Call for Papers: N&N Issue 3.2 'Return'

The January 2015 issue of Networks and Neighbours will be dedicated to exploring the concept of ‘return’ in the history and historiography of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

Complementing the theme of the first issue of the 2015 volume (‘migration’), the July 2015 issue of N&N will focus on ‘return’. As usual for N&N, the issue’s theme can be read in a number of ways and allows a diversity of responses. In Early Medieval Studies and across the Humanities, in recent years, we have seen a plethora of ‘returns’, from theology and eschatology, to theories of the object and objectivity, to history itself. ‘Return’ can refer to the desire to reintroduce a previous situation, revive or reform past or currently existing ways of life, ideas, institutions, languages, narratives, and historiographies. Historical examples of ‘return’ can range from reception studies looking at drives for the past and memory construction, to psychological enquiries dealing with trauma, to archaeological research on building syncretism, to returns of linguistic or material culture forms, to the impact of present narratives about ‘rights of return’ on historiographical discussions, and so on.

We welcome papers on any of these topics as well as any other related issues, perspectives, and interpretations. We encourage papers dealing with historiographical questions, and also enquiries about the role of early medieval historians in public dialogue. As is the tradition of Networks and Neighbours, these suggestions are not meant to be prescriptive. Though we look forward to submissions which question, develop, or reject altogether our plural notions and interpretations of ‘return’, we also welcome submissions on any other aspect of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, which fits with the overall philosophy of Networks and Neighbours.

Abstracts for proposed articles should be received by 1 February 2015, with full papers to be submitted electronically by 15 March 2015. Prospective articles will be between 6,000-10,000 words (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography), prepared for blind review, and accompanied by an article summary of approximately 250 words. In addition to scholarly articles the editors of N&N also invite book reviews as well as reports from conferences, exhibitions, masterclasses and other relevant events. As always, Networks and Neighbours will accept articles in any modern language, although an English abstract is required for all submissions.

Past issues of Networks and Neighbours, as well as full guidelines about formatting and online submission, can be found at: networksandneighbours.org. If you have any further questions please contact us at: networksandneighbours@gmail.com.

Upcoming Calls for Papers:

N&N Vol. 4.1 (Jan 2016) ‘World History’
Beginning with the Chronicle of Eusebius, which was continued in myriad forms, many late antique and early medieval authors attempted to write ‘world history’. Today’s historians are increasingly concerned with approaching their discipline with a global, post-national, framework in mind, abandoning traditional geographical limitations in order to provide comparisons between concurrent developments in different parts of the world. The January 2016 issue of N&N will consider ‘World History’ in these and other contexts. Abstracts for proposed articles should be received by 15 July 2015, with full papers to be submitted by 31 August 2015.

N&N Vol. 4.2 (Jul 2016) ‘Local Histories’
Now accepting proposals: further details to follow.

Please circulate the pdf below to anyone who may be interested.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bxrcs6sZeRj0UEZ5bm8yZXg3Y2M&authuser=0

IMC 2015 - Call for Papers

Networks and Neighbours: IMC 2015

Call for Panels at the 2015 International Medieval Congress at Leeds

Dear friends and colleagues,

Networks and Neighbours is pleased to announce that we will be sponsoring and organizing several panels at the Leeds 2015 International Medieval Congress.   

There is no particular sub-theme for the papers or panels except that they should consider the general aims of Networks and Neighbours. Panels and papers focusing on the theme of the 2015 IMC, Reform and Renewal, will be particularly welcome. 

For those of you that do not know us, we are an international and cross-disciplinary project dedicated to broadly innovative research in Early Medieval History.   We are constituted by an exceptional collection of junior and senior scholars from a wide array of academic, intellectual, cultural and linguistic backgrounds from around the globe and across fields of enquiry.  We hope by this method to be able to eliminate, or at least minimize, the barriers that prevent co-operation and in so doing develop a worldwide community of scholars readily familiar and in dialogue with current research and scholars in Early Medieval History.

Whether you are submitting a single paper or assembled panel, all proposals must be accompanied by 250-500-word abstracts of all works involved.  Panel submissions should additionally include a 500-word explanation about the panel and how the papers complement one another and, if appropriate, the research of the moderator. 

