Books and Transgressions: 50th New England Medieval Consortium Conference and Quinquagenary Celebration
Friday, November 15, 2024 - Saturday, November 16, 2024 | Boston College & Tufts University | Please Register to Attend
The Friday, November 15 event is going to take place in Special Collections, Tisch Library, Tufts University 35 Professors Row Medford, MA 02155.
The 2024 conference will mark the quinquagenary (fiftieth anniversary) of the NEMC’s founding. As the conference returns to Boston College for the first time since 1981, we hope to make it an especially festive occasion.
This year's theme is "Books and Transgressions." Keynote lectures will be delivered by Ariane Bottex-Ferragne (Assistant Professor of French, New York University), “Rules of Transgression in Medieval Poetry: Lessons from a Forgotten Bestseller”; and Ahmed El Shamsy (Professor of Islamic Thought, University of Chicago), “Authors and their Audiences in Medieval Arabic Book Culture."
The local organizing committee is Tina Montenegro (BC), Alice Sullivan (Tufts University), and Eric Weiskott (BC).
This conference will provide an opportunity for medievalists working across a range of disciplines and geographic areas to join in conversation about premodern cultures of the book, boundary-crossing, and the law and other normative cultural expressions. Given this year’s conference location at a Jesuit, Catholic university, and our keynote speakers, we particularly (but not exclusively) invite submissions focused on regions other than England, including the Middle East; language traditions other than English; and religious cultures.
We interpret “transgressions” broadly, including the notions of access, trespass, and desire. Accordingly, we welcome papers from medievalists in any discipline, concerned with any region or polity of Europe, Asia, or Africa.
The conference takes place on Saturday. On the preceding Friday afternoon, there will be an exhibition or workshop hosted by the Tufts University Special Collections.
Institutional Sponsors:
- Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA)
- Medieval Academy of America Institute for the Liberal Arts
- Boston College Special Collections, Tufts University
Schedule and RegistrationFriday, November 15, 2024 | Special Collections, Tisch Library, Tufts University | Registration Required | |
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| 3:00–4:45 PM | exhibit and workshop on manuscript fragments feat. Lisa Fagin Davis |
| 5:00–6:00 PM | NEMC steering committee meeting |
Saturday, November 16, 2024 | Stokes Hall South Rm. S195 (Auditorium), Boston College | Registration Required | |
|---|---|
| 8:00-9:00 AM | Coffee / Registration |
| 9:00-10:00 AM | Plenary Lecture
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| 10:00-11:30 AM | Session 1: Transgressive Poetics
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| 11:30-11:45 AM | Coffee Break |
| 11:45 AM-1:15 PM | Session 2: Manuscript Studies Unbound
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| 1:15-2:15 PM | Lunch |
| 2:15-3:15 PM | Session 3: Sciences at the Crossroads
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| 3:15-4:15 PM | Session 4: Translation as Transgression
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| 4:15-4:30 PM | Coffee Break |
| 4:30-5:30 PM | Plenary Lecture (Live-stream option available)
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| 5:45-7:30 PM | Reception | John J. Burns Library |
Speakers
- Ariane Bottex-Ferragne (New York University), “Rules of Transgression in Medieval Poetry: Lessons from a Forgotten Bestseller”
- Robert Stanton (Boston College)
- Juliette Goutierre (Columbia University), “Erasure and Transformation of the Transgressive in the Fourteenth-Century Ovide moralisé”
- Mariah Min (Brown University), “Desperate Measures Call for Desperate Times: Richard Coer de Lyon and the State of Exception”
- Selina Wang (Columbia University), “Transgressive Nonsense and Beyond: An Analysis of Meaningless Poems in Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, c. Eighth–Ninth Century)”
- Nancy Netzer (Boston College / McMullen Museum)
- Anahit Gasparyan (Tufts University), “Manuscript and Monument: The Roots of the Etchmiadzin Gospel in Bgheno-Noravank‘”
- Alexander Riehle (Harvard University), “Miniature Manuscripts: Byzantine Books of Diminutive Dimensions”
- Anne Shafer (Rhode Island School of Design), “Reimagining Boundaries: The Blue Qur’an and its Ancient Order”
- Eileen Sweeney (Boston College)
- Riccardo Brighenti (University of Milan), “‘And it is called “Plato’s laws” since it is against Nature’s laws’: Classical Reception and Preternatural Transgressions in the Medieval Kitāb al-Nawāmis / Liber Aneguemis”
- Iman Darwish (Harvard University), “How Not To Write a Medieval Arabic Medical Book”
- Eric W. Driscoll (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Antiquarianism as Transgression in Late Byzantium: The Case of Georgios Gemistos Plethon”
- Chase Hockema (Boston College)
- Gennifer Dorgan (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), “Translation, Version, Recension: Modern Terms, Medieval Textuality”
- Joseph R. Johnson (Georgetown University), “Revelation/Variation: Encountering the ‘Mother of Abominations’ in French Vernacular Bibles”
- Ahmed El Shamsy (University of Chicago), “Authors and their Audiences in Medieval Arabic Book Culture”
Campus Map and Parking
Campus Map and Parking:
Parking is available at the nearby Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue Garages.
Boston College is also accessible via public transportation (MBTA B Line - Boston College).
Boston College strongly encourages conference participants to receive the COVID-19 vaccination before attending events on campus.