The International Medieval Congress in 2016 (Leeds)

Last Updated: 27 August 2015

For my own interest I'm gathering together here a list of any Calls for Papers (CfP) for the IMC 2016 in Leeds. The individual paper closing date is 31 August 2015.

31 Aug 2015	The Dominican Order in the Middle Ages	Ordernsgeschichte
31 Aug 2015	Academic Englishes and Academia in the Making: Who Will Write the Middle Ages and How?	Zsuzsanna Reed, CEU
1 Sept 2015	Artisans of the book and collaborative working methods	Manuscript Collaboration Hub
1 Sept 2015	The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture	Amanda Dotseth, Courtauld Institute of Art / AVISTA
8 Sept 2015	Food, Feast and Famine, 3 sessions proposed	Royal Studies Network
10 Sept 2015	Topic: Names & Onomastics	Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
10 Sept 2015	Session proposals for ICMA (ICMA members only) – scroll down	Janis Elliott / ICMA
11 Sept 2015	The Animal Turn in Medieval Health Studies	Sunny Harrison, Leeds
14 Sept 2015	Eating the Book: Manuscripts and Reading Habits in Anglo-Saxon England (Image)	Rachel Burns (UCL) & Francis Leneghan (Oxford)
15 Sept 2015	Interactions among towns and leagues of towns in the long thirteenth century	Dr Gianluca Raccagni
15 Sept 2015	Rethinking the Medieval Frontier	Jonathan Jarrett
15 Sept 2015	The Monastic Refectory and Spiritual Food	CESM
15 Sept 2015	2 sessions: Food and Feast in Medieval Outlaw Texts Ecocritical Outlaws	Kristin Bovaird-Abbo & Lesley A. Coote / IAHRS
ASAP or 15 Sept 2015	The Medieval Landscape/Seascape (blog)	Kimm Curran (Glasgow)
ASAP or 15 Sept 2015	New Directions in the Study of Women Religious (4 sessions)	Kimm Curran (Glasgow) & Kirsty Day (Leeds) & Steven Vanderputten (Ghent)
20 Sept 2015	Medieval Equestrianism: Theory and Practice	Anastasija Ropa & Timothy Dawson
[Unspecified]	Topic: Letters to Women (panel), esp. Letters to Jewish or Muslim women	@KRMaude
[Unspecified]	Medieval Ecocriticism	Heide Estes / Medieval Ecocriticisms
[Unspecified]	"If anyone is interested in putting up sessions for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds [...] under the auspices of the IPPS, please contact us."	Piers Plowman Society
[Unspecified]	Food + Death / Food in Death / Food + Wills	@Emy_Pica
30 Sept 2015	IMC Committee Deadline for Organisers of Sessions / Panels
[Closed]	Murder and Mayhem: Disorder and Violence in Italy 568-1154	---
[Closed]	Feast or Famine? What Presence did the Bible Really Have in Medieval Spiritual Writings?	The Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages
[Closed]	Mastering Knowledge and Power: Bishops, Schools and Political Engagement in Early Medieval Europe (650-1050)	Giorgia Vocino & Giacomo Vignodelli
[Closed]	Slavery in the Medieval World (PDF)	"Medieval Slavery" project
[Closed]	The Separation of Church and Church Bishops and their Communities in the Carolingian Era (8th-10th c.) (Thematic session)	SFB Visions of Community & the Network for the Study of Late Antique and Early Medieval Monasticism
[Closed]	Debating Relics: Reflections on Relics in the Middle Ages and Problems of Methodology	"Mind over Matter" project
[Closed]	Setting the Table: Medieval Tablescapes, Dining, and the Visual Culture of Food (scroll down) (Facebook)	Meg Bernstein / ICMA Student Committee

Any more I've missed? Leave a comment, or tweet @MEM_PG_Confs with the details.

#IMC2016.

Exposing the Truth about cleanliness in the Middle Ages

This is my original premise regarding Hygiene in the Middle Ages. It has evolved since it was written back in about 2005, but it is useful (for me at least!) to see where I started from.

It was originally inspired by a comment in a book about the history of cookery, Food and Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to Recent Times by C. Anne Wilson. Wilson decided to deal with each food type separately, rather than giving an overview of, say, Roman food then 'Dark Ages' food. I was intrigued by a mention of problems with wood meaning that less was available for non-essential uses to preserve it for more important functions like cooking. 

This sparked the question in my head as I thought back to studying Latin Culture at school and remembered visiting villas like Fishbourne and Bignor, and later studying Brading. Each of these sites had highly developed hypocaust systems and bath houses. This just sat in the back of my head until I was taking part in a re-enactment event with friends, and a member of the public commented that "well, everyone knows medieval people were smelly". I'm not good at just accepting assumptions, and started digging around for evidence to either corroborate or deny this. More on this later.

To investigate the role of personal hygiene and cleanliness in the Middle Ages – from the departure of the Romans to the coming of the Tudors


Limits:

Britain -> England 410 – 1485 = over 1000 years Bathing; toilets and teeth Gentry and nobility

1. Hygiene in literature
   1. Chaucer; Pizan; de Troyes etc.
   2. Romances
   3. Salacious tales / Satirical / Aesop-esque
   4. Manuscript illustration?
2. Hygiene and religion
   1. Ancrene wisse
   2. Hagiography for saintly lives
   3. Papal edicts – any mention / lack of mention?
   4. Monastic rules
   5. Contemporary satire and criticism?
   6. Knighting ceremonies?
3. Royal hygiene
   1. E.g. Last days of Queen Isabella contains bath details – look for similar records
   2. Architecture of royal palaces => contemporary accounts, maps, plans etc.
4. Architecture and hygiene (castles and manors)
   1. Toilets and garderobes
   2. Bath houses
   3. Maps and plans (as for Royal palaces)
5. Archaeological evidence
   1. Toothbrushes and other oral hygiene equipment
   2. Hygiene and personal care objects recovered
6. Other mentions in contemporary documentation.

Where am I now?

So where am I now with regards to research? What has changed?

Current topics

• The history of personal hygiene in the wider Middle Ages
• Medievalism and the modern perception of the Medieval period
• Rosaries
• The source of the concept of the filthy Middle Ages

Future (near and distant)
This covers areas which interest me, but which either I don't have the time or skill (yet?) to research, or which I am looking into incidentally to other research

• National and social insults - "Filthy viking marauders", "effete Italians", "impassive Germans" and so on...
• Links between Muscovy/Rus and the British Isles - mostly interested in the elite and trading links
• The Varangarians
• Women's roles in borderlands - especially looking at the Welsh Marches, how women interacted across the borders in times of peace and war, cross border relationships etc.
• The daughters of Yaroslav the Wise.
• The place and role of women in medieval court life.
• Pre-modern Royal ladies-in-waiting - who were they, what did they actually do, what happened to them once their mistresses moved on, either through marriage, political deposition of their husband, or death?
• Women in Russian folklore - Rusalka, Baba Yaga, Vasilissa Prekrasnaia - roles, actions and importance
• Folklore and historicity, e.g. Continuing from my BA thesis and looking at the links between Russian folklore and real historical periods (i.e. Do folk tales represent an era, an idealised era, etc.)

Some posts will be a short series outlining my thinking on each of these. My intention is that these will serve as indexes to thinking each subject, although I will use tags for indexing as well (The Librarian in me goes deep ;D)