Call for Papers for the 13th Annual MEMSA Conference at Durham University on 11th-12th July 2019. This year’s theme is ‘Travel, Movement and Exploration in the Medieval and Early Modern World’.

13th Durham MEMSA CFP

The deadline for submission is Monday 25th March 2019.

We are looking for proposals of 200-300 words, for papers lasting twenty minutes to be sent to us at: memsaconference2019@gmail.com. Please find the full call for papers attached to this email.

MEMSA (the Medieval and Early Modern Student Association) is an interdisciplinary group of postgraduate students at Durham University. We accept paper proposals from postgraduate students and early career researchers working in any area of medieval and early modern studies.

CALL FOR PAPERS for the 4^th Biennial Conference:

Living with Animals

Theme: Some we love, some we hate, some we eat, some we need

Co-organizers: Robert W. Mitchell, Radhika Makecha, and Michał Pręgowski.

“Living with Animals 4” is an Animal Studies conference about all things animal and human-animal interaction, occurring at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). EKU, located in Richmond, Kentucky, just south of Lexington, “The Horse Capital of the World,” began offering the first undergraduate degree in Animal Studies in 2010. We offer a Living with Animals conference every 2 years, and are pleased again to have an international set of speakers.

The conference is now over three days, March 21-23, 2019.

On Sunday, March 24, the day after the conference, we are hoping to have an optional day-long excursion to Salato Wildlife Center, and then to Buffalo Trace Distillery, both in Frankfort, Kentucky, but this is still in the planning stages.

The conference will be held in the Perkins Building at EKU. 

PROSPECTUS:

The conference centers on our ever-present relationships with animals examined through the arts and humanities, sciences, and applied fields. Consistent with the conference theme, our focus this time around is our diverse relationships with animals.  The theme derives from Hal Herzog’s well-known and influential book, Some we love, some we hate, some we eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about animals. We hope presenters will find the relevance of their topic to the theme, but of course any topic related to animals or human-animal interaction is welcome.

The special day-long session, “Living with Horses”, a continuing conference in the Living with Animals conference, is co-organized by Gala Argent and Angela Hofstetter.

We are also hoping to attract presenters on the theme of “Living with Insects,” to draw attention to the precarious nature of so many insects in the world today.

We have 4 keynotes:

Hal Herzog is professor of Psychology at Western Carolina University. To find out more about him, see: http://halherzog.com/about/.

Marcy Norton is associate professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her talk will focus on horse-human interactions in Western Europe and indigenous America between 1500-1800. To find out more about her, see: https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/marcy-norton/.

Seth Magle is the Director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The provisional title of his talk is “Building a global network for urban wildlife research.” To find out more about him, see: https://www.lpzoo.org/staff/seth-magle-phd.

Clare Rittschof is assistant professor of Entomology at the University Kentucky in Lexington. The provisional title of her talk is “The interwoven social lives of humans and honey bees.” To find out more about her, see: https://clarerittschof.com.

Email contact: livingwithanimals@eku.edu

ABSTRACTS:

Abstracts of 200 to (approximately) 400 words should be sent to livingwithanimals@eku.edu. The first line of the abstract should be the title of the talk, and the next line(s) should be the authors’ names, positions, affiliations, and email addresses. Following this should be a blank line, followed by the text of the abstract. All should be single spaced. Reference to existing bodies of work might be made.

Please also indicate if you would like your presentation to be a talk or a poster, or if you are offering a panel.  (We are open to other forms of presentations.) Posters are an excellent way to present some scientific and artistic works, and allow the presenter to engage closely with conference attendees who are most interested by their work. Posters will be available during the buffet lunch on Saturday, 23 March.

In addition, provide a one-page CV of your most relevant work and experience.

Individual paper presentation time will be 20 minutes, including time for questions. Panels (usually 3 people; maximum time, 1 hour) are welcome. All presentations and panels will be reviewed by the organizers.

TIMETABLE:

Abstract submission deadline: December 10, 2018

(Abstracts received after this date will be reviewed and, if accepted, put in the program if space allows.)

Author notification: around December 22, 2018

Conference begins: March 21, 2019

Conference ends: March 23, 2019

Optional excursion: March 24, 2019

We recommend that participants arrive on March 20, and depart no earlier than the evening of March 23, to enjoy the conference fully.

CONFERENCE WEBPAGE: The conference website is http://livingwithanimals.eku.edu. The website contains information about registration, hotels, excursions, dinners, food issues, and more information about the keynote speakers.

CONFERENCE LOCATION: Eastern Kentucky University is located in historic Richmond, Kentucky, including many areas of historic and scenic interest. Fort Boonesborough State Park, birthplace of Kentucky, is located 12 miles to the north, and Civil War and many other historical sites are nearby. The university is located just south of Kentucky’s famed Bluegrass Region, internationally recognized for its horse culture. See http://www.eku.edu/about for more information.

     Kathleen Sullivan Thomas is seeking three co-panelists for a session on animals, the environment, and science at HSS 2018 in Seattle. My own dissertation work investigates the interactions between wild animal and domestic bodies in mid-20th-century America through the lens of veterinary medicine and zoonotic disease, though it necessarily tangles with the problems of “wild” and “domestic” as classifications. Potential participants will ideally have a paper that touches on all three themes (animals, environment, science), but time and place need not be homogenous, and there is some flexibility within the themes. This panel would seek to pose new ideas about how animals complicate our human categories, encouraging other scholars to think about the ways science not only used animals, but constructed a human world around those bodies. Papers that explore animal agency are especially welcome, and possible topics include (but certainly are not limited to): veterinary medicine, wildlife science, experimentation, animal activism, animal work, evolutionary science, agriculture, and wilderness.

    Interested parties should contact Kathleen Sullivan Thomas by April 1 at kas465@msstate.edu with a brief description of your work, and how you see your project contributing to the larger goal of the panel.

Animals & Society Institute: “Animal Studies Across the Disciplines” (Sunday July 8-Saturday July 14, 2018).  Directed by Jane Desmond (Resident Director), Kim Marra, Margo DeMello, and Kenneth Shapiro.

Application Deadline: February 15, 2018

• The Animals & Society Institute and the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invite applications for the second annual Summer Institute in Human-Animal Studies for advanced graduate students and early career scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies.
• The Institute is designed to support participants’ individual research in Human-Animal Studies as well as to promote interdisciplinary exchange.
• At the heart of the program are daily morning seminars devoted to discussion of participants’ work, followed by afternoon plenary lectures by distinguished speakers.
• The tuition fee for the Institute (which covers registration, housing, library access, special events, receptions, and seminars) is $800.  Some scholarships are available.

For more details and how to apply, see the full call for applications:

https://www.animalsandsociety.org/call-for-applications-2018-summer-institute-in-human-animal-studies/