Visitorships, Institute for Advanced Study

/in

INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, School of Historical Studies, Princeton. Opportunities for Scholars 2018-2019.  The Institute is an independent private institution founded in 1930 to create a community of scholars focused on intellectual inquiry, free from teaching and other university obligations.  Scholars from around the world come to the Institute to pursue their own research.  Candidates of any nationality may apply for a single term or a full academic year.  Scholars may apply for a stipend, but those with sabbatical funding, other grants, retirement funding or other means are also invited to apply for a non-stipendiary membership.  Some short-term visitorships (for less than a full term, and without stipend) are also available on an ad-hoc basis.  Open to all fields of historical research, the School of Historical Studies’ principal interests are Greek and Roman civilization, the history of Europe (medieval, early modern, and modern), the Islamic world, East Asian studies, art history, the history of science and philosophy, modern international relations and music studies.   Residence in Princeton during term time is required.  The only other obligation of Members is to pursue their own research.  The Ph.D. (or equivalent) and substantial publications are required.  Further information can be found in the announcement on the web athttps://www.hs.ias.edu/mem_announcement, or on the School’s web site, www.hs.ias.edu.  Inquiries sent by post should be addressed to the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Dr., Princeton, N.J. 08540 (E-mail address: mzelazny@ias.edu).  Deadline: November 1 2017.

CFP: New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

/in

The twenty-first biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will take place 8–10 March 2018 in Sarasota, Florida. The program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, music and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are also welcome. The deadline for all abstracts is 15 September 2017; for submission guidelines or to submit an abstract, please go to http://www.newcollegeconference.org/cfp.  

Summer School “Discovering the End of the World. Portugal as a Central Periphery”

/in

Summer School in Medieval Studies

Discovering the End of the World- Portugal as a Central Periphery- hosted by the Institute of Medieval Studies (FCSH- Nova University of Lisbon)
July 17-21, 2017, Monastery of Batalha (Portugal)
It will include five modules of classes and study visits to some of the most relevant medieval places and sites of Portugal:
1. The sacred periphery: places of the distant earth (Visiting Santiago de Guarda)
2. Dangerous Liaisons? Portugal between the Atlantic and Mediterranean (Visiting Batalha)
3. Before Globalisation: War and Peace in the Iberian Peninsula (Visiting Aljubarrota)
4. The Social Network (Visiting Leiria)
5. Places of the Middle Earth: Portuguese art and culture (Visiting Alcobaça)

Registration open until June 15, 2017

For further details:
http://iem.fcsh.unl.pt/imagens/files/IEMActiv_Summer%20School%202017_Flyer.pdf

CFP: Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies

/in

The Association will hold its 39th Conference, organised jointly by the University of East Anglia, University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham, from 4 to 6 September 2017. The conference will take place at the University of East Anglia.

You are cordially invited to offer a paper, panel, or workshop presentation. Proposals for individual papers as well as panels on specific themes (max. four papers per panel) are encouraged. Any proposed panel should be organised by one convenor who will be responsible for inviting the speakers and chairing the session.

See the ACIS website for more information.

Conference, “The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Muslim-Christian Interchange,” 19-20 May 2017

/in

Conference announcement:

https://ica.princeton.edu/conferences/

In collaboration with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid and Princeton’s departments of Art & Archaeology and History, the Index of Christian Art will sponsor a two-day interdisciplinary conference, “The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Muslim-Christian Interchange,” on 19-20 May 2017.

The medieval treasury offers an extraordinary material witness to the desires, aspirations, and self-conception of its creators. Treasuries could function as sources of gifts (and obligations) for their allies, as prestigious private storehouses for ostentation before an elite audience, or as financial reserves that could be made use of in times of need. Luxury items from non-Christian cultures, such as the many Islamic objects that found their way into church treasuries, or those made from materials of great intrinsic value, such as ivory, gold, silver, or silk, became even more valuable if the piece were turned to a sacred use. We will examine these dimensions of the treasury by giving special emphasis to the rich holdings of the royal-sponsored monastery of San Isidoro de León in northern Spain. Taken as a whole, both texts and objects offer a rich body of evidence for interdisciplinary investigation and serve as a springing point for larger questions about sumptuary collections and their patrons across Europe and the Mediterranean during the central Middle Ages.

