Call for Papers
From Hortulus
Hortulus has an open submission policy, so submissions are accepted throughout the year. Graduate students are welcome to submit previously unpublished articles that challenge our readers to look at the Middle Ages from a variety of perspectives by engaging in new theories and interdisciplinary research. Please see the Submission Guidelines regarding specific requirements. All articles should be submitted via email to submit@hortulus.net.
Special Call for Papers
Kalamazoo 2012 Hortulus Sponsored Session: Space and Place in the Medieval Imagination
Sponsored Session: Hortulus invites submission of proposals for its session at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan from May 10-13, 2012. The panel seeks proposals of 300-500 words with a working title and department affiliation by September 1, 2011. Participants will be contacted regardless of whether or not their proposal has been accepted. All proposals submitted but not accepted will be sent on to the general committee for consideration in one of the general sessions at Kalamazoo. All proposals will additionally be considered for special publication in Hortulus Journal.
The CfP is as follows:
Place and space theories have manifested themselves in Medieval Studies in the past few years in a number of ways. More recently, this has been in the form of analysing specific spaces and places, such as gardens (Dendle), forests (Saunders), cities (Dietl), and the court (Simpson). There has also been a recent surge of interest in spatially theorized topics such as travel narratives (Hiatt), nationalism (Leerssen), and the open- or closedness (Goldberg) of specific medieval cultural areas.
Theoretical discourse on space and place investigates how humans position themselves in the world. On a broader scale, human networks of commerce, communication and travel construct meaningful topographies; while at the level of the individual, spatial practices such as physical separation according to perceived differences, and place-making through the process of ritual or imagination, reflect society's vision of the human place in the order of the world. In particular, a post-structuralist view of spatial order recognizes that binaries of centers and peripheries are not inherent in the physical world, but are socially defined representations. Such representations are contingent on discourse by persons who find utility in defining particular centers as stable and enduring.
This session welcomes scholars working on medieval representations of spatial order, or on the sense of place in the construction of social identities. We are seeking papers which investigate any time and place in medieval Europe in which a strong local or regional identity was emphasized; the papers should explore how an imagined order of space, or the meaning of a particular place, aided in defining those identities. The topic encourages literary scholars, historians and art historians to consider the meaning of space in the past by situating it in its precise historical context.
