Below please find listed those panel sessions devoted to medieval and early modern topics for the upcoming South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) Conference in Durham, North Carolina, November 13-15, 2015. For those who do not know, this is the Southeastern American branch of the Modern Language Association. Please note the various abstract due dates for each session and plan accordingly. More information about the conference can be found here: https://samla.memberclicks.net/conference
Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) Sponsored Session:
Of Marriages and Disciplines: Celebrating the Fruits of Interdisciplinary Nature of Medieval Studies
This session seeks presentations that explore the many riches of interdisciplinary studies of the medieval period. Many of us in the field take this for granted, but we should not. Rather we should take a moment to celebrate the way that art and history and philosophy and literature all work to illuminate and contradict each other. By June 15, 2015, please submit a 500 word abstract, brief bio, and A/V requirements to Michael Crafton,mcrafton@westga.edu.
English I (Medieval)
The Arts in Early Medieval Literature
In keeping with this year’s conference theme (“In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts”) the Medieval session this year is open for papers that deal with any of the arts of the period, from the illustration of illuminated manuscripts, wearable art such as heraldric jewelry, and other artifacts and implements. Papers that explore the descriptions of material culture in works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with its lush description of the trappings of the Knight himself, would also be welcome. Celebrations of music or depictions of the holiday customs of singing and dancing, ekphrasis, the employment of inanimate objects in riddles, giving voice to inanimate objects as in The Dream of the Rood, the possible topics are limitless. This year’s conference will be in Durham, North Carolina on November 13-15, 2015. Please send a 250-word abstract, a one-page bio, and A/V requirements to Rachel Scoggins, vscoggins2@student.gsu.edu by May 15.
Medieval Literature
Strangers, Neighbors, and Monsters in Medieval Literature
This panel seeks papers that treat any aspect of social difference as presented in the literatures of the Middle Ages. Papers might construe this social difference as confessional, geographic, economic, political, or bodily. How do these categories of difference shape social formation? How do they delimit the boundaries of moral relevance and/or social inclusion? What counts as a neighbor? What counts as a monster? What obligations or affinities do these designations entail? How does one know how to treat a stranger? Paper proposals that deal with the troubling of categories of social difference are especially welcome. So too are proposals that respond to the conference theme of “In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts” by engaging music, architecture, manuscript illumination, painting, sculpture, fashion, or any of the “other arts.” By June 1, 2015, please submit a 300-word abstract, a brief bio, and A/V requirements to Gabriel Ford at gaford@davidson.edu.
English II (1500 to 1600), Session A
Old English
Old English Literature and Science
This panel welcomes proposals on any aspect of Old English literature and science. Although the Old English period antedates the Scientific Revolution, it includes a number of pre-scientific works. Among these are Bede’s treatises On the Nature of Things and On Times; poems like “The Phoenix,” based in part on the natural histories of eagles and peacocks; and “monstrous” works such as the Aldhelmian Liber Monstrorum, the Old English prose piece The Marvels of the East, and Beowulf. While these “monstrous” texts are largely fanciful, they may have been inspired by empirical observations of natural elements such as landscape, weather, and animal remains. In turn, Old English texts have been profitably studied from a range of scientific perspectives, including ecology, animal studies, information theory, geology, geomythology, archaeology, cognitive studies, cosmology, zoology, meteorology, and taxonomy, among others. Proposals addressing the SAMLA 87 theme (“In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts”) are also welcome. By May 15, 2015, please submit a 300-word abstract, a brief bio, and A/V requirements to Timothy J. Burbery, Marshall University, at burbery@marshall.edu.
More Matter with Less Art? Literature and the Other Arts in 16th-Century England
This panel invites papers concerning the intersections of literature and the other arts in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: the influence of the Reformation on artistic production, the use of music in the public theater, representations of courtly masques and dancing, the musicality of poetry, representations of architecture in literature, etc. By June 15, 2015, please submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio to Donna Wroble, Georgia State University, at dwroble1@student.gsu.edu
English II (1500 to 1600), Session C
Early Modern Inversions
Conference papers are invited to explore the literary, cultural, and theoretical aspects of inversions in early modern drama, poetry, and prose. This session will explore the nature and meaning of inversions (broadly defined), with special attention paid to how unexpected (or previously unseen) inversions display, develop, or subvert traditional ideas of community and order. This session encourages papers that examine gender, politics, economics, science, and religion. Please send 200-word abstracts and short bios by 1 June, 2015 to Matt Carter, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, at mccarte2@uncg.edu.
Melissa Ridley Elmes 