CFP: Text, Context, and Non-Text: Grimoires and Ritual Magic in culture, literature, and art

Posted December 13, 2012

April 5th and 6th 2013
The University of Texas at Austin Conference sponsored by the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies,
the Texas Chair for Czech Studies, and the Departments of History, Germanic Studies, and Religious Studies

This conference is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of a large
corpus of magic texts that figure prominently in the cultural and
intellectual history of Europe. Its focus will be grimoires, real or
imagined, whose legacy has reverberated throughout European culture in the
form of folktales, literature (Faust, for example), and graphic art down to
the present, at times being among the few treasured possessions brought to
the New World.
Abstracts are requested that address any facet of this cultural legacy, in
any country and in any era:
· TEXT refers to the content of the grimoire, its images and words, and
issues arising from these directly–analysis of meaning, new manuscript
finds, translations, etc.
· CONTEXT refers to the total situation in which the grimoire exists, with
a view to politics, arts and letters, religion, folklore, etc.
· NON-TEXT refers to any situation in which the grimoire as object or as
idea is more central than its content–the evocative indecipherability of
existing grimoires, the grimoire as an emblem, key, or symbol, etc.
Abstracts for twenty-minute conference presentations from any discipline
will be considered. Please send the abstract as part of an email to:
textcontextnontext[at] gmail.com. Abstracts should be no more than 500
words long and accompanied by a brief (250 word) biography suitable for an
introduction at the conference. The conference language is English. All
abstracts should be submitted by December 15th (Jan 15th extended deadline.)