Medieval Material Matters
A one-day Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Research Day at the University of Warwick, 18th July 2016.
Medievalist Guest Speaker: Professor Catherine Brown, University of Michigan.
Funding provided by The Society for French Studies and by the University of Warwick
This interdisciplinary event aims to cultivate research links between medievalist postgraduate communities, and the conference will be a free public event. The theme of the event – Medieval Material Matters – has been chosen as a means of focusing discussion. A plenary lecture on 'Manuscript is the New Digital' by Professor Catherine Brown, an internationally established academic working on questions of materiality, will be delivered in the morning. In order to maximise opportunities for exploratory conversation following the plenary, there will be 2 sessions for short presentations (10-15 minutes) based on pre-circulated papers in the morning and afternoon, followed by a session discussing a piece of secondary reading in seminar format. The final part of the day will be used to think about future collaboration.
The conference will seek to address the following questions:
How might ‘materiality’ be understood – and critiqued – in medieval contexts? How does textual materiality fit into this understanding? What is the role of objects (material or otherwise) within this context?
What perspectives can research in Medieval Studies offer on discussions/theorisations of materiality in other periods?
How might the digital environment in which medieval research increasingly takes place affect our thinking about the materiality of cultural artefacts, objects, and spaces?
This event is running as part of the prestigious and well-established Medieval Seminar Series at the University of Warwick.
Abstracts of 200 words are welcomed from postgraduate medievalist students working within any department. Please send these as an email attachment to medievalmaterialmatters@gmail.com, or submit them on the conference website, by 1 May 2016. It is anticipated that final papers of between 3000 – 3500 words will subsequently be submitted to the organisers by the deadline of 18 June 2016, for pre-circulation to registered delegates. Speakers will then be expected to present a summary of their paper, lasting 10-15 minutes, on the day, before discussion of their paper begins.
For any queries, or to reserve a free place at this event, please first visit the conference website at www.medmaterialmatters.wix.com/warwick, or contact one of the organisers at medievalmaterialmatters@gmail.com. Travel bursaries for postgraduate students are available, kindly funded by The Society for French Studies.
