Workshop: New Directions in Medieval Studies on Religious Literature

Doctoral students who are working in the field of medieval religious literature are invited to take part in a workshop in Göttingen on 11–13 June 2020.

The workshop is the fourth in a series of workshops of which the first three took place in Cambridge in the years 2017 to 2019. The purpose of these workshops was to facilitate exchange between senior faculty and doctoral students from the German- and the English-speaking worlds. This aim is pursued further with the forthcoming workshop in Göttingen (this is why the working language is English), along with an even stronger emphasis on interdisciplinary research, which has a long-standing tradition in the Zentrum für Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung in Göttingen. In line with projects on religious literature pursued in Göttingen, the thematic focus in 2020 will be on religious literature in a broad sense (including texts with religious motifs).

Applications by doctoral students from the fields of medieval Latin literature and all vernacular literatures are welcome. Participants will benefit from networking opportunities; from the opportunity to present and discuss their projects with each other; from advice and mentoring by established senior researchers; from exposure to different traditions of medieval studies and to interdisciplinary perspectives. Participants will also gain experience in presenting and discussing academic papers in English.

Each doctoral participant will give a short (15-minute) presentation in English about their current research project, so that there will be plenty of time for discussion and feedback. Presentations should foreground those aspects of the research that are relevant to medieval studies at large, for example (but not necessarily only) questions of approach and method, representativeness of the particular subject matter, interdisciplinary dimensions.

Participating senior faculty will be: Mark Chinca (Medieval German Studies, Cambridge); Sean Curran (Musicology, Cambridge); Thomas Haye (Medieval Latin Literature, Göttingen); Henrike Manuwald (Medieval German Studies, Göttingen); Winfried Rudolf (Medieval English Studies, Göttingen); Michael Stolz (Medieval German Studies, Bern); Christopher Young (Medieval German Studies, Cambridge).

Up to five places will be available. Costs for accommodation will be covered, the same applies for travel costs, with a limit of 200,00 € for participants travelling to Göttingen from places within Germany and of 350,00 € for participants travelling to Göttingen from places outside Germany.

Applications should be sent to Henrike Manuwald (henrike.manuwald@uni-goettingen.de) by 31 January 2020. They should consist of a one-page abstract, in English, describing your research and emphasizing the aspects of it that are generalizable across the field of medieval studies, and a curriculum vitae, in German or English, which should contain a statement of the status of your project (e.g. whether dissertation is in progress / completed / accepted etc.) and the number of years of doctoral research you have completed to date.