Upcoming Conferences on Zoom and Others

The annual medieval colloquium at the University of Toronto takes place at the end of next week. Details here. (Toronto, Sept. 22-23, 2023.)

The Fourth International Meeting of the Avicenna Study Group, starting in Paris in two days, is also accessible remotely. Details here. (Sept. 13-15, 2023.)

The previously advertised SIEPM annual colloquium starts tomorrow in Trento, on the subject of divine foreknowledge. Those unable to attend in person are invited to join remotely. Details here. (Sept. 12-15, 2023.)

In honor of the 800th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s birth, Notre Dame is sponsoring what looks to be quite a large conference next fall, Aquinas at 800: Ad multos annos. The cfp deadline is November 1, 2023. (South Bend, Indiana, Sept. 22-25, 2024.)

Johns Hopkins University is beginning what it hopes will become an annual event, the Hopkins Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. One-page abstracts are due October 10, 2023. (Baltimore, December 10-11, 2023.)

Monika Michałowska and Michael Dunne are sponsoring an international conference on Will-Discourse in the Late Middle Ages. (Łódź, June 20-21, 2024.) The deadline for receiving abstracts is October 31, 2023.

The XXIV European Symposium in Medieval Logic and Semantics will be held next summer in Parma, on the topic of Truth, Falsity and Lying (June 17-20, 2024). The cfp deadline is November 30, 2023.

The Franciscan Institute will be holding a conference next summer on the topic, “Qui primus legit: Studies in Sentence Commentaries on the Eighth Centenary of Alexander of Hales’s Lectures.” The conference’s focus is the broad subject of Sentences commentaries as a genre. Paper proposals should be submitted, by Nov. 15, 2023, to Prof. Aaron Gies. At the moment there seems to be no web page. (St. Bonaventure, New York, July 11-13, 2024.)

The Franciscan Institute is also sponsoring a session at the Leeds medieval studies conference next summer on “Bonaventure as a Reader of Albertus Magnus.” Brief proposals need to be sent by this Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, to Prof. Luke Togni (July 1-4, 2024, Leeds).

If anyone has a paper lying around on Irrationality and Madness (or perhaps just one of the two?), they’ve got four days to submit it to David Bennett and Filip Radovic, who are organizing a session at the Kalamazoo medieval studies congress on the subject. Papers can be submitted here. (Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 9-11, 2024.) Proposals due Sept. 15, 2023.

The international History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) conference will be in Vienna next July, and they are calling both for individual papers and for symposium proposals. The proposal deadline has been extended to October 1, 2023. Details here. (Vienna, July 9-12, 2024.)

The University of Wisconsin (Madison) is again advertising its Solmsen fellowships, aimed at scholars in the humanities working on Europe pre-1700.

Claus Andersen (Louvain) has continued his efforts to provide us with a guide to medieval editions available at the Internet Archive. His latest list provides links to William of Ockham’s Opera theologica and Opera politica. (But not the Opera philosophica, which, oddly, does not seem to be available there.)

Congratulations to Peter Hartman (Loyola Chicago), who won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study medieval theories of consciousness. Announcement here.

From Paleography to Real Books

The Virtual Paleography Group, first organized on this blog during the dark days of the pandemic, is regrouping this fall. No experience required. Interested parties should contact Zita Toth (KCL).

The Claudio Leonardi Fellowship for medieval Latin studies is seeking applications again. This fellowship is aimed at junior scholars, and can be held for up to six months. Judging from previous winners, the selection committee is particularly focused on supporting editions of texts and other such manuscript-based projects. The application deadline is September 30th, 2023. Details here.

The Journal of the History of Philosophy is advertising two travel fellowships for junior scholars (post-PhD), for the purpose of travel related to research. The application deadline is December 1, 2023. Details here.

The Maimonides Centre (Hamburg) is sponsoring a conference next week on Sceptical Trends in the European Universities of the Early Modern Period. Discussions of late scholastic material will be particularly prominent (August 14-15, 2023, Hamburg).

The Société internationale d’histoire des sciences et de la philosophie Arabes et Islamiques (SIHSPAI) will hold an international colloquium this September in Munich (Sept. 6-8, 2023).

