Ecole d’été – Institut suédois d’Istanbul

Medieval literature across languages: a multi-lingual summer school

17–28 May 2021 Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

The summer school seeks to provide PhD students with a first immersion into the study of medieval literature across languages. Language training, with the aim of inviting PhD students to become acquainted with new medieval languages, will here be combined with lectures on case studies, addressing various methodological issues and approaches. The summer school focuses on five medieval languages: Georgian, Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Old French. Together these languages cover an immense geographical and literary expanse, yet they all involved various areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.

For more information see attached  flyer.

Appel à contribution – The 8th Annual Koç University Archaeology and History of Art Graduate Research Symposium

Call for Papers – The 8th Annual Koç University Archaeology and History of Art Graduate Research Symposium 

Performance: Actors, Objects, Spaces

Application Deadline: 31 December 2019, Tuesday

Koç University’s Department of Archaeology and History of Art (ARHA) is pleased to announce its 8th Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium, which will be held on 26 March 2020 at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), located in Beyoğlu, Istanbul.

The symposium titled Performance: Actors, Objects, Spaces aims to investigate various manifestations of artistic and cultural acts revolving around performance in order to discuss their enduring prevalence and trace their nuances in different spatial, temporal, social, and personal contexts. Outcomes of performances as employed in building identity, constructing gender, expressing self, and defining community will be analyzed. Our definition of performance is broad: it embraces the sacred and the secular, the social and the personal, and the spectacular and the quotidian. Moreover, performativity, or the interdependent relationship between words and actions, emerges as a topic of interest in this framework, owing to its reflections in the arts.

This symposium seeks to bring together a diverse range of perspectives and disciplines concerned with a span of subjects, areas and periods of research converging around the theme of performance in the arts and culture. Paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Depictions of performance
  • Performance and space
  • Performance, architecture, and urban planning
  • State power, theatricality, ceremonies, and processions
  • Imperial and military performances
  • Sacred performances, rites, and rituals
  • Performing identities
  • Performing culture
  • Performativity in arts
  • Gender as performance
  • Performing arts, theatre, dance, spectacles
  • Performing music, musicians, musical instruments
  • Memory and performance
  • Documenting performances
  • Staging and restaging performances
  • Self-expression through performance
  • Intangible cultural heritage and performance
  • Performativity in museum studies

Students of archaeology, art history, history, cultural heritage, museum studies and related fields are invited to present research related to Anatolia and its neighboring regions, including the Mediterranean, Aegean, Black Sea, the Balkans, the Levant and the Ancient Near East, from the earliest prehistoric times through the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Classical, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, and into contemporary times.

All graduate students are encouraged to apply, including M.A. and Ph.D. students at any stage of their studies. The conference will be held in English, but we are open to accepting presentations and posters in both English and Turkish. Applicants should submit a 250-word abstract by 31 December 2019 to arhasymposium@gmail.com. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance by the middle of January. For other questions, please contact arhasymposium@gmail.com or visit arhags.ku.edu.tr and www.facebook.com/ARHAsymposium.

Ecole d’été – Swedish Research Institute, Istanbul

Ecole d’été

Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

Medieval approaches to reading

23–28 May 2016

This summer school will explore discourses and strategies of reading and pleasure in the Middle Ages. From what appears to have been a primarily pious, learned, and/ or legal use of reading in the early medieval period, books and texts came to be gradually and increasingly associated with notions of pleasure. On the one hand, different kinds of explicit or implicit pleasure made up literary motifs and became a literary theme; on the other, pleasure came to be thought of – at least by some – as fundamental to reading. This tendency concerns not just narrative fiction and poetry, traditionally associated with reading for pleasure, but also genres such as epistolography and historiography. And patterns turn out surprisingly similar in both Persian, Arabic, Byzantine and Western medieval environments.

In theory as in practice, pleasure is easily sought, but equally easily slips out of grasp. The aim of the summer school is to engage with and develop specific approaches that will enable us to discuss medieval developments – of great impor- tance for later premodern and modern literary thinking – across the time gap, but also across the spatial gap between east and west. Aiming for conceptual clarity, we encourage participants to consider the pleasure of storytelling and narrative urges, but also the modern pleasure of reading medieval texts. We wish to open up for a wide range of genres – such as romance, drama, chronography, court poetry, and letters – and numerous perspectives, for instance performance, text/image recog- nition, book production, genre questions, author-narrator position, or gendered roles in and outside the text.

