Mediëvistendag 2015, Ghent University 30 October 2015

Civitas

21^e Mediëvistendag 2015, Ghent University

30 October 2015
10:30 Registration (with coffee/tea)

10:50 Welcome (Wim Verbaal, Director of the Henri Pirenne Institute)

11:00 VWM Pirenne Lecture: Julia M H Smith (University of Glasgow)

12:00 Katell Lavéant (University of Utrecht)

13:00 Lunch with optional short city walk

14:15 PhD student presentations in parallel sessions

15:45 Break

16:00 Marc Boone (Ghent University)

17:00 Closing (Catrien Santing, Director of the Dutch

Research School for Medieval Studies)

17:10 Reception offered by the VWM
Keynote Strand: Ideals and practices of urban life
Julia M H Smith is Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. She holds a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for the project Christianity in Fragments. She gives the first keynote and Pirenne lecture of the Vlaamse Werkgroep Mediëvistiek: Multiculturalism in the early Middle Ages? Material Religion in 8^th-century Rome
Katell Lavéant is Assistant Professor in French Language and Literature at the Universiteit of Utrecht and coordinator of a new Vidi-project on parodies in the Low Countries. Her keynote lecture addresses this project: Building Communities through Parody? Joyful Culture in the Late Middle Ages

Marc Boone is Professor Medieval History at Ghent University. He coordinates the collaborative IUAP research project City and Society in the Low Countries (ca. 1200-ca. 1850). The ‘condition urbaine’: between resilience and vulnerability. His keynote lecture discusses the Urban society in the late middle ages: communal ideal and ‘herrschaftsfremde Charisma
Civitas and open sessions (Call for papers)
The broad theme of civitas will bring together a wide range of medievalists to discuss urban development, communities in religious and secular context, literature, political representation, etc. It is associated with political communities, urban settlements, episcopal towns, and fortresses. From these urban environments stem communal ideals and political emancipation, organised trade and craftsmanship, new religious ideals, and artistic development expressed in architecture, art and literature. The concept of civitas was also central to the development of a particular kind of symbolic urbanism, expressed in philosophical, religious and literary works. It furthermore inspired the early-medieval idea of civitates as Christian communities around rural monastic communities modeled after the ideal of Jerusalem or Rome, in particular in the British Isles. Meanwhile the ideal of the city was not limited to the West or to the Christian world. As can be noticed in, for example, the Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, reflections on the meaning of the city also circulated in the Islamic world.
PhD Students are invited to present their research project. This may be related to the civitas-theme, but there are open sessions too. Researchmaster students of the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies have the possibility of completing an assignment.
More information & registration (before 9/10/2015): www.ugent.be/civitas