Pour la deuxième année consécutive, le CESCM, en association avec l’IMS-Paris, organise des sessions au Congrès international des médiévistes de Kalamazoo qui se tiendra dans le Michigan (USA) du 10 au 13 mai 2018. Les sessions porteront sur les moyens de la mémoire au Moyen Âge, sur les manifestations publiques de la commémoration et sur les objets et monuments produits dans cette perspective.

Les propositions de communication (300 mots) peuvent être adressés à Vincent Debiais (vincent.debiais@univ-poitiers.fr) avant le 10 septembre 2017, en français ou en anglais. On trouvera ci-dessous le texte de l’appel à communication et dans ce lien l’appel à communications général du prochain Congrès de Kalamazoo.

Memory – Public Display and Material Evidences I & II

The two sessions cosponsored by the IMS-Paris and the CESCM-Poitiers aim to explore how medieval men and women used material devices, artefacts, and inscriptions to stage the memory of people and facts in public spaces.

In the perspective of Oexle’s seminal work, participants are invited to elaborate on the meaning and shape of public monuments erected for individual or institutional commemorations, and on the effect of such devices in the collective construction of past. Commemorative inscriptions, statues, fountains, columns translate memory into material signs, footprints of the past in medieval landscapes. In the other hand, public ceremonies, processions and liturgical celebrations need provisional constructions and displays to perform the public and demonstrative side of memory. Thus, the sessions would like to explore how daily practices and permanent installations of commemoration give shape to medieval understanding of time and space.

In order to go beyond the state of art, and to nuance the boundaries between private and public spaces, religious and political ceremonies, individual and collective memory, these sessions aim to gather specialists from different disciplines: history, art history, epigraphy, literature, liturgy, musicology… At the crossroad of visual studies and social history, the sessions would like to echo the new research trends on the complex notion of “memory” by articulating within a single approach historical facts and the material way they have been understood and commemorated by medieval groups and individuals.

Participants are invited to submit papers on the following topics (non-exhaustive list):

• Civic memory and public ceremonies,
• Epigraphic programs for private and public commemorations,
• Monuments and artefacts of memory,
• Liturgical and para-liturgical aspects of commemorations,
• Permanent vs. provisional in commemoration,
• Feasts, celebrations, ceremonies in urban contexts,
• Signs and devices for commemoration.

The International Medieval Society-Paris is a non-profit association that welcomes international scholars of the Middle Ages in France and promotes international exchange with French colleagues. It organizes an annual symposium in Paris at the end of June and several meetings with senior scholars and graduate students all along the academic year (http://www.ims-paris.org).

The Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale in Poitiers is one of the main research institution in Europe for teaching and research in the field of medieval studies. Founded at the end of the 1950’s, it gathers scholars in different disciplines (history, art history, literature, archeology, musicology) and hosts several publications, among which is the journal Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (http://cescm.labo.univ-poitiers.fr).

Pour tout renseignement, contacter Vincent Debiais (vincent.debiais@univ-poitiers.fr).

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