"Hearing and Speaking the Middle Ages: Orality and Aurality in Performance and Text"

The Twenty-Seventh Annual Spring Symposium of The Medieval Studies Institute of Indiana University

27–29 March 2015

Indiana University, Bloomington

Keynote: Professor Samer Ali, University of Texas at Austin

CALL FOR PAPERS

Oral practice was a widespread mode of cultural consumption in the Middle Ages. From troubadour chansonniers, to the itinerant Japanese biwa hôshi and court poets like the Anglo-Saxon scopas, to the carnivalesque festivals of the Feast of Fools, speech and song illuminated the public and private lives of men and women throughout the medieval world. Even in the highly literate codicological culture of scriptoria, hearing and recitation were indispensable tools for understanding and producing the manuscripts we study today.

The symposium would like to pose a broad range of possible topics on the social, political, ethical, and aesthetic purposes of oral culture and its contexts.

Abstracts for 20-minute papers are welcome from scholars across all fields relevant to the study of the Middle Ages, broadly conceived in time and place. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of the Medieval Studies Institute, we invite submissions in areas such as art history, history, linguistics, literature, musicology, philosophy, and religious studies.

Potential paper topics can include, but are not limited to:

* memory and oral culture
* visual and literary depictions of performance
* traveling courtly musicians
* orality and literacy
* linguistic changes over time
* gossip, news, and daily life
* romance narrative and courtly love
* the transition from oral to written text
* liturgical (re)performance of Scripture
* cross-cultural encounters and exchanges

Indiana University is honored to have this year as its keynote speaker Professor Samer Ali of the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Ali studies on the intersection of oral and written literature in Arabic culture. Professor Ali's interdisciplinary work will no doubt appeal to a broad swathe of medievalists and scholars in related fields.

The Medieval Studies Institute invites papers by graduate students for panels sponsored by the Indiana Medieval Graduate Consortium (IMGC), and papers by faculty and graduate students for Institute-sponsored panels.

Please email an abstract of no more than 300 words to Sean Tandy, smtandy@indiana.edu, by 12 January 2015.

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