7th Annual Meeting of the AMEMG
25-26 October 2019
Halifax, N.S.

Co-sponsored by Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College

If you are interested in presenting a paper (15-20 minutes in length) or organizing a roundtable or special session, please submit an abstract or description of roughly 300 words along with a brief biographical statement (300 words) to Krista.Kesselring@dal.ca by 17 May 2019.

We welcome papers from graduate students, as well as from regular members of AMEMG. Papers can be on any subject related to the pre-modern era, in any discipline, and can be presented in either English or French. Details about accommodations, the keynote, and an anticipated special treat to follow!

click for Programme & Registration

Registration fees are $60, with $40 reduced rate for graduate students, sessional/stipendiary faculty, and independent scholars. The registration fee includes a reception on Friday evening and lunch on Saturday, as well as coffee breaks and light snacks throughout both days

Accommodation:

Participants will arrange their own accommodation: Rooms are being held for the AMA/AMEMG members at a B&B and a motel (see below): tell them you are attending the conference when you book. The rooms are only held until September 12, so book as soon as you can.

Savoy Arms:  This small B&B will hold 3 rooms under the conference name until September 12.  Their rate is $110/night and includes breakfast.  The Savoy Arms does not take credit or debit cards, so people staying there will have to pay with cash or cheque. Tel: 506-536-0790.

Coastal Inn:  Rooms are being held under the conference name until September 12.  The rooms each have 2 double beds, and the rate is $105 plus tax/night and includes breakfast. Tel: 506-536-0000.

Please note that Sackville is a very small town and does get sold out of accommodation spaces on fall weekends: book early!

Food

Please let us know about any dietary requirements!

As this conference is run on a “bijou budget,” participants will need to pay for their own meals, aside from the reception on Friday (which will include food) and Saturday’s lunch, both of which are included in the registration fee.

Friday lunch: Since the conference is starting at 1pm on Friday, we advise that you eat lunch before arriving. We will reserve space at the University Club that day for anyone who wants to eat there (they do a nice lunch service): as we get closer to the date we will ask for RSVPs for that.

Friday dinner: Traditionally we’ve booked a space in a restaurant on Friday nights for a late dinner after the plenary, and we plan on doing that again this year – and in the early fall we’ll also contact you about an RSVP for that too. The reception at the university club that evening, however, will include food to tide you over!

Saturday dinner: On Saturday night we’ll arrange something informal for people who are staying in town – perhaps simply hanging out at one of the local pubs and ordering food in from a local establishment. We’ll keep you posted on those plans.

Translatio: Knowledge Migrations of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Joint Conference of the Atlantic Medieval Association
& the Atlantic Medieval and Early Modern Group

Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB
12-13 October 2018

Keynote and Workshop by Dr. Samuel Gessner, Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT), University of Lisbon, Portugal:
“A Hands-on History of the Astrolabe” (12 October 2018)

Taken from the topos of translatio studii, the Translatio joint conference of the AMA and AMEMG will explore the ways medieval and early modern knowledge moved between historical periods, lands, cultures, languages, and disciplines. We invite papers on subjects that consider both disciplinary and interdisciplinary explorations of knowledge migrations from the 4 th to 18 th centuries in Europe, the Americas, and around the world.

Medieval and early modern knowledge did not pass away with these cultures; in many ways contemporary cultures are the inheritors of that knowledge. Thus, medievalism and historicism are also part of the scope of the conference. Additionally, the transmission of medieval and early modern knowledge through teaching practices, especially undergraduate pedagogy, will be an important discussion in this conference. We would also like to explore the meeting of European and Indigenous knowledge in the medieval and early modern periods, and consider the ways in which these multicultural engagements are still part of our intellectual and cultural landscapes today (please see the call for contributions for a special panel below).

The keynote speaker for 2018, Dr. Samuel Gessner, is a historian of science specializing in interdisciplinary approaches to the history of medieval and early modern instruments of science and mathematics. He will present a talk on the international migrations of astrolabe knowledge (texts and instruments) from the ancient world to the early modern period. His presentation will include a “hands-on” segment where audience members will get an introduction on using an astrolabe.

