Call for Papers
2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 9 - 14, 2022)
Download the Quick Guide for Paper Proposals here!
Download the Quick Guide for Roundtables here!
All those working in the field of medieval studies, including graduate students and independent scholars and artists, may submit proposals to the International Congress on Medieval Studies. We invite contributions to Sponsored and Special Sessions, which are sessions on predetermined topics organized by colleagues around the world. We also welcome proposals for General Sessions, which are ad hoc sessions organized by the Program Committee in Kalamazoo. The topics of General Sessions are determined by the paper proposals submitted and accepted.
Please review our policies before submitting your proposal below. In particular, note that undergraduate students may submit proposals only to the "Papers by Undergraduates" sessions (listed under Sponsored and Special Sessions of Papers).
Instructions:
You are invited to make one paper proposal to one session of papers. This may be to one of the Sponsored or Special Sessions of Papers, which are organized by colleagues around the world, OR to the General Sessions of Papers, which are organized by the Program Committee in Kalamazoo. You may propose an unlimited number of contributions to roundtables, but you will not be scheduled to actively participate in more than three sessions.
Session Selection
Sessions are grouped by format (sessions of papers and roundtables). You can browse the sessions by format below. You can also browse the session offerings by principal sponsoring organization (for Sponsored Sessions), by title (for Special Sessions), or by modality in the call for papers on the Congress website.
Demonstrations, Performances, and Workshops are not included here, because organizers are responsible for naming their own participants and contributions are not solicited.
Title and Presentation Information
Enter the title of the proposed paper. (Contributions to roundtables do not have titles.) Confirm your willingness to make your presentation in the time established by the session’s organizer(s) and indicate your social media preferences and whether you are willing to have your contribution recorded.
People
Enter the name(s), affiliation(s), and contact information for the author(s).
Abstract
Supply an abstract (300 words) of your proposed paper or a description of your proposed contribution to the roundtable.
Short Description
Supply a short description (50 words) of your proposed paper or contribution to the roundtable for public display, if your proposal is accepted.
Technical Support
For help in submitting a proposal online, Contact technical support.
Session Selection:
To access the Begin a Submission button, click on your session format of choice bewlow and then select one of the session offerings. Note: The general session does not offer a selection of sessions.
Sessions of Papers
"Any News?": Recent Developments in the Study of Celtic Magical Texts and Traditions
Contact Person: Phillip Bernhardt-House ; phillip.bernhardthouse@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P-OMoNA)
Several scholars who have been working on Celtic magical texts and traditions have made advances in recent years, including established academics as well as more recent doctoral graduates. This session will serve to highlight their most recent work in textual editing and translating, as well as in philological and historical studies across several cultures, periods, and areas of interest within the broad phenomena falling under the rubric of "magic."
"Sermonizancium Communi Populo": Contextualizing the Devotional Compilations of Fifteenth-Century London
Contact Person: Natalie Calder ; n.calder@qub.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Whittington's Gift: Reconstructing the Lost Common Library of London's Guildhall (Leverhulme)
Whittington's Gift recognises a discernible pattern in medieval devotional compilations that demonstrates that these anthologies were understood as a discrete class of book. The project team hypothesises that there must have been a centre of production that housed multiple exemplars for use in the production of books involved in 'sermonizancium communi populo' (discoursing to the common people): we suggest that such locus may well have been London's Guildhall Library. This session invites scholars interested in the fifteenth-century London book scene to respond to and explore this hypothesis.
"When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend": Examining and Decentering the Myth of the "Monk of Bury"
Contact Person: Matthew Davis ; matthew@matthewedavis.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Lydgate Society
Ten years have passed since the one-two punch of Denny-Brown and Cooper's Lydgate Matters and Sponsler’s Mummings and Entertainments, yet John Lydgate is still seen primarily as a court poet first and foremost to the near-exclusion of everything else. This legend of the "Monk of Bury" has become a myth with an outsized role in how the poet is approached both in scholarship and in the classroom. In this panel, we seek papers that will complicate that mythologizing by putting Lydgate's historiography in direct conversation with the more holistic Lydgate whose work was multimodal, interpretive, and served the public good.
"XXX": Dubious Consent in the Pearl-Poet and Analogues
Contact Person: Lisa Horton ; lhorton@d.umn.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Pearl-Poet Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)
A significant aspect of the discussion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, questions around bodily autonomy and consent impact our understanding and reception of all the Pearl-poet's work. These vital matters arise not only in this singular manuscript, but in many other medieval texts. This session will invite an examination of how problematic medieval sexuality manifests in the literature, and how such manifestations resonate in the context of our increasing awareness of power dynamics in relationships in the wake of "me too."
(Re)Constructing Manuscripts
1122–2022: Looking Back 900 Years at Items Gifted, Exchanged, Pawned, or Claimed
Contact Person: Therese Martin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Iberian Treasury in Context: Collections, Connections, and Representations on the Peninsula and Beyond
Beowulf and the Monstrous
The Green Knight: Multimedia and Dramatic Reinterpretations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Contact Person: Lisa Horton ; lhorton@d.umn.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Pearl-Poet Society
The long-awaited film, The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and at last released in the summer of 2021, is the latest in a multimedia history of the poem. From the dire depths of the 1984 Sword of the Valiant, featuring Miles O'Keefe and Sean Connery, to a collection of one-act plays and even a "Rock'N'Roll Musical" produced in Chicago in 2017, this poem's dramatic potential has sparked the creative urge again and again. This session explores the adaptations and interpretations of the poem on stage and screen.
A Western Byzantine Polarity: The Case of the Southern Adriatic Region
Contact Person: Brandie Ratliff
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture
Adapting Revolution: Trans and Queer Medievalisms
Contact Person: Felipe Rojas ; felipe.rojas@westliberty.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Queer Medieval Studies (SQMS)
Popular medievalist treatments of the medieval era often attempt to simplify the embodied complexity of the Middle Ages, but these adaptations can push boundaries as well. SQMS welcomes abstracts that focus on Trans and Queer Medievalisms. "Medievalism" refers to any narrative (novels, films, comics, TV shows, games) that engages with cultural elements of the Middle Ages. “Queer” is expansive (includes lived realities such as asexuality and neurodiversity or neuro-queerness). Topics may address trans and queer medievalisms in literature and popular culture. Abstracts that mix academic language with memoir/creative nonfiction, and scholarship that explores intersectional medievalisms are encouraged.
Age in Monastic Life
Contact Person: Amelia Kennedy ; amelia.kennedy@uni-graz.at
Contact Person: Jacob Doss
From child oblates to venerable seniors, age plays a crucial role in monastic life. Yet it is easy to overlook mentions of age in historical sources as merely recording objective facts. This panel explores age as a socially constructed category within the monastery, asking how “age” was calculated, asserted, and negotiated. We invite proposals for 15-20-minute papers analyzing concepts of age and the life-cycle in medieval monasticism: How did monastic authors understand the aging process? How were relationships among different generations governed? What are the relationships between age and gender, authority, disability, or spirituality?
Alfredian Texts and Contexts
Contact Person: Nicole Discenza ; ndiscenza@usf.edu
Whether he wrote and translated texts, sponsored those doing so, or simply lent a name that others used to claim authority, the figure of Alfred the Great had a major impact on England from the late ninth century onwards. “Alfredian Texts and Contexts” welcomes submissions from both newcomers and established scholars in a variety of fields or using interdisciplinary approaches. Past papers have addressed topics as varied as Old Saxon connections, source study, military history, manuscript studies, literary readings, linguistics, geography and place studies, and the afterlives of texts and practices associated with Alfred.
Allegory with Argument: The Art and Scope of Mixed Form (In Memoriam Peter Dronke)
Contact Person: Sarah Powrie
The session's title is a nod to Dronke's study of medieval prosimetra: Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of Mixed Form. The idea of "mixed form" aptly characterized Peter Dronke's scholarly projects, which so often explored the interplay of poetry and philosophy. His book titles reveal his interdisciplinary scope: A History of Twelfth-Century Philosophy; Dante and Medieval Latin Traditions; and importantly, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A critical study of texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. This session honours Dronke by seeking new applications of his work and methods.
Alter(n)ative Alphabets in the Iberian Middle Ages
Contact Person: Donald Wood
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
This panel will explore uses of niche or alternative alphabets in the Iberian Middle Ages, conceived broadly as the period spanning the 8th through 17th centuries. The term ‘Iberian’ also embraces Iberian-controlled territories outside of the Iberian Peninsula. Papers may address Judeo-Spanish, Haketia, Judeo-Arabic, Mozarabic, Aljamiado, or other linguistic blendings that have yet to be explored in scholarly fashion. Possible themes may include the implications of an alphabetic choice for the resulting textual object (manuscripts, glosses, inscriptions, epigraphs, and other forms of written expression) or examples of alterity beyond the text to achieve a particular end.
Anglo-Norman Texts and Manuscripts
Contact Person: Maureen Boulton ; mboulton@nd.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Anglo-Norman Text Society
Proposals that address Anglo-Norman texts, their audiences, or the manuscripts that transmit them (contents, producers, decoration, readership etc.) are invited from scholars of literature, codicology, art history, and history.
Annual Journal of Medieval Military History Lecture
Contact Person: Valerie Eads ; veads@sva.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
The topic of the lecture is proposed by the speakers who are recognized scholars in medieval military history. Session includes a response by a scholar with recognized expertise in the lecture topic and a question-answer period. The lectures are published in the Journal of Medieval Military History the following year.
Appetites for Destruction: Ugly Feelings in Iberia I
Contact Person: Robin Bower
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Narrators, characters, and inscribed audiences who grapple with destructive appetites and actions abound in Medieval Iberian culture. Enacted, vanquished, or prayed away, the affective states that enjoin sinful behaviors or are themselves sinful enjoy ample literary and artistic space. These same internal states can drive action defined as virtuous or even saintly. What accounts for this ambiguity ? How do 'sinful' psychic states transcend or defy internal and external legislation and when do they seemingly act in concert with such regulation? This panel seeks papers interrogating representations of negative emotions or sin in any area of Iberian cultural production.
Appetites for Destruction: Ugly Feelings in Iberia II
Contact Person: Robin Bower
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Narrators, characters, and inscribed audiences who grapple with destructive appetites and actions abound in Medieval Iberian culture. Enacted, vanquished, or prayed away, the affective states that enjoin sinful behaviors or are themselves sinful enjoy ample literary and artistic space. These same internal states can drive action defined as virtuous or even saintly. What accounts for this ambiguity ? How do 'sinful' psychic states transcend or defy internal and external legislation and when do they seemingly act in concert with such regulation? This panel seeks papers interrogating representations of negative emotions or sin in any area of Iberian cultural production.
Arboria: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Wood Use in Northeastern Europe I
Contact Person: Visa Immonen ; visa.immonen@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Carving out Transformations: Wood Use in North-Eastern Europe, 1100–1600
Arboria: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Wood Use in Northeastern Europe II
Contact Person: Visa Immonen ; visa.immonen@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Carving out Transformations: Wood Use in North-Eastern Europe, 1100–1600
Archaeology of the Medieval Iberian Peninsula: The Christian Religious Center of Cercadilla, the Palace of the Caliphs of Cordoba, and the Islamic Urbanism of Batalyaws
Contact Person: Fernando Valdés Fernández
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Univ. Autónoma de Madrid
Archbishop Wulfstan of York
Contact Person: Andrew Rabin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval-Renaissance Faculty Workshop, Univ. of Louisville
Archeology and Legal Status of Spanish Medieval Castles
Contact Person: Donald Kagay
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Texas Medieval Association (TEMA)
This session will focus on the legal and archaeological aspects of fortifications within Iberian cities and across the countryside of all the Christian and Muslim realms of Medieval Spain.
Armenian Studies: Literature and Art I
Contact Person: Michail Kitsos
These two sessions aim to demonstrate the importance of classical and medieval Armenian sources and material culture for the study of Byzantium and beyond in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. We welcome papers that study different literary genres such as chronicles, theological treatises, narratives, letters, legal texts, as well as various forms of artistic expression in order to explore points of interaction, cultural exchange, literary contacts, and polemics between Armenia and its neighbors. Through these sessions, we aim to provide a multifaceted perspective of the role of medieval Armenia between Byzantium and Islam.
Armenian Studies: Literature and Art II
Contact Person: Michail Kitsos
Arms and Armor of Romance I: Race and Romance
Contact Person: Katie Vernon ; kv522@york.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Romance Society
This session will investigate the depiction of race and ethnicity through arms and amour in romance. It invites proposals for a 20-minute paper. Topics could include, but are not limited to, depictions of Middle-Eastern people and their arms in crusading romance, or arms and armour in romance traditions beyond Western Europe. We welcome papers from all forms of the romance tradition, and which engage with critical frameworks of postcolonialism or use interdisciplinary methodologies. We strongly encourage researchers from different academic disciplines to apply, and researchers at all stages of their career, including unaffiliated researchers.
Arms and Armor of Romance II: Religion and Romance
Contact Person: Katie Vernon ; kv522@york.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Romance Society
This session will investigate religious arms and armour in romance. It invites proposals for a 20-minute paper. Topics could discuss romance arms bearing by clerics or gifts of weapons and armour from God. Papers that consider the ways in which romance arms and armour draw significance from religions other than Christianity (Norse mythology, Islam, etc.) are also particularly welcome. We welcome papers from all forms of the romance tradition, or which use interdisciplinary methodologies. We strongly encourage researchers from different academic disciplines to apply, and researchers at all stages of their career, including unaffiliated researchers.
Arms and Armor of Romance III: Anyone but Knights
Contact Person: Katie Vernon ; kv522@york.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Romance Society
This session will investigate arms bearing by "anyone but knights" in romance. It invites proposals for a 20-minute paper. Topics could discuss romance arms bearing by women or diverse socio-economic groups, such as craftspeople or merchants. We welcome papers from all forms of the romance tradition, and which engage with critical frameworks including feminism or use interdisciplinary methodologies. We strongly encourage researchers from different academic disciplines to apply, and researchers at all stages of their career, including unaffiliated researchers.
Arms and Armor of Romance IV: The Marginalised and Marginalia
Contact Person: Katie Vernon ; kv522@york.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Romance Society
Arthurian Obstacles I
Contact Person: Karen Cherewatuk ; cherewat@stolaf.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)
Obstacles are structuring features Arthurian chronicles and romances; among other things, obstacles reveal character development. Contributors to this session explore what a particular obstacle contributes to a medieval work or to a post-medieval reworking of the motif. Examples of material obstacles include a portcullis, a comb with a golden hair, three drops of blood in the snow; spiritual obstacles include varieties of sin, such as incest or revenge; emotional obstacles include jealousy, anger, a fainting body. This session is open to scholars working in any medieval language, as well as those tracing a later version of a medieval motif.
Arthurian Obstacles II
Contact Person: Karen Cherewatuk ; cherewat@stolaf.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)
Augustine of Hippo on Faith, Tolerance, and Truth
Contact Person: Marianne Djuth ; djuth@canisius.edu
This session focuses primarily on the relationship between faith, tolerance, and truth in Augustine's writings. The session as a whole constitutes a reflection on tolerance in the context of faith and truth as an antidote to ancient (and contemporary) intolerance to religious difference and the other. The first paper focuses on the role that tolerance plays in Augustine's interaction with the Donatists. The second paper emphasizes the importance of intellectual humility in the pursuit of truth as opposed to the arrogance of intolerance. The final paper captures similar themes in Augustine's and Tertullian's response to heresy.
Before the Exile (May 1418): Literary, Intellectual, and Cultural Intersections in Early 1400s Paris
Contact Person: Linda Burke ; lindaebb@aol.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Alain Chartier Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Jean Gerson Society
All topics on Gerson, Chartier, and authors from their milieu are welcome. Comparative and intersectional approaches are especially encouraged. While the theme is “before the exile,” papers are welcome to reflect upon the aftermath of the catastrophe in 1418.
Beyond Northwest Europe: New Frontiers in the Study of Chivalry
Contact Person: Peter Sposato
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Seigneurie: The International Society for the Study of the Nobility, Lordship, and Knighthood
Chivalry has long been recognized as the dominant ethos of the medieval lay elite. Over the past few decades, a multitude of studies have confirmed the centrality of chivalric ideology to the lifestyle and mentality of these elites, in particular illuminating chivalry's powerful influence on elite violence, piety, economic behavior, and identity formation, among many others aspects. Most of this scholarship has focused, however, on northwest Europe. As a result, for this session we are seeking papers that investigate chivalry's presence and influence in new geographic, chronological, or thematic contexts.
Biblical Exegesis and Preaching I
Contact Person: Frans van Liere ; fvliere@calvin.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (SSBMA)
The SSBAM and IMSSS are calling for paper submissions for a joint session on medieval biblical exegesis and preaching, at ICMS 2022. We invite submissions that address the interplay between sermon and biblical commentary, by examining exegetical or expository preaching or preachers, or homiletic commentary and/or postillas.
Biblical Exegesis and Preaching II
Contact Person: Frans van Liere ; fvliere@calvin.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for the Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (SSBMA)
Boccaccio and Petrarch in the Wake of Plague
Contact Person: Alani Hicks-Bartlett ; alani_hicks-bartlett@brown.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italians and Italianists at Kalamazoo
In the past year, there have been myriad connections made between the present pandemic and the 'Grande Pestilenza' of 1348-1349. This panel proposes to take the next step as we begin to emerge from isolation, martialing Boccaccio and Petrarch, writers formed as a result of and in the wake of the plague, and interrogate their output through the lens of disease, healing, and coping with loss. We will consider both research insights and pedagogical strategies, and strike a balance between historicizing and contemporary reception and adaptation.
Bodies in Motion: Singers, Dancers, and Musicians
Contact Person: Lucia Marchi
Contact Person: Gillian Gower
Contact Person: Sarah Long
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Musicology at Kalamazoo
Body, Mind, and Matter in Medieval Scandinavia I: Medieval Norse Personhood and the Self
Contact Person: Miriam Mayburd
While extensive studies in recent years have been underway in Scandinavian countries to counter the ableist, homophobic, and racist “alpha viking” narratives still popular in public imaginations, the disciplinary niches of overspecialization have largely kept these revaluations out of sight of Anglophone audiences.This session invites close readings and revaluations of Old Norse narratives dealing with supranormal phenomena, putting the spotlight upon the implicit human subjects and using such narrative moments as sites for interrogating Old Norse constructions of bodies, personhood, and the senses. New approaches engaging disability studies, queer theory, and critical race studies are especially welcome.
Body, Mind, and Matter in Medieval Scandinavia II: More than Human Ecologies
Contact Person: Miriam Mayburd
This session's thematic strand centers around literary constructions, narrations, and depictions of otherworldly, other-than-human, and otherwise ambiguous figures associated with paranormal phenomena across Medieval Scandinavia, inviting new critical approaches and creative re-interpretations. We especially welcome perspectives from ecocriticism, new materialism, object-oriented-ontology, and other rogue offshoots of contemporary critical theory to problematize how the very methodologies chosen for analyses tend to shape the interpretative results they yield. These become auspicious sites for interrogating human entanglements in the more-than-human environment of premodern North, exposing socio-historical contingencies of the very concept of normativity.
Building Christian Communities
Byzantium and the Ottomans
Contact Person: Colin Whiting ; whitingc01@doaks.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
The growth of the Ottoman Empire and its eventual conquest of Byzantium, culminating in the capture of Constantinople in 1453, hold perennial interest for historians of the medieval world. This panel seeks fresh approaches to the relationship between Byzantium and the East, particularly the Ottomans, in the Late Byzantine period and beyond. Panelists might explore the political maneuverings or military campaigns between the Byzantines and Ottomans, literary or religious developments in light of the changing fortunes of these empires, western attitudes toward the two, or any other relevant topics.
