Postgraduate Medieval Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS
19th Annual Postgraduate Medieval Studies Conference
22nd-23rd February, 2013
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol, UK
MIND AND BODY
The University of Bristol hosts the longest-running international medieval
postgraduate conference in the UK. This annual event offers medievalists the
opportunity to present their research and discuss ideas in an interdisciplinary
setting. The conference is now in its 19th year, and proposals are invited for
papers from postgraduates and early career scholars on the theme of Mind and
Body.
The aim of this year’s conference is to explore medieval understandings and
presentation of mind and body. We are interested in the ways individuals and
groups conceived of, and responded to, questions surrounding mind and body
and/or the relationship between the two, and in what ways this might have been
conditioned by gender, religion, or other socio-political contexts. The theme
‘Mind and Body’ invites consideration of if, and how, it is possible to examine
medieval understandings of what it means to be human, based on textual, visual,
musical, and material sources which have survived to the present day. We
welcome a wide range of discussion from analysis of artistic and textual output,
devotional practices, and social conventions, to investigation of how a particular
understanding of mind and body might impact on attitudes and behaviour
towards oneself or others.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
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The body as ‘object’? : artistic and literary presentations
Treatment of bodily difference and otherness
Mind, Body, and Gender
Memory and cognition
The role of body and mind in worship
The cult of saints
Medical understandings of illness/diseases of the mind or body
Attitudes to disability
Intellectual organisation: the life of schools and universities
Papers must be no more than 20 minutes long.
Abstracts of 250-300 words should be sent by email (by preference) to Tamzin
Simmons (tamzin.c.simmons@bristol.ac.uk)
or by post:
Tamzin Simmons,
Centre for Medieval Studies,
Graduate School of Arts and Humanities,
University of Bristol,
7, Woodland Road,
Bristol,
BS8 1TB
UK
Deadline for applications: Friday 7th December 2012