The SIEPM’s annual colloquium is scheduled for September 12-15, 2023, in Trento, and concerns medieval debates over foreknowledge.

The Avicenna Study Group is holding its fourth meeting this September, on the topic “A Hidden Treasure: Editorial, Historical, and Philosophical Issues in Avicenna’s ‘Minor’ Works (rasāʾil)” (Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, 13-15 September, 2023).

The Società italiana per lo studio del pensiero medievale (SISPM) meets September 20-22, 2023, in Rome, on the philosophy of the twelfth century.

The Society of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy is sponsoring several sessions at the annual conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy (Liverpool, April 8-10, 2024). Proposals for individual papers or for whole symposia are welcomed, and should be sent to Zita Toth by September 15, 2023.

The Center for Thomistic Studies and the Thomas Aquinas Society are sponsoring a series of sessions at the International Congress of Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), which runs May 9-11, 2024. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2023. Details here.

Anna Marmodoro and Rodrigo Ballon-Villanueva are organizing a conference on Augustine on Relations for next March, in Oxford (March 11-12, 2024). Graduate students are particularly encouraged to apply. The deadline for sending in an abstract is November 15th, 2023.

If there’s still anyone out there who’s into actual printed books, you might like to know that Brill is currently holding its annual summer sale, with 50% off all titles. The discount code, good until the end of September, is 71645.

Summer news from Neukölln

Within the last couple of weeks I’ve learned of a couple of new and notable Italian journals in our field. The first is Noctua, which focuses on “the history of philosophy from the ancient to the modern age,” but is particularly interested in things medieval, unsurprisingly since it seems to be the project of Stefano Caroti (Parma). It’s a biannual, open-access journal, and also produces an open-access book series, Quaderni di Noctua.

A second new Italian journal is Studi sull’Aristotelismo medievale, the scope of which runs from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It’s directed by Alessandro Conti (L’Aquila) and Cecilia Trifogli (Oxford). As with Noctua, the initial volumes are full of interesting material.

Thinking about these new journals reminds me of Jean-Luc Solère’s Table of Tables. This is an extremely useful online resource that I’ve probably mentioned before, but that deserves a reminder. It’s a regularly updated report of medieval papers that have come out over the last year in a long list of journals. In addition to being a great way to see quickly what’s new, it’s also useful simply as a list of journals that publish in medieval philosophy.

Something else pertaining to journals that some may find useful is an attempt to collect information about acceptance rate and response time (and other things) at a long list of English-language journals. See the announcement on the DailyNous. (This is, however, mainly useful for people who work in analytic philosophy, and has no specific connection to medieval philosophy.)

Two scholarships in France for doctoral students are being advertised, both focused on the relationship between law and theology in twelfth-century Europe. The dissertations can be written in French or English. The deadline is very soon (June 30, 2023). The positions begin in September 2023. Details here.

The Thomistic Institute is sponsoring a three-day conference this fall: Aquinas After 750 Years: Still the Common Doctor?” There’s an impressive list of participants. (Washington, DC, Sept. 14-16, 2023).

This November, there’s a conference in Brazil on Christine de Pizan and the Querelle de Femmes: Perspectives on the History of Philosophy (Nov. 20-22, 2023, Porto Alegre). The cfp deadline is August 15.

The Dante Society of America is sponsoring a session on the links between Dante and scholasticism, and especially “Islamo-Judaic Rationalism,” at next spring’s Renaissance Society of America (Chicago, March 21-23, 2024). The cfp deadline is the end of this week, June 30, 2023. Details here.

The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy is also sponsoring a series of sessions at that same RSA meeting in March 2024. They’ve put out a wide-open call for proposals, with a deadline of August 7, 2024. There seems to be nothing yet on their web page about this, but interested parties should contact Jason Aleksander.

Those whose interests run to the early modern period may like to know about a new website, run by Steven Nadler (Madison), that aims to serve something like the purpose of this blog, for that community. (It is, however, set up along different lines, and I will be interested to see whether it works better.)

Although I don’t usually mention the publication of books, my fondness for John Buridan compels me to announce with great pleasure that the long-awaited edition (with translation) of the Quaestiones de anima has finally been published by Springer. The editorial team is Klima–Sobol–Hartman–Zupko.

