REMINDER Call for Papers: Scholarly Correspondence on Medieval Germanic Language and Literature (Leiden, 17 November 2017. Deadline: 31 August 2017)

28 augustus 2017

On 17 November, 2017, a symposium will be held at Leiden University, entitled ‘Scholarly Correspondence on Medieval Germanic Language and Literature’. The symposium aims to bring together scholars who are working with the correspondence of prominent scholars of medieval Germanic language and literature before 1945.

Scholarly correspondence is a treasure trove of information about the history and development of the academic study of historical linguistics, philology and literary studies. Letters of prominent scholars provide a behind-the-scenes-look at how these scholars worked out the linguistic and philological problems that today’s students of medieval Germanic language and literature take for granted. Moreover, scholarly correspondence reveals how academics collaborated in an age before e-mail and Google Docs.

Paper proposals are welcome from scholars of all disciplines, including literary studies, art history, history, archaeology and lexicography. The topic range is limited to correspondence of scholars within the field of medieval Germanic languages and literatures, ranging from Old English to Old Norse, Old Saxon, Gothic, Old and Middle High German, Middle English and Middle Dutch, including runology and manuscript studies.

Possible topics/themes include but are not limited to:

  • Editing scholarly correspondence
  • The role of scholarly correspondence in the study of the development of the academicstudy of (specific) medieval Germanic languages and literatures
  • Scholarly correspondence in relation to:
    • academic publications
    • scholarly collaboration
    • academic careers
    • the personal life of scholars o gossip and conflicts
    • academic integrity
    • archives

Subsequent to the symposium, we aim to publish the contributions as a special issue of the peer- reviewed journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (published by Brill), with the goal of furthering interest in the topic.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to Thijs Porck (Leiden University; m.h.porck@hum.leidenuniv.nl) by 31 August, 2017. The language of presentation at the symposium is English.

Illustration: Signatures of Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899); Eduard Sievers (1850-1932); Henry Sweet (1845-1912); James Murray (1837-1915); and Richard Heinzel (1838-1905)