Call for Papers: International Congress for Medieval Studies

From http://apaclassics.org/index.php/apa_blog/apa_blog_entry/cfp_societas_ovidiana_at_kalamazoo

The Societas Ovidiana is soliciting abstracts for papers to be presented at the 49th International Congress for Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI from May 8-11, 2014. This year the organizers are sponsoring two sessions which focus on specific spaces of Ovidian reception in order to explore the broad range of Ovid’s influence during the medieval centuries. The two spaces chosen to visit are the medieval classroom and the medieval courts.

The first panel, “Ovid in the Classroom,” invites an investigation into the teaching practices of medieval schools, both primary and advanced. The material transmission of Ovid’s corpus, specifically the traditions of glosses and commentaries found in both manuscripts and print, allow us insight into the diversity of classroom instruction throughout the Middle Ages. These differences, however, occur not only at the grammatical, logical or rhetorical level but can also point to divergent constructions of identity, gender and society. How was Ovid taught?

The second panel, “Ovid in the Courts,” considers the influence both on courtiers themselves and on those who aspired to courtly rank. Ovid's amatory works were distilled into models of courtly love, and his epic tales were adapted into chivalric chansons. Vernacular receptions of Ovid’s works proliferated throughout the late Medieval period, and these translations extend beyond mere reproduction from one language to another to furnish us with rich sources for studies of cross-cultural and cross-generic literary metamorphoses. How was Ovid performed?

Please send proposals of 300-500 words with a working title and department affiliation by September 15, 2013.

View the full call for papers at http://apaclassics.org/index.php/apa_blog/apa_blog_entry/cfp_societas_ovidiana_at_kalamazoo