While previous symposia have focused on specific parish records and their contents, this year’s meeting takes a broader view, focusing on ‘reflections’ of the parish more generally – its nature, its characteristics, its meaning. The keynote address will be delivered by Ellen K. Rentz (Claremont McKenna College) on ‘In the Nave with Chaucer’.

We now seek proposals that engage with a wide variety of genres and texts including, but not limited to: memoranda, synodal / diocesan statues, visitation records; sermons, exempla, and catechetical handbooks; hymns and liturgical texts; poetry, drama, travel narratives; visual sources such as wall paintings, stained glass, manuscript illuminations, etc. How did contemporaries understand and envisage the purposes, workings, and problems of parish communities, in different contexts and at different points in time? What constituted the “ideal” parish, and who – clergy, patrons, parishioners – was in charge? Were there alternative models of pastoral care? Alternatives to the parish more generally? How did different genres conceptualize the parish, and to what end? And what about the parish of posterity: how would future generations envision its nature and function?

We welcome papers (of max. 20 minutes) addressing any aspect relating to these questions from the Middle Ages to the present. We also invite miniature ‘parish project’ presentations (max. 5 minutes) on topics unrelated to this year’s theme.

Please send 1-2 page proposals simultaneously to b.kumin@warwick.ac.uk and Ellen.Rentz@claremontmckenna.edu by 30 January 2016.

Online registration will open early in 2016.

For regular updates see the event homepage at:
http://my-parish.org/events/parish-symposium-2016