Byzantium Bizarre: Storytelling through Sacred Spaces
Contact Person: Catherine Keane ; ckeane8@gmail.com
Church architecture, sacred locations and legend can produce a bizarre interplay in the late antique and Byzantine Mediterranean. The role of storytelling is manifest in creating or reframing tradition and mythology, for example the Church of St. Symeon Stylites, or the repurposing of natural formations (e.g., Constantinian caves in Jerusalem). This panel will examine examples of this relationship between legend and monument and their influences on each other to create a holy place throughout the Byzantine empire. We look forward to discussing the sociocultural aspects of Byzantine churches, particularly those linking material to the sacred spaces, architecture, and archaeology.
C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages I: Dante and the Lewis Circle (In Honor of Marsha Daigle Williamson)
Contact Person: Joe Ricke ; jsricke@outlook.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Inkling Folk Fellowship
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Oxford C. S. Lewis Society
Dante’s influence on C. S. Lewis was obvious early in his scholarly career with the publication of The Allegory of Love (1936). More recently in years of papers at Kalamazoo and the book based on them, Marsha Daigle Williamson traced in detail Dante's influence on Lewis's fiction. This session extends the scholarship to the intentionally loosely-defined "Lewis Circle." The most obvious writers would be Charles Williams and Dorothy L. Sayers, who after hearing Williams lecture, learned Italian and translated the Comedy. Papers on other writers are welcome, keeping the dual focus Lewis and Dante n mind.
C. S. Lewis and the Middle Ages II: C. S. Lewis and Medieval Philosophy
Contact Person: Joe Ricke ; jsricke@outlook.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Inkling Folk Fellowship
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Oxford C. S. Lewis Society
In previous Congress sessions, we have welcomed papers on the influence of Boethius, St. Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and others. In this session, we do not exclude those thinkers, but hope to include other, especially, the school of Chartres from whom we know Lewis drew heavily. We also welcome papers on Lewis’s dialogue with later scholars of medieval philosophy. Lewis first took a philosophy degree at Oxford. He remained engaged in the great questions of medieval philosophy, as reflected in his religious, scholarly, and creative work. We especially encourage philosophers to take us into new (for Lewis scholarship) territory.
Captivity in the Arthurian World
Contact Person: Dalicia Raymond ; raymondd@smcsc.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)
We invite papers addressing the topic of captivity in the Arthurian world. Captivity plays a central role within Arthurian narratives and is not always unpleasant even when undesired. Texts provide rich accounts of these periods of captivity and of the accommodations where captives are held. Arthurian authors as well could be held captive and these experiences also influence how authors shape the Arthurian world within their works. This topic is particularly well suited for interdisciplinary engagement with literary studies, historical studies, trauma theory, and/or military studies. All accepted presenters will need to be members of an International Arthurian Society branch.
Channeling the Maid: The Avatars of Joan of Arc in Media and Politics
Contact Person: Scott Manning ; scottmanning13@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Joan of Arc Society/Société Internationale de l'étude de Jeanne d'Arc
One of the categories Kevin J. Harty identifies for Joan of Arc productions is "channeling Joan." These could be simply titular in nature, but typically feature characters that “channel Joan as an avatar to advance a number of agendas.” This panel seeks papers on media and political figures that channel Joan of Arc. How do these evocations fit into the creators’ original aesthetic of Joan? How do these characters parallel Joan’s own story? Are these parallels intentional or accidental? What popular versions of Joan of Arc’s story influenced these works? How do works that channel Joan vary across time/space?
Chant
Chant and Liturgy
Contact Person: Lucia Marchi
Contact Person: Sarah Long
Contact Person: Gillian Gower
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Musicology at Kalamazoo
Chant and Polyphony: Looking beyond the Cantus Firmus
Contact Person: Gillian Gower
Contact Person: Lucia Marchi
Contact Person: Sarah Long
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Musicology at Kalamazoo
Chant and polyphony have coexisted for centuries. Medieval composers and singers routinely encountered these distinct musical practices during same performances and/or liturgical occasions. Yet they have traditionally been represented as discrete phenomena, emerging from divergent musical and devotional contexts, with one exception: the study of how a chant becomes the structural backbone of a polyphonic piece (the cantus firmus). This session invites reflections on the relationship between chant and polyphony beyond the cantus firmus. How did the meanings, compositional techniques, and performance practices particular to chant and polyphony influence one another? What new methodologies might we use to investigate them?
Christine de Pizan and the Five Senses
Contact Person: Geri Smith ; Geri.Smith@ucf.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Christine de Pizan Society, North American Branch
Cistercian Mysticism
Contact Person: Aage Rydstrøm-Poulsen ; aarp@uni.gl
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
Mysticism is a most crucial phenomenon in the history of culture of the Western world since it deals with the highest goals and values of the human life. It was an important part of the Medieval monastic world and together with many other things it influenced deeply the intellectual culture of the Western world. The history of mysticism in the Western world is a history about the highest and most important ambitions and possibilities of the individual regarding the understanding of oneself and the divine. The Cistercian Mysticism is an outstanding example.
Cistercians and the Early Monastic Traditions
Contact Person: Marsha Dutton ; dutton@ohio.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
Thomas Merton published The Wisdom of the Desert in 1960, an introduction to and translation of some Latin sayings of the Desert Fathers. The work was groundbreaking in many ways, introducing the desert monastics to a new generation not only of monks but of numerous readers interested in early Christianity, early monasticism, and monastic spirituality. What has been the Cistercian response to early monasticism and incorporation of its spirituality? This session seeks papers not only on Merton but on Cistercians before and after Merton. For example, John Eudes Bamberger published Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos. Chapters on Prayer in 1972.
City Limits: Verging on the Urban in Medieval Iberia
Contact Person: Matthew Desing ; desin001@umn.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, Univ. of Texas-El Paso
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Scholarly interest in formulations of urban space have increased in recent years. Academics from a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, archeology, art, among others, have examined the ways that urban spaces were conceptualized in the Middle Ages. This session aims to explore spaces that border on cities, such as those directly outside city walls, and including urban-adjacent markets, common lands, ports, etc. The organizers welcome papers implementing various methodologies, including the social construction of space, and may analyze behavior or activities allowed in such liminal spaces at the edges of medieval cities.
Classical Philosophy in the Lands of Islam and Its Influence I
Contact Person: Nicholas Oschman
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Aquinas and 'the Arabs' International Working Group
Classical Philosophy in the Lands of Islam and Its Influence II
Contact Person: Nicholas Oschman
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Aquinas and 'the Arabs' International Working Group
Coding and Codicology: New Practices in the Study of Manuscripts and Books
Contact Person: Martha Driver ; mdriver@pace.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Book Society
Scholars will explain the applications of various technologies in their work on MSS and early printed books, including multispectral imaging, data recovery, new collation methods, among others. Discussion of collaborative projects is encouraged as is sharing information on useful repositories and other online resources.
Coinage, Money, and the State in Medieval Europe
Contact Person: David Yoon ; dyoon@numismatics.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Numismatic Society
Coins and Seals in Byzantium
Contact Person: Jonathan Shea
Contact Person: Lain Wilson
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Byzantine coins and seals survive in enormous numbers, and thus provide some of the most important sources of evidence for economic and administrative history and historical geography. Lead seals in particular are underexploited by scholars despite the rich onomastic and prosopographic data encoded on each specimen. Although focusing on coins and seals from Byzantium this panel welcomes speakers working on materials from a comparative perspective.
Colonial Stereotypes in Iberia and Beyond I
Contact Person: Marcelo Fuentes ; mfuentes2@njcu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
In the Iberian Peninsula, first during the struggle for hegemony among diverse medieval polities and later during the expansion of the first modern empires, stereotypical representations and discourses were indispensable tools to affirm the superiority of some religious, ethnic, and political groups while dehumanizing others and depriving them of their rights. This session will analyze the use of stereotypes by medieval and early modern Christian and non-Christian Iberians to dominate other groups inside and outside the Peninsula, while considering the impact of those discourses on the development of different forms of racism, ethnic discrimination, and religious persecution.
Colonial Stereotypes in Iberia and Beyond II
Contact Person: Marcelo Fuentes ; mfuentes2@njcu.edu
Contact Person: Linde Brocato
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Conceptualizing Identity on England's Borders
Crossing Chronology: Imagining Antiquity in Medieval Iberia
Contact Person: Matthew Desing ; desin001@umn.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, Univ. of Texas-El Paso
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
This session explores the ways that medieval inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula imagined “antiquity” as well as their own relationship to the distant past. The session welcomes contributions from a variety of disciplines including but not limited to literature, history, archeology, and art history. Manifestations of this imaginary could include the following: physical ones, such as the repurposing of materials from earlier civilizations; visual representations, such as artistic depictions in material culture; or textual portrayals, such as chronicles or literary works including the roman antique/romance of antiquity.
Cults of Saints in Their Locales
Cusanus and Ecclesiology
Contact Person: Christopher Bellitto ; cbellitt@kean.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Cusanus Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Episcopus: Society for the Study of Bishops and Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages
Dante I
Contact Person: Akash Kumar
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dante Society of America
The Dante Society of America is sponsoring two general sessions, and one themed session on Dante and the Sciences of the Human. We aim to represent a diversity of approaches to the field of Dante studies and we welcome submissions that emphasize interdisciplinary perspectives.
Dante II
Contact Person: Akash Kumar
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dante Society of America
The Dante Society of America is sponsoring two general sessions, and one themed session on Dante and the Sciences of the Human. We aim to represent a diversity of approaches to the field of Dante studies and we welcome submissions that emphasize interdisciplinary perspectives
Dante III: Dante and the Sciences of the Human: Medicine, Physics, Soul
Contact Person: Matteo Pace
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dante Society of America
Dead Bodies, Living Souls: Late Medieval Representations of Death and the Afterlife
Contact Person: Angelica Verduci ; axv270@case.edu
Throughout the Middle Ages, the pious Christian was constantly preoccupied with both the death of the earthly body and the subsequent survival of the soul. The fear of dying suddenly without repenting and confessing engendered images of death and the afterlife. Speakers in this session are encourage to investigate late medieval representations of death as both an earthly and otherworldly matter. We welcome papers that explore the flourishing of these imageries especially in rural and marginal areas, which were extremely receptive to cultural exchanges, but which have not received proper scholarly investigation yet.
Death and Dying in Medieval Italy
Death and Judgment in Medieval Literature
Contact Person: Will Beattie ; wbeattie@nd.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Institute, Univ. of Notre Dame
Decentering the Self: Liminality and Marginality in Self-Presentation
Contact Person: Lora Webb ; loraw@stanford.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford Univ.
Why would a man choose an angel for his seal? Why might someone be buried in a sarcophagus adorned with Moses? Does the use of a liminal figure by a culturally-central individual function differently than when the same figure is used by a marginalized person? The panel explores the role of liminal figures in images of self-presentation. Building on recent conversations around intersectionality and understandings of the self through liturgical and literary models, our panel asks how these issues were visualized. We welcome papers exploring these themes from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages and from any geographic area.
Digital Humanities and Medieval Music
Contact Person: Gillian Gower
Contact Person: Lucia Marchi
Contact Person: Sarah Long
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Musicology at Kalamazoo
Digital tools available for musicological research run the gamut from the publication of online repositories of manuscript facsimiles and databases of musical repertories to innovative epistemological solutions in which the digital medium allows scholars to analyze and explore the inner features of musical and cultural phenomena. This panel will include presentations of new digital resources as well as papers that critically examine the theoretical and practical connections between computing and medieval musicology, address the technological divide among different parts of the world and how this can affect the circulation of ideas, and illustrate possible pedagogical applications of digital medieval musicology.
Digital Methods in Preservation of Medieval Cultural Heritage: New Approaches and Technologies
Contact Person: Ida Sinkevic ; sinkevic@lafayette.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: BLAGO Fund
We seek proposals that will address some of the issues related to practices in digital humanities used in the preservation of the material heritage of the Middle Ages- technical advancements created or employed in digitization, innovative approaches taken, and particular obstacles faced in the process. We also invite scholars and professionals to present their insights and experiences working with digital visual databases in studying and teaching the Middle Ages.
Digital Visualization of Urban Form in Medieval Iberia: Recent Approaches and Methodologies
Contact Person: Scott de Brestian ; debre1sc@cmich.edu
Disability, Disease, and Health: New Voices, New Directions
Contact Person: Leah Parker
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages
Paper proposals on any topic relating to disability, disease, and/or health will be welcomed, on any period between c. 500–1500 and on any geographical area. Topics might include, but are not limited to: lived experiences of impairment, medicine, healing, stigma, pandemic, contagion, textual or visual representations of bodily difference, archaeological evidence of impairment, theological/political/social attitudes toward disability, the body in law, etc. Presenters may be emerging in terms of their career (e.g., graduate students or early career researchers) or emerging by bringing their research into a new direction (i.e., newly engaging with the study of disability, disease, and/or health).
Discourses on Iberian Wet Nurses: Beyond Breastfeeding
Contact Person: Jessica Boon
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
The panel will focus on medieval wet nurses on the Iberian Peninsula, 14th-early 16th centuries. Exclusively associated with their nurturing function, often in a reductive manner, the roles and experiences of these women are still little known, even though they are frequently mentioned in the historical, archival, and literary production of late medieval Spain. Their social, political, economic and symbolic functions remain poorly known in the peninsular context and the present session would like to offer fresh and complementary insights into Iberian nurses from new perspectives, such as the symbolic, spiritual, educational, and political significance of these figures.
Disney and the Middle Ages I
Contact Person: Joshua Parks ; joshua.t.parks@wmich.edu
The Walt Disney Company's media and theme parks are full of people and places coded as medieval, from the Magic Kingdom's castles and fairies to the magical realm of Arendelle in the Frozen films. Disney’s large market share and international reach have made it a powerful purveyor of “the medieval” in popular culture for decades. This session invites papers that examine medievalism in Disney entertainment from a variety of disciplinary and critical perspectives.
Disney and the Middle Ages II
Contact Person: Joshua Parks ; joshua.t.parks@wmich.edu
Diversity of Discourse in the Medieval World
Contact Person: Eric Bryan ; bryane@mst.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Speech Act Society
This session seeks papers that explore ways that discourse--broadly conceived as either verbal exchanges or other types of discursive communication--reflects the diversity of the medieval world. While the broad notion of diversity has been a growing area of scholarly interest for some time, little work has been done on perhaps the most fundamental aspect of cultural interaction: discourse. This panel of papers aims to contribute to an understanding of medieval diversity by examining verbal (or other discursive) exchanges through the lens of speech act theory and pragmatics, which view discourse within its cultural and speech-situation contexts.
Drawing Together and Setting Apart: Pulpits and Screens in Medieval Italy I
Contact Person: Ludovico Geymonat ; Geymonat1@lsu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italian Art Society
Screens (transenne, pontili and tramezzi) as well as ambos and pulpits were among the essential liturgical furnishings of any medieval church. In Italy, these liturgical implements were often lavishly built and decorated. Some chancel screens and pulpits were well maintained; many others were dismantled and are now preserved only in fragments. This session brings together current research on liturgical furnishings, their arrangement, and the role they played in configuring religious space, directing liturgical movement and performance, conveying the sound of prayer and preaching, uniting communities in worship, and proclaiming civic pride and priorities.
Drawing Together and Setting Apart: Pulpits and Screens in Medieval Italy II
Contact Person: Ludovico Geymonat ; Geymonat1@lsu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italian Art Society
Dress and Textiles I: Evidence from Accounts, Inventories, and Legal Documents
Contact Person: Robin Netherton ; robin@netherton.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) invites paper proposals for “Dress and Textiles I: Evidence from Accounts, Inventories, and Legal Documents.” This session is designed to showcase new research on dress and textile references in a range of document types. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary analyses that contextualize and illuminate the written references with complementary data from other types of sources. Papers presented at the session will also be considered for publication in the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles.
Dress and Textiles II: Cloth and Clothing as Status Markers
Contact Person: Robin Netherton ; robin@netherton.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) invites paper proposals for “Dress and Textiles II: Cloth and Clothing as Status Markers.” Any scholarly approach to medieval or early modern textiles and clothing is welcome, and papers may focus on the use of dress or textiles as indicators of status in art, literature, or real life. Papers presented at the session will also be considered for publication in the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles.
Dying in Middle English Literature
Early Medieval Europe
Contact Person: Maya Maskarinec ; maskarin@usc.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Medieval Europe
Ecclesiastical Complexes in Urban Contexts
Emblem Studies
Contact Person: Sabine Moedersheim ; smoedersheim@wisc.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Emblem Studies
The Society for Emblem Studies invites proposals for sessions at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, May 9-14, 2022) on topics such as: Emblem books and manuscripts, medieval sources for emblems such as pilgrim badges, heraldry, court culture, and royal entries; emblem in arts and architecture, political and religious discourses and iconography; emblems in the material and visual culture. We welcome new approaches to emblem studies, including gender perspectives, global reception and production of emblems, contribution on the practice and theory of emblem digitization.
Emblems in Material Culture
Contact Person: Sabine Moedersheim ; smoedersheim@wisc.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Emblem Studies
The Society for Emblem Studies invites proposals for sessions at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, May 9-14, 2022) on topics such as: Emblem books and manuscripts, medieval sources for emblems such as pilgrim badges, heraldry, court culture, and royal entries; emblem in arts and architecture, political and religious discourses and iconography; emblems in the material and visual culture. We welcome new approaches to emblem studies, including gender perspectives, global reception and production of emblems, contribution on the practice and theory of emblem digitization.
Emotion and Devotion
Emotion and Martyr Celebration in Late Antiquity
Contact Person: Vladimir Ivanovici ; vladimir.ivanovici@univie.ac.at
Late antique martyr panegyria emerge from the sources as highly emotional experiences. The martyr’s drama, into which the audience was drawn through the preacher’s rhetorical mastery and/or the artisan’s virtuosity, constituted the emotional apex. This intense moment of identification with the martyr and vicarious suffering was preceded and succeeded by several other emotions, some elicited by the ritual’s mise-en-scène, some stirred by its presiders. We welcome papers that identify the various emotions and/or discuss their stimuli and effects, in an effort to identify the emotional profile of the experience and the use(s) of emotion.
Encountering the Sacred in Medieval Italian Spaces I
Contact Person: Erik Gustafson ; egustafson.phd@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italian Art Society
This session seeks papers which investigate how medieval Italian spaces impacted experiences of the sacred. How did Christians, Jews, and Muslims experience the sacred? In what ways did navigating through medieval religious spaces, homes, governmental spaces, streets and squares, or the countryside inform encounters with the sacred? Did the spatial setting carry ramifications for how different media manifested sacrality? Could space itself articulate a sense of the divine, either through architecture, the presence of sacred objects, or the wilds of nature? In what ways did gender, class, or wealth impact audiences’ ability to engage in different spaces?
