Leeds 2012

International Medieval Congress
The following conference sessions, panels, and business meetings involving digital subjects are being proposed for the International Medieval Congress 2012, which takes place in Leeds, July 9-12, 2012.

The theme of the 2012 conference is "Rules to follow (or not)," although other topics are welcome. For further details, see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/index.html.

In 2012, Digital Medievalist does not sponsor any session.

Session	403: Seals and Sigillography: What Is Their Future in a Digital Age? - A Round Table Discussion
Arranged in the year that Sigillum, the website for the encouragement of research and the study of seals, was established, this round table will discuss the future for the study of seals and sigillography in the digital age. Is sigillography a study in its own right or is it simply the handmaid of history and art history? One of the goals of Sigillum is to encourage the use of seal and seal matrices in the study, teaching and writing of history (of all kinds, including social history and art history), archaeology, palaeography, archival studies, and other allied subjects. Whatever its status, how should the study develop in this digital age? All those interested in seals and seal matrices, of whatever country and period, are warmly invited.

Session	627: Mabillon's Heirs: New Diplomatics - Young Scholars
Diplomatic studies, as an old science, have renewed themselves these last years with the new perspectives brought by the study of literacy. The famous technical way of studying documents is not only used for the discrimen veri ac falsi, but also to bring into new light the practices of writing in particular societies, in connection with social studies and cultural studies. These two sessions aim to focus on new projects initiated by young scholars at the beginning of their research, in order to help them to connect themselves with the scientific community and to improve their own way of searching.

Session	727: Producing, Keeping, and Reusing Documents: Charters and Cartularies from Northern Iberia, 9th-12th Century
The session will address the ways in which documents were kept, copied and reused in northern Iberia in the period between the late 9th and the 12th century. The first paper will focus on the single charters which survive from the earlier end of this period to investigate how documents were produced and kept before the production of the later monastic cartularies, while the second and the third paper will discuss the rationale behind the construction of some of the most significant cartularies which were compiled in that region between the end of the 11th and the 12th century.

Session	1015: Medievalism: Medieval Rules in Modern Culture and Literature
There are a lot of everyday rules, cultural rules and agreements, literary structures and rules, religious orders and rules of the Middle Aages that have survived up to modern times. But they have not been the same ones. For instance sometimes only a word still exists with another meaning or not exactly equivalent meaning, as 'Ritterlichkeit' or with different meaning 'wib : weib'. We still know some religious customs and rules but they don't have this high relevance for our everyday life as they had in the middle ages. For some occasions we still have dress-codes but they are aimed other events and other groups of people and other dressings. We still know the lyrics and the epics, the literary texts of the Middle Ages but nowadays they are told in a different way, sometimes for a different audience and, of course, they appear in another media. This session will give three exemples of this turn of rules.

Session	1119: 'Ruling' the Script, I: Playing with the Rule
Medieval writing, as part of the interpersonal communication process, had to follow rules that ensure the legibility and convey the meaning of a text. Latin or vernacular, spoken or read, charter on parchment, painting, or stained-glass: different functions, social contexts, and publics lead to variations in the use of scripts during the Middle Ages. This session explores the representational modes of the text as an image and the concept of 'liberty' for scripts in regard to the staging of spoken or vernacular texts in epigraphy (Latin/vernacular) and to the degree of stability and variation in vernacular scripts.

Session	1303: GIS as a Tool for Understanding Medieval Road Systems
This session is primarily concerned with the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in creating a method of modeling historical roads. Very often, medieval roads cited in historical sources are no longer existent, and locating a known route could be impossible; GIS surveys, combined with an extensive analysis of historical sources and archeological data, can be an excellent tool to reconstruct the outline of a road, or of a network of roads, offering the historians an invaluable help.

Session	1319: 'Ruling' the Script, III: Measure and Sense
Medieval writing, as part of the interpersonal communication process, had to follow rules that ensure the legibility and convey the meaning of a text. The digital humanities in palaeography give birth to a renewed quantitative approach, either as computer-aided palaeography or as digital palaeography with automated image-analysis softwares. This session explores what can be measured (angles, inclination, collective scribal profiles, and allographs) and how this new data can be analysed (databases, factorial analysis, cross-validation). The results give new insights on the dynamic of script evolution, and how it relates to the social contexts of written production.

Session	1402: 'The Paradox of Medieval Scotland' Database as a Research Tool - A Round Table Discussion
'The Paradox of Medieval Scotland' database covers all individuals mentioned in the 6014 charters (broadly defined) that survive from the period 1093-1286. Relationships between individuals, as well as information about them, are represented as this has been constructed in the documents themselves. The database, completed towards the end of 2010, has been designed as a research tool not only for historians of Scotland, but for anyone with an interest in the process of 'Europeanisation', or who wishes to include a comparative dimension to their research. The workshop will consist of a brief introduction to the database, a couple of case studies where it has been used in research, followed by questions and discussion.

Sessions 728 & 828: Playing with the Middle Ages: Video Game Medievalisms, I & II
Video games are one of the most popular ways in which the public engages with the Middle Ages today. While they often may present romanticised or (more often) completely fantastical versions of the period, these are a vibrant way in which the public comes to know the Middle Ages today.