On the subject of books, Tobias Hoffmann (Sorbonne) and colleagues have been producing, for a few years now, an impressively comprehensive catalog of new books in the field of medieval philosophy. It’s available online, and well worth paging through.

Beginning next month, Princeton’s fabulous online Index of Medieval Art will be accessible without subscription. Even if you don’t do scholarly work on visual material, it’s a great way to quickly find images to enliven teaching, presentations and, come to think of it, even blogs. For instance, here’s the first-ever (?!) image to grace this particular blog:

https://theindex.princeton.edu/javax.faces.resource/GraphicImageView_getContentStream.action?ln=omnifaces.graphic&v=0&p=507B96AE-C72E-4305-8A86-E83C619AE2C0

Nope, that seems not to have worked. Oh well. No images today.

Edith Dudley Sylla (1941-2023)

I have just learned that Edith Sylla died on May 12th, 2023.

She was one of the central figures in the later twentieth-century flourishing of interest in medieval European science. Her dissertation (Harvard, 1970) on the Oxford Calculators set the tone for the central focus of her research, on later medieval movements toward an exact, quantified science of motion and qualitative change. She spent most of her career teaching at North Carolina State University.

Zénon Kaluza (1936-2023)

I am sorry to report that Zénon Kaluza died on Sunday night. His many publications over his long career focused especially on Latin philosophy from the later thirteenth and fourteenth century, sometimes written in his native Polish but mainly in French. Among his prominent works are Les querelles doctrinales à Paris : nominalistes et réalistes aux confins du XIVe et du XVe siècles (1988), Nicolas d’Autrécourt, ami de la vérité (1995), and Études doctrinales sur le XIVe siècle: Théologie, Logique, Philosophie (2013). Already in 2002, a festschrift was published in his honor, Chemins de la pensée médiévale : études offertes à Zénon Kaluza (Brepols).

News of May 2023

LMU Munich is advertising a three-year postdoc associated with the research group “The Philosophy of the Baghdad School.” Strong skills in Arabic and English are required. The application deadline is June 16, 2023. Details here.

Jenny Pelletier (Gothenburg) and Ana María Mora-Márquez (Gothenburg) are organizing a special issue of History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis, focused on the topic New Social Perspectives in Medieval Philosophy. They are asking for an abstract of a paper by June 30, 2023, and plan to organize a workshop in 2024 for participants in the issue.

KU Leuven has begun a program that sponsors scholars for visits to Leuven of a month or longer. These positions do not include stipends, but they may fund travel and lodging. Research should be in the area of “the study and transmission of texts, ideas and images in antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.” Application deadline is May 31, 2023. Details on the LECTIO program are here.

Starting today, a conference in Paris will take up the subject Avicenne et les intraduisibles: Pour un lexique philosophico-médical de la théorie de l’âme (May 25-27, 2023).

There is a conference starting tomorrow, in Lucca, on Aqua et terra / al-māʾ wa-l-arḍ. Interactions of Aristotelian Elements in Medieval Philosophy, from the Bible to Dante (May 26-27, 2023).

The annual Cornell Summer Colloquium will run again in Brooklyn at the end of this month (May 31-June 2, 2023). Details here.

Stephan Schmid (Hamburg) and Hamid Taieb (Berlin) have organized a three-day workshop on A Philosophical History of the Concept, bringing together scholars working from antiquity until the present (June 7-9, 2023, Hamburg).

Next month, KU Leuven is hosting a conference on Sight and Light in the Late Middle Ages (June 12-13, 2023).

Alberic of Paris gets his days in the sun next month, over the course of a three-day conference in Copenhagen (June 14-16, 2023).

Radboud University is hosting a conference on The Sense of Touch: Medieval and Modern Debates in Philosophy and Science (Nijmegen, June 19-21, 2023).

There are various sessions pertaining to medieval philosophy at the Leeds medieval studies conference this summer (July 4-5, 2023). For details on at least some of these events see here.

Fabrizio Bigotti (Pisa) has organized a summer school on Intensity and the Grades of Nature: Heat, Colour, and Sound in the Ordering of the Pre-Modern Cosmos, 1200-1600. Although there are no longer spaces available to participate in person, there is an online option (July 11-14, 2023).