Proposals (300 words) and a brief biographical statement should be sent to Lauren Beck (lbeck@mta.ca) and Janine Rogers (jrogers@mta.ca) by 1 February 2018.

Panel: Responses from the Fields of Medieval and Early Modern Studies to the TRC’s Calls for Action

Taking place at the joint meeting of the AMA and the AMEMG at Mount Allison University in October 2018, this panel will address any aspect of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls for Action in light of the scholarship and teaching practices used by the disciplines of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Scholars at any stage of their careers as well as students are encouraged to participate, identify challenges to be addressed in the future, share thoughts on how we can decolonize our curriculum and scholarship, propose collective initiatives that may allow us to respond to or address the Calls for Action, observe how cognate disciplines or other institutions are dealing (or not dealing) with the Calls, and outline ways that Indigenous peoples, literatures, cultures, histories, and experiences might be better integrated into our fields of research and teaching.

A brief 150-word description of your contribution to this panel as well as a brief 100-word biography should be sent to Lauren Beck (lbeck@mta.ca) and Janine Rogers (jrogers@mta.ca) by 1 February 2018. Participants will be briefed on the length of their presentations after the panel is organized.

October 13-14, 2017

University of New Brunswick, Fredericton

Friday, October 13

2:30-4:00pm: Registration – Tilley Hall 123 (Windsor Room)

UNB Map

Registration fee: 35$ (includes coffee breaks, lunch, and the Friday evening reception)

4:00-5:30pm  Session #1: Disruptive and Destructive Behaviours  (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: Richard Raiswell, History, UPEI

Cheryl Fury, University of New Brunswick (Saint John)

“Wicked Actions Merit Fearful Judgments”: Capital Trials aboard the Early East India Company Voyages, 1601-1611

Cheryl Petreman, Technical University of Dresden

Drunk and Disorderly in Early Modern Nördlingen

Janet Mullin, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) and St. Thomas University

“Very drunk & fit for nothing”: The language of drunkenness in eighteenth-century England

5:30-7:00pm:  Reception at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB), 23 Dineen Drive

7:00-8:00pm:  Keynote address (PANB)

Chair: Richard Raiswell, History, UPEI

Randall Martin (Department of English, University of New Brunswick)

“Environmental History, Shakespeare, and Ecological Modernity”

8:00pm onwards:  Pizza and drinks at the “Grad House” (Alden Nowlan House), 676 Windsor Street

Saturday, October 14

8:30-10:00am: Session #2: European and Indigenous Knowledge  (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: Edith Snook, UNBF

Robin Vose, St. Thomas University

De iurisdiccione inquisitorum contra infideles: the evolution of a concept

Lauren Beck, Mount Allison University

Indigenous Adaptations of European Cartographical Practices in the Early Modern Period in the Spanish Americas

Rachel Bryant, Dalhousie University

Rejected Kinship: The Pocahontas Myth in Settler Ontologies

10:00-10:15am:  Coffee Break  (Tilley Hall 28)

10:15-11:45am: Concurrent Sessions #3 and #4

Session #3: Using, Revising, and Clarifying the Past (Tilley Hall 124)

Chair: Elizabeth Mancke, Canada Research Chair, History, UNBF

Mark MacDonald, University of Prince Edward Island and University of Saskatchewan

Enlightenment Replicant: Sir James Macdonald, Hybridity, and Eighteenth-Century Time-Space Compression

Adam Nadeau, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

“The lucrative vices of men of trade”: Commerce, Rhetoric, and History in Thomas Hobbes’s Behemoth

Neil Robertson, University of King’s College

Descartes and Augustine: An Attempt at Clarifying the Relation

Session #4: Kinship, Bonds, and Gender (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: Karen Pearlston, Law, UNBF

Lyndan Warner, St. Mary’s University

Kinship Riddles

Danielle Taylor, Carleton University

Blood, Bonds, and Brothers: Fraternal Triads in Lydgate and Malory

Tim Stretton, St. Mary’s University

“Married Women at Law in 17^th Century England”

11:45am-1:00pm: Lunch (Tilley Hall 28)

