22nd Biennial Symposium of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society

“Conversions and Life Passages through the Mirror of Medieval Preachers”

Hospedería-Convento Santo Domingo in Caleruega (Spain)
17 July to 21 July 2020

Host: Linda G. Jones, Vice-President of the IMSSS
Organizing Committee: Linda G. Jones (Pompeu Fabra University), Bernard Hodel, O.P. (University of Fribourg), Oriol Catalán (Pompeu Fabra University), Adrienne Dupont-Hamy (Ph.D. Université Paris VII)

The past few decades have witnessed an extraordinary boom in the scholarship on inter-religious conversion. The old dichotomous models that privileged either the inner, subjective, affective, or psychological experience of the individual convert or the social, institutional, or ritual aspects of religious conversion have given way to more nuanced approaches that recognize not only that narratives of the experiences of individual converts must be historically and socially contextualized, but also that they play ideological and symbolic roles within society (Szpiech, 2013). Ideally, sociological and biographical or psychological perspectives should be combined since no one approach or discipline alone suffices to comprehend fully the phenomenon of conversion (Jindra, 2014). Conversion studies scholars have increasingly moved toward introducing comparative and global perspectives, acknowledging that the processes, experiences, and contributing factors of conversion differ from one religion to another, change over time or in response to inter-religious interactions, and are inflected by other factors such as gender, ethnicity, or social status (Fox & Yisraeli, 2017; Jindra, 2014; Rambo & Fardahian, 2014; Kimber Buell, 2005). Traditional images of passive converts and of conversion as a sudden radical change have given way to considering the convert as an active agent, and conversion as a lengthy process (Rambo & Fardahian, 2014). Finally, new themes have emerged as foci of study: alongside inter-religious conversion, scholars are paying more attention to phenomena such as intra-religious conversion, the intensification of one's own faith tradition, forms of resistance to religious conversion, “deconversion,” and conversion as a transition from one life passage to another—as opposed to one religious tradition to another.

Ministerium Sermonis: An International Colloquium on St. Augustine's Sermons

Leuven, 27-29 May 2020

On 27-29 May 2020, the research units History of Church and Theology and Literary Studies: Latin Literature of KU Leuven will organize, in collaboration with the C1-project Magnum opus et arduum: Towards a History of the Reception of Augustine's De civitate Dei and the ERC-project Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages: The Dissemination, Manipulation, and Interpretation of Late-Antique Sermons in the medieval Latin West, based at Radboud University Nijmegen, the fourth edition of Ministerium Sermonis: An International Colloquium on St. Augustine's Sermons, Leuven, 27-29 May 2020.

Rebelles, révoltés, innovateurs : figures antiques de la Transgression

Journée d'étude organisée par le Laboratoire junior TANTALE

École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 22 novembre 2019

Journée d'étude – Lyon, 22 novembre 2019
École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Rebelles, révoltés, innovateurs : figures antiques de la Transgression
Journée d'étude organisée par le Laboratoire junior TANTALE
Appel à communications
Ouvert aux doctorants, jeunes chercheurs et enseignants-chercheurs
Date limite d'envoi des propositions : 27 mai 2019

« Tu arriveras au bord du fleuve Hybristès dont le nom ne ment pas :
garde-toi de le franchir, car traverser n'est pas sans danger. »
Eschyle, Prométhée enchaîné, 717-718
La mise en garde de Prométhée à Io le montre : en vertu de son sens étymologique, la transgression est un acte, le franchissement ponctuel d'une limite ou, au sens figuré, d'une norme, et ce geste est lourd de conséquences pour celui qui s'aventure à l'accomplir. Toutefois, le nom du fleuve (l'« Emporté ») l'associe à l'hybris : transgresser devient la preuve d'une démesure, le propre de celui qui, faisant fi des dangers et des avertissements, désobéit à ce qui a été édicté, le trait caractéristique d'un individu qui ne se conforme pas à l'ordre établi. Le conseil est donc particulièrement pertinent dans la bouche du héros enchaîné : Prométhée n'est-il pas le transgresseur par excellence, puni pour avoir dérobé le feu aux dieux et menacé l'ordre divin en le transmettant aux hommes ?

Cicero in Basel. Reception Histories from a Humanist City

Basel, 3–5 October 2019

With the generous support of the foundation Patrum Lumen Sustine (PLuS) the Department of Ancient Civilizations of the University of Basel and the Société Internationale des Amis de Cicéron (SIAC) are jointly organising the international conference Cicero in Basel. Reception Histories from a Humanist City, Basel, 3–5 October 2019.
The conference Cicero in Basel aims at charting the presence of the statesman, orator, and philosopher M. Tullius Cicero in the cultural history of Basel, the city located in the border region between Switzerland, Germany and France. While the study of Classical receptions tends to focus on particular cultural forms and discourses, the scope of the planned conference is programmatically open. Cicero in Basel explores a broad spectrum of engagements with Cicero through the ages: from the manuscript tradition of his works, to Humanist editions and commentaries, up to the political debates and controversies of today. In this, Cicero in Basel will assess Cicero's impact on the formation of a specific idea of Humanism in Basel as well as Basel's role in Cicero's Nachleben. The aim of the conference is twofold: It seeks to contribute both to the study of Ciceronian reception and to further our understanding of the history and development of Basel and the regio Basiliensis. Indeed, we expect this critical survey of Ciceronian reception histories from Basel to shed light on the emergence and development of the specific idea of Humanism that to this day plays a fundamental role in the self-image and identity politics of the Humanistenstadt Basel.