Encountering the Sacred in Medieval Italian Spaces II
Contact Person: Erik Gustafson ; egustafson.phd@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italian Art Society
England and Beyond: Sessions in Memory of Paul Szarmach I: The Material Record
Contact Person: Joel Rosenthal ; joel.rosenthal@stonybrook.edu
Contact Person: Virginia Blanton
England and Beyond: Sessions in Memory of Paul Szarmach II: Texts and Translation
Contact Person: Joel Rosenthal ; joel.rosenthal@stonybrook.edu
Contact Person: Virginia Blanton
England and Beyond: Sessions in Memory of Paul Szarmach III: Saints and Holiness
Contact Person: Joel Rosenthal ; joel.rosenthal@stonybrook.edu
Contact Person: Virginia Blanton
Eschatology in the Bohemian Long Reformation, 1400–1700
Contact Person: Christopher Bellitto ; cbellitt@kean.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Cusanus Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Filosofický ústav, Akademie věd České republiky
Exploring Conceptions of Death in the Medieval Mind and Culture
Contact Person: Mickey Sweeney ; msweeney@dom.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)
Medieval life in Europe focused on preparing for death and the afterlife, and not just because people often died unexpectedly and prematurely in the Middle Ages. Faith and experience fueled the preoccupation and the cultural means of engaging death, which featured a variety of media spanning from visual to literary. This impact only intensified after the calamities of the fourteenth century. This cultural phenomenon becomes a building block to Western culture, but not exclusively. This session aims to explore perceptions and representations of death, dying, and the afterlife through a variety of perspectives – cultural, historical, theological, European, or global.
Family Reading: Manuscripts and Books Down the Line
Contact Person: Martha Driver ; mdriver@pace.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Book Society
Papers that explore the reading of mercantile, gentry and/or royal families as recorded in the pages of the manuscripts or printed books, or in wills, are invited.
Fifteenth-Century Painting
Finding Their Voices: New Research on Women Writing Latin in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Contact Person: Diane Anderson ; diane.anderson@umb.edu
Forensic Manuscript Studies
Contact Person: Gina Hurley
Contact Person: Kristen Herdman
Contact Person: Raymond Clemens
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale Univ.
Recent advances in the forensic study of manuscripts have prompted an impressive outpouring of new discoveries and methods. Scholars can now identify the animal products and pigment ingredients used in book production with great detail, while . closer examination of dirt and damage reveals how books were actually used by medieval readers. This panel will consider how this new information has revolutionized book history writ large. We seek papers that use a range of forensic methodologies on medieval materials, including, but not limited to, imaging technologies, DNA, chemical analysis, dendrochronology, etc.
Framing Texts in the Islamicate World
Framing the Dead in Burials, Tombs, and Buildings
From Manuscript to Print: Writing for the Court in the Crown of Aragon
Contact Person: Miriam Cabré ; miriam.cabre@udg.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Courtly Written Culture in the Crown of Aragon: Materiality, Transmission and Reception (CECCA)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes, Universitat de Girona
From Prophet of Israel to Miracle-Working Saint: The Transformations of Elijah's Story in Jewish and Christian Iconographic Traditions (ca. Third–Fifteenth Centuries)
Contact Person: Barbara Crostini ; crostini.barbara@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)
From Song to Book: The Role of the Crown of Aragon in Troubadour Manuscript Culture
Contact Person: Miriam Cabré ; miriam.cabre@udg.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Courtly Written Culture in the Crown of Aragon: Materiality, Transmission and Reception (CECCA)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes, Universitat de Girona
From West to East: Geography in Medieval French Texts (Fourteenth–Fifteenth Centuries)
Contact Person: Anne Salamon
Furnishing Sacred Spaces
Gendered Animals
Contact Person: Jessica Hines ; jnhines@bsc.edu
This panel considers the intersection of gender and animal studies in premodern contexts. It builds on a central claim of ecofeminism—that the oppression of women and animals benefit from being considered together—and it considers the ways that this intersection might allow for new modes of understanding gender, power, and the nonhuman. Papers might cover a range of genres and theoretical perspectives including ecofeminism, queer readings, race theory, and reception theory. Considering that these ideologies have a long intellectual history, this panel is particularly interested in papers that consider greco-roman texts and/or their reception in medieval works.
Global Arthurianism
Contact Person: K. Whetter ; kevin.whetter@acadiau.ca
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Arthurian Literature
Arthurian Literature proposes a sponsored session on “Global Arthurianism.” The topic is wide-ranging, inviting submissions from established and junior scholars on subjects as diverse as archaeology, codicology, history, literature, and other media. Arthurian literature was translated into every language in medieval Europe, often engaging with the geopolitics of areas far beyond its roots; scenes from the legend found their way into art, from manuscript illumination to floor tiles to cathedral carvings. The wide-spread permeation of the legend continues today. We invite papers that explore the global investments and incarnations of the Arthur story across its long and varied history.
Global Feminist Dream Visions
Contact Person: Boyda Johnstone
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)
There is an increased interest in medieval dream visions during our current moment of tumult and fear. Medieval dream visions also responded to an unstable world with visions for alterity and change. This panel will take a feminist perspective to these visions which have so often been examined through a malecentric lens, and also encourage submissions that deal with dream visions from across the globe, helping us destabilize our traditionally European perspective and find connections previously unseen.
Gower and Ovid
Contact Person: Brian Gastle ; bgastle@wcu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: John Gower Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Societas Ovidiana
John Gower’s debt to Ovid is significant and spans his oeuvre. While source studies have traditionally marked analyses of Gower’s use of Ovid, Gowerians and medieval Ovidians alike are reassessing the complicated and nuanced relationship between Gower’s works and Ovidiana (both classical and medieval). This panel invites papers addressing Gower’s use of Ovid as a source, but it also encourages scholarship addressing the rich relationship between Gower’s works, Gower as a poet, and medieval Ovidiana generally.
Gowerian Aesthetics
Contact Person: Brian Gastle ; bgastle@wcu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: John Gower Society
This session invites panelists to consider John Gower, known for his historical focus and “plain” Latin and vernacular styles, through an aesthetic lens. Are we comfortable in thinking about--for example--“the beautiful” in Gower’s works? Is he a poet in whom the aesthetic finds particular traction, or does he resist it as a category? If we are to define “Gowerian aesthetics,” what would they be? How would these resonate with his contemporaries? Does such an aesthetics entrench him in as a resolutely historical (and “medieval”) author?
Grief and Mourning in the Cistercian World
Contact Person: Anna Harrison ; annaharrison@lmu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
Historical Writing
History Making with Manuscripts
Contact Person: Johannes Junge Ruhland ; jmjr@stanford.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford Univ.
We invite 20-minute presentations on the role of manuscripts in history-making. While scholars often ask what historiographical manuscripts are used for, this panel emphasizes the role of manuscripts in determining what history is and how it functions. Literary critics, art historians, historians, philologists, and scholars from related fields are encouraged to speak about how compilation, illumination, textual variation, as well as the materiality and historical existence of the codex contribute to the sense of history conveyed by manuscripts. Emphasis is on the Romance-speaking Middle Ages, but we welcome contributions from further afield and would re-work our sociocultural framework accordingly.
How Did Medieval Benedictines Respond to Crises?
Contact Person: Hugh Feiss ; hughf@idahomonks.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Benedictine Academy
At the present time of pandemic and a sharp drop in vocations, this session will consider how medieval Benedictine monasteries responded to crises, such as destruction by invading armies, plague, internal discord, lax observance, or a dearth of members. The motto of St. Benedcit’s abbey of Monte Casino is “sucissa virescit,” “chopped down, it grows back green,” describes what happened often to monasteries in the Middle Ages. Of course, monasteries did not always grow back. What factors accounted for survival or lack of survival of one or several monasteries?
Human and Hippiatric Medicine
Iberia in Global Contexts
Iberian Medieval Didactic Strategies: The Medieval Exemplar Gone Awry I
Contact Person: Paul Larson
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Does your favorite story from medieval Iberia seem to teach a lesson that is out of focus, ambivalent, or ambiguous? This session will focus on the lessons that went awry, deconstructing themselves in such a way as to leave the reader wondering if there is any lesson at all. Papers might encompass the involvement of all of medieval Iberia’s cultures and languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Castilian, Gallego, and Catalan. This session will address didactic failures in short stories, fables, and other short forms of medieval narrative, spanning Arabic, Sefardic and Christian cultures.
Iberian Medieval Didactic Strategies: The Medieval Exemplar Gone Awry II
Contact Person: Paul Larson
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)
Iberian Sainthood
Contact Person: Anna Harrison ; annaharrison@lmu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hagiography Society
Imagining Distant Lands
Imprisonment in Malory's World
Contact Person: Felicia Nimue Ackerman ; Felicia_Ackerman@brown.edu
This is a multifaceted topic involving not just physical imprisonment but also imprisonment by one’s own emotions as well as by social roles and expectations. It covers Malory’s own imprisonment as well as that of his characters. These areas offer much to discuss. How about it?
In Honor of John M. Ganim I: Medieval Theatricality and Performance
Contact Person: Christopher Queen ; cquee001@ucr.edu
In celebration of the career and scholarship of John Ganim, this panel invites abstract submissions which engage with the ideas, arguments, and critiques presented in his study of medieval performance and popular culture, Chaucerian Theatricality (1990). This session will address the state of medieval performance and theatre studies; medieval poetical and dramatic performance in varied textual and material contexts; and, ultimately, the lasting impact of Ganim’s scholarship with regard to our conception of medieval theatricality.
In Honor of John M. Ganim II: Medievalism and Orientalism
Contact Person: Christopher Queen ; cquee001@ucr.edu
In celebration of the career and scholarship of John Ganim, this panel invites abstract submissions which engage with the ideas, arguments, and critiques presented in his study of the reception and representation of the medieval past, Medievalism and Orientalism (2005). This session seeks papers which address medievalism and its relationship to notions of Orientalism; the representation and deployment of the Middle Ages in various textual, visual, and material contexts; and, ultimately, the lasting impact of Ganim’s scholarship on our understanding of the Middle Ages as a period which is simultaneously genre, genealogy, and display.
In Honor of Roberta Krueger I: Reading Romance and Conduct Literature through Common Frames
Contact Person: Amy Vines ; anvines@uncg.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Foremothers Society
Interpreting Manuscript Images
Interpreting Real and Imagined Crusading
Introducing Medieval People
Contact Person: Amy Livingstone
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval People
A session of papers is proposed to highlight the recent launch of the journal, Medieval People (a rebooting of Medieval Prosopography). Papers should interrogate the experiences of unfamiliar, unknown, or obscure individuals or groups or explore the social networks that gave shape to the lives of all medieval people. New approaches or methodologies that can be employed to investigate the lives of medieval people would also be welcome, as well as digital tools or digital humanities projects. Topics from all parts of the medieval world are welcome. Papers presented can be considered for publication in the journal.
J. R. R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard C. West
Contact Person: Christopher Vaccaro ; cvaccaro@uvm.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Tolkien at Kalamazoo
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Pearl-Poet Society
The significance of Tolkien’s interpretations of medieval poetry deserves further investigation in a post-pandemic modern world looking for meaning, consolation, and eucatastrophe (a ‘sudden joyous turn of events’). This session is in honor of Tolkien scholar Richard C. West, who passed way from complications of the coronavirus in 2020.
Knights and White Satin: Dress and Heraldry in the Medieval Court
Contact Person: Monica Wright
Principal Sponsoring Organization: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): International Courtly Literature Society (ICLS), North American Branch
The International Courtly Literature Society (North American Branch) and DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) invite paper proposals for a co-sponsored session: Knights and White Satin: Dress and Heraldry in the Medieval Court. We welcome submissions approaching any aspect of attire or heraldry in medieval courtly literature. Presenters will receive a year’s membership in the ICLS-NAB, may be eligible for presentation-related grants and awards of that society, and may be considered for publication in the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles.
Landscape and Environment in Early English Texts
Language Long Unspoken: Linguistic Approaches to Medieval Languages
Contact Person: Andrew Troup ; atroup@csub.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Languages and Linguistics
Medievalists by necessity deal with a linguistic barrier, whether their language is Old English, Old French, Middle High German, Medieval Latin, etc. Philologists of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries pioneered the study of these languages, and now linguistic theorists are reexamining them from a socio-historical perspective. Some linguists work on phonology and metrics, some on morphology and syntax, and some on discourse analysis. We plan to offer a session of papers covering the widest possible assortment of linguistic approaches to various medieval languages.
Language Matters: Middle English Studies in Honor of Karla Taylor
Contact Person: Catherine Sanok
Panel participation will be by invitation.
Language, Space, and Place in the Brut
Contact Person: Ken Tiller ; kjt9t@uvawise.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Lawman's Brut Society
This session seeks proposals that further the critical conversation about territorial and textual space and its relation to language in Laȝamon's Brut and in its analogues. We are particularly interested in proposals that examine ways the Brut texts engage medieval concepts of space and place: how is space defined, perceived, and navigated in the Brut? How does Layamon’s own sense of place or space inform his identity? Possible topics include: local space in the Brut, boundaries and territorial limits, text as space, Layamon in his West-Midlands context.
Late and Medieval Latin: Translation on the Ground
Contact Person: Danuta Shanzer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Platinum Latin
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
Late Antiquity I
Contact Person: Tiggy McLaughlin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Late Antiquity
The Society for Late Antiquity sponsored session Late Antiquity I seeks abstract submissions for the thoughtful study of any aspect of late antiquity, from any period ranging from ca. 250-750, and from any region of Europe, the Mediterranean, world, and the Near East. Such papers might focus on a specific region, time, or development; comment on a vast array of written and/or material sources; or treat a particular theme, person, or event, as long as they are late antique.
Late Antiquity II: Culture and Society
Contact Person: Tiggy McLaughlin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Late Antiquity
The Society for Late Antiquity sponsored session Late Antiquity II seeks abstract submissions for the thoughtful study of social or cultural history of late antiquity, from any period ranging from ca. 250-750, and from any region of Europe, the Mediterranean, world, and the Near East. Such papers might focus on any aspect of late antique culture and society, including but not limited to the study of non-elites, religion, material culture, popular culture, education, philosophy, magic, sport and games, or pious practices.
Late Medieval Iberian Literary Perspectives
Law and Legal Culture in Early Medieval Britain
Contact Person: Andrew Rabin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval-Renaissance Faculty Workshop, Univ. of Louisville
Law and Legal Culture in the Fourteenth Century
Contact Person: Elizabeth Kamali ; ekamali@law.harvard.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: 14th Century Society
Punctuated by crisis, ranging from famine to plague to revolt, the fourteenth century was a time of tremendous legal innovation and yet, in some areas, also a century of gradual evolution and even stasis in the law. In exploring law and legal culture in the fourteenth century, the panel organizers welcome papers on such topics as: legal innovation in response to crisis, the rise of the legal profession, jurisdictional competition between center and periphery, and the role of customary law in a world of increasingly written law. Geographic diversity will be a priority in selecting papers for the panel.
Law and Litigation
Law as Culture: Substance, Procedure, and Institutions in the Middle Ages
Contact Person: Alexander Volokh ; volokh@post.harvard.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Selden Society
This panel will explore the interaction between substance and procedure, with an emphasis on the development of the institutions of government and the enforcement of private rights, in the Middle Ages. We welcome submissions from any area, e.g. English, Celtic, Continental, Roman, Canon, and from any period within the Middle Ages. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches (merging legal history with, e.g., economics, political science, literature, anthropology, etc.), and the participation of junior scholars and graduate students.
Letter-Writing and Cistercian Expansion
Contact Person: Michael Voigts
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
Longing and Desire in the Middle Ages
Contact Person: Maile Hutterer ; msh@uoregon.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Association of the Pacific
This year has required many to live in the absence of the people or things that they value. Longing took many forms in the Middle Ages. Some are familiar to our recent experience, and others are unique to their medieval realities. This session explores the sensation of desire, broadly conceived. Papers might consider the history of emotions, long distance relationships (trade, warfare, diplomacy), coveted material objects, or desire in both sacred and secular contexts. In keeping with the mission of the Medieval Association of the Pacific, we especially seek papers that are interdisciplinary and that engage with a broad geography.
Lost in Transmission I
Contact Person: Mary Franklin-Brown
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Société Guilhem IX
The corpus of the troubadours is at once abundant and meagre: more than 2500 lyric texts, most transmitted without their melodies, and often significantly altered in the process of transmission. This panel will examine instances where it is clear that something has been lost; we will measure the losses but also ask how the phenomenon might be described in more positive terms, such as adaptation or creative reinvention.
Lost in Transmission II
Contact Person: Mary Franklin-Brown
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Société Guilhem IX
Love and Desire in Medieval French Literature
Magical Cross-Currents: Fluidity, Hybridity, and Overlaps
Contact Person: Veronica Menaldi
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Magica
Magic is hard to define, control, and censure. The use and study of magic overlaps and intersects with various disciplines, practices, and geographical locations. What distinguishes magic from medicine or divine intervention? How was it used and by whom? How far did certain practices (or its attempted censorship) spread? This panel invites papers that explore the places where these cross-currents occur whether in the surviving documents themselves or among those who presumably created, used, or condemned them. Some examples include: fictional references, multi-lingual representation, religious contact, medicinal practices, and maritime connections across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, or other bodies of water.
Magical Rhetoric and Apologetics
Contact Person: Claire Fanger
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Magica
The Church Fathers had defined magic as idolatry; this included all forms of astrology, conjuring, and divination. Nevertheless, despite such condemnations, thousands of extant manuscripts testify to the survival of magical beliefs in all their various modalities. Moreover, the vast majority of the texts preserved in our manuscripts proclaim themselves to be pious. This session aims to explore the many ways in which these texts sought to authorize or otherwise legitimate such claims in the face of traditional prohibitions.
Magical Thinking and the Mystical Body
Contact Person: Meagan Khoury ; megkhoury@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford Univ.
Managing Resources in Later Medieval England
Manuscript Compilatio
Manuscripts and/or Printed Books as Memorial Artifacts
Contact Person: Martha Driver ; mdriver@pace.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Book Society
Early printed editions of Chaucer include an engraved portrait of the author standing above Thomas Chaucer’s tomb, a form of visual memorial text. There are also collections, in both manuscript and print, of epitaphs (Higden’s Polychronicon contains a number of obituaries or elegies, for example). Another subject for consideration might be John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a memorial text valorizing Protestant martyrs. Papers in this session might discuss early mnemonic works like the Ars memorandi, or scholars may interpret the theme more metaphorically, looking at the ways in which a manuscript or book preserves a specific occasion or memory.
Manuscripts in the Age of Print I
Contact Person: N. Kıvılcım Yavuz ; nky@ku.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Univ. of Kansas
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Stanford Univ. Libraries
Until recently manuscripts and printed books have been considered products of different eras. Consequently, manuscripts bound with printed material traditionally have been studied separately, even when they are part of a single codex. The first of the two sessions welcomes proposals that examine the decision-making processes involved in producing codices composed of handwritten and printed components. The second session welcomes proposals that discuss how printed books impacted the production of handwritten books both materially and in terms of content; i.e., the introduction of new features such as title pages or the use of printed books as exemplars.
Manuscripts in the Age of Print II
Contact Person: N. Kıvılcım Yavuz ; nky@ku.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Univ. of Kansas
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Stanford Univ. Libraries
Until recently manuscripts and printed books have been considered products of different eras. Consequently, manuscripts bound with printed material traditionally have been studied separately, even when they are part of a single codex. The first of the two sessions welcomes proposals that examine the decision-making processes involved in producing codices composed of handwritten and printed components. The second session welcomes proposals that discuss how printed books impacted the production of handwritten books both materially and in terms of content; i.e., the introduction of new features such as title pages or the use of printed books as exemplars.
Materiality in the Fourteenth Century I: Money and Economics
Contact Person: Maya Irish
Principal Sponsoring Organization: 14th Century Society
In the Middle Ages, like today, economic issues such as income inequality, ethical use of money, possession of material objects, currency manipulation, and heavy taxation provoked controversy. Many of these debates intensified when the crises of the late Middle Ages devastated European economies and accelerated social change. Focusing on the fourteenth century, this session welcomes papers that explore the history of medieval economic thought and materiality, analyze systems of coinage and taxation, investigate the intersections of economic ideas with gender and religion, and examine the relationship between economic theory and practice during the age of social and political upheavals.
