Pleasure in Anglo-Saxon England

The Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium

4^th Annual Graduate Student Conference

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Yale University, in partnership with the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium (Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, NYU), invites submissions for the fourth annual graduate student conference sponsored by the Colloquium.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Pleasure in Anglo-Saxon England.” We invite submissions addressing any and all manifestations of pleasure in Old English or Anglo-Latin texts, Anglo-Saxon history, art, religion, or archaeology. We welcome a variety of methodologies, being equally pleased by the philological delight of a word study as by a wide-ranging treatment of emotions in Anglo-Saxon society. We also invite papers on the particular pleasures that the Anglo-Saxon world offers post-medieval scholars, artists, and armchair antiquarians. In the tradition of the Colloquium, we will be having respondents for the paper presentations, which should be no longer than ten minutes.

Possible topics include:

- emotions in Anglo-Saxon England

- pleasure and religion

- word-play and language play

- the joy of objects

- Anglo-Saxon recreation

- food and feasting

- Anglo-Saxon music

- reception of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture

- Anglo-Saxon aesthetics

- pleasure of the exotic

- personal relationships

- depictions of heaven

- definition of the good

- luxury goods

- desire and appetite

- the senses

- the regulation of pleasure

- dreams

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by November 26, 2007. Include your contact information, including active email address, street address, and phone number, and any requests for audio-visual equipment. You may submit abstracts via email to pleasureatyale@hotmail.com, or send paper submissions to P.O. Box 208302, New Haven, CT 06520. (Paper submissions should arrive by the deadline.)

Conference organizers: Irina Dumitrescu, Denis Ferhatovic, Jordan Zweck.