Twitter was absolutely buzzing last week with excited medievalists announcing that their panel had been accepted for the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in July 2018. I have already triple booked myself in some time slots with all the fantastic papers and panels that friends and colleagues have been tweeting. And now we are excited to announce that Cerae has it’s very own panel, too! Join us bright and early on the Tuesday morning for four fantastic papers on Memory and Empire, all specifically chosen to complement and enhance Volume 5’s thematic strand Representations and Recollections of Empire. We’re so in sync, Cerae and the IMC – memory-recollections, recollections-memory.
Cerae’s panel discusses the ways in which individuals or collectives used, or were influenced by, recollections and remnants of the Roman Empire. Medieval ideas about education and civic duty were heavily influenced by Roman authors, for example, while Roman ruins were continuously used in Medieval buildings. Medieval theologians constantly grappled with the legacy of their ancient pagan forebears, while poets sought to establish authority and prestige by placing themselves in the classical tradition through emulation and imitation. In Medieval memories and imaginations, the Roman Empire served as not only a past point of reference, but as an aspirational destination.
We have four diverse but beautifully complementary papers. Philippa Byrne’s paper will focus on rhetoric and political thought in Sallust, while Stephanie Hathaway explores magic and pagan thought in the French Reine Sebile texts. Celeste Andrews will treat us to a paper on the remembrance of Rome in medieval Welsh texts. Sean Tandy will close the panel with a paper on authorship and authority in mis-attributed late antique texts.
In all our excitement, we’ve decided also to extend the deadline for thematic submissions for Volume 5. If this panel has got you all fired up about Representations and Recollections of Empire, you now have until the end of December to send us a submission.