are encouraged to engage in open discussion regarding current trends in medieval studies.
Guest Speaker: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
Friday, November 8, 2013 – 3:00 pm
Graduate Center, CUNY – room 5409
Utility French and the Making of English Literate Culture
In recent years, historical socio-linguistics and attention to manuscript culture have broadened our approach to ‘literary history,’ and re-contexualised our post-medieval term, ‘literature’. These perspectives help to bring into view a broader spectrum of medieval writings and to trouble boundaries between the literary and the documentary. This paper will explore the new rush to textuality, to writing down disciplinary, occupational, and technical knowledge in treatises, compilations, and encyclopaedias across the thirteenth century in England. Literary scholars have tended to focus study of utilitarian writing, as also of bureaucratic and documentary cultures, on Anglophone writings in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but these texts form only one strand of a more complicated multilingual story.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne,
Thomas F. X. and Teresa Mullarkey Chair of Literature,
English Department,
Fordham University
Call for Papers: Medieval Celebrations
9th Annual Pearl Kibre Medieval Study Graduate Student Conference
CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
February 28, 2014
“Medieval Celebrations”
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, CUNY Graduate Center’s student-run organization for medieval studies, is hosting their ninth annual graduate student conference: Medieval Celebrations. We invite grad students to submit proposals about celebrations of all kinds.
Topics for presentations include but are not limited to:
· Festivals, feasts, and food
· Holy days and saints days
· Forms of ritual
· The Mass
· Coronation
· Baptisms, weddings, and funerals
· Entertainment and performance
· Agriculture and pagan vestiges
· Markets
· Mockery and foolery
We also invite grad student performers of medieval music or dramatic arts to submit proposals for short performances (up to 30 minutes; please include estimation of time).
Please submit your abstract of no more than 300 words by Nov. 30 Dec. 13, 2013.
Include your name and affiliation.
Papers must be 15-20 minutes in length, and performances no more than 30 minutes.
Submissions should be emailed to [email protected]