The annual colloquium of the Sociedade de Filosofía Medieval (SOFIME) will take place this fall on the theme De imagine (September 7-9, 2023, in Covilhã, Portugal). Cfp deadline is June 15. Details here.

The SIEPM is sponsoring a scholarship for students interested in enrolling in a one-year graduate program–the Diplôme Européen d’Études Médiévales–focused on fundamentals of paleography and text-editing. The program takes place in Rome (although there is an on-line option), and runs from November until May. Students must have a “working knowledge” of Italian, English, and French, as well as Latin. The deadline for applications is September 15, 2023. Genuine financial need must be shown, and preference will be given to students from low-income countries. Further details here.

Markus Fuehrer (1944-2023)

Professor Fuehrer spent his entire career teaching at Augsburg University (Minneapolis), retiring in 2021. Among his notable publications are several books on Nicholas of Cusa, a translation of Dietrich of Freiberg’s Tractatus de intellectu et intelligibili (Marquette UP, 1992), and his edition of volume 30 of the Henry of Ghent Opera omnia. He died on January 21, 2023.

Girard J. Etzkorn (1927-2023)

At the age of 95, Jerry Etzkorn died last month. Although his PhD was from Leuven, he was born and lived for most of his career in America. His greatest contribution to the field was undoubtedly the many critical editions to which he contributed for over half a century, particularly on Franciscan authors. For twenty-two years he was part of the great team of scholars at the Franciscan Institute in upstate New York that produced, among other things, Ockham’s Opera Theologica et Philosophica. More recently he made major contributions to newly appearing editions of Henry of Ghent and Francis of Marchia, among much else.

Prizes & Databases &c.

The SIEPM has awarded its 2022 junior scholar award to Aurora Panzica (Fribourg), for her paper “Antiperistasis as Action on Contrary Qualities and Its Interpretation in the Medieval Philosophical and Medical Commentary Tradition.” Runners up for the prize were Thomas Gruber (Harvard) and Athanasios Rinotas (Leuven).

This prize will henceforth be known as the Jacqueline Hamesse Award, and the deadline to be considered for this year’s prize is June 1, 2023. Details here.

The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy has awarded its 2022 Founders’ Award (best paper by a junior scholar) to Mohammed Saleh Zarapour (Manchester) for his paper, “Dashtaki’s Solution to the Liar Paradox.”

The SMRP’s deadline for submissions to the 2023 Founders’ Award is June 15, 2023. Details here.

Graziana Ciola (Nijmegen) is advertising two PhD positions tied to her ERC grant on late medieval semantics and mathematics and its Renaissance reception. The application deadline is May 14, 2023. Details here.

The topic of the 44th Cologne Mediaevistentagung is Constellations, understood as “a dynamic and dense network of relationships between persons, ideas, theories, problems and documents” (Cologne, September 9-13, 2024). The cfp deadline is July 31, 2023.

The Semitics department at Catholic University is offering a variety of online summer courses: Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, and Syriac. These are courses focused on reading historical texts, and so ideal for scholarly purposes. They are not cheap–the cost of the Arabic course is around $3000–but this would be an excellent way to get a start at this material. Details here.

A steadily growing resource for readers who work on Latin material is the Corpus Corporum, being developed under the guidance of Philipp Roelli (Zurich). It’s an attempt to assemble a very large corpus of Latin texts, searchable in sophisticated ways, all linked to a large number of classical and medieval Latin dictionaries.

Speaking of Latin databases, Stephen Dumont has called to my attention that Godfrey of Fontaines’s quodlibetal questions are now available in searchable form in Brepols’ Library of Latin Texts. (Do an author search for ‘Gaufridus’!) As I have mentioned previously, this is a useful source for a lot of important texts. Unfortunately, it requires a subscription.

Jacqueline Hamesse (1942-2023)

I have just learned that Jacqueline Hamesse died on February 3 of this year. She was born in Belgium, studied there, and spent much of her career there, ultimately becoming professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve). Her most cited work, an edition of the Auctoritates Aristotelis, grew out of her doctoral dissertation at Leuven.