Hosted at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the conference brings together international and US scholars from multiple disciplines and professions, with specializations including Islamic law and sumptuary production, Christian chronicles, patronage and royal studies, identity and gender studies, and political history across the cultures of medieval Spain. The diversity of questions and perspectives addressed by these scholars will shed light on the nature of treasury collections, as well as on the broad efficacy of multidisciplinary study for the Middle Ages.

For further information, contact Pamela Patton: ppatton@princeton.edu

SPEAKERS
THOMAS BURMAN, ROBERT M. CONWAY DIRECTOR OF THE MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
“Seeing and Not Seeing Islam in Twelfth-Century Europe”

ANA CABRERA, VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, AND MARÍA JUDITH FELICIANO, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR, “MEDIEVAL TEXTILES IN IBERIA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN”
“Medieval Textiles in León in the Iberian and Mediterranean Context”

JERRILYNN DODDS, SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE
“The Treasury, Beyond Interaction”

AMANDA DOTSETH, MEADOWS MUSEUM, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY AND PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID
“Medieval Treasure and the Modern Museum: Christian and Islamic Objects from San Isidoro de León”

MARIBEL FIERRO, INSTITUTO DE LENGUAS Y CULTURAS DEL MEDITERRÁNEO Y ORIENTE PRÓXIMO, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS
“Christian Relics in al-Andalus”

JULIE HARRIS, SPERTUS INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP
“Jews, Real and Imagined, at San Isidoro and Beyond”

EVA HOFFMAN, DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY, TUFTS UNIVERSITY
“Arabic Script as Text and Image on Treasury Objects across the Medieval Mediterranean”

JITSKE JASPERSE, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS
“Set in Stone: Questioning the Portable Altar of the Infanta Sancha (d. 1159)”

BEATRICE KITZINGER, DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
“The Treasury, a Material Witness to Long-Distance Contact and Pivot Point for Interdisciplinary Exchange”

EDUARDO MANZANO, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS
“Beyond the Year 900: The ‘Iron Century’ or an Era of Silk?”

THERESE MARTIN, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS
“Ivory Assemblage as Visual Metaphor: The Beatitudes Casket in Context”

PAMELA A. PATTON, INDEX OF CHRISTIAN ART, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
“Demons and Diversity in León”

ANA RODRÍGUEZ, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS
“Narrating the Treasury: What Medieval Iberian Chronicles Choose to Tell Us about Luxury Objects”

ITTAI WEINRYB, BARD GRADUATE CENTER
“The Idea of North”

https://ica.princeton.edu/conferences/

CFP: Links Between Spain and North America

/in

Third International Conference on the Historical Links between Spain and North America: Hispanic Roots and Heritage Yesterday and Today. Extended deadline for proposals: January 23, 2017.

The presence of Hispanic culture in America is an intrinsic part of the true identity of the American people from their roots. America is Hispanic, it is European, it is African, it is Asian and that is what make it America. These roots take us on a trip back and forth from medieval Spain, crossing the ocean carrying conquistadors, crosses, language and culture to the New World and returning after the nineteenth century in science, technology, culture, democracy and English; thanks to this reciprocal influence born of the same tree. Hispanic America makes us aware of a common past, of belonging to the same group joined by two languages and also a shared historical destiny.

The Instituto Franklin de la Universidad de Alcalá, the City College of New York – Division of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Instituto Cervantes de New York, join for the third year in organizing this conference through this call for papers in different disciplines and areas of study with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to the historical links between Spain and North America.

The primary aim of the conference is to provide a meeting place for academics and professionals with an interest in other disciplines related to this subject as well as to interact with other members within and outside their own disciplines in the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For more information and a link to submit proposals, click here.

Spagna contemporanea’s 25th anniversary

/in

Twenty-five years ago, in the spring of 1992, the first issue of “Spagna contemporanea” – the first and only Italian journal devoted to Spanish history – came to press. Of perhaps more lasting significance, the project was also eagerly embraced by one of Torino’s most prestigious cultural institutions, the Istituto di Studi Storici Gaetano Salvemini, with the journal becoming the voice of the Istituto’s newly founded Spanish studies section.

The mission of the project was to publish a bi-annual journal on what we might call late modern and contemporary Spanish history and culture, covering roughly the period from 1750 to today. It began with two guiding principles: a journal planned and written in Italy, on the Spanish history of the last two and a half centuries, could be neither just another Italian historical journal, nor a Hispanic studies publication among others.