Materiality in the Fourteenth Century II: Art and Architecture
Contact Person: Gabriela Chitwood ; gchitwoo@uoregon.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: 14th Century Society
The art and architecture of the fourteenth century reflect the social changes and political upheavals that defined the period in Europe. Scholars have increasingly employed the materiality of art—its physical features and characteristics—to critically investigate expanding trade networks, modes of production, and the relationship between artist, patron, and viewer. This session builds on this momentum to explore the social and cultural function of art and architecture in the fourteenth century. Submissions are invited to examine the materiality of art and architecture from any disciplinary and theoretical perspective; interdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged.
Meaning and Uses of Latin
Medicine in the Global Middle Ages
Contact Person: Meg Oldman
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Makars Society
After a year, the world is beginning to see an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout it all, we have heard various ways to cope with or test our resilience against the novel coronavirus, from logical public health recommendations such as mask wearing and hand washing to abstract suggestions like injecting bleach and holding our breaths for 10 seconds. Suggestions such as these are nothing new. Prior to public health initiatives we know today, folklore was an important method of transmission for medical knowledge. We are looking for papers that explore global transmissions of medical knowledge through folkloric methods.
Medieval and Premodern Studies and the Caribbean
Contact Person: Marian Polhill ; marian.polhill1@upr.edu
We invite proposals for papers engaging with Medieval Studies from a Caribbean location and/or perspective, or considering pre-Columbian Caribbean literature, religion, and cultures from any location or theoretical stance. Contributions might consider the impact of medieval discourse in the premodern and early modern Caribbean (for example, as proposed by Dr. Marla Pagán-Mattos), or apply Caribbean theory to an analysis of medieval literature (for example, as proposed by Dr. Nahir Otaño-Gracia), among other possibilities.
Medieval Arts and Rituals
Contact Person: Stavroula Constantinou ; konstans@ucy.ac.cy
The EU Horizon 2020-funded project “Network of Medieval Arts and Rituals” (grant agreement No. 951875), which is implemented through a close collaboration between the Centre for Medieval Arts and Rituals at the University of Cyprus, the Centre for Medieval Literature at the University of Southern Denmark, and the Centre for Medieval Studies at Bamberg University in Germany invite proposals for papers that investigate the intersections between medieval rituals and artworks (visual, performing, and literary).
Medieval Ecocriticisms: Humans and Nature I
Contact Person: Heide Estes
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Ecocriticisms
We welcome papers that will stimulate discussion among scholars in varied subfields of medieval studies (literature, art history, history, philosophy, and others) on humans and others — what do the terms mean? How do they interact? What can we learn about our present by examining the ecologies of the past? We seek thought experiements engaging with ecocriticism, environmental studies, environmental history, critical animal studies, ecofeminism, postcolonial ecocriticism, and/or related topics.
Medieval Ecocriticisms: Humans and Nature II
Contact Person: Heide Estes
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Ecocriticisms
Medieval Equestrian History
Contact Person: Anastasija Ropa
It is a truism that horses and other equines were vital in the medieval society - yet, despite considerable body of research into medieval horse history, equines remain underrepresented in medieval studies. This special session is dedicated to the history of medieval equestrianism - the various ways in which people in the Middle Ages interacted with their horses, whether as companions, means of transportation, brothers in arms, status symbols, food, etc. The session encourages an interdisciplinary approach and cross-cultural comparison of equine and human interaction across the medieval world.
Medieval Galicia I: Pilgrimage and Sacred Geographies
Contact Person: Simon Doubleday ; simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS)
We seek papers for the first of three proposed sessions on medieval Galicia which revisit questions of pilgrimage in the second of two consecutive Holy Years to—and from—Santiago de Compostela (the 2021 ‘Xacobeo’ having been extended to 2022 because of COVID-19). Papers may address the multiple pilgrimage routes to Santiago, by sea and by land, from any disciplinary perspective including history, literature, music, and art history. We also welcome submissions relating to other aspects of the sacred geography of medieval Galicia, Galician spiritual sites beyond the camiño and Compostela itself, and pilgrimage from Galicia to other sacred places.
Medieval Ibero-Romance Languages I: Early Romance Linguistic Perspectives
Contact Person: Pablo Pastrana-Pérez
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (HSMS)
This session seeks to bring together advances to our knowledge of the medieval Romance languages of Iberia. Presentations may focus on intrinsic linguistic features found on medieval texts, or on extrinsic aspects (e.g. social, cultural, political, artistic, literary) that affected the use or development of the medieval languages of Iberia. Any approach dealing with the use, contact, variation or change in any of the Ibero-Romance languages is welcome.
Medieval Ibero-Romance Languages II: Linguistic Approaches to Medieval Texts
Contact Person: Pablo Pastrana-Pérez
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (HSMS)
Medieval Islamicate Paratexts in Contexts
Contact Person: Nathan Tabor ; nathan.tabor@wmich.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Great Lakes Adiban Society
This panel will explore the nature of the paratext in the lettered traditions of the medieval Islamicate world and ask how developments in textual technology (manuscript, lithograph, print, digital) as well as practices of reading and editing have changed how such works are understood and valorized. We hope to illuminate historically contingent and yet expansive ways of reading and interpreting Islamicate written works, stimulate comparative discussion between scholars of diverse lettered traditions, and highlight especially problematic examples and trends of what we might call paratextual erasure.
Medieval Jewish-Christian Relations
Contact Person: Steven McMichael
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Academy of Jewish-Christian Studies
Medieval Military History I: Early Medieval Warfare, Byzantium
Contact Person: Valerie Eads ; veads@sva.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
This session focuses on the period from Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries. Papers discussing all aspects of medieval warfare, broadly defined, are welcome.
Medieval Military History II: Late Medieval Warfare
Contact Person: Valerie Eads ; veads@sva.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
This session focuses on the period from the Central Middle Ages to the Early Modern period, roughly the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Papers discussing all aspects of medieval warfare, broadly defined, are welcome.
Medieval Military History III: Medieval Military Technology
Contact Person: Valerie Eads ; veads@sva.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
This session focuses on the technology of warfare, broadly defined, throughout the Middle Ages. Papers discussing all aspects of medieval warfare are welcome.
Medieval Military History IV: Early Medieval Warfare in the West
Contact Person: Valerie Eads ; veads@sva.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
This session marks the fifth centennial of the second, ultimately successful, attempt to take the Hospitaller stronghold of Rhodes led by Suleyman the Magnificent in 1522. Papers on all aspects of the siege are sought.
Medieval Minds in French
Contact Person: Paula Leverage ; leverage@purdue.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)
Knowing “the other” is an elusive search which assesses sense perception, language, experience and context, and results in approximating conclusions subject to constant change. The challenge increases exponentially when the minds probed are many centuries distant. This session will explore methodologies for reconstructing the minds and modalities of knowing from the medieval francophone diaspora. It will also consider the ways in which contemporary culture represents the medieval mind, and how these present additional challenges to knowing “the other.”
Medieval Sacramental Theology
Contact Person: Richard Nicholas ; rnicholas@stfrancis.edu
The sacraments are central to Christian spirituality. While the Church Fathers commented on the sacraments at length, a systematic treatment of the sacraments was not fully developed until the Middle Ages. With the introduction of Aristotelianism, new questions were asked of the sacraments. The quest for answers led to the development of a highly systematic treatment of the sacraments. Recent scholarship has revisited how medieval sacramental theology influenced later sacramental theologies. This session will showcase papers that reassess the medieval systematic treatment of the sacraments and show how what is found there can augment and enrich contemporary theological issues.
Medieval Sermon Studies I: Sermons in Eastern and Central Europe and the New World
Contact Person: Jessalynn Bird ; jbird@saintmarys.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
This session explores the rhetoric, metaphors, and physical realities of spiritual, mental, and physical illness in the medieval period in pastoral literature and sermons. Discourse between pastoralia and other genres is encouraged (liturgy, hagiography, miracle stories, vernacular literature, hospital records and medical treatises).
Medieval Sermon Studies II: Sermons and Saints
Contact Person: Jessalynn Bird ; jbird@saintmarys.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
Given the recent COVID crisis, attention has been refocused on the importance of ceremonies and social coping mechanisms in times of disaster, epidemics, and communal tension and/or loss. How did medieval communities forge unity, provide comfort, and deal with social and political tensions in times of disaster through liturgies, speeches, sermons, processions, commemorative masses, and confession and the last rites?
Medieval Sermon Studies III: Women and Preaching
Contact Person: Jessalynn Bird ; jbird@saintmarys.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
This session investigates the intersection of gender and women's studies with the study of sermons. Themes may include the construction and performance of femininities, gender roles and models, women preachers, preaching to women, gendered language and/or performance, the intersection of gender with other categories (status, occupation, ethnicity, religious practices, age), and gender fluidity and sexualities in sermons. We encourage papers from all global areas and religious traditions for the approximate period 500-1500 CE.
Medieval Temporalities I: Materiality, Embodiment, and Temporal Disruptions
Contact Person: Rachel Golden ; rmgolden@utk.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville
Notions of time, history, and nowness define medieval identifications with canonical or mythological pasts, constructions of historical and literary narratives, attention to materiality and embodiment, and imaginations of apocalypse or afterlife. These varied concepts of time reside in medieval arts of memory, writing and record-keeping, liturgical practices, and performances of speech, song, and movement. As such, historical and contemporary reckonings with the middle ages pose challenges to traditional and modernist-structured historiography, periodization, alterity, and racialized, gendered, and sexual identities. This interdisciplinary panel explores temporal conceptualizations in the Middle Ages and how ideologies of modernity have shaped understandings of medieval pasts.
Medieval Temporalities II: Mystical Time and Imagined Futures
Contact Person: Rachel Golden ; rmgolden@utk.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville
Notions of time, history, and nowness define medieval identifications with canonical or mythological pasts, constructions of historical and literary narratives, attention to materiality and embodiment, and imaginations of apocalypse or afterlife. These varied concepts of time reside in medieval arts of memory, writing and record-keeping, liturgical practices, and performances of speech, song, and movement. As such, historical and contemporary reckonings with the middle ages pose challenges to traditional and modernist-structured historiography, periodization, alterity, and racialized, gendered, and sexual identities. This interdisciplinary panel explores temporal conceptualizations in the Middle Ages and how ideologies of modernity have shaped understandings of medieval pasts.
Medieval Understandings of the Nature of Evil as Depicted by J. R. R. Tolkien
Contact Person: Michael Wodzak
Principal Sponsoring Organization: D. B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership, Viterbo Univ.
Medieval Writing Materials: Processes, Products, and Case Studies
Contact Person: Mildred Budny
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Seeking to explore new and cumulative research on medieval writing materials and their impact, we propose to examine multiple modes for producing books, documents, and texts in other forms, such as wax, wood, metal, or stone. Case-studies might consider, for example, the transmission of paper across geographical regions and cultures, whether as material structures (watermarks sometimes included) or as products (books, correspondence, and more); the deployment of multi-media in assembling various products (bindings, reused fragments, seals, etc.); and the roles of the technology and praxis of manuscripts in shaping the initial production of incunables, on both paper and vellum.
Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction
Contact Person: Valerie Johnson
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Society for the Study of Medievalism
This panel seeks to explore the influence of the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction upon medievalism, whether the field overall or in specific works (of any medium or mode). For example, how might romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight change meaning in a new genre, such as science fiction or fantasy? Proposals might consider specific texts, or ask broader questions including: how do speculative genres influence, restrict, or expand the potential of medievalism, or change the types of stories told? Where does genre cross over with medievalism?
Medievalism in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literary and Cinematic Adaptations of Beowulf
Contact Person: Lorraine Stock ; lstock@uh.edu
Illustrating Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest through adaptation, Beowulf’s now-obsolete warrior culture and characters were restored to contemporary significance through 20th-21st-century literary and cinematic adaptations (per Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Adaptation). Reflecting cultural issues contemporaneous with their decade of creation, such novels and films employed medievalism to make an ancient poem relevant for their intended immediate audiences, often achieved by re-presenting Beowulf’s plot from non-canonical perspectives. This session seeks three to four papers that explore literary adaptations (novels or other verbal genres) and/or films that employ medievalism to re-present the Beowulf narrative through its monsters’, female characters,’ or invented characters’ points-of-view.
Medievalism, Orientalism, Capitalism
Contact Person: Mariah Proctor-Tiffany
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Material Collective
Patrons of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries looked to the Middle Ages in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for objects and inspiration for their exoticizing and historically evocative collections and architecture. Prominent examples include John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Cloisters Museum, Doris Duke’s Shangri La home in Hawaii, and Frederic and Isabel Church’s home, Olana. This session seeks to analyze collecting and/or building projects within their political, social, economic, and cultural environments, examining the financial structures that enabled their creation, nationalist and colonialist appropriation and collecting strategies, and issues of class such as the relationships between artists and patrons.
Medievalisms and More I
Contact Person: Evelyn Meyer ; evelyn.meyer@slu.edu
Contact Person: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand ; hellenbranda@appstate.edu
Contact Person: Joseph Sullivan ; jsullivan@ou.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS)
“New Research in Medieval Germanic Studies” seeks innovative scholarly contributions from a broad range of areas. We have expanded the focus of our society to include literary as well as linguistic scholarship in all the medieval Germanic areas. Our sessions have fostered interactions with, for example, scholars from Medieval Scandinavian, Middle Dutch Studies, Medieval German, and Comparative Medieval Studies; to connect the field of Germanic Medieval Studies more broadly with other medieval fields of inquiry, we are actively recruiting participants to our panels from those fields to allow for more fruitful intellectual conversations across disciplinary boundaries.
Medievalisms and More II
Contact Person: Evelyn Meyer ; evelyn.meyer@slu.edu
Contact Person: Joseph Sullivan ; jsullivan@ou.edu
Contact Person: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand ; hellenbranda@appstate.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS)
By medievalism(s) we are referring to the uses and abuses of the medieval from the Late Middle Ages through modernity. In this session, we seek to showcase the dynamic intersections at which German medieval texts and their interpreters conceptualized the future of the past. This theme has received relatively little scholarly attention by Germanists. This session, therefore, aims to spur conversation among Germanists about medievalism and to encourage research into it. This session on medievalism(s) in the German context will add a European dimension to a dialogue dominated by Anglophone scholarship on medievalism.
Meditation and Memory in Women's Devotional Texts
Mendicant Friars and the Secular Church: Controversy, Coexistence, Collaboration
Contact Person: William Campbell ; whc7@pitt.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Episcopus: Society for the Study of Bishops and Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.
From c. 1215 onward, the Latin church had two parallel structures for reaching the laity, the seculars and the mendicants. As the latter exploded in numbers and popularity, the two became rivals, sometimes espousing radically different agendas for reform and concepts of the nature of the church itself. From time to time, this broke into open conflict. But the two could often co-operate, as when a parish priest invited a friar to preach, or even overlap, as when a friar was elected to the episcopate. Papers are invited that address the nature of these complex relationships.
Mester de Clerecía: New Horizons, Crossing Borders
Contact Person: Paul Larson
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Texas Medieval Association (TEMA)
The poetic form “mester de clerecía” enjoyed a certain popularity among some of Spain’s poets during the 13th and 14th centuries: Gonzalo de Berceo and Juan Ruiz, for example. This session will be an exploration of new scholarship and new criticism regarding this genre.
Minorite Meetings
Contact Person: Lezlie Knox ; lezlie.knox@marquette.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.
This session welcomes paper that explore the significance of meetings for shaping the medieval Franciscan tradition. From Francis' encounter with the lepers, which raises questions about how his early followers really met with the poor, the sick, and the needy, to his detente with sultan al-Kamil, which asks how the brothers approached “others,” including “enemies” and “competitors,” meetings shaped the order's communal identity. Only with regular meetings, could the Franciscan fraternity develop into an Order. Records of virtual meetings--visions and spiritual encounters--also testify to the communal character of medieval Franciscan life.
Modern Iberian (Neo)Medievalisms in Postcolonial Contexts and Diaspora
Contact Person: Rebecca De Souza ; rdesouza@live.co.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
We welcome papers from scholars working on the ways in which the medieval past has been used in a variety of contexts in the Hispano and Lusophone worlds beyond the Iberian Peninsula, from Latin America and the Philippines to the Sephardic and morisco diasporas in the Mediterranean and beyond.
Modern Reception of Medieval Literary Texts
Monastic Agents and Networks
Monetary Fictions: Money and Literature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Contact Person: Filippo Petricca
Contact Person: Miguel Llanos de la Guardia
In medieval and early modern Europe, money was a force of both submission and transformation. Political institutions attempted to regulate and envision its circulation through coinage, legislation, and sometimes by coercion. At the same time, money was the protagonist of global mercantile networks, and its circulation influenced philosophical, literary, and political hierarchies. This ambivalent position makes money a compelling locus for the study of culture and epistemology. For this panel, we welcome papers investigating how medieval and early modern literature negotiated, mediated, and conceptualized the presence of money, ranging from economic theories and practices to the literary representations of coins.
Money and Service: Techniques of Power
Motets
Movement and the Construction of Narrative in Middle English Romance
Multilingual Italy
Contact Person: Akash Kumar
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Italians and Italianists at Kalamazoo
This panel seeks to explore the multilingual nature of Italy in the late medieval period by interrogating ideas of linguistic and cultural unity, the choice of literary languages, acts of translation, and the like. How might a look to poetry written in multiple languages change our idea of Dante's 'vernacular eloquence'? How might we interpret the use of Occitan, Hebrew, and the like within the vernacular ecosystem of the Italian peninsula and the islands? And, finally, might this approach have something to offer with regard to contemporary issues of migration and the rethinking of Italian identity?
Naples and Beyond: World-Wide Cultural Networks I: Within Naples
Contact Person: Denva Gallant ; dgallant@udel.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)
Within Naples: The City and the Regno c. 1250-1450. If Naples should be considered not on the periphery of mainstream Italian art but a center of it, then what aspects allow us to consider it as such? We seek papers that investigate, among other topics: 1. Artists’ ateliers (painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, scribes and illuminators) – materials and materiality; 2. The interpretation or appropriation of cultural symbols and ideology within Naples; 3. Digital mapping or reconstruction and maps of Naples; 3. Impact of nuns, religious leaders/preachers; and 4. The importation of artists and their contribution to Neapolitan culture.
Naples and Beyond: World-Wide Cultural Networks II: Beyond Naples I
Contact Person: Janis Elliott ; janis.elliott@ttu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)
What impact did the art and artists of late medieval Naples have on the global stage? And equally, what impact did the wider connected world have on Naples? We seek papers that investigate, among other topics: 1. The movement of art and other objects of material culture between Naples far-reaching transcontinental cultural, diplomatic, commercial networks; 2. Royal interactions (cultural, artistic, diplomatic, marital, commercial, political) with other monarchies and states; 3. The circulation of non-Italian and/or non-Western objects and artistic materials in Naples; 4. The importance of trade, especially maritime trade; 5. Naples and Florence, Naples and Rome, Naples and Paris.
Naples and Beyond: World-Wide Cultural Networks III: Beyond Naples II
Contact Person: Gilbert Jones
Contact Person: Denva Gallant ; dgallant@udel.edu
Contact Person: Janis Elliott ; janis.elliott@ttu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA)
Narrative Technique and Point of View I: Numbness, Shock, Surprise
Contact Person: David Raybin ; draybin@eiu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Chaucer Review
In his romances, fables and fabliaux, spiritual tales, and tragedies mock and real, Chaucer’s plotting often embeds surprises for his readers, built up to in suspenseful ways. This session seeks papers that explore how Chaucer’s techniques might generate heightened anticipation and then play against or fulfill audience expectation. Papers that treat Chaucer’s contemporaries are also welcome.
