EPISCOPUS is sponsoring three sessions at the 2012 International Medieval Congress. The 2012 EPS panel titles are:

• Men of the Cloth: Vestments and the Performance of Episcopal Power (co-sponsored with DISTAFF)
• Re-thinking Reform: Bishops, Issues, Texts (co-sponsored with ICMAC)
• Monks against Bishops? Reconsidering Episcopal-Monastic Relationships

The full CFP with session descriptions and contact information for each session organizer is available at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/CallForPapers2012.pdf. Quick access to the paper-proposal submission forms (in Word and interactive PDF versions) is at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF.

Submissions not accepted by EPS will be forwarded to the Medieval Institute for consideration in general sessions.

The Thirty-Ninth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, 30-31 March 2012, at The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, presents “After Constantine: Religion and Secular Power in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages”.

In recognition of the 1700th anniversary of the traditional “conversion” of Constantine, this conference will explore the interrelationship of religion and secular power in the late antique and medieval worlds. Attention will be given to the relationship of “church” and “state,” the role of the church as holder of secular power, the politics of sainthood, the uses of patronage, the relationship of religion and power in non-Christian contexts, and any other appropriate issues. The program will include 20-minute papers from any discipline.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, please submit an abstract of approx. 250 words and a short c.v. by 1 October 2011. If you would like to organize a session (3 papers preferred), please submit all the pertinent abstracts and c.v.s by 1 October. Papers accepted for the Colloquium must be submitted in their final form, including notes, by 15 Feb. 2012, in order to reach their commentators in good time. Please submit your materials electronically if possible.

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium Prize will be awarded for the best paper by a PhD student or recent PhD recipient (degree awarded in or after June 2009)

Contact: Susan J Ridyard
Professor of History
Director, Sewanee Medieval Colloquium
Sewanee: The University of the South
735 University Ave
Sewanee TN 37383
(931) 598 1531
sridyard@sewanee.edu

The Fourteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law will be held 5–11 August, 2012, at Saint Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, Canada. Visit our website at http://medieval.utoronto.ca/events/ICMCL/index.html.

The program committee invites proposals for papers in any area of Medieval Canon Law, including the following:

• Sources and Texts
• Canonical Doctrine
• Institutions, Legislation, Procedures
• Application and Influence
• Law, Theology and the Schools

Please include the following information with your proposal:

• Your Name and title (Ms./Mr., Dr., Prof., etc)
• Your institutional affiliation
• The title of your proposed paper
• A brief (one paragraph) summary of the proposed paper
• Your email address
• Your postal address

In addition to individual papers, the program committee will also entertain proposals for special sessions (3 papers) and panel discussions on a particular topic.

The deadline for proposals is August 15, 2011. Proposals (in a PDF file, or in Word or WordPerfect format) should be sent as an email attachment to joe.goering@utoronto.ca. Those unable to send proposals as email attachments may send a hard copy to:

Joseph Goering
Department of History
University of Toronto
100 St. George St.
Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
Canada

This conference seeks to explore and re-evaluate medieval men’s relationship with religion, both professed religious men and laymen of any faith. Despite their centrality to ‘traditional’ histories of the Middle Ages, many aspects of the lives and representation of medieval men remain relatively unexplored. Only recently have scholars begun to consider what religion, belief and devotion meant to men as men and how these informed and intersected with other aspects of their identity (social status, gender, occupation, ethnicity, age, location, etc). We invite papers which consider the experiences, self-perception or depiction of individuals or groups from any faith, religious tradition, monotheistic, pagan, or heretical, or could focus on men who rejected faith and religion altogether. We encourage proposals from scholars working in any relevant field: history, literature and language, art history, musicology, archaeology, etc, and from any Medieval period (c. 500 – early 1500s) or geographical setting. We hope to publish a volume of essays based on a selection of the papers delivered at the conference.

Please send a brief proposal to Conference.presentations07@hud.ac.uk

Plenary speakers:

• Professor Michael L Satlow, Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic studies Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. ‘Antique and Early Medieval Rabbinic thought on constructions of masculinity and religiosity, with particular reference to Torah study’
• Dr Jennifer Thibodeaux, Associate Professor in Women’s Studies and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. ‘The disciplining of the Norman clergy and the engagement with celibacy as a defining feature of clerical identity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’
• Dr James Clark, Reader in Late Medieval History, University of Bristol. ‘The attractions of the monastic life for English men between the Black Death and the Reformation’

The conference will be held at the University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK. It has been timed for the weekend before the Leeds IMC to allow international visitors to attend both. Leeds is a 20 minute train journey from Huddersfield. Huddersfield has good train connections to Manchester Airport which lies less than an hour away. (http://www2.hud.ac.uk/about/visiting/)

The conference organisers are Dr Pat Cullum and Dr Katherine J. Lewis, editors of Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, (Cardiff, 2004)

For further information go to

http://www2.hud.ac.uk/mhm/history/research/conferences/religiousmen.php

The conference seeks to take an interdisciplinary approach inviting contributors from many different fields, including conservation and science, to stimulate new connections and prompt further research. It is anticipated that the papers will be published in 2012.

Suggested general topics are:

• Manifestations of the medieval cult of relics and the cult of saints
• Pilgrimage, real and virtual
• Reliquaries and shrines; their construction, use and re-use
• Patronage and relic collecting

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted by *Friday 28 January 2011*.

By post:
Anna Harnden
Prehistory and Europe
British Museum
London WC1B 3DG

By email: aharnden@britishmuseum.org