[MGSA-L] Reminder - CFP for Medievalists at Penn Graduate Student Conference, UPenn 2011 (fwd)

[roilos at fas.harvard.edu]

Dear all,

The following may be of interest to members of the list.

Sincerely,
Panagiotis Roilos

Panagiotis Roilos
Professor of Greek Studies and of Comparative Literature
Department of the Classics and Department of Comparative Literature
Faculty Associate, The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~modgreek/index.html


-----> To: Committee on Medieval Studies <medieval at fas.harvard.edu>
> Subject: Reminder - CFP for Medievalists at Penn Graduate Student Conference,
UPenn 2011 (fwd)
>
> Call for Papers
> Medievalists @ Penn (M at P) Third Annual Graduate Student Conference
> "Mater(ia) familias: Family Matters"
> April 1-2, 2011, University of Pennsylvania
>
> Keynote speaker: Ann Marie Rasmussen, Duke University
>
>> From the nuclear to the royal to the holy, families fill the Middle
> Ages. As a dominant structuring principle of society, the concept of
> the family knits together the prevalent social, political and economic
> relations attending the formation and development of the medieval
> subject. As an ideological construct, the family motif pervades all
> spheres of cultural expression, from theological and philosophical
> debates to literary creations, visual productions and musical
> compositions. As a taxonomizing unit, the notion of family organizes
> our understanding of language, of material texts and of literary
> categories. This year’s theme asks us to probe and complicate the
> questions of gender, structure and power raised by the idea of the
> family in order to illuminate the complex discursive relations at the
> heart of medieval society.
>
> Our conference invites submissions concerning one or more formulations
> of the idea of family. Proposals might look at actual families,
> whether functional or dysfunctional, real or supernatural, or seek to
> theorize more abstract concepts of family in relation to linguistic
> groups, manuscripts and textual transmission. As per our group's
> mission, we welcome a plurality of perspectives from across all fields
> of study in recognition of the profound interdisciplinarity of our
> common object of inquiry: the Middle Ages.
>
> Topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:
> genealogies
> text and manuscript families
> families of believers
> divine families, the Trinity
> monastic orders
> gender roles
> supernatural/monstrous families
> genre and canon formation
> arranged marriages
> marriage as economic transaction
> kinship structures
> nontraditional/non-nuclear families
> sibling rivalry
> conduct manuals, didactic texts
> wills, legacies, inheritances, posterity
> language families
> ruptures, estrangement, long distance relationships
> incest
> polygamy
> childbearing and childrearing
> dynasties
>
> Please send 300-word abstracts to pennmedieval at gmail.com by January 15,
> 2011.
>
> --
> Elizaveta Strakhov
> Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
> University of Pennsylvania
> strakhov at sas.upenn.edu
>
>
>