Narrative Technique and Point of View II: Emotive Manipulation
Contact Person: David Raybin ; draybin@eiu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Chaucer Review
Chaucer seems to have known exactly how to push his readers’ buttons and control their feelings. This session seeks papers that consider how Chaucer involves readers in literary representations of emotion—joy and sorrow, mental suffering and anxiety, self-assurance and disbelief, confidence and confusion. We are particularly interested in considerations of how Chaucer and his contemporaries create feelings of empathy, delight, or revulsion.
Negotiating Religion, Gender, and Travel in the Medieval Mediterranean I
Contact Person: Michelle Hamilton
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval Studies, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities
People in medieval Mediterranean were connected by networks or trade, family and knowledge. This panel welcomes papers exploring how authors imagined the people who lived these networks and their effects, including slaves, scholars and merchants.
Negotiating Religion, Gender, and Travel in the Medieval Mediterranean II
Contact Person: Michelle Hamilton
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval Studies, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Neomedievalism and Global Social Media
Neomedievalist Images and the Robin Hood Tradition
Contact Person: Anna Czarnowus
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Neomedievalism is understood as ideas or concepts that are detached from the historical Middle Ages, but are nonetheless seen as of medieval origin. The Robin Hood tradition has long inspired neomedievalist imagery: for example, the idea that medieval outlaws protected women and children. Such images are not confirmed by history or the literary Robin Hood texts. Neomedievalist ideas inspired by the Robin Hood tradition can be found in film, children’s literature, and other media. We seek paper proposals that address the question of how the medieval is reworked in such imagery and images.
Networks of Makers: Scribes, Artists, Printers, Binders
Contact Person: Martha Driver ; mdriver@pace.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Book Society
This session considers connections between scribes, or between scribes and artists, or between printers and binders, or any combination, as well as cross-cultural exchange.
New Approaches to Medieval Archaeology
Contact Person: Pam Crabtree ; pc4@nyu.edu
This session is designed to show how new archaeological methods and techniques are shedding new light on medieval societies. We are interested in papers that use methods such as geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, experimental archaeology, Geographical Information Systems, isotopic studies and other new techniques to shed new light on medieval societies and lifeways.
New Approaches to the Art and Architecture of Angevin and Aragonese Naples (1265–1458)
Contact Person: Gilbert Jones
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) Student Committee
New Directions in Source Study
Contact Person: Benjamin Weber
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture Project (SOEALLC)
The Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture (SOEALLC) project invites submissions for a session entitled "New Directions in Source Study" at the 2022 ICMS. This session will explore the ongoing vitality and utility of source criticism in the methodologically diverse field of Old English studies. Submissions should focus on texts in which source relationships can inform and/or be informed by the use of other interpretive methods—a reading of the Old English Bede against the Historia Ecclesiastica inspired by current work on race, or a discussion of Alfred's use of Augustine informed by recent scholarship on multilingualism.
New Readings of the Lord of the Rings
New Research on Medieval Parish Church Art and Architecture I
Contact Person: Zachary Stewart
New Research on Medieval Parish Church Art and Architecture II
Contact Person: Zachary Stewart
New Voices in Early Drama Studies
Contact Person: Christina Fitzgerald ; christina.fitzgerald@utoledo.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) continues its annual tradition of inviting all scholars new to the field of early drama studies, specifically graduate students and recent PhDs (within four years of receiving the degree), to submit their work to the “New Voices” panel, which will consist of three or four papers and commentary from a respondent.
New Work by Young Celtic Studies Scholars
Contact Person: Frederick Suppe ; fsuppe@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Celtic Studies Association of North America
This session will include three 20-minute papers written by scholars in the early stages of their careers. Papers may be based in any academic discipline relevant to Celtic Studies.
New Work in Medieval Religious Studies
Contact Person: Barbara Zimbalist
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures (JMRC)
Nineteenth-/Twentieth-/Twenty-First-Century Medievalisms
Contact Person: Daniel Najork
Proposals might explore the factors shaping nineteenth- and twentieth-/twenty-first-century literature about the Middle Ages as well as the differences in approaches to the Middle Ages in each century. What historical, social, and intellectual views shaped nineteenth-century approaches to the Middle Ages? In what ways were these views limited or biased based on what the Victorians knew and believed and did not know, particularly when compared to advances in historical, psychological, and political knowledge in the next centuries? Conversely, what shaped twentieth-/twenty-first-century views of the Middle Ages? To what degree did writers react to and against the nineteenth century?
Novelties and New Discoveries in the Archeological Record of the Iberian Peninsula
Contact Person: Yasmine Beale-Rivaya
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Texas Medieval Association (TEMA)
This session will focus on important and lesser known Christian and Muslim archeological sites and will instruct the audience concerning recent important discoveries from such "digs" and how these discoveries widen our knowledge of medieval Spain. In this panel, we invite papers dedicated to these new discoveries and invite scholars to contextualize them and give their initial thoughts on how these discoveries affect the historical record.
Old Wine, New Skins: Manuscripts and Books Adapted, Emended, Repurposed
Contact Person: Martha Driver ; mdriver@pace.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Early Book Society
This session looks at the repackaging or translation of manuscripts and books made between 1350 and 1550 through various perspectives – for example, from manuscript to manuscript or from manuscript to print, examining changes in language and/or illustration or other aspects of presentation. In some cases, a text may be abstracted or emended to suit a specific readership.
Ovid's Bodies in the Middle Ages
Contact Person: William Little
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Ovidiana
The iconic opening words of the Metamorphoses, announcing the epic’s subject as forms (formas) changed into new bodies (corpora), has long established Ovid as a poet of corporeality. Indeed, Ovid’s entire poetic oeuvre—and not least medieval pseudo-Ovidiana—abounds with bodies that offered medieval readers vivid images of the possibilities, limits, and dangers of an embodied existence. This panel invites papers exploring any medieval connection between Ovidianism and corporeality, including but not limited to how Ovidian models were used in text or image to explore desire, gender and sexuality, violence, monstrosity, interiority, artistic representation, change, decay, birth, or death.
Ovidian Paratexts
Contact Person: William Little
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Ovidiana
The poetic corpus of Ovid is notorious for the quantity of secondary texts it attracted to itself in the Middle Ages. Accessus and other forms of biographical tradition, commentaries, translations, pseudepigrapha: these products of intensive reading of Ovid served to bridge the gap between the ancient poetry and the medieval reader. This panel invites papers on Ovidian paratexts broadly defined, that is, text or image that, while secondary, in some sense, to the works of Ovid themselves, shows medieval readers as active participants in Ovid’s reception and attempting to shape other readers’ understanding of the poet.
Papers by Undergraduates I
Contact Person: Richard Nicholas ; rnicholas@stfrancis.edu
Papers by Undergraduates II
Contact Person: Richard Nicholas ; rnicholas@stfrancis.edu
Papers in Honor of Elizabeth C. Teviotdale
Contact Person: Elizabeth Morrison
Performance in the Global Middle Ages
Contact Person: Christopher Swift ; cswift@citytech.cuny.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) invites proposals for “Performance in the Global Middle Ages”, a panel that engages with performance in marginalized areas of study (Iberia, the Maghreb, Byzantium, Persia, the Eastern Mediterranean, etc.) or, alternatively, the ways in which theatre in the West operated within networks of cultural exchange across confessional and political boundaries. MRDS encourages submissions from scholars working in a range of disciplines, including theatre, art and material culture, musicology, history, archeology, manuscript studies, and language. Subjects may include but are not limited to festivals, paraliturgies, preaching, puppetry, performance space, storytelling, dance, and song.
Performing Death I: Grief and Emotion in the Medieval Mediterranean
Contact Person: Nuria Silleras-Fernandez ; silleras@colorado.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: CU Mediterranean Studies Group
Papers are sought that examine the emotional, social, gendered, and cultural contexts of mourning among Christians, Muslims, and Jews across the medieval Mediterranean. The aim is to better understand grief, both in the past and today. How was death understood and ritualized from an emotional point of view? What was the role of religion in establishing appropriate models and rituals? How was the expression of grief, whether in history, literature, or art, shaped by social norms, and expectations and by the emotional communities’ individuals belonged to? Was there an emotional Mediterranean culture of “lamenting” that transcended ethno-religious divisions?
Performing Death II: Ritual and Remembrance in the Medieval Mediterranean
Contact Person: Nuria Silleras-Fernandez ; silleras@colorado.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: CU Mediterranean Studies Group
Performing Scientific Authority: Forms, Modes, and Rhetorics
Contact Person: Chelsea Silva ; chelsea.silva@okstate.edu
This panel explores representations of scientific authority in the global Middle Ages, focusing not on how expertise was obtained, but how it was displayed. We welcome proposals for papers that consider the performance and rhetoric of authority in areas such as medicine, alchemy, and natural philosophy, among others, and are especially interested in papers that examine diverse sources, including art, literature, architecture, and legal procedure. We’re also interested in papers that engage with modern concerns about popular (mis)trust of science. How did medieval thinkers and practitioners convey expertise? What forms, discourses, or rhetorics structured successful or unsuccessful performances?
Philosophical Themes and Issues in Malory's World
Contact Person: Felicia Nimue Ackerman ; Felicia_Ackerman@brown.edu
Malory’s world offers much to discuss on philosophical themes and issues corcerning envy, revenge, penitence, love, betrayal, fidelity, honor, shame, and many other areas. How about it?
Pious Queens and Franciscan Devotion I
Contact Person: Lezlie Knox ; lezlie.knox@marquette.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Women in the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition (WIFIT)
This panel explores royal patronage and spiritual practices with particular attention to gender and power. We welcome papers that consider both explicit connections between queens and branches of the Franciscan Order and those associated with it (such as lay confraternities, recluses), as well as devotional affinities.
Pious Queens and Franciscan Devotion II
Contact Person: Lezlie Knox ; lezlie.knox@marquette.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.
Playing Robin Hood: Theatricality in the Robin Hood Tradition
Contact Person: Lorraine Stock ; lstock@uh.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
The Robin Hood tradition has a history of performance and theatricality. In addition to the medieval ballads, Robin Hood stories were conveyed using elements of theatricality, including early plays performed at May games, Whitsun ales, and revels; Early Modern stage drama; 18th- and 19th-century sung broadside ballads, Christmas plays, and operas; modern dramatic pieces; staged depictions of the outlaw in 19th and 20th-century operas, pantomimes, burlesques; and film. Theatricality, broadly construed, employs elements of music, stagecraft, or scripting. This session seeks papers that explore any aspect(s) of how theatricality has been employed to deliver the Robin Hood tradition to audiences.
Playing with Game Theory: Playful Genres
Contact Person: Sarah Sprouse
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Game Cultures Society
Games were one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the Middle Ages and yet only a handful of studies exist on the importance of games in medieval culture. This session proposes to explore the social and cultural significance of medieval genres of gaming, including debates, legal texts, riddles, carols, hunting manuals, and poems and romances traditionally studied for their literary value rather than their ludonarratological functions. Such papers might consider historical analyses of such functions as well as complicating the modern editing practices of these genres of texts.
Pressing Politics: Interactions between Authors and Printers in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Contact Person: Mildred Budny
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
The symbiotic relationship between authors and printers was as frought in the early days of printing as it is today. Indeed, the level of care that authors invested in their works was not always matched by diligence on the part of those charged with the physical layout of the text and is mechanical reproduction. Yet for every example of such tensions and the errors at their source (e.g., Marsilio Ficino), there is another of extremely productive collaboration on both sides (e.g., Erasmus and Aldus Manutius). This session proposes to examine the full range of these interactions, including layout and illustrations.
Queering Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Contact Person: Felipe Rojas ; felipe.rojas@westliberty.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Queer Medieval Studies (SQMS)
New explorations of the queerness in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are long overdue. Much of the existing scholarship narrowly focuses on the queer threat raised by Gawain’s possible consummation with Bertilak, while Queer Theory’s movements in the past five years alone suggest a breadth of new readings. Finally, a range of twenty-first-century editions of the poem (including W. S. Merwin and Simon Armitage’s) and summer 2022 release of the film The Green Knight all offer new inroads to the poem’s queerness. Participants each offer a queer reading that takes advantage of this newly situated Gawain.
Race and Identity in the Fourteenth Century
Contact Person: Sarah Ifft Decker
Principal Sponsoring Organization: 14th Century Society
Raid and Trade: Medieval Ireland in the Maritime World
Contact Person: Larissa Tracy ; kattracy@comcast.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS)
Despite modern perceptions of the Middle Ages as a period of stasis and insularity, medieval people were mobile and came into contact with a diverse set of travelers. Medieval Ireland was a nexus for both raiding and trading throughout the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic. Ships from Ireland ranged as far as Byzantium, and Ireland was populated by settlers who began both as raiders and traders from far afield. This panel explores the complexities of contact between Ireland and other maritime communities, as well as the implications of such interaction that often contradict assumptions of ethnic or religious homogeneity.
Rationality and Allegoresis
Contact Person: Evelyn Meyer ; evelyn.meyer@slu.edu
Contact Person: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand ; hellenbranda@appstate.edu
Contact Person: Joseph Sullivan ; jsullivan@ou.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS)
“New Research in Medieval Germanic Studies II” seeks innovative scholarly contributions from a broad range of areas. We have expanded the focus of our society to include literary as well as linguistic scholarship in all the medieval Germanic areas. Our sessions have fostered interactions with, for example, scholars from Medieval Scandinavian, Middle Dutch Studies, Medieval German, and Comparative Medieval Studies; to connect the field of Germanic Medieval Studies more broadly with other medieval fields of inquiry, we are actively recruiting participants to our panels from those fields to allow for more fruitful intellectual conversations across disciplinary boundaries.
Reading Art and Power in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Italy
Reading the Past in Late Antiquity
Reformation: Historical and Cultural Texts, Contexts, and Influences of the Reformation
Contact Person: Maureen Thum ; mthum@umich.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Reformation Research
Society for Reformation Research (Sponsored Sessions at the Medieval Congress) invites twenty-minute papers on the (long) Reformation. We welcome Cross Disciplinary, Cross Cultural and Multi-Media papers in History, Literature, and the Arts. Themes may include communities and voices; documents and texts; heretics and heterodoxies; medical and scientific developments; theological, liturgical and confessional movements; Pre- and Post Reformation influences. Potential Sessions 1) Reformation I: Texts and Contexts in the Reformation; 2) Reformation II: Self, Persona, and Audience; 3) Reformation III: Historical, Political, Personal Conflict in the Long Reformation; 4) Reformation IV: Dissonance, Resistance, and Dissent in the Reformation
Restoring Medieval Art and Architecture I: Technology in Documentation and Research
Contact Person: Sarah Thompson ; setfaa@rit.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: AVISTA: The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art
Critical discourse surrounding the conservation and restoration of Notre-Dame of Paris following the disastrous 2019 fire indicates the continued existence of a nostalgic desire to experience medieval buildings "as they were." Paradoxically, to conserve or restore medieval buildings and objects "authentically," cultural heritage practitioners increasingly rely on contemporary technological tools. Such tools, long recognized for their scholarly and pedagogical value, have become crucial for engagement with medieval sites and objects in a time of enforced distance. These sessions will explore ties between technology and concepts of authenticity as they intersect with the conservation or restoration of medieval art and architecture.
Restoring Medieval Art and Architecture II: Technology and Concepts of Authenticity
Contact Person: Sarah Thompson ; setfaa@rit.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: AVISTA: The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art
Critical discourse surrounding the conservation and restoration of Notre-Dame of Paris following the disastrous 2019 fire indicates the continued existence of a nostalgic desire to experience medieval buildings "as they were." Paradoxically, to conserve or restore medieval buildings and objects "authentically," cultural heritage practitioners increasingly rely on contemporary technological tools. Such tools, long recognized for their scholarly and pedagogical value, have become crucial for engagement with medieval sites and objects in a time of enforced distance. These sessions will explore ties between technology and concepts of authenticity as they intersect with the conservation or restoration of medieval art and architecture.
Restoring Medieval Art and Architecture III: Technology and Access
Contact Person: Sarah Thompson ; setfaa@rit.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: AVISTA: The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art
Critical discourse surrounding the conservation and restoration of Notre-Dame of Paris following the disastrous 2019 fire indicates the continued existence of a nostalgic desire to experience medieval buildings "as they were." Paradoxically, to conserve or restore medieval buildings and objects "authentically," cultural heritage practitioners increasingly rely on contemporary technological tools. Such tools, long recognized for their scholarly and pedagogical value, have become crucial for engagement with medieval sites and objects in a time of enforced distance. These sessions will explore ties between technology and concepts of authenticity as they intersect with the conservation or restoration of medieval art and architecture.
Rethinking Anachronism in and out of the Middle Ages
Contact Person: Alexander Pena
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Studies Program, Yale Univ.
Scholars have often held that medieval people lacked a sense of separation between past and present. However, many have countered that these societies often exhibited strong senses of historical perspective. Still others have suggested that debates about medieval anachronism often perpetuate modern assumptions that “anachronism” is itself an inherently negative quality. What might we gain by reconsidering the extent to which medieval thought was defined by anachronism, or by reconsidering the value of anachronism as a technique for understanding relationships between past and present? We welcome papers considering innovative theoretical interventions and geographical and cultural breadth across various disciplines.
Rethinking Bede in the Twenty-First Century I: Identities and Oralities
Contact Person: Sharon Rowley ; srowley@cnu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Christopher Newport Univ.
Early medieval studies have undergone dramatic conceptual and technological changes since 2000. From a new awareness of diversity and inclusion, thing theory, new ecologies and networks, to new methods of computer-assisted statistical analysis, ArcGIS, and increased access to digital surrogates of documentary, art historical, and archaeological sources/objects, practices across many disciplines differ radically from 20 years ago. Bede has long been a key source for the study of the history , theology, and cultures of the medieval north Atlantic archipelago. This panel seeks papers using new approaches, methodologies, and technologies to rethink Bed e's works and/or his (geo)cultural milieux.
Rethinking Bede in the Twenty-First Century II: Network Analyses
Contact Person: Sharon Rowley ; srowley@cnu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Christopher Newport Univ.
Rethinking Chaucerian Obscenity I
Contact Person: Kristen Curtis
Principal Sponsoring Organization: COMMode (Canonicity, Obscenity, and the Making of Modern Chaucer)
If Chaucer is sometimes known as the ‘Father of English Poetry’ (in Dryden’s words), he is also famous for rather less elevated reasons: his bawdy sexual and scatological language and content. While responses to this material have varied over the past six centuries, Chaucer’s obscenity is regularly an issue to be contended with, a fact that raises questions about how or whether a particular editor, publisher, or reader will engage with content that would otherwise be regarded as taboo. ‘Rethinking Chaucerian Obscenity’ will consider how Chaucer’s obscenity has been received in different contexts since the poet’s death in 1400.
Rethinking Chaucerian Obscenity II
Contact Person: Kristen Curtis
Principal Sponsoring Organization: COMMode (Canonicity, Obscenity, and the Making of Modern Chaucer)
If Chaucer is sometimes known as the ‘Father of English Poetry’ (in Dryden’s words), he is also famous for rather less elevated reasons: his bawdy sexual and scatological language and content. While responses to this material have varied over the past six centuries, Chaucer’s obscenity is regularly an issue to be contended with, a fact that raises questions about how or whether a particular editor, publisher, or reader will engage with content that would otherwise be regarded as taboo. ‘Rethinking Chaucerian Obscenity’ will consider how Chaucer’s obscenity has been received in different contexts since the poet’s death in 1400.
