Another Kalamazoo Monster CFP

Call for Papers 

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University

May 8-11, 2014

The Medieval Monster as Mirror: Translation, Hybridity, and Cultural Identity

Scholars in several areas of Medieval Studies have made important contributions to the growing field of “monster theory.”  For example, Michael Camille discussed the role of the hybrid figures who populate the margins of many medieval manuscripts as visual mirrors of anxiety about identity in the cultures that produced them; and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has argued that monsters in medieval European literature embody a paradox of otherness and intimacy that allows authors and readers to test definitions of cultural identity.  Recently, Deanne Williams has read a monstrous character in Gower’s Confessio amantis as a figure for the hybridity of the translated text.  This session invites papers that examine additional examples of monster figures in medieval texts using translated material, in order to explore the relationship between representations of corporeal hybridity and translation as a self-conscious negotiation of anxieties about cultural identity and otherness.

 Please send proposals for papers of 15-20 minutes to Ben Garceau (bgarceau@indiana.edu) by September 15, 2013.

Session organizers: Ben Garceau and Margot Valles

 Session sponsored by the Medieval Studies Institute, Indiana University

 

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Flaying Volume CFP

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR AN EDITED VOLUME

Title: Images of Flaying in the Middle Ages

Editor: Larissa Tracy

From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his arms, to scenes of grisly execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this volume explores the gruesome practice of skin removal—flaying—in the Middle Ages. This volume examines the widely diverse examples of this grisly practice, and explores the layered responses to skin-removal in art, history, literature, manuscript studies and law. How common was this punishment in practice? How does art reflect spiritual response? How is flaying, in any form, used to further political or religious goals? The papers in this volume will literally get beneath the skin of medieval sensibilities regarding punishment and sacrifice in a nuanced discussion of medieval flaying. Abstracts covering any aspect of literal skin removal from late antiquity to the early modern period will be considered.

* Please submit abstracts of 250 words by Sept. 1, 2013 to Larissa Tracy

(kattracy@comcast.net or tracylc@longwood.edu)

* Please include your affiliation and brief bio with your abstract.

* Please include your last name in the file name, and please include a brief bio.