Call for Papers

You are cordially invited to propose participation in a session
sponsored by the Société Guilhem IX at the

45th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
13-16 May 2010

Deadline for Proposals: 1 September 2009

Session 1: The Troubadours in Italy

The troubadours have a long history with Italy: from the many Provençal poets who frequented the courts of Montferrat, Este, and others in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to Sordel, Lanfranc Cigala, the Sicilian School, and other Italians who employed the Provençal language and/or lyric forms, to Dante's appreciation of the "lingua di oc" in the De Vulgari Eloquentia and the Commedia, Italy has been a highly important region for the compilation of troubadour poetry, beginning with the many canzonieri collected there in the generations following the Albigensian crusade. Today, Italian philologists are doing important work with material philology and other approaches to the troubadour corpus. This session would invite such scholars to share their work, and would also consider broader connections between Occitan and Italian lyric culture.

Session 2: The Art and Practice of Music in Medieval Occitania, France, and Beyond I (A Roundtable)

Literary scholars, historians, liturgists, art historians, and other medievalists whose work intersects with music often express a need for greater interdisciplinary connections and better understanding of the often arcane world of musicology. This will be one of two roundtables (the other is to be sponsored by the ICLS) featuring senior musicologists who will address general issues of music in the Middle Ages, with a target audience mainly of scholars in fields other than musicology who would like to understand musical matters better. The goal is to open up dialogue addressing questions of the current state of music in the discipline. The speakers will address such issues as musical structure and style, notation, medieval theory, mode, and performance practices, with a goal of explaining and clarifying difficult ideas and laying out the state of research. Each panelist will speak to one topic in particular for about 15 minutes, followed by questions and general discussion at the end.

Those interested in presenting a paper in Session I, or who would like to participate in the Roundtable should, by 1 September 2009, send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a completed Participant Information Form, preferably via e-mail, to:

Professor Sarah-Grace Heller
Department of French & Italian
The Ohio State University
200 Hagerty Hall
1775 College Road
Columbus, OH 43210

Phone: (614) 891-7654
Fax: (614) 292-7403
e-mail: heller.64@osu.edu

Find further information on the Congress Web site.