Rethinking Early Modern Drama on and off the Stage
Rethinking Theology of the Central and Later Middle Ages
Rethinking Trauma (and Theory) in Literature I
Contact Person: Matthew Aiello
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Manuscript Technologies Forum Interest Group, The English Association
Rethinking Trauma (and Theory) in Literature II
Contact Person: Matthew Aiello
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Manuscript Technologies Forum Interest Group, The English Association
Returning to the Archives: Pedagogical Perspectives and Experiences
Contact Person: Gina Hurley
Contact Person: Raymond Clemens
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale Univ.
In the rush to make object-based learning remote, we were forced to experiment with new ways to engage students. Even as we discovered the benefits of digital teaching, we learned to assess and address its limitations. This panel will explore these developments, addressing the following questions and others: How have instructors attended to issues of access, even as curators and instructional specialists have expanded the boundaries of access to their collections? How have instructors used this opportunity to put local collections in conversation with ones from across the world, reorienting their course materials around a global perspective?
Reuse and Repurposing of Sculpture
Reusing Medieval Sculpture: Ideology, Meaning, and Aesthetics of a Process over Time
Contact Person: Paola Vitolo ; paola.vitolo@unina.it
Contact Person: Laura Cavazzini
Contact Person: Clario Di Fabio
Historical sites, as palimpsests of material and symbolic elements, are characterized by the re-functioning of spaces and buildings and also by the re-use of artistic materials. The session aims to analyse cases of reuse of medieval sculpture in modern contexts (roughly 15th-18th centuries) inspired not by practical and material purposes but by the need to communicate messages of high symbolic value. Papers will focus on episodes that allow to recover the "long life" of the medieval sculpture over the centuries, in contexts similar or, on the contrary, completely different to the original ones and related phenomena of re-working and re-functionalization.
Robert T. Farrell Lecture
Contact Person: Larissa Tracy ; kattracy@comcast.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS)
Romance, Local and International
Contact Person: Jonathan Davis-Secord ; jwds@unm.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
With the "global turn" underway in Medieval Studies, the romance genre figures importantly in new understandings of connections across boundaries. From Chrétien to Iceland to Arabic, the romance genre transcends language and nation, yet each romance remains tied to its individual time and place. This session will examine romances on both of these levels and explore the tension between the local and the international.
Runes, Words, Texts, Contexts I
Contact Person: Haruko Momma
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dictionary of Old English (DOE)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): RuneS
“Runes, Words, Texts, Contexts” undertakes to explore the intersection of two areas of Old English studies: namely, lexicology and runology. Questions that may be addressed in the first session include (but are not limited to): how best to represent runes in editions and lexicons; the use of new technology in such projects; new discoveries that have emerged from these and other team efforts. Possible questions for the second session may include new insights gained by individual research; relationships between runes and words; new approaches to textual studies of runes; the importance of contexts in runic studies; interdisciplinary approaches to runes.
Runes, Words, Texts, Contexts II
Contact Person: Haruko Momma
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dictionary of Old English (DOE)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): RuneS
Saint Francis's Legacy: The Value of Contemplation
Contact Person: Donatella D'Aguanno ; daguanno@stanford.edu
Saint Francis has always had a predominant resonance from the medieval to the modern era. Dante, in a straightforward way, in the Divine Comedy, glorifies the Saint from Assisi. Francis is present in canto XI of Paradiso. Still, he is also perceptible in constructing Dante's poetics built around the crucial aspect of the "eye", which is strongly linked to Francis's legacy: the cruciality of contemplating. Dante is only one example of intellectuals who grasped Francis's contemplation and used it for their own artistic and literary purpose.
Saintly Dismemberment
Contact Person: Stephanie Grace-Petinos ; stephanie.grace.petinos@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hagiography Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages
Saints and Animals
Contact Person: Catherine Mooney
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hagiography Society
Saints and Sermons
Contact Person: Jessalynn Bird ; jbird@saintmarys.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hagiography Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
Senses and Affects in the Middle Ages I: Synaesthesia and Multisensory Perception
Contact Person: Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė ; ak914@cam.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Affect/Sensation/Emotion in Medieval France and Italy Research Group, Univ. of Cambridge
This session invites papers examining the representation of experiences that blur the boundaries between sensory modalities that the modern West usually prefers to keep distinct, namely, colour, light, movement, texture, smell, taste, and hearing. We welcome contributions analysing medieval visual, literary, and theoretical works that embrace the possibilities of sensory-cognitive integration, challenge scholarly paradigms that rely on the Cartesian mind-body dualism, and/or reflect on how art might produce multisensory impressions in the people experiencing it.
Senses and Affects in the Middle Ages II: Emotions and Affective Experience
Contact Person: Jack Ford ; jack.ford.13@ucl.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Affect/Sensation/Emotion in Medieval France and Italy Research Group, Univ. of Cambridge
This session invites papers examining the blurred boundaries between perceptive and affective experience in the medieval Latin West. As such, we seek contributions that explore how psychological categories such as ‘mind’, ‘rationality’, ‘imagination’, ‘perception’, ‘affection’, and ‘affectivity’ were understood as interconnected aspects of medieval experience. Papers may include (but are not limited to) studies of medieval literary, theoretical, medical, or visual works in addition to material culture (writ large). Papers should seek to engage with ongoing research in the fields of emotion, sensation, affect and the sciences and/or engage with current debates on medieval affective experience.
Sickness in the Medieval Court I: Literary Representations
Contact Person: Shawn Cooper
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Courtly Literature Society (ICLS), North American Branch
The International Courtly Literature Society (North American Branch) invites paper proposals for a sponsored session: Of Pestilences and Plagues: Sickness in the Medieval Court. We welcome submissions addressing the depiction of illness in courtly literatures, chronicles, histories, and other artistic media. Comparative readings of medieval and modern depictions of sickness in the setting of the medieval court are also welcome. Presenters will receive a year’s membership in the ICLS-NAB, and may be eligible for presentation-related grants and awards of the society.
Sickness in the Medieval Court II: Historical Responses
Contact Person: Shawn Cooper
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Courtly Literature Society (ICLS), North American Branch
Simulating Sacred Space
Contact Person: Gina Hurley
Contact Person: Kristen Herdman
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Studies Program, Yale Univ.
The creation of sacred space is multidimensional: a church is sanctioned not only by its liturgical use or architectural features, but also by religious authority, communal tradition, and personal devotion. This intersection is crucial to how a given space is demarcated, understood, and sacralized. But what of simulated sacred space or sacred objects? Imaginary pilgrimages, meditations on an absent nail, conjurations constructed by instruction alone - medieval devotional practice routinely asked the faithful to engage their mind’s eye. This panel seeks papers that engage with practices, devotional or otherwise, that engage with the question of imaginary or virtual sacred space.
Sociability between Justice and Tyranny
Contact Person: Nathan Tabor ; nathan.tabor@wmich.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Great Lakes Adiban Society
This panel explores the question of how pre-modern Islamicate texts from a wide variety of traditions ambivalently considered the role of sociability. Muslim majority and Muslim-ruled societies in lands between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean shared notions of association and political order informed by connected multi-lingual literatures and accepted notions of comportment. Yet, pre-modern Islamicate texts occasionally valorized characters, settings, and scenarios that unseated the social order, as drunkards (rindan), tricksters (ʿayyarun) and conspirators (khuwwan) interrupted friendships or overturned proper governance for virtuous ends.
Spaces of the Written Word: The Visibility of Jews through Texts
Contact Person: Birgit Wiedl ; birgit.wiedl@injoest.ac.at
Spenser at Kalamazoo I
Contact Person: David Wilson-Okamura
Contact Person: Sean Henry
Contact Person: Susannah Monta
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Spenser at Kalamazoo
Spenser at Kalamazoo invites paper abstracts for three sessions on any topic dealing with Edmund Spenser, including teaching. As always, we encourage submissions from newcomers, including graduate students, and from established scholars of all ranks. Abstracts that outline an argument are usually more successful than ones that just announce a topic. Reading time for the completed paper should not exceed 20 minutes. According to Congress rules, those submitting abstracts for one session may not submit abstracts for other sessions in the same year. Papers submitted should not have been read elsewhere nor be scheduled for publication in the near future.
Spenser at Kalamazoo II
Contact Person: David Wilson-Okamura
Contact Person: Jennifer Vaught
Contact Person: Brad Tuggle
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Spenser at Kalamazoo
Spenser at Kalamazoo invites paper abstracts for three sessions on any topic dealing with Edmund Spenser, including teaching. As always, we encourage submissions from newcomers, including graduate students, and from established scholars of all ranks. Abstracts that outline an argument are usually more successful than ones that just announce a topic. Reading time for the completed paper should not exceed 20 minutes. According to Congress rules, those submitting abstracts for one session may not submit abstracts for other sessions in the same year. Papers submitted should not have been read elsewhere nor be scheduled for publication in the near future.
Status, Rank, or Office? Social Boundaries in England, 900–1200
Contact Person: Mary Blanchard
Contact Person: Chelsea Shields-Más ; shieldsmasc@oldwestbury.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Haskins Society
This session asks where did status end and office begin in pre-Conquest England and how things changed under the Normans? Can the men and women who gained status and office in the ecclesiastical sphere tell us things about those who obtained the same thing in the secular world? What can a discussion of the lower male and female aristocrats reveal about those who held the office of reeve or earl? Addressing these and other questions furthers a multifaceted understanding of the period including revelations of social and political regional variation in England in the ninth through twelfth centuries.
Structuring Sacred Spaces
Studies in the Heliand
Contact Person: Perry Harrison ; PNHarrison@fhsu.edu
This session seeks abstracts examining any aspect of the Heliand, the chief surviving text written in the Old Saxon language. In this remarkable work, the poet adapts Tatian's Diatessaron into a Germanic epic by, among other things, adopting alliterative verse and refiguring Jesus as a Germanic lord. While all topics and approaches are welcome, we are especially interested in: the relationship between the Heliand, its sources, and other Germanic translations of the Diatessaron; the poet's choices while adapting the text; and the Heliand's relationship to works of Old English literature.
Subverting Gender Roles
Teaching Medieval Drama to Today's Students
Contact Person: Carolyn Coulson ; ccoulson2@su.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
There is no doubt that ideas of a homogenous, white, Catholic Europe play a significant role in the construct of and discourse about medieval drama. Over the past several years, walking into a classroom to teach medieval drama has become a political act, electrified even more in the past year. This session seeks papers that address ways to acknowledge, challenge, and diversify the constructs that permeate our field and respond to the discourse of inclusion and equity.
Teaching Nineteenth-Century British and American Medievalism: William Morris
Contact Person: Gale Sigal ; sigal@wfu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
The “Gothic Revival” in Western Europe culminated in a sweeping 19thC British and American movement. How do medievalists perceive this 19thC retrospective? What social and artistic sources generated interest in native roots? Were Victorian and American responses to medieval culture and history accurate? William Morris was a singular re-inventor of the Middle Ages. We are open to hearing about other figures as well. Can 19thC medievalism stand on its own as a movement despite its distortions and recreations of the past? Why should students be exposed to a medievalism that precedes today's assorted medievalisms? What does such study offer students?
Teaching the Middle Ages Using Digital Mapping
Contact Person: David Wrisley ; djw12@nyu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages & Renaissance
We are seeking contributions for a session of papers that discuss innovative ways for teaching the Middle Ages using digital, spatial materials and how such approaches contribute to integrative learning and the development of digital literacies. Possible topics for the papers include, but are not limited to, integrating established spatial materials into teaching medieval studies; creating spatial datasets from sources; mapping as collaborative pedagogy; creating StoryMaps for telling location-rich stories; counter-mapping the Middle Ages or contemporary medievalism; sharing medieval spatial data; using digital maps along with other forms of visualization.
The "New Paradigm" of Plague Studies: Expanded Geographies and Chronologies of the Medieval Pandemics
Contact Person: William York
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
In 2014, Monica Green wrote “the field of historical plague studies ... must be redefined in three dimensions: its geographic extent, its chronological extent, and the methodological registers we use to investigate it.” Since then, work on the full extent of both the 1st and 2nd Plague Pandemics has continued as Green anticipated, now encompassing the Mongol Empire (and perhaps the Xiongnu before them) and extending, perhaps, into sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas prior scholarship focused on the Mediterranean and Europe, pandemic studies must necessarily cast a wider net. This panel invites presentations of the latest work in the field.
The Abbey of Saint-Victor I: Life at the Abbey of Saint-Victor (In Honor of Luc Jocqué)
Contact Person: Grover Zinn ; grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
The Abbey of Saint-Victor II: Victorine Sacramental Thought (In Honor of Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB)
Contact Person: Grover Zinn ; grover.zinn@oberlin.edu
The Agency of Chaucer's Women
The Alfredian or Old English Boethius: Authority, Authorship, and Influence in Memory of Paul E. Szarmach
Contact Person: Philip Phillips ; philip.phillips@mtsu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Boethius Society
Proposals for twenty-minute papers addressing the issues of "authority" or "authorship" in respect to the Alfredian or Old English Boethius and/or the subsequent reception or influence of the work are invited for presentation in a session dedicated to the memory of Paul E. Szarmach.
The Cistercians: Inventors or Borrowers?
Contact Person: Martha Krieg
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
The Early Medieval Economy: New Tools, New Approaches, New Questions
Contact Person: Lee Mordechai
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Framing the Late Antique and Early Medieval Economy (FLAME)
The Glamor of Error
Contact Person: Carolyn Scott ; cscott@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS)
This panel will examine the attractiveness of error as it pushes against the borders of truth. We invite exploration of medieval authors, artists, and thinkers who valorize the search for knowledge while confronting the limitations of human understanding. Why is error attractive? Where can error be found? How can error be identified? What are the consequences of exploring error? The manner in which medieval people locate, describe and react to the glamour of error will help us to consider the ways in which the process of discernment involves some kind of accommodation with error that both expands and limits knowledge.
The Global Middle Ages I
Contact Person: Geraldine Heng
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Academy of America
Panelists will be invited to present.
The Global Middle Ages II
Contact Person: Geraldine Heng
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Academy of America
Panelists will be invited to present papers.
The Globalization of Medieval Medicine: Ideas, Authorities, and Products 1000–1600
Contact Person: William York
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
This panel explores the globalization of medieval medicine, beginning in the eleventh century via the Silk Road and continuing through the early modern era of exploration and discovery. It will look at how medieval European medical practice and theory changed due to the influx of new ideas, practices, and pharmaceutical products. Panelists will also consider how medical consumerism and the transmission of ideas were affected by economic, religious, cultural, political, and technological changes, such as the advent of printed medical texts and the popularization of medical authorities outside of the ancient canon.
The Iconography of Medieval Magic: Texts and Images
Contact Person: Vajra Regan ; vajra.regan@mail.utoronto.ca
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Societas Magica
The Image of Elijah
The Material Aspects of Poverty in Late Medieval Urban Space
Contact Person: Gerhard Jaritz ; jaritzg@ceu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dept. of Medieval Studies, Central European Univ.
The session will not (only) concentrate on the description of the material objects or their lack that are characteristic for becoming or being poor in late medieval urban space. Its particular purpose is to discuss the occasions at which these material components of poverty are dealt with, the "authors" of their references and debates on them, the negative or positive evaluations, and the patterns which can be recognized.
The Medieval Tradition of Natural Law I: Natural Law and Moral Philosophy
Contact Person: Harvey Brown ; hbrown2@uwo.ca
These sessions look to examine the role of Natural Law theory in Medieval philosophy; moral, political, and legal as well as the influence of Natural Law on subsequent thinking. Papers that examine individual Medieval thinkers or that reflect on the influence of Medieval Natural Law theory on later moral, political or legal philosophy are welcome.
The Medieval Tradition of Natural Law II: Natural Law and Political Thought
Contact Person: Harvey Brown ; hbrown2@uwo.ca
The Nuns of Helfta I: Death as Life-Giving in the Helfta Literature
Contact Person: Judith Sutera ; jsutera@mountosb.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Magistra: A Journal of Women's Spirituality in History
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies, Western Michigan Univ.
This panel considers the theme of death in the writings that emerged from the thirteenth-century Cistercian convent of Helfta. True to the Christian paradox, death as life-giving is reflected throughout the Helfta literature, particularly in the way that Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Special Grace and Gertrude the Great’s Herald of Divine Love discuss the death of Abbess Gertrude and in Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises.
The Nuns of Helfta II: Theology of Death and Community in the Helfta Literature
Contact Person: Judith Sutera ; jsutera@mountosb.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Magistra: A Journal of Women's Spirituality in History
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Committee for the Nomination of St. Gertrude as a Doctor of the Church
This session coordinates with our other proposed session on the theology of death in the Helfta writings. The papers in this panel will attend to Helfta writings’ references to the biblical, monastic, and theological traditions as they reflect on death as life-giving, as in Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises, which is dedicated to “life in death.”
The Pelican, the Phoenix, and the Donkey
The Pen, the Sword, and the Abacus: Elite Identities at Medieval Courts and in Medieval Cities
Contact Person: Peter Sposato
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Seigneurie: The International Society for the Study of the Nobility, Lordship, and Knighthood
Recent scholarship on medieval elites has made clear that a variety of models of elite identity coexisted and competed at medieval courts and in medieval cities. While the title of the session suggests that there are three main archtypes --- the courtier (pen), the knight (sword), and the merchant elite (abacus) --- in reality, the boundaries between these groups were porous and individuals often moved between them during their lifetimes. This session seeks papers that will shed further light on the idiosyncracies of elite identity across medieval Europe and the Mediterranean.
The Practice of Science
The Queen's Lands I: The Language and Institution of Queenly Landholding
Contact Person: Chloë McKenzie
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Royal Studies Network
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe, Univ. of Winchester
The Queen's Lands II: Providing Property for Queens Consort in Medieval Europe
Contact Person: Chloë McKenzie
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Royal Studies Network
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe, Univ. of Winchester
The Queen's Lands III: Disputed Territory and Territorial Integrity across Borders
Contact Person: Chloë McKenzie
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Royal Studies Network
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Examining the Resources and Revenues of Royal Women in Premodern Europe, Univ. of Winchester
The Reception of Lucan in the Middle Ages
Contact Person: Cillian O'Hogan
The Sacred and the Secular: Crossovers between Religious Piety and Courtly Love
Contact Person: Maybelle Leung ; leungm20@yorku.ca
Barbara Newman explores the “crossovers” (2013) between courtly love and affective piety, the opposing discourses of love, which often remain treated as separate traditions in medieval studies today. This session reads crossovers between “religious” and “secular” forms of love in turn. We ask: how did courtly love and medieval devotion alike approach the love object? How did both discourses on love describe the limits of the soul and the flesh? Did erotic consummation prevent spiritual salvation, or did it ennoble the soul towards it? Conversely, was the devotional only spiritual, or did it also promote carnality?
The Sidneys and Their Circles I
Contact Person: Joel Davis ; jbdavis@stetson.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Sidney Society
The Sidneys and Their Circles II
Contact Person: Joel Davis ; jbdavis@stetson.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Sidney Society
The Transcultural Zone: Identities and Exchanges in Medieval Southern Italy I
Contact Person: Andrew Irving
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Beneventan Studies
How did cultural groups borrow from, adapt, or resist the cultural products, ideas, and practices of “others” around them, and why? These panels address transculturality in Southern Italy in the early to central Middle Ages, and explore the boundaries of identity, distinction, resistance and appropriation in a dense transcultural zone. Scholars from across disciplines and perspectives working on sources of all kinds are invited to contribute papers that aim to shed new light on adaptive and conservative strategies and practices of exchange, distinction, profiling and appropriation – and reflection up on them - in the medieval Mezzogiorno
The Transcultural Zone: Identities and Exchanges in Medieval Southern Italy II
Contact Person: Andrew Irving
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Beneventan Studies
The Virgin and the City: Urban Marian Spaces in Late Medieval Europe
Contact Person: Fiammetta Campagnoli ; fiammetta.campagnoli@gmail.com
Thomas Aquinas I: The Catena aurea
Contact Person: John Boyle ; jfboyle@stthomas.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Thomas Aquinas Society
Papers on Thomas Aquinas' Catena aurea in itself and within the larger context of Aquinas' thought and work.