Some possible themes include Persian, Arabic, Byzantine and Western literature; Middle Ages; reading and storytelling; translations; romance; drama; poetry; letters; chronography; court culture; book history; illuminations; gender studies.

Programme

The summer school will be organized around lectures, discussion groups and time for informal talk. In the mornings, lectures, all of which will be followed by a seminar of the whole group, will address large themes. In the afternoon, smaller seminar groups, each led by a tutor, will work together over the course of the summer school on a series of case studies. These will be combined with smaller excursions by foot. There will be substantial reading in advance. Lunches and two dinners will be in common. On Wednesday there will be a longer excursion.

Tutors are Christian Høgel (University of Southern Denmark), Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark), Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University), and Elizabeth Tyler (University of York).

Lectures will be delivered by Virginia Langum (Uppsala University), Pernilla Myrne (University of Gothenburg), Stratis Papaioannou (Brown University), and Bo Utas (Uppsala University).

Practical Information

Applications

Applications should be sent before 1st of December 2015 to hogel@sdu.dk.

The summer school is open to PhD students of medieval history, linguistics, literature and philology. Students’ research should preferably involve texts in at least two medieval languages, and they will be expected to read English and either French or German. Lectures and seminars will be held in English. Your application should include an abstract of your current research (no more than one side of A4, single spaced) and a statement addressing the contributions you can make to the summer school and what you hope to gain from participating (no more than one side of A4, single spaced). You must also name one referee who will be willing to write in support of your application. Referees of short-listed applicants will be contacted directly by the organizers of the summer school.

There is no cost for attending the Summer School.

Bursaries

Five bursaries (cost of transportation to Istanbul) will be available. Please address your application to hogel@sdu.dk before 1st of December 2015, precising your costs and financial need.

Accommodation and transport

Accommodation will be provided for the participants at the Swedish institute or at hotels in the vicinity.

Meals

Lunches and two dinners will be provided by the organizers. The participants will take care of the other meals.

This project is organized by the section for Greek and Byzantine Studies (Uppsala University) and the Centre for Medieval Literature (University of Southern Denmark and the University of York).

Intensive Graduate Summer Seminar by Koç University GSSSH & RCAC « Istanbul Through the Ages »

Istanbul Through the Ages
Intensive Graduate Summer Seminar by Koç University GSSSH & RCAC

Understanding Istanbul from pre-history to present…

DATE:  29 JUNE – 21 JULY 2015

Being the center of magnificent empires through time, İstanbul is calling you to discover its rich cultural heritage by following the footmarks of saints, sultans and angels in this enriching summer seminar.  Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations is excited to invite you to have a taste of İstanbul with its intellectual, in-depth program developed by world renowned Ottoman and Byzantine academicians. This exclusive program is designed for graduate students interested in:

  • An intensive program organized chronologically, carrying participants from pre-historic times to present
  • An opportunity to deepen their understanding of İstanbul and add this unique value to their academic focus
  • Gain exposure of lecturers with outstanding expertise and perspectives
  • Collaborate with a cohort of equals, bonded by a mutual interest in historical mysteries and myths of İstanbul through time
  • Have access to the extensive resources available at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations and Koç University as a whole
  • Attend field trips offering students invitations to opportunities otherwise unavailable to general public

…all the while spending your summer in an exotic city bursting with energy, history, spontaneity and endless roads to travel and discover.  With over 12 million inhabitants representing a true melting pot of cultures and faiths, İstanbul-supplemented by the continents of this unique summer program-gives you the chance to enrich your academic pursuits while concurrently enriching your mind and soul.

In order to maintain an intimate setting and provide maximum exposure opportunities, the program has a limited capacity of 15 students. Accommodation will be provided by the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, located at the heart of İstanbul, Beyoğlu.

This program is only open to graduate level students.

All instructions will be in English.
https://rcac.ku.edu.tr/en/istanbul