“Spagna contemporanea” was thus envisioned as a publication-conduit that could help identify interlocutors across diverse academic, disciplinary and geographical fields. In so doing, the Journal implicitly employed the comparative approach in establishing a connection between the historical processes in the two countries rather than between individual events, thereby contributing to the increase of the scientific and cultural relationships and to the strengthening of personal ties between scholars of both Spain and Italy.

The Journal deals with Spanish contemporary history in a very broad sense, including every aspect of civilization (culture, literature, cinema, social and political problems, etc.), so we are not strictly bound to a limited view of Spain or “historical” fields. Additionally, we were, if not the first the first historical journal, then one of the first Humanities journals in Italy to adopt double-blind peer reviewing of our texts.

“Spagna contemporanea” thus set a standard common elsewhere and recently garnering the top classification (“A”) by the Ministry of Education’s Commission for the Contemporary History Journals. A few days ago we published our 50th issue, with articles and essays on every aspect of contemporary Spanish history and society. While we give voice mainly to Italian and Spanish scholars (about 50% of every issue is in Spanish), the publication does also provide a forum for scholars from other countries (France, UK, Germany, USA etc.) engaged in Spanish studies.

The Journal has also fostered more direct international scholarly exchanges among hispanist historians. Since the year 2000 the Journal has organized a series of international historical conferences, many of whose proceedings have been published. In 2014, the Journal hosted the ASPHS’s annual conference in Modena, with the as yet unsurpassed record of 120 panels for 427 participants from all over the world.

Even as this important anniversary prompts us to reflect upon our past, we continue to look forward, and an important piece of news about the future of the Journal that may be especially interesting for ASPHS members is that, as of issue 51 the Journal will now accept submissions in English, which shall be judged and eventually published according to our standing double-blind referee system.

In this way we hope to increase the Journal’s accessibility and the exchange of scientific knowledge about Spanish history on both sides of the Atlantic – hopefully to deepen the already existing good relationships between historians located in very distant places. We may perhaps differ in our respective approaches to the subject, and in the treatment of the matter, but we remain eager to widen the boundaries of our shared knowledge.

Call for Chapter Proposals: Confined Women

/in

Chapter proposals are invited for a forthcoming book titled Confined Women: Emparedadas, Malcasadas and the Walls of Female Space in Inquisitorial Spain. The book will focus on the mechanisms of control that women faced in early modern Spain and the different ways that they were venerated through literary, historical, and visual texts. Chapters of 6,000–8,000 words will explore questions such as: how did literary and historical figures become closed-in and monitored?  How did contemporary women interact with ideals of the “virtuous woman” or the “perfect wife”? Conversely, how were figures punished and labelled as subversive and of need of reform? Who were figures that interrupted narratives of virtuosity and of contemporary gendered morality usually determined by men (Juan Luis Vives, Fray Luis de León, Fray Martín de Talavera and Martín Carillo)? Likewise, we look to unveil narratives of voluntary immurement, typically carried out by excessively devout religious women or beatas, but also viewed as a means of escape from an overzealous patriarchy. Some of the themes and authors touched upon in the volume include Cervantes’s portrayal of jealous men and the women they control by means of enclosure, María de Zayas y Sotomayor’s condemnation of an overzealous patriarchy and the popularity and repetition of oral poems of immurement such as La oración de la emparedada.

Contributors are invited to submit a 250 to 300-word chapter proposal for consideration to the editors, Emily Colbert Cairns (emily.colbertcairns@salve.edu) and Brian M. Phillips (brian.m.phillips@jsums.edu). The deadline to receive the proposal is 10 December 2016. Authors of chapter proposals will be notified no later than 10 January 2017, and if accepted a first version of the chapter should be submitted by late April to mid-May of 2017.

CFP: “La internacionalización de España”

/in

En relación con el próximo Congreso “La España actual: cuarenta años de historia (1976-2016)” de la Asociación de Historia Actual y la Asociación de Historiadores del Presente, que se celebrará en Cádiz del 10 al 12 de mayo de 2017, os invitamos a presentar propuestas de comunicación para la mesa que coordinamos sobre “La internacionalización de España (1976-2016): actores y redes transnacionales”.

Las propuestas deberán enviarse por email antes del 15 de enero de 2017, simultáneamente, a los coordinadores de la mesa (carlos.sanz@ghis.ucm.es y clopezgo@nebrija.com)y a la organización (geha@uca.es), indicando el nombre, filiación y direcciones de contacto (postal y electrónica) de los comunicantes, así como un breve resumen de las mismas (300 palabras).