Thomas Aquinas II: The Catena aurea
Contact Person: John Boyle ; jfboyle@stthomas.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Thomas Aquinas Society
This session provides the opportunity for scholars across disciplines to discuss the thought of Aquinas.
Thomas Aquinas III
Contact Person: John Boyle ; jfboyle@stthomas.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Thomas Aquinas Society
This session provides the opportunity for scholars across disciplines to discuss the thought of Aquinas.
Thomistic Philosophy I: Ethical Thought
Contact Person: Steven Jensen
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Thomistic Studies, Univ. of St. Thomas, Houston
Thomistic Philosophy II: Infused Virtues
Contact Person: Steven Jensen
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Thomistic Studies, Univ. of St. Thomas, Houston
Thomistic Philosophy III: Perfection and Love
Contact Person: Steven Jensen
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Thomistic Studies, Univ. of St. Thomas, Houston
Tolkien and the Medieval Animal
Contact Person: Kristine Swank
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, Univ. of Glasgow
The emerging field of animal studies shifts critical thought from an assumption of human supremacy toward a view of the web of interdependence that enmeshes all forms of life. These conceptions are not new, as illustrated by a spate of recent monographs on animals in the Middle Ages (e.g. Salisbury, Crane, Walker-Meikle, et. al.). J.R.R. Tolkien also engaged with medieval conceptions of animals in his writings, often highlighting human/animal relationships. We welcome paper proposals on Tolkien's engagement with and depiction of specific medieval animals, and/or medieval views of human/animal relationships. Interdisciplinary topics and a variety of theoretical approaches are encouraged.
Tracing the "Multiplicatioun of Manye Bookis" of Devotion in Fifteenth-Century London: Codicological Contexts
Contact Person: Hannah Schühle-Lewis ; h.schuhle-lewis@kent.ac.uk
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Whittington's Gift: Reconstructing the Lost Common Library of London's Guildhall (Leverhulme)
The Whittington’s Gift Project examines textual and codicological evidence related to Middle English devotional compilations. The team hypothesises that multiple exemplars held at London’s Guildhall Library played a vital role in the copying and dissemination of such volumes. This session aims to expand scholarly understanding of these compilations, their textual overlaps, and the material contexts in which they were produced and circulated. We invite scholars to respond to and explore our hypothesis, examining any related aspect of late-medieval religious book production in England, with particular emphasis on codicological and palaeographical approaches and textual connections.
Trans-Disciplinary Approaches to Plague History
Contact Person: Phil Slavin
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Association for Rural Studies (MARS)
Translation and Transformation
Trauma, Disability, and the Anchorhold
Contact Person: Michelle Sauer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Anchoritic Society
Trauma studies and work that links studies of disability and trauma finds ample representation in the texts and contexts of anchorites, and their frequent citation of Christ’s wounds and the valorization of sickness, pain, and distress in the anchorhold. For this panel, we are seeking papers that interrogate the role and use of trauma and its attendant concerns—witnessing, wounds, pain—in the study of anchorites, their texts, and the responses to both. Papers are welcome that touch on the material realities of these figures and their receptions, or which concentrate on the figurative significance of trauma.
Trauma, Healing, and Transformation
Traveling Texts and Technology: New Finds from Islamic and Eastern Christian Manuscripts
Contact Person: Matthew Heintzelman ; mheintzelma@hmml.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library invites proposals for 20-minute presentations and papers highlighting the contribution of technological advances to issues of manuscript transmission across linguistic, religious, and cultural boundaries in Islamic and Eastern Christian traditions. Special topics may include--but are not limited to--textual studies based on digital manuscripts, linking of texts and authors found in multiple traditions, digital reuniting of dispersed manuscripts, trends of manuscript movement, as well as the composition of manuscript collections.
Tribute to Elizabeth C. Teviotdale
Contact Person: Beth Mulvaney ; mulvaneyb@meredith.edu
Elizabeth C. Teviotdale is a person known to many as the wizard behind the ICMS, at least through 2020 when she retired after serving as the Assistant Director of The Medieval Institute for nearly 20 years. While her research and publications focus on early medieval Christian liturgical manuscripts of the Latin West and their illumination, her training embraces art history and musicology, and her recent interests extend to book arts; submissions from all types of medievalists associated with Liz will be considered for this special session in Liz's honor.
Un-Disciplining Premodern Histories of Gender and Race
Contact Person: Jessica Zisa ; jessicazisa@ucsb.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Dept. of English Center for Medieval Literatures, Univ. of California-Santa Barbara; Medieval Studies, Univ. of California-Santa Barbara
This panel welcomes papers from across the disciplines that explore the critical intersections of race, gender, class, and colonial privilege within the ‘Middle Ages,’ and consider how epistemologies of gender and race are used to define, mask, and appropriate cultural fictions in the premodern world. Panelists are encouraged to challenge Eurocentric boundaries of periodization, epistemologies of whiteness, and engage in what Walter Mignolo calls ‘epistemic disobedience.’ Panelists are invited to consider what it might mean to undiscipline and rediscipline our approach to medieval/premodern studies and truly practice intersectionality as feminist scholars working to dismantle systemic oppression.
Unbalanced Humors
Contact Person: Kavita Finn
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Pseudo Society
We welcome the discoveries other panels are too frightened to handle. Bad Photoshop encouraged. Whether in person or virtual, we raise a (metaphorical or actual) glass at Pseudo Society to the strange, the hilarious, and the just plain weird of Medieval Studies. Just remember, we punch up, not down.
Underexplored Themes in John Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad
Contact Person: Teresa Burns ; burnst@uwplatt.edu
Because Dee is well-known for his synthesis of medieval alchemical themes with those of Renaissance Hermeticism, and because such a long time has elapsed between this translation and the previous scholarly translation, we expect there to be a natural draw. The contact person also runs an alchemy discussion group with over 1000 members where she will publicize the session; the translation itself is being publicized by Ouroboros Press, the publisher.
What Women Want: Representing Desire in Medieval English Texts
Contact Person: Emily McLemore
Where Are We Going? Where Have We Been? An Assessment of Medieval Drama Scholarship
Contact Person: Frank Napolitano ; fnapolitano@radford.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
The study of early drama has traversed several inflection points within the last century, from the publication of Karl Young’s The Drama of the Medieval Church (1933), to the print and electronic publications of the Records of Early English Drama (1979-present), to the contributions of previously-marginalized scholars or explorations of global theatre and performance. As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, now is a good time to take stock and discuss the future of our discipline. This session welcomes proposals for papers assessing the past and/or forecasting the future of scholarship of an ever-expanding field.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Re-Theorizing Magical Texts
Contact Person: Marla Segol
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Magica
This panel will probe the ways in which magic invites us to reformulate our theories of religion and mysticism. Magic has often been treated as a special case, separate from mainstream religion and from what we now see as secular culture. Our panel will question the impulses underlying its production and its propagation, as a prompt to re-theorize magic and to recontextualize it. This panel therefore challenges scholarship of magic which has treated it as a special case, as separate from both mainstream religion, and from other adjacent fields of knowledge.
Women and Agency in Medieval Literature
Women and Exemplarity in Iberian Texts
Contact Person: Yonsoo Kim ; kim153@purdue.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)
This panel aims to delve into the different constructions of female exemplarity in spiritual writings from late medieval and early modern Castile. The panel will focus on public and institutional exemplarity through female discourse, the writing of hagiographies, and the rewriting of these same texts under the new precepts of the observance of Trent. The aim is to reflect upon the great impact that these female figures had in the public sphere and within the Church, as well as the gender biases inherent in the construction of exemplarity.
Women and Violence
Women in Romance
Women Making Noise
Contact Person: Jared Hartt
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Machaut Society
This session will explore how women shaped sonic experience in the later medieval world. Female influence resonates across a variety of musico-poetic sources, from the works of Guillaume de Machaut and Christine de Pizan to the earlier song tradition of the troubadours/trouvères to narrative accounts of women speaking or singing. More possibilities surface in visual representations of women engaged in music and other forms of sound-making, such as chanting, suffering, gossiping, game-playing, spell-casting, or expressions of mystical encounter. Recovering the role of female audiences and patrons can further attune the contemporary ear to the significance of medieval women making noise.
Roundtables
"Who Gets to be Legendary?": Race in Modern Arthuriana (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Dorsey Armstrong
Contact Person: Margaret Sheble ; mlsheble@gmail.com
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Arthuriana
Tracy Deonn in the article “Every King Arthur Retelling Is Fanfic About Who Gets to Be Legendary” points out there is no “pure” Arthurian narrative. Her use of the word “fanfiction” is purposeful because it “...reframes these stories as shared, flexible narratives.” With the rise of Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and other similar movements, the Arthurian legend has become a fictional literary space to explore and dismantle anti-racist pedagogy in the real-world. This session wishes to continue that conversation about how modern Arthurian expressions intervene and participate in serious discussions around race and inclusion in modern society.
La corónica International Book Award: Session in Honor of Dr. Sol Miguel-Prendes for Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain (A Roundtable Discussion)
Contact Person: Michelle Hamilton
Principal Sponsoring Organization: La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Magistri et Artifices: Defining Excellence in the Medieval Studies Classroom (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Sean Gilsdorf
Principal Sponsoring Organization: CARA (Committee on Centers and Regional Associations, Medieval Academy of America)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
Roundtable participants--each of them a recent CARA or TEAMS teaching prize recipient, will be invited by the roundtable organizers.
The Green Knight (2021): Key Critical Perspectives (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Valerie Johnson
Contact Person: Renée Ward
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Society for the Study of Medievalism
This roundtable seeks participants to identify and discuss an element of the long-anticipated film The Green Knight (2021), directed by David Lowery and staring Dev Patel. In short presentations (10 minutes), panelists are invited to consider an element of the film in light of a focal keyword inspired by Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (2014), including: archive, authenticity, authority, christianity, co-disciplinarity, continuity, feast, gender, genealogy, gesture, gothic, heresy, humor, lingua, love, memory, middle, modernity, monument, myth, play, power, presentism, primitive, purity, race, reenactment, resonance, simulacrum, spectacle, transfer, trauma, and troubadour.
A Roundtable on Amy Neff, A Soul's Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes variae (Toronto, 2019)
Contact Person: Lezlie Knox ; lezlie.knox@marquette.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure Univ.
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Italian Art Society
This book focuses on a unique manuscript from the late thirteenth-century which contains an anthology of devotional texts and includes full-page illustrations. Intriguing, while it does not contain Bonaventure’s foundational text, A Soul’s Journey to God, that work is key to understanding the manuscript’s contents as well as its support for virtual pilgrimages. An interdisciplinary panel will consider its arguments and openings for new research; response by the author.
Brevia on Bishops and the Secular Clergy (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Evan Gatti ; egatti@elon.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Episcopus: Society for the Study of Bishops and Secular Clergy in the Middle Ages
For the fourth year in a row, we propose a lightning-round panel that gives up to 7 scholars 3 minutes each (time strictly enforced!) to present a current research idea. The audience and session participants will respond with suggestions about where to take the ideas. This panel, modeled initially on sessions at the American Historical Association, has had several successful iterations at the IMSC, and has sparked new collaborations. The panel aims to foster research in its very early stages and to generate future proposals for IMSC and IMC Congresses. We welcome papers ranging from late antiquity to late medieval.
Camelot on Stage and Screen (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Tara Foster ; tafoster@nmu.edu
This roundtable will focus on stage, television, and film adaptations of the legends of King Arthur.
Computational Methods in Medieval and Renaissance Digital Humanities (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Astrid Giugni ; astrid.giugni@duke.edu
Both digital and traditional scholars have recently begun to rethink premodern temporal and geographic boundaries. This has meant a renewed interest in grand narrative, cross-periodization, and the transnational. In turn, the greater accessibility of digitized pre-modern texts and artifacts has made it possible to complement close readings with large-scale, computational analyses. Text analysis packages (from Voyant to Stylo) and visualization tools (GIS, Global Mapper), help scholars explore and represent historical, literary, and artistic developments in novel ways. This panel considers projects tackling the challenges of thinking across conventional disciplinary boundaries of temporal periods, geographic borders, and field using digital tools.
Crumpling the Timeline: Teaching Medieval Texts Alongside Non-Medievalist Contemporary Works (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Moira Fitzgibbons ; Moira.Fitzgibbons@marist.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
What happens when students consider medieval works beyond the frames of reference typically associated with the period? This roundtable will explore teaching medieval texts alongside modern works that are NOT explicitly medievalist in their orientation. For example, do Beowulf and the film Alien use similar strategies for evoking dread in their audiences? What parallels might students perceive between Chaucer’s Griselda and the long-suffering protagonist of Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar? Drawing from experiences in K-12 as well as undergraduate classrooms, participants will describe their strategies for engaging students in new conversations around medieval and modern works.
Dear Medieval Studies: Renegotiating the Citational Network (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Sarah LaVoy-Brunette ; sfl39@cornell.edu
One method for dismantling the colonialist-imperialist, capitalist, heteropatriarchalizing, and racist logics of the academy and their effects on Medieval Studies is renegotiating our citational networks. For "Dear Medieval Studies: Renegotiating the Citational Network," we welcome submissions featuring non-"traditional" citational practices in Medieval Studies on any topic. We are particularly interested in work incorporating a wide range of interdisicplinary methodologies and citations. Methodologies and citations may include those drawn from Black studies, Indigenous studies, diaspora studies, queer studies, gender studies, the social sciences, STEM disciplines, and other approaches from the humanities which are not "traditionally" associated with Medieval Studies.
Digital Humanities, Lyric Poetry, Textual Studies in Christine de Pizan: A Roundtable Festschrift in Honor of James Laidlaw
Contact Person: Geri Smith ; Geri.Smith@ucf.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Christine de Pizan Society, North American Branch
Eating Feeling: Food, Affect, and "Other" Communities in Medieval Literature (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Yea Jung Park ; yeajung.p@columbia.edu
Medieval archives abound with accounts of food-related practices and encounters, with acute attention paid to the food habits of “others” (neighbors, foreigners, pagans) and the impact of communal eating in various social spaces. This session explores the rich intersections of food, affect, and communal identity in the medieval period, especially in light of the pressing need to rethink the cultural history of eating practices in the COVID-19 era. We welcome roundtable talks (5-8 minutes) on representations of food and eating practices in medieval texts or any other media.
Encountering Laudine, a Lady Unafraid to Gaze back at Us across Times, Spaces, and Media (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Evelyn Meyer ; evelyn.meyer@slu.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St. Louis Univ.
The figure of Queen Laudine appears in several adaptations of the Arthurian romance Iwein ranging from Welsh, French, German, English to Scandinavian. While there are many set pieces in her narrative, each author adapted her role at court from dependent queen to one who makes her own political decisions. The gender implications are broad and varied and I hope that this session to continue interdisciplinary scholarly discussion of female figures, gender implications, male and female fantasies about power, and the way in which female figures were used as pawns or power players in the imagined political landscape.
Expanding the Insular: Maintaining the International Scholarly Network in Irish Medieval Studies (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Larissa Tracy ; kattracy@comcast.net
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS)
This round table discussion assembles scholars from a variety of disciplines to broaden and strengthen the network of researchers actively engaged in the study of medieval Ireland as a means of understanding the medieval world at large. To further foster international collaboration contributors will draw from their own experiences and individual networks to share interdisciplinary goals and innovative opportunities, as well as discuss the shared challenges facing the field at large, including current critical questions and future directions; forthcoming influential approaches; and research and career opportunities for graduate students and both early career and established scholars.
Expulsions of Jews from France, Germany, and Spain (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Thelma Fenster
Fragments and Fragmentology (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Elizabeth Hebbard
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Digital Editing and the Medieval Manuscript: Rolls and Fragments (DEMMR/F)
What have we learned from the upswing of scholarly interest in fragments? Recent advances in digital approaches have set the stage for new discoveries of previously unknown texts. Scholars have been able to trace codicological mysteries and understand provenance in more detailed and sophisticated ways. Most importantly, perhaps, fragments allow a critical lens on the practices of collection and curation, prompting a discussion of how we approach material culture in ethical and intellectually rigorous ways. We welcome papers that examine these topics and others related to the research of medieval manuscript fragments.
Grounds for a Trans-Regional Medieval Studies: Beyond the Global (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Julie Orlemanski ; julieorlemanski@uchicago.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
This round-table invites participants to conceptualize medieval studies across regions and continents -- but to do so outside the framework of globality. The "global" Middle Ages has been critiqued for its eurocentrism, its neoliberalism, and its encyclopedism, even as it has been the spur for exciting collaborations and redefinitions of the discipline. What other grounds might be the basis for conversations across geographic distance and difference? Speakers are invited to offer alternative frameworks for trans-regional collaborations, comparisons, and study. Short presentations will be followed by dialogue among participants and with the audience.
In Honor of Roberta Krueger II: (Post)Pandemic Professional Balance: Teaching, Scholarship, Service, Life (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Amy Vines ; anvines@uncg.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Foremothers Society
Indecent Anchorholds (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Michelle Sauer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Anchoritic Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): New Queer Medievalisms
Indecent Theology is a theological perversion in sex, gender, and politics coined by Marcella Althaus-Reid in 2000. This session is an out-of-the-closet style of doing anchoritic studies, exploring the ways in which the binaries decent/indecent are fluid. The anchorhold becomes a place of privacy and prospective non-normative discourses. The point of departure is the understanding that the established social code and expectations for reclused can be perverted by the lived experience or the inhabited space. (“Pervert” here is used in its original Latin meaning of “overthrow,” of going too far to encounter hidden meanings.)
Medieval Ecocriticisms: Humans and Others (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Heide Estes
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Ecocriticisms
We welcome brief position papers that will stimulate discussion among scholars in varied subfields of medieval studies (literature, art history, history, philosophy, and others) on humans and others — what do the terms mean? How do they interact? What can we learn about our present by examining the ecologies of the past? We seek thought experiements engaging with ecocriticism, environmental studies, environmental history, critical animal studies, ecofeminism, postcolonial ecocriticism, and/or related topics.
Medieval Galicia II: Periphery or Center? (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Simon Doubleday ; simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS)
This roundtable will question the perception of medieval Galicia as a periphery, exploring its embeddedness in commercial, military, economic, political, and religious networks. While Galicia lies on the northwestern fringes of the Iberian Peninsula, this peripheral status made it a point of international convergence; as Manuel Rivas observes, “to be peripheral locates you at the center of the world”. Since late antiquity, the indented coasts of Galicia catalyzed connectivity, exchange, and economic growth. Participants will discuss the ways in which, and degree to which, Galicia’s ‘marginal’ location conferred centrality, focusing particularly on the period up to the thirteenth century.
Medieval Galicia III: Galicia in the Age of Alfonso X (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Simon Doubleday ; simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS)
This roundtable will bring together contributors to a book on Galicia in the age of Alfonso X, to be published by the Consello da Cultura Galega. and other interested scholars. Focusing on the reign of Alfonso X, whose 800th ‘anniversary’ is commemorated this year, participants will reassess the Iberian northwest after the union of Castile and León (1230) and the Andalusian conquests of Córdoba and Seville. Did Galicia become "marginal", as historians have claimed? Did the reigns of Alfonso and Queen Violante mark a definitive turning to the south? If not, when—if ever—did the decline of Galicia occur?
