Call for Papers: Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop for Michaelmas Term 2025 (Virtual and In-Person), Due by 29 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop for Michaelmas Term 2025

Virtual and In-Person

Due by 29 September 2025

The Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop is inviting paper submissions for Michaelmas term 2025. We host presentations on the cultures, economies, literature, material cultures, politics, thought, religions, and reception of the medieval world, which we define as broadly as possible as the global period between c.500 and c.1500. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship and encourage submissions which stretch our conception of ‘medieval’ in
time or space, from late antiquity to modern reception and from Scandinavia to the Middle East and beyond, or which deal with the practice of medieval history.

These short 15–20-minute workshop papers are excellent ways to share your work, gain presentation experience, and receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment run for and by graduate students. In terms of scope, we are looking for focused studies that offer snapshots into ongoing graduate research, and particularly encourage primary source work and case studies, rather than sweeping overviews of large topics or summaries of entire dissertations/theses.

We welcome submissions from Master’s and PhD students from any discipline or university, but especially encourage graduate students based in or around Cambridge to submit. Accepted speakers will have the opportunity to be featured on our blog, Camedieval. The Workshop meets alternate Thursdays, 4–5 :30pm, with the option of virtual attendance on Microsoft Teams for audience members. In each session we will have two 15–20-minute papers, followed by in-person socialising and refreshments.

Please send abstracts of not more than 250 words and a short bio by 29th September 2025 to: cambridgemedieval@gmail.com.

For more information, visit https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/2025/09/11/cfp-cambridge-medieval-history-graduate-workshop/

Exhibition: Retablos II: Spanish Paintings and Polychromed Sculpture from the 13th to 16th Centuries, Sam Fogg Gallery, London, 18 Sept. 2025 - 17 Oct. 2025

Exhibition

Retablos II

Spanish Paintings and Polychromed Sculpture from the 13th to 16th Centuries

Sam Fogg Gallery, London, England

18 September - 17 October 2025

The late medieval period was a time of extraordinary artistic dynamism in the Spanish kingdoms. Among its most remarkable expressions was the retablo, a type of fixed monumental altarpiece unique to the Iberian Peninsula. Positioned behind the altar table and completely filling the apse in a display of brilliant colours and shimmering gold leaf, Spanish retablos reached towering dimensions, combining panel paintings, polychromed sculptures and sumptuous traceried frames. Their scale, presence, and graphic depiction of the lives and deaths of the Christian saints made them the visual and spiritual focus of Spanish churches, framing the liturgy and guiding devotion. 

Over the centuries, many retablos were dismembered as a result of renovation, changing taste, or simple decay. Most have been scattered across private collections and museums right around the world, a process which, paradoxically, often ensured their survival. Following the success of the gallery's first exhibition of Spanish late-medieval retablos in 2019, this new iteration brings together eighteen panel paintings alongside five polychromed sculptures created by artists working in the wealthy northern Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon between around 1250 and 1520. Selected highlights from the exhibition can be seen below, by scrolling down this page, but a complete digital catalogue of the exhibition is available upon request. 

The arresting, inventive, and iconographically complex works of art brought together for this new exhibition all reflect the rich and rapidly changing artistic climate that characterised the Iberian Peninsula during the period. The earliest paintings in the group vividly document the influence of the so-called 'International Gothic' style with its decorative stylisation, rich colour and lavish application of gold, which persisted in Spain longer than anywhere else in Europe. As we move through the fifteenth century however, we begin to discern new models and innovations introduced from Northern Europe through trade routes, itinerant artists and the circulation of drawings and prints. Rather than abandoning tradition, artists and workshops right across Spain adapted to change in remarkable, creative ways, assimilating foreign influences and transforming them into a distinctive Iberian style which, though regionally diverse, stands out for its material richness and complexity. Collectively, these astonishing and arresting works of art help to shine a searing light on the extraordinary artistic splendour of medieval Spain as it developed and evolved from the end of the Romanesque to the birth of the Renaissance.

For more information, visit https://www.samfogg.com/exhibitions/64/

Gallery Reