In the last week of April, the Ceræ committee organised a very stimulating virtual Zoom conference, both in terms of thematic diversity and technical implementation. Uniquely organised in a continuous, uninterrupted format of four blocks each containing three thematically cohesive sessions over two calendar days, speakers presented from 11 time zones around the world. The thematic focus of the event was determined by the Call for Papers for the forthcoming 11th volume of the journal, which focuses on medieval and early modern metamorphosis, transformation and transmutation. We have also received a pleasing number of submissions to the journal from conference presenters many of which we hope to share with you when volume 11 is published at the end of this year.
The conference opened with a keynote lecture from Alexandre M. Roberts (Associate Professor, University of Southern California, Dornsife) entitled Chrysopoetic Hermeneutics in Byzantium and the Islamic World and Their Place in the History of Chemistry. Roberts presented a lesser known aspect of the early history of chemistry, based on two main crysopoetic commentaries – the work of an anonymous early medieval Greek author and of a fourteenth-century Arab scholar, Aydamir al-Jildaki – on the terminology of recipes for the artificial production of gold.
After the opening lecture, the smooth and continuous format allowed speakers and registered participants to present from Friday to Saturday in their own (or close to their own) time zone, and the members of the audience could attend as many panels as their own schedule and time zone allowed. This was made even easier by the fact that all sessions were recorded, allowing registered participants to watch them after the conference. These recordings are available on our website for a limited time until 15 June.
Over the two days, there were almost 30 presentations in 10 sessions, of which I had the opportunity to be actively involved in three sessions on Friday. The first of these focused on gender transformations in the medieval and early modern period. Lydia Coates (University of Hull) provided a truly interesting insight into the transformation and dehumanisation of both sexes in early modern English bawdy ballads through the use of the zoomorphic language, while Melanie Stephens (University of Sydney), through her analysis of male ring-wearing habits in fifteenth-century Italy, showed how the male hand could become a public space for the display and projection of different masculine identities through ring-wearing.
The second session’s presenters focused on the changing aspects of early modern politics. Dóra Bachusz (Eötvös Loránd University) recounted efforts to preserve the property system of the dismembered Kingdom of Hungary through Hungarian common law following the Battle of Mohács (1526). Following my own presentation on the English aspects of the early modern conceptual history of balance of power, Réka Horváth (Eötvös Loránd University) presented fascinating new research on how the London Gazette and the Daily Courant differently portrayed the transformation of Transylvania from principality to province following the events of Rákóczi’s War of Independence (1703–1711). Session ten was similarly political, though from a more personal perspective with a focus on individual rulers and dynasties.
I also had the pleasure to chair the fourth session of the conference, which explored the role of the physical and the spiritual spheres in metamorphoses. Emanuele Lacca (University of South Bohemia) discussed how Spanish Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed the early modern concepts of a “good death” (buena muerte) and the “afterlife” (postrimerías), while art historian Cassandra Harrington (University of Kent) explored material, pictorial and allegorical metamorphoses represented in Botticelli’s (now) eminently famous painting, Primavera.
Further sessions of the conference explored the issue of metamorphosis from a number of other angles, mainly from the field of literary and social history, while some presentations dealt with ecological, reception, art history as well as mental history aspects. As sessions one and four, sessions three and seven also considered physical and human metamorphosis, but shifted focus to explore gender, personhood, and human-animal transformations considering the theme through a variety of foci, including Icelandic afterlives or the use of transformation in non-lupine wonder tales.
On the other hand, session five explored theatrical transformations with papers on Othello, Doctor Faustus and The Winter’s Tale, while session six turned to the question of literary transformations. Session eight took yet another approach to the idea of metamorphoses, focusing on shifting historiographies, ranging from the Hypnerotomachia of Pope Alexander VII to the consideration of the misconception that ‘Britons painted their bodies with woad’ by our very own Erica Steiner, while session nine explored the emergence of the natural sciences through, for example, the controversial career of the English natural historian and traveller Robert Townson.
The closing lecture was given by Stephanie Trigg (Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English, University of Melbourne), whose presentation focused on literary history, featuring one of the most famous works of the late fifteenth century Scottish poet Robert Henryson, Testament of Cresseid. The poem tells a morally and psychologically nuanced story with a tragic tone, which is essentially a ‘sequel’ to Chaucer’s love poem Troilus and Criseyde. The plenary lecture, in an excellent link with the theme of metamorphosis, explored the changing dynamics of illness, mourning and divine punishment in Henryson’s poem, paying particular attention to the discursive traditions of different illnesses and emotions in Middle English and Middle Scottish literature.
If all of this has whetted your appetite, you will be excited to know that you can still ‘register’ for the conference, and be able to view all session recordings on our website until 15 June as well as gain access to the conference-exclusive Boydell & Brewer promotion – offering a 50% discount on all the publisher’s medieval and early modern titles – until 31 May. Registration is available here.
Although Ceræ has organised and sponsored conference panels at both IMC Leeds and Anzamems since 2018 (and intends to continue to do so in the future), this year’s online conference was our first completely independent event. It also underscores the transformation our journal has made from a graduate-focused publication at the University of Western Australia to an institutionally independent and international journal both in the managing committee and the breadth of our published content. Furthermore, through the conference registrations we have been able to assure our future for another year, providing a digital space for graduate and ECR research. If you would like to support Ceræ to grow, further details can be found on our website’s donations page.
I strongly believe that the event has excellently fulfilled the organising committee’s preliminary objectives of presenting medieval and early modern research of high quality, focusing on new research issues and findings, and engaging the young research community, while promoting the digital humanities and the development of the online community both in Australian and in international contexts. Through our efforts, we hope to have firmly established a new tradition of an annual online Ceræ symposium, and we welcome all presenters and attendees from this event to return for the 2025 Ceræ conference!
Brigitta Schvéd
PhD Candidate, University of Pécs – Doctoral Fellow, IEG Mainz
Featured image: Green Lion devouring the Sun, 18th c., Rosarium Philosophorum, illustration 18, GB 247 MS Ferguson 210