Medieval Studies and the Community: Scholarship and Outreach (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Jonathan Correa-Reyes
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Academy Graduate Student Committee
Medieval Tolkien and the Nature of Middle-earth (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Yvette Kisor ; ykisor@ramapo.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Tolkien at Kalamazoo
The upcoming publication of Carl Hostetter’s The Nature of Middle-earth brings to light some of J. R. R. Tolkien’s final writings on the nature of Middle-earth, covering a wide range of topics including immortality and reincarnation among the Elves, the powers of the Valar, the geography of Gondor, the nature of the land and beasts of Númenor, and even the incidence of facial hair among different races. This roundtable is an opportunity to examine the subjects that concerned Tolkien in the final years of his life in light of their medieval contexts.
Medievalism within and through Asian Popular Cultures (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Anna Czarnowus
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Mutual Images Research Association (MIRA)
In The Invention of Race in the Middle Ages Geraldine Heng writes that Asian perspectives were marginalized in medieval studies. We realize how important Asian contributions into the field have been and how powerfully the “Western” medievalisms have been influencing various Asian cultures. The idea of “international medievalism” brings into question any demarcations. Asian popular cultures with their medievalisms question the national and cultural demarcations, since in those cultures the “Western” Middle Ages are recreated and creatively reworked. This session invites discussion of any such reverberations and reworking, starting with manga, anime, feature films, and any other instances of medievalisms.
Neglected Neighbors: How to Include Central and Eastern Europe in Your Syllabus (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Christopher Mielke
We seek panelists willing to speak a few minutes on how their expertise in Central and Eastern Europe can be used in everyday courses on the Middle Ages. All disciplines here are welcome and we encourage all who have experience with countries from the Baltic to the Balkans to apply.
New Directions in Source Study? (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Benjamin Weber
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture Project (SOEALLC)
The Sources of Old English and Anglo-Latin Literary Culture (SOEALLC) project invites submissions for a roundtable entitled "New Directions in Source Study?" This session will gather several scholars to discuss the past, present, and future of source study in a methodologically diverse field. This roundtable aims to identify what source study's possible futures look like in light of the theoretical and practical concerns that currently face our field. While our principle focus is on the Old English period, we invite participants from other periods who face similar methodological challenges or questions.
Notable Books in Medieval Germanic Studies (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Evelyn Meyer ; evelyn.meyer@slu.edu
Contact Person: Joseph Sullivan ; jsullivan@ou.edu
Contact Person: Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand ; hellenbranda@appstate.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS)
Pedagogy of the Unpopular: Teaching the Medieval in the Twenty-First-Century Classroom (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Joanna Shearer
Sometimes what we love is unpopular. In the broadest sense, medieval studies face a cultural reckoning that sees us as irrelevant and unprofitable in contemporary higher education. Yet, these generalizations ignore the rich worlds that exist in the literature, art, and history we love so much. Therefore, how do we keep the medieval relevant to the 21st-Century student in order to revive our disciplines in ways that are both academically rigorous and imaginatively compelling? This roundtable seeks presenters who have developed innovative and engaging courses, assignments, and classroom activities to share with other scholars to implement in their own courses.
Pharmacy, Pfizer, and the Pandemic: Finding Community in Tradition and Science (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: William York
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
In December 2020, newspapers throughout the world carried images and video feeds of trucks rolling out of the Kalamazoo warehouses of the drug manufacturer, Pfizer, carrying the first doses of the recently approved COVID-19 vaccine to hospitals and distribution centers across the United States. Pfizer is a neighbor of the ICMS, and just as Western Michigan University is located on lands that have been historically occupied by the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi nations, so this roundtable takes the opportunity of the 2022 meeting to explore the traditional ties between communities and provisioners of life-saving or life-enhancing pharmaceutics.
Prenational Sources in National Collections: Toward a Comparative Critical Medievalism (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Sara Ritchey
Principal Sponsoring Organization: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
Race, Intersectionality, and the Anchorhold (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Michelle Sauer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Anchoritic Society
This roundtable will consider premodern critical race in relation to gender, sexuality, disability, (in effect, premodern critical intersectionality) as a way to discussing anchorites and anchoritic religious and cultural production in the premodern past. We are interested in a discussion that will address how premodern critical race as has been framed out particularly by groups like Race Before Race can open up discussion to anchoritic material: Ancrene Wisse Group, Katherine and Wooing Group, Julian of Norwich, etc.
Ranulph Higden's Distinctiones: Roundtable on the New Online Edition
Contact Person: Philipp Rosemann
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations
Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations just published an online edition and translation, by Eugene Crook, of Ranulph Higden's Distinctiones, a massive work that includes over 800 entries, alphabetically arranged. This is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in the genre of the biblical distinctions, which were designed for use in the composition of homilies. It also sheds fresh light on the oeuvre of Ranulph Higden, who is best known as the author of the Polychronicon. We are looking for reflections on the edition and its significance for our knowledge of Ranulph Higden and the development of biblical distinctions.
Remaking the Madonna (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Emma Solberg
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)
In the past decade, innovative monographs—Clare Monagle’s Scholastic Affect, Laura Saetveit Miles’s The Virgin Mary's Book at the Annunciation, Karin Vélez’s The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto, Sara Ritchey’s Holy Matter, Adrienne Williams Boyarin’s Miracles of the Virgin, and Miri Ruben’s Mother of God—have changed our understanding of the meaning of the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages. This session would reflect on what we have learned and look ahead to future. How is our understanding of the medieval Madonna changing in response to new developments in feminist theory (like trans feminism, social reproduction theory, intersectionality, and critical posthumanism)?
Rethinking Homosexuality (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Kersti Francis
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Queer Medieval Studies (SQMS)
Tied to our name change from SSHMA (Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the MiddleAges) to SQMS (Society for Queer Medieval Studies), we propose a roundtable on rethinking homosexuality. To some extent, this would also be the continuation of our rethinking sodomy panel from 2021. With more people identifying as non-binary, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming, how does this alter investigations of homosexuality? How do we re-evaluate a past we have already re-evaluated? How does our changing appreciation of queerness change how we read texts, history, culture, and artifacts? Where might multi-layered trans and gender fluid readings take us?
Romance and Rhetoric: Roundtable in Memory of Dhira Mahoney
Contact Person: Susanne Hafner ; hafner@fordham.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Courtly Literature Society (ICLS), North American Branch
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)
Dhira B. Mahoney, an eminent scholar of courtly and Arthurian literature, died in 2019. As a longtime member of the ICLS-NAB and the IAS-NAB, she had an impact on generations of Malory, Arthurian and Grail scholars as well as those working in the field of rhetoric. We would like to honour Dhira and her legacy with a roundtable and invite scholars of all generations whose work she has influenced to participate. Contributions should reflect Dhira's influence on the individual presenters' scholarship and careers.
Roundtable on Medieval and Premodern Studies and the Caribbean
Contact Person: Marian Polhill ; marian.polhill1@upr.edu
We invite Roundtable contributions considering ways to teach and research Medieval Studies from a Caribbean location and/or perspective, as well as methods for analyzing pre-Columbian Caribbean literature, religion, and cultures from any location or theoretical stance. Contributions might consider the impact of medieval discourse in the premodern and early modern Caribbean (for example, as proposed by Dr. Marla Pagán-Mattos), or apply Caribbean theory to an analysis of medieval literature (for example, as proposed by Dr. Nahir Otaño-Gracia), among other possibilites.
Scholarly Resistance, Scholarly Action: Personal Experience, Medievalist Scholarship, and Social Justice Activism (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Carissa Harris
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dept. of English, Temple Univ.
What does it mean to be a scholar-activist? How can our work as medievalists contribute to ongoing struggles for liberation, justice, and equity? This roundtable seeks short, focused papers which consider specific examples of how medievalist scholarship, personal experience, and activism inform one another. We welcome proposals that draw on presenters’ experiences as scholar-activists, for example, from those who serve as labor organizers, volunteer for domestic violence or reproductive rights causes, teach service-learning courses, or create public scholarship that sheds light on urgent contemporary social justice issues. Black feminist or intersectional approaches are especially welcome.
Spotlight on Peire Vidal (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Mary Franklin-Brown
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Société Guilhem IX
According to the biography that appears in manuscripts, Peire Vidal was a fabulous singer who composed the richest melodies more easily than anyone else, but he was crazy. The narratives that accompany his songs recount exploits that are, indeed, crazy, but the esteem that Peire's work garnered is reflected in the numbers of songs that have been preserved: 45 lyrics, 10 with melodies. This “spotlight” roundtable will bring scholars together to reassess this important troubadour as a lyricist, a maker of melodies, and the inspiration for stories about crazy courtly exploits.
Teaching Late Antiquity and Early Medieval (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Larry Swain ; larry.swain@bemidjistate.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe
In many courses and textbook treatments, the height of the Roman empire is the last high point; what follows are brief chapters, or sometimes just a chapter, covering the transition from Empire to Successor states, a few paragraphs regarding the Early Medieval period and then larger focus on the Crusades, Late Middle Ages, and on to the Renaissance. This roundtable is designed to discuss the historical, literary, archeological, and linguistic importance of these periods, what key elements should be taught, pedagogical approaches to these periods, and perhaps even suggestions for student-driven exercises.
Teaching the Old Saxon Heliand (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Perry Harrison ; PNHarrison@fhsu.edu
This roundtable seeks proposals detailing any approach to teaching the Old Saxon Heliand. Submissions from instructors who teach the text in the Old Saxon language and those who assign the work in translation are both equally encouraged. While all classroom contexts and approaches are appreciated, we especially welcome submissions from a diverse range of teaching contexts, including 2-year institutions, HBCUs, state comprehensive universities, and Departments of Religion and Art History. Proposals should briefly detail the classroom approaches that are used to teach the work, as well as the institutional and departmental contexts in which the text is taught.
The End-Times in Medieval German Literature: A Roundtable in Honor of Francis G. Gentry
Contact Person: Ernst Hintz ; ehintz@truman.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Studies, Truman State Univ.
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Society for Medieval Germanic Studies (SMGS)
Theorizing Patriarchy, Gender, and Liberation: Medievalist Engagements with Imani Perry's Vexy Thing (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Carissa Harris
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Exemplaria: Medieval / Early Modern / Theory
Imani Perry’s Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (2018) offers an historically expansive new theorization of patriarchy, power, and personhood from a Black feminist perspective. We aim to consider how Perry's articulation of feminism as a critical reading practice, "reading through the layers" of gendered forms of domination, opens up new readings of patriarchy in medieval culture, as well as urgently needed understandings of patriarchy’s operations today. We seek short papers that engage with Vexy Thing from a medievalist perspective. These can explore how its insights are useful for medievalists or examine how medievalist perspectives expand or complicate its analysis.
There's No Business like Machaut Business (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Jared Hartt
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Machaut Society
This roundtable will be the culmination of a year of digital creativity in Machaut studies. We will offer a set of pre-recorded pieces that explore Machaut scholarship and performance in the digital realm. Some of these pieces will be specially curated items created by the International Machaut Society. These will include 360° music performances, soundscapes and readings. We also invite contributions that respond to Machaut’s works with digital innovation. Discussion in the roundtable will centre on how these pieces can aid teaching and research and how we can continue to build on Machaut’s legacy in the twenty-first century.
Translating Medieval Texts (A Roundtable Discussion)
Contact Person: Danuta Shanzer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
Twenty-First-Century Neo/Medievalisms (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Geoffrey Elliott
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Tales after Tolkien Society
Prompted in part by reactions to COVID-19 and comparisons to the Black Death and other plagues, people producing art in various forms in the twenty-first century continue to look back to the medieval--often through the lens of other, earlier people who have done much the same thing. This roundtable hopes to explicate and examine what is looked at, by whom, and to what ends.
Very Close Encounters: Insects and Humans in the Middle Ages (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Abby Ang
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Oecologies: Inhabiting Premodern Worlds
Critical animal studies often privilege furry domesticated animals. Insects, by contrast, tend to scare, disrupt, annoy, and hurt humans. In the midst of mass insect extinction however, questions about how we protect these creatures and their ecosystems become crucial. This roundtable examines medieval representations of insect-human encounters, a growing subfield in medieval studies. How did medieval people regard insects? Are mutually generative relationships with insects possible? Is it possible to care for insects? How might these representations encourage ethical practices, past and present? Presenters may engage a broad range of methodologies, including critical animal studies, ecofeminism, queer ecology, and more.
Virtual Marie: Marie de France Online (A Roundtable)
Contact Person: Tamara Caudill ; tcaudil1@ju.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Marie de France Society
In this roundtable, participants will treat the myriad of ways that Marie de France's online presence can be augmented or explored. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to: creative teaching methods using apps, memes, videos, etc.; digital humanities projects featuring Marie de France or her milieu; the use of online manuscripts, databases, open-source translations, etc.; and more. Participants will be invited to submit their talks to our journal, Le Cygne, to be published as proceedings of the panel or expanded into full-length articles.
Panel Discussions
"Can these bones come to life?" II: The Afterlife of the Knights Templar (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Kenneth Mondschein
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Societas Johannis Higginsis
In keeping with our themes of medievalism and "insights from re-construction, re-enactment, and re-creation," we invite participants to discuss the afterlife of, and appropriation of, the Templars and Templar imagery in contexts both premodern and modern. From the association of the Order of Christ with sixteenth-century imperialism, to freemasonry and conspiracy theories, to costumes Renaissance faire costumes, to white-supremacist deployments in Charlottesville and online, the Templar cross has become a symbol as polyvalent as it is potent. We aim to explore the continuing appeal of the Knights Templar, and whether such imagery can ever not be problematic.
Beekeeping in the Global Middle Ages I: Asia (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: David Wallace-Hare
2021 marks the closure of an important project at King’s College London ‘Bees in the Medieval World: Economic, Environmental, and Cultural Perspectives 1200-1600,’ a project which brought needed attention to the study of beekeeping’s role in the medieval economy of western Europe. Capitalizing on this work and the opportunity to cross-pollinate thanks to new exciting work on the global Middle Ages, this panel series will for the first time bring together a group of scholars to discuss global traditions of beekeeping happening roughly contemporaneously and the significance of beekeeping in medieval economies of Asia.
Beekeeping in the Global Middle Ages II: Africa (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: David Wallace-Hare
2021 marks the closure of an important project at King’s College London ‘Bees in the Medieval World: Economic, Environmental, and Cultural Perspectives 1200-1600,’ a project which brought needed attention to the study of beekeeping’s role in the medieval economy of western Europe. Capitalizing on this work and the opportunity to cross-pollinate thanks to new exciting work on the global Middle Ages, this panel series will for the first time bring together a group of scholars to discuss global traditions of beekeeping happening roughly contemporaneously and the significance of beekeeping in the medieval economies of Africa.
Beyond Manuscripts and Rare Books: Medievalist Librarians outside Special Collections Departments (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Julia Schneider ; jschneid@nd.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Society of Medievalist Librarians
When considering library-related career choices, medievalists often gravitate toward the study of manuscripts and early imprints, but this comprises only a small part of library employment. We welcome submissions from those who wish to discuss library careers from across the broad spectrum of librarianship. For our panel this year, we are particularly interested in hearing from those whose work lies outside special collections librarianship. This could include metadata, cataloging, acquisitions, electronic resources management, digital scholarship services, collection development, instruction/reference, and library administration; we also encourage submissions from those working at public libraries/institutions, in addition to academic librarians.
Food and Health in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Textual Evidence from the English and German Traditions (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Chiara Benati ; chiara.benati@unige.it
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Dipartimento di Lingue e culture moderne, Univ. degli Studi di Genova
The aim of the session is to explore the close and multifaceted connection between medicine and nutrition on the basis of Medieval and Early Modern literary and pragmatic sources from the English and the German language areas. Topics may include recipes, cookbooks, dietetic treatises, medical and surgical handbooks, healing charms and formulas, description of food and/or diseases in literary texts.
Healing Backwards: Time, Affect, and the Poetics of Prayer in Medieval Mystical Theology (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Ailie Posillico ; Aposill3@villanova.edu
Insularity and Regionality in the Global Middle Ages (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Nahir Gracia
Principal Sponsoring Organization: CARA (Committee on Centers and Regional Associations, Medieval Academy of America)
The terms insular and regional seem to imply a closed location, spaces with distinct cultural ideas, and spaces that are concerned with the here and now. Insularity, for example, makes us think of fantastical islands such as Avalon, but also islands that represent archipelagos and networks—linked coastal zones where merchants, missionaries, and migrants mingle in local ports. And regional spaces are defined by their relationships—binding areas of considerable extent not just local spaces. At the heart of these terms is an exploration of the nature and extent of our relationships as individuals to society at large, and to one another.
Journal Publishing in Medieval Literary Studies: The State of the Field (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Matthew Giancarlo
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Journal of English and Germanic Philology (JEGP)
A roundtable with current editors of peer-reviewed journals in medieval literary studies and related fields. Brief introductions and descriptions of the journals will be followed by questions and discussion about the state of journal publishing. Topics for discussion will include: the scope and history of particular journals; editorial policies and processes; the timelines for submission and review; current trends in scholarly journal publishing; book review policies; advice for beginning scholars interested in journal publication; and more.
New Approaches to Mysticism and Materiality in Medieval Studies (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Christopher Bellitto ; cbellitt@kean.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: American Cusanus Society
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Mystical Theology Network, Univ. of Oxford
Queer and Feminist Materiality (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Kersti Francis
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for Queer Medieval Studies (SQMS)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)
This interdisciplinary panel, co-sponsored by the Society for the Queer Middle Ages (SQMS, formerly Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages), welcomes submissions on material objects, theories of materiality, and questions of material value through a queer and/or feminist lens. We welcome submissions dealing with the Global Middle Ages, medievalism, and/or materiality and queer/feminist pedagogy.
Revisiting Romances from Trans and Genderqueer Perspectives (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Amy Brown ; amy.brown@ens.unibe.ch
This session expands on recent developments in the field of medieval trans studies, with a discursive round table on trans and genderqueer approaches to medieval romance. Participants will offer a short presentation of one text or case study (5-7 min) and a critical or methodological question for other panelists. Diversity of methodological and critical backgrounds is encouraged, but participants should engage with recent developments in premodern trans studies (those new to the subfield are suggested to start with Gutt & Spencer-Hall, introduction to Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, available open-access). Early Career Researchers prioritised.
Teaching Abraham's Legacy: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Imagination (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Deborah Sinnreich-Levi ; dsinnrei@stevens.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: TEAMS (Teaching Association for Medieval Studies)
Abraham — husband, father, refugee, wanderer, warrior, leader — figured prominently in medieval art, literature, and mysticism. A model for steadfastness by all three religions, he anchored religious and philosophical thinking. When Jews, Christians and Moslems lived among or alongside each other with varying degrees of tolerance and respect – or hatred – now considered key to bridging differences among these three faiths, how was Abraham viewed? How does he figure in teaching students about a Middle Ages that is not solidly white, European and Christian? This panel may result in a dedicated volume of The Once and Future Classroom.
Their Communitas Then, Our Communities Now (A Panel Discussion)
Contact Person: Ahmed Seif ; seif@g.harvard.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Harvard English Dept. Medieval Colloquium
The panel welcomes work that investigates medieval theories of community. How does Middle English literature represent the notion of communitas, subvert it, or reimagine the social relationships of interdependence that define it? If literary characters could be read as institutional actors, are their individual identities subsumed in the collective identity of the corporate communitas they represent? Is communitas a placeholder for all humankind or an exclusionary category of local identity, perhaps a form of proto-nationalism? This is a Middle English panel, but we are happy to consider submissions on similar issues in other times and places of the Middle Ages.