The Senses in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Hearing and Auditory Perception
Trinity College Dublin, 24-25 April 2020
Proposals for papers are invited for a conference on The Senses in Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Hearing and Auditory Perception, which aims to provide an international and interdisciplinary forum for researchers with an interest in the history of the senses in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Sam Barrett, University of Cambridge, Title tbc
Professor David Hendy, University of Sussex , Echoes on the Air: How Modern Media Evoke and Dramatize
the Sounds of the Distant Past
The history of the senses is a rapidly expanding field of research. Pioneered in Early Modern and Modern Studies, it is now attracting attention also from Medieval and Renaissance specialists. Preoccupation with the human senses and with divine control over them is evident in a range of narrative texts, scientific treatises, creative literature, as well as the visual arts and music from the pre-modern period. This conference – the second in a series devoted to the five senses – aims to contribute to this expansion by bringing together leading researchers to exchange ideas and approaches.
The conference organisers have signed a five-book contract with Brepols which is based on the theme: ‘The Senses in Medieval and Renaissance Europe’. The proceedings of our 2016 conference, ‘Sight and Visual Perception’, held in University College Dublin, edited by Ann Buckley and Edward Coleman, are due for publication in 2020.
We invite proposals from the full range of disciplines including (but not limited to) history, archaeology, musicology, art history, architecture, literary studies, acoustics, astronomy, physics, medicine. Contributions from established and early-career scholars as well as postgraduates are all equally welcome.
Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):
- humanly organised sound
- music (social and religious ritual; art, leisure)
- musica et scientia
- sound and social meaning
- sound and the emotions
- sound and healing
- sound and the body
- soundscapes
- sound and nature
- sound and the regulation of time
- sound and religious experience
- deafness and its consequences
- hearing and medicine
- exploring the physics of sound in the middle ages and renaissance