Existing scholarship on madness in medieval (mostly English) literature is dedicated predominantly to typological schematization or to clinical descriptions of medieval madness, either in terms of medieval theories of insanity or from a more modern, often Lacanian, perspective. More properly literary accounts, notably Sylvia Huot’s excellent Madness in Medieval French Literature (2003), tend to privilege the ways in which madness constructs, deconstructs, and problematizes individual and collective identities and their articulation with each other. Without excluding these issues, this...

Apologies for cross-posting. Proposals of papers are invited for the annualGender and Medieval Studies conference that will meet on thetheme of ‘Gender in Material Culture’ at Bath Spa University (Corsham Courtcampus) from 4th to 6th January 2013. I would be grateful if you couldcirculate this via any email lists you may have.The Conference will consider the gendered nature of social, religious andeconomic uses of ?things’, exploring the way that objects and the materialenvironment were produced, consumed and displayed in medieval culture.Papers will address questions of...

Paper abstracts are invited for an upcoming multi-disciplinary conference entitled, Politeness and Prurience: Situating Transgressive Sexualities in the Long Eighteenth Century. The conference will attempt to reconcile the dominant discourse of politeness with the subject of illicit sexuality, which have been hitherto pursued as two separate fields of enquiry within cultural histories of the eighteenth century.This two-day event will be hosted by the History of Art Department at the University of Edinburgh on the 2-3 September 2013. Please see the conference website...