For the first time, the New England Medieval Studies Consortium Graduate Conference is offering a variety of sponsored sessions.  Abstracts on all topics concerning late antiquity through the late Middle Ages are encouraged and will be considered for the general sessions.  However, if you would like to be considered for one of these sponsored sessions, please make a note on your abstract.

Charles A. Owen, Jr. Memorial Library – The Fifteenth Century and Beyond in Medieval Studies

The recent emergence of the fifteenth century as the subject of enthusiastic and energetic reassessment – in the fields of literary study, history, and book culture especially – provides a fresh challenge to the parameters of what we mean when we say “medieval studies.”  Where are the current boundaries – chronological, theoretical, disciplinary – of the medieval? How does recent scholarship conceive of, challenge, reinscribe, or rewrite those limits?  This session invites work that explores any aspect of the fifteenth century forward. Papers don’t have to directly engage the above questions, but we expect these will emerge as part of the fuller session discussion.  The Charles A. Owen, Jr. Memorial Library is maintained by the University of Connecticut Medieval Studies Program.

Mystics Quarterly – Medieval Mysticism

Mystics Quarterly was founded as the 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter by Valerie Lagorio and Ritamary Bradley in 1974 and was renamed in 1984.  Mystics Quarterly is currently housed at the University of Connecticut and is edited by Bob Hasenfratz.  The journal is sponsoring a session on any aspect of medieval mysticism.  As the Mystics Quarterly web site states, mysticism is understood as the "belief in the possibility of direct experience of the divine, that is, of union with or absorption into the godhead by means of contemplation and self-surrender."
 

New England Saga Society – Norse and Germanic Sagas

The New England Saga Society (NESS) is an organization founded at the University of Connecticut and is dedicated to facilitating the study of Old Norse literature and culture in the United States.  NESS is sponsoring a session on Norse and Germanic sagas.  For further information on NESS itself, please see the organization's web site.

University of Connecticut Dodd Center – Art History

The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut acquires, preserves, and makes accessible specialized research collections for students, faculty, staff, scholars, and the general public.  It houses Archives and  Special Collections, the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, and the Human Rights Institute and is responsible for all the university's collections of original source materials, including manuscripts, organizational records, early printed books, broadsides, pamphlets, photographs, prints, and audio visual materials.  The Dodd is sponsoring a session on any art history topic.

Yale University Medieval Studies Program – Translation as Conversation

This session, "Translation as Conversation," invites papers involving any combination of medieval languages in any context. Translation is rarely a one-way conversation, and this session seeks to stimulate discussion on the dialogic potential of translation between vernacular and sacred languages, between dialects, between cultures, between audiences, between secular and spiritual, between human and divine.  The Yale University Medieval Studies Program, a member of the New England Medieval Studies Consortium, has offered interdisciplinary degrees in medieval studies since 1962.