CALL FOR PAPERS FOR ROUNDTABLE

THE MIDDLE AGES RELOADED: ACTIVISM, PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT, AND POLITICAL REALITIES

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES, KALAMAZOO 2025 (8-10 MAY 2025)

DUE 15 SEPTEMBER 2024

Our roundtable panel seeks to draw attention to how we speak of the Middle Ages during tumultuous times. We aim to highlight real-world issues and ways of creating and innovating against the crises in education, institutional constraints, and social disparities at large. For example, how one teaches the Middle Ages in the classroom is increasingly subject to state and local curricular mandates. In museums, exhibitions and acquisitions are frequently dependent on fundraising structures, donor relations, and stewardship. Throughout the field, inequitable institutional and social structures condition who gets to participate in the telling of the Middle Ages, and even within those structures, the labor required to engage remains invisible or unacknowledged.

We are seeking contributions to a roundtable on the current praxis of the Middle Ages as we are in the midst of rapid cultural changes. Participants should propose present issues and/or future-oriented questions about how we teach, curate, and research the Middle Ages. How do we get around restrictions placed upon us to talk, write, educate, and create the Middle Ages in inclusive, global, and meaningful ways? How can we balance activism with work that is historically responsible? Do we envision disruptions to larger systems that would fundamentally change the field of medieval studies?

Interested panelists should submit a 100-word bio and 200-word abstract that concretely conveys examples of recent changes to, or future goals for, your practice as a medievalist. We are looking for short talks (ca. 8 minutes) on actionable changes to the field, recommendations for the future, and/or strategies that grapple with the changing U.S. political landscape. We especially welcome non-traditional forms of academic presentations, including personal reflections, public engagement and writing, innovative pedagogical approaches, social media and digital projects, and emerging platforms broadly speaking. Panelists from a variety of contexts/positions/career stages are strongly encouraged to apply, including: K–12 public educators, government and public service workers, curators and staff from museums and cultural institutions, those with non-academic affiliations, graduate students, as well as retired, tenure-track and contingent faculty from higher education, among others.

Organizers:

Larisa Grollemond, Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Getty Museum
Laura Tillery, Assistant Professor of Art History, Hamilton College

Submit to:
https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/round/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6297