All proposals should be submitted to us at networksandneighbours@gmail.com by the 27^th of August 2014.   We will make our decisions closely after the deadline in consideration of the IMC’s internal deadlines.  If your paper and/or panel are selected please keep in mind that some moderators may want your full papers submitted to them in advance of the IMC.

Finally, it should be noted that it is our intention to publish an edited volume based on the papers and other work developed in our IMC panels, as well as our annual Symposia and other significant events run and sponsored by Networks and Neighbours recent years.  Furthermore, we welcome extended panel papers as peer-reviewed submissions to our no-fees open-access and print journal at www.networksandneighbours.org.

Please circulate the pdf below to anyone who may be interested.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxrcs6sZeRj0ajhVdHhTX0lCYWc/edit?usp=sharing

Sneak Peak of N&N - Vol. 2, No. 2: Cultural Capital

We have just sent the proofs off to the publisher for final layout and so we are now able to officially announce what will be in the upcoming issue of N&N (page numbers to follow).  

N&N - Vol. 2, No. 2: Cultural Capital

Since the idea was first proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, ‘Cultural Capital’ has broadened the way researchers of the modern world consider the meanings of ‘wealth’, ‘power’ and their relationship to real ‘capital’. The idea is no less relevant to the study of the Early Middle Ages. For this issue, we are seeking papers which investigate the literature and material goods of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; the polemics and the paintings, the buildings, coins, jewellery, topoi, prejudices, languages, dress, songs, and hairstyles that framed the early medieval world(s), and consider them in terms of ‘Cultural Capital’. 

For example, what relation did Charlemagne’s moustache, his penchant for Augustine, and an elephant called Abul-Abbas have to his success as emperor? How did Rome become so central to the European imagination, even as its military and economic relevance waned? What role, if any, do Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages have in both the modern ‘European’ debate and the question of Scottish independence? Other issues to consider include: what constituted Cultural Capital in the Early Middle Ages, and why does it matter? Who created, exchanged, brokered, and consumed Cultural Capital? How did it translate into economic, symbolic, and social capital? And was Cultural Capital a force for social change, or inertia?

Invited Paper

Kevin Wanner, Strategies of Skaldic Poets for Producing, Protecting, and Profiting from Capitals of Cognition and Recognition

Articles

Jonathan Jarret, Engaging Élites: Counts, Capital and Frontier Communities in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, in Catalonia and Elsewhere

Helen Oxenham, Women Satirists and the Wielding Of Cultural Capital in Early Medieval Ireland 

Paulo Henrique Pachá, Gift and Conflict: Forms of Social Domination in the Iberian Early Middle Ages 

Janira F. Pohlmann, Nobility, Ascetic Christianity and Martyrdom: A Family’s Identity in the Writings of Ambrose of Milan 

Claudia J. Rogers, The Devil in Gregory of Tours: Spirit Intercession and the Human Body

Book Reviews

Julia Barrow’s review of The Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow by Ian Wood and Christopher Grocock (2013, Oxford) 

Colleen Batey’s review of Viking Identities: Scandinavian Jewellery in England by Jane Kershaw (2013, Oxford) 

Isabella Bolognese’s review of Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900-1100 by Steven Vanderputten (2013, Cornell) 

Ioannis Papadopoulos’ review of The Restoration of Rome by Peter Heather (2014, Oxford) 

Annika Rulkens’ review of The Carolingian Debate over Sacred Space by Sam Collins (2012, Macmillan) 

Evina Steinova’s review of Early Medieval Palimpsests by George Declerq (2007, Brepols) 

Otavio Luiz Viera-Pinto’s review of Law and Society in the Age of Theoderic the Great. A Study of the Edictum Theoderici by Sean D. W. Lafferty (2013, Cambridge)

Conference Reports

Tom Birkett and Kirsty March’s report on ‘From Eald to New: Translating Early Medieval Poetry for the 21st century’, University College Cork, Ireland 

Colleen Curran’s report on ‘Liminal Networks: Western Paleography to c. 1100’, The Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, King's College London 

Philipp Dörler’s report on ‘Meeting the Gentes – Crossing the Boundaries: Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe’, Schottenstift, Vienna, Austria 

Daniel Knox’s report on ‘From Byzantium to Clontarf: Tenth Annual Conference of The Australian Early Medieval Association’, Maquerie University, Australia 

Jane Roberts’ report on ‘Guthlac of Crowland: Celebrating 1300 Years’, Institute of English Studies, University of London 

Heidi Stoner & Meg Boulton’s report on the ‘The “Subterranean” in the Medieval World’, University of York 

Simon Thomson’s report on ‘Sensory perception and the medieval world: An Interdisciplinary Conference’, Institute of Archaeology, UCL

Interview

Michael J Kelly, Interview with Björn Weiler

Call for Papers: The Transformation of Poverty, Philanthropy, and Healthcare in Late Antiquity

Here's a CfP for an exciting sounding conference taking place in March next year at the University of Iowa.

https://shiftingfrontiers2015.wordpress.com/

Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity XI

The Transformation of Poverty, Philanthropy, and Healthcare in Late Antiquity

Iowa City, IA, March 26-29, 2015. 
The eleventh biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference will take place at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, March 26-29, 2015. The period of Late Antiquity (A.D. 200-700) witnessed great changes in respect to attitudes towards poverty, philanthropy, and healthcare. The conference aims to bring together scholars in order to explore these issues amidst global concerns over poverty and the provision of healthcare, and questions over the role of private philanthropy in effecting change within these areas. Two events in particular, the ascendency of Pope Francis to the papacy and the debate over the federal provision of healthcare in the United States, helped to inspire the conference’s goal of surveying how early Christians, Jews, early Islamic communities, and others within the Mediterranean viewed, wrote upon, depicted, and grappled with these issues, and how they shaped the late antique world economically, socially, politically, and topographically. Questions that we may wish to address are: What were elite attitudes towards the poor? What do we mean by the “economy of charity”? How did monasticism shape healthcare in the later empire? What is the interaction between religion and science?  We hope to receive proposals for papers concerning all aspects of poverty, philanthropy, and healthcare, which approach these issues from textual, archaeological, numismatic, papyrological, or epigraphic standpoints.  The conference aims to serve as an interdisciplinary forum for specialists throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Africa during the period of Late Antiquity, and as such, welcomes a broad interpretation of the theme.

Two keynote speakers will be taking part in the conference: Professor Ramsay MacMullen, Dunham Professor Emeritus in History and Classics, Yale University (U.S.A.) and Professor Susanna Elm, History Department, University of California, Berkeley (U.S.A.).

The deadline for proposals is 15 November 2014. Abstracts should be 200-300 words in length. Papers should be in English. Proposals from graduate students are welcome, but they should indicate on their submission whether they have discussed their proposal with their supervisor or not. We encourage international applicants, and may be able to provide a limited number of speaker subvention grants primarily for registration. Please note that the submission of an abstract carries with it a commitment to attend the conference should the abstract be accepted.

Proposals should be sent to: shiftingfrontiers2015@gmail.com

#IMC2014 Session - Networks and Neighbours, VII: Relationships of Power in the Early Middle Ages

N&N - IMC 2014 Session

Session	1715
Title	Networks and Neighbours, VII: Relationships of Power in the Early Middle Ages
Date/Time	Thursday 10 July 2014: 14.15-15.45
Sponsor	Networks & Neighbours Network
Organiser	Michael Burrows, School of History, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair	Michael J. Kelly, School of History, University of Leeds / Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Paper 1715-a	The Visigothic State and the Relations of Personal Dependence: Transition, Transformation, and Domination (Language: English) Paulo Henrique de Carvalho Pachá, Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Sociedades Pré-Capitalistas, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro Index Terms: Political Thought; Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1715-b	Lower Class Violence and the End of the Roman Empire (Language: English) Michael Burrows, School of History, University of Leeds Index Terms: Military History; Social History
Paper 1715-c	Donation of Land and State Building in 7th- and 8th-Century Northumbria (Language: English) Renato Rodrigues Da Silva, Department of History, University of Leicester Index Terms: Administration; Charters and Diplomatics; Political Thought
Abstract	The notion of Empire immediately precipitates consideration of issues of decline and aftermath. This session will attempt to elucidate these related themes through investigation of relationships of power during the final years of the Western Roman Empire and the formation of its successor states. These relationships governed the social status, mobility, and interactions of the individuals who lived during these formative years and their developments give us insight into their fluid socio-political context. In order to investigate general trends that can be discerned from the personal evidence of Late Antique social relationships, a broad spectrum of places and times will be investigated; in particular Iberia, Gaul, and Britain, from the 4th to 8th centuries.