Conference: Charms, Charmers, and Charming
When: May 22 – 24, 2019
Where: University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy)

Deadline for abstracts: December 1, 2018

From the organizers:

The Department of Lingue, Letterature e Culture moderne, University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy) is proud to host the 12th international interdisciplinary conference organized by the ISFNR committee on CHARMS, CHARMERS AND CHARMING.

The conference aims at a cross—disciplinary approach to the study of charms from antiquity to the present day. We therefore welcome proposals from different disciplines, including: literature, folklore, anthropology, linguistics, philology, history, religious studies, history of medicine, etc.

The focus of the conference is on language, we would appreciate papers in the following topics:

1. Charms as texts: meaning, analysis, editions, methods, translations;
2. Multilingual charms: the interplay in the same texts or manuscripts between Latin (or other high languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) and vernacular languages;
3.  How to do magic with words: the narrating power of the historiola, performative language, charm instructions, the power of the spoken word, speech acts;
4.  Oral and written transmission of charms: textual tradition in a written environment, writing surfaces, the power of the written word, orality, memory, variation;
5.  Charms as verbal remedies: interaction with medical and religious texts;
6.  The rhetoric of charms: argumentational techniques, belief narratives;
7.  What the charms do not say: taboo words, gibberish language, censorship;
8.  The alphabets of magic from the antiquity to present age.

Language of the conference: English

Papers should be 20 minutes long with a 10 minute period for questions.

Send proposals, including a title, an abstract of 200-300 words, and brief biodata to Eleonora Cianci: e.cianci@unich.it

No registration fee will be required for the conference. A tour on 25th May will be chargeable.