1:00-2:30pm: Concurrent Sessions #5 and #6

Session # 5: Disputes in Evidence, Art, and Language (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: Gary Waite, History, UNBF

Richard Raiswell, University of Prince Edward Island

Authenticating Demon Possession in the Age of the New Empiricism

Jannette Vusich, University of King’s College

“Qui si conviene usare un poco d’arte”: Renaissance illustrations of Cantos X-XI in Dante’s Purgatorio

Jeremy Hayhoe, Université de Moncton

Experience and experimentation in agronomic discourse in eighteenth-century France

Session #6: The Fashioning of Religious and Professional Identities (Tilley Hall 124)

Chair: Stephanie Kennedy, History, UNBF

Laura Verner, King’s College, London

Innovation in the Sacramental Life of Catholics in Elizabethan England

Bonnie Huskins, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) and St. Thomas University

“Such is the very important office of an engineer”: William Booth, professional self-fashioning, and British military engineers in the 18th century

Wendy Churchill, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

“I lost my Health and indeed My Senses”: Military rights, masculinity, and professional identity in William Booth’s 1782 Gibraltar experience

2:30-2:45pm: Coffee Break (Tilley Hall 28)

2:45-4:15pm:  Session #7: The Acquisition, Production, and Exchange of Knowledge (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: J. Marc MacDonald, History, UPEI

Kathryn Morris, University of King’s College

Margaret Cavendish on Self-Knowledge

Siobhan Carlson, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

The Madness in the Howl: Madd Dogg Bites and Woman’s Medical Writing

Edith Snook, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

Rum Jellies and Ginger Wine: Maritime Recipes in the Early Modern Atlantic World

4:30-6:00pm: Session #8: Cultures of Emotion and Power Dynamics (Tilley Hall 125)

Chair: Janet Mullin, History, UNBF

Gary Waite, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

Feeling the Spirit(s) in the Dutch Radical Reformation: From Ecstatic Perception to Rational Doubt, 1536-1690

Stephanie Pettigrew, University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

The Transatlantic Power of 17^th-century French Women

Keith Grant, Crandall University

“I think I feel new Desires”: Unfeeling Enthusiasts in the Culture of Sensibility

6:00-6:30pm: Closing Remarks and Business Meeting  (Tilley Hall 125)

6:30pm onwards: downtown pub for food and drinks

Photo credit: Tashwayn via Flickr.  Creative Commons License.

Dr. Gary Waite, of the Department of History, University of New Brunswick, has funding for a qualified MA student for the academic year 2016-2017 who wishes to complete an MA by thesis (18 months) or report (12 months) at UNB in Early Modern European History, preferably on some aspect of sixteenth or seventeenth century intellectual, religious, political or socio-cultural history (England, Netherlands, Germany, France). This stipend is in conjunction with the new research project, “Amsterdamnified! Religious Dissenters, Anti-Providential Ideas and Urban Associationalism in the Emergence of the Early Enlightenment in England and the Low Countries, 1540-1700,” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. For a brief description of the project, see the website http://amsterdamnified.dutchdissenters.net/wp/.

The stipend for year one will be in the order of $15,300. Research Assistantship duties will follow the UNB Graduate School guidelines (c. 8 hours per week) and will involve assisting Professor Waite (and when appropriate his co-investigator, Professor Michael Driedger of Brock University) with ongoing bibliographical searches and analysis of secondary source material, searching for and analysis of relevant primary source material (English and/or Dutch), and assisting in the mapping of correspondence, printing, and personal networks of Christian and Jewish nonconformists in the UK and continental Europe.

The particular collections to be utilized will depend of course on the language skills of the particular student. There will also be funding for presenting relevant research findings at appropriate scholarly venues, and perhaps also to accompany Prof. Waite on a research trip to London.

For further information or if interested, please contact Dr. Waite by email at: waite@unb.ca.

All applicants will of course have to meet the usual requirements for admission and funding for MA students as set out in the Department of History and School of Graduate Studies. The History Graduate Student webpage is a good place to start: http://www.unb.ca/fredericton/arts/graduate/history/index.html