Monday, November 8, 2010

Law and Marriage in Medieval and Early Modern Times

[Here's the Call for Papers for the conference "Law and Marriage in Medieval and Early Modern Times," to be held May 4-6, 2011, at the Carlsberg Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark. The keynoters are Charles Donahue, Jr., Harvard Law School, and Philip L. Reynolds, Emory University, Candler School of Theology.]

We are happy to announce the upcoming eighth Carlsberg Academy conference in the interdisciplinary series on medieval legal history and therefore invite colleagues whose research touches upon aspects of law and marriage in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times to submit proposals for papers of 20 minutes duration. A title and an abstract of 200-250 words should be sent by e-mail to the following members of the organising committee: Helle I. M. Sigh, Institute for History and Area Studies, University of Aarhus: hishim@hum.au.dk; or Kirsi Salonen, Department of History and Philosophy, University of Tampere: kirsi.l.salonen@uta.fi

The deadline for proposals is December 15, 2010. The final programme will be published soon thereafter. All proposals and presentations should be in English. The selected speakers will be notified in advance.

Suggested themes are:

Contracting a marriage, marital life, dissolving a marriage, continuation of marital traditions from the Middle Ages to the Reformation Period, and the effects of marriage institutions on politics and society.

The list is by no means exhaustive and other proposals touching on the main theme of law and marriage in medieval and early modern times are most welcome. All papers will, as usual, be published in our series of proceedings.

The conference on Law and Marriage is the eighth in an interdisciplinary series which aim at discussing new approaches to the study of medieval law and legal practice. The first, held in May 2003, examined the question of how 'Nordic' the medieval Scandinavian law books actually were. The outset was the prevalent notion of a recent paradigm shift in the study of medieval laws, in which focus has been moving towards a perspective in which regional laws were seen in a much broader context as part of a general European development. The second conference, in 2005, threw the nets even wider and covered a broad range of aspects concerning the development of medieval learned law, with speakers coming from Belgium, Denmark, England, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States. For the third, held in November 2006, we invited a number of internationally distinguished scholars to contribute papers on aspects of law and jurisprudence in the period before the systematization of law, signified by the emergence of Gratian's Decretum. The fourth conference in 2007 continued along these interdisciplinary lines with 16 papers covering various aspects of a broad theme of the interrelation between law and power in medieval societies. Finally, in May 2008 we once more invited a select number of scholars of international distinction to discuss the use (and misuse) of the concept of 'custum' in medieval legal history. In April/May 2009 the focus was on law and private life, and in the coming December it will be on law and Archaeology. Proceedings from all conferences are or will be published in our series.

The conference will be held at the Carlsberg Academy, formerly the family residence of the founder of the Carlsberg Breweries, J. C. Jacobsen. The Academy buildings are beautifully situated, easy to reach by public transportation and close to the centre of Copenhagen.

The registration fee for non-speakers will be EUR 100 or 750 Danish Kroner payable upon arrival at the conference. The fee includes lunch on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the conference dinner on Wednesday, all drinks and snacks, as well as an excursion on Friday to the medieval sites and museums in Roskilde. Speakers are of course exempt from paying the conference fee.

Please use the registration form which will be available here in the beginning of January 2011.

The deadline for non-speakers' registration is 15th March 2011. The Academy lecture room can only contain a limited number of participants so please do not hesitate to register as soon as possible.