Category Archives: Cfp

Call for Papers
The Book of Psalms is a little Bible, as Martin Luther famously wrote. It is also a rich poetry collection that has inspired authors and composers alike. The Psalms offered a model for private prayer, a prism for theological enquiry, the vehicle of scientific and encyclopaedic knowledge. Their enduring literary force challenged translators, poets and scholars to rework and revise their verses into different languages and formats.

This conference studies the ways in which paraphrases and translations of the Psalms functioned as literary exercises, interpretive statements, and educational tools. We invite contributions that explore the poetic, religious and intellectual negotiation of meaning in these texts, where Jewish poetics, Christian worldviews and classical forms come together. We also solicit insights in the original Hebrew text for a better understanding of the subsequent versions.

We welcome perspectives from transnational languages such as Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, and Byzantine Greek, as well as vernacular languages until 1800. Interdisciplinary approaches which discuss, for example, musical settings of or book historical questions related to relevant texts are equally welcome. Given the conference’s longue durée perspective, we encourage papers that deal with long-distance reception or cross-linguistic comparisons.

Practical
The conference takes place at KU Leuven, from 12-13 May 2026; accommodation costs will be covered by the organisation and (partial) compensation for travel costs is foreseen, especially for students and scholars with limited funds. Abstracts on the text, the translation and the rewriting of Psalms from their original composition until early modern times can be submitted to simon.smets@kuleuven.be by 15 January.

The conference is supported by KU Leuven Institute LECTIO and the FWO-funded Scientific Research Network Literatures without Borders.

Local organising committee: Dr Simon Smets, Prof. Dr Raf Van Rooy, Prof. Dr Reinhart Ceulemans, Prof. Dr Pierre Van Hecke

Vilnius, 15-17 October 2026

Cult of saint – an important feature of Catholicism before and after the Council of Trent –
expressed itself in various media, including art and literature and their generic intersections.
Hagiographic and, more generally, religious works served not only the paraenetic agenda of
educating the devotees in Catholic morals and doctrine, but were also used to mark and develop
specific profiles of different communities which, on the one hand, already existed and competed
with each other or, on the other hand, were newly encultured into the framework of Catholicism.
Focusing on hagiography and other related groups of religious literature, this conference
embraces the question of how the figures of saints, candidates to sanctity or people regarded as
saints were exploited in the process of profiling various local or monastic communities and other
groups in the Catholic Church in the time from the late 16th until the end of 19th century. How
important or desired was it to shape a specific or, conversely, a generic profile? Which features
did distinguish or link various communities and groups, or e.g. local communities of diƯerent
orders, with each other and with the Catholic doctrine? How and why did such specific or generic
features evolved over the centuries? What were the dynamics of group-specific notion of sanctity
and approach to cultic practices? Under which circumstances were the new figures of saints or
would-saints created and the old ones appropriated or recontextualised?

Considering the leading questions above, the topics of the presentations (about 20 minutes, in
English) may concern, but do not have to be limited to the following aspects:
– early modern hagiography: genres, topics, figures, contexts, intersections with other
thematic text groups;
– biblical, historical and mythological examples, references and motifs in hagiographic
argumentation;
– female and male sanctity in religious and hagiographic sources;
– desired sanctity: self-fashioning as a saint; failed canonisations endeavours;
– local communities within the Catholic Church and their literary profile;
– literature produced and circulated in the Catholic orders and their literary profile;
– facets of Eastern Catholicism and its representations in early modern literature;
– Catholicism and Catholic communities from the view of other confessions.

The call is opened for the researchers from all disciplines of early modern studies interested
particularly in hagiography and religious literature. The proposals, consisting of a title as well as
of an abstract and a short CV (each up to 300 words), should be sent until 31 January 2026 to
Patryk M. Ryczkowski (patryk.ryczkowski@flf.vu.lt) who will also answer any questions about the
conference. Selected speakers will be notified until 16 February 2026.

A post-conference publication in a peer-review format is planned; the details will follow.

The conference is part of the MSCA postdoctoral project BasInCult. Catholic Inculturation of the
Uniate Church: Basilian hagiography of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Hellas Belgica project organizes an international conference devoted to the vibrant but understudied phenomenon of New Ancient Greek (NAG) or Humanist Greek literature (also known as e.g. Neo-Greek). This body of texts, composed primarily during the Renaissance and the early modern period but by no means limited to it, sought to revive and reinvent classical Greek as a living literary language, bridging antiquity and Byzantium with the authors’ contemporary intellectual landscapes.

Conference title: New Ancient Greek Literature. Contexts, Audiences, Legacies
Dates: 8-10 July 2026
Location: Leuven
Conveners: Liese Dictus, Dries Nijs, Raf Van Rooy, Reinhart Ceulemans (KU Leuven, HellBel)
Keynote speakers: Tua Korhonen, Filippomaria Pontani, Han Lamers

More information in the attached call for papers and through www.dalet.be/hellbel.

Humanistica Lovaniensia plans a thematic section on the legacy of Jozef Ijsewijn and the Leuven seminarium to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae. All Neo-Latinists are warmly invited to contribute. More information through https://www.peeters-leuven.be/pdf/HLO_call_for_papers.pdf. The deadline for proposals is June 1, 2025. Please consider submitting a proposal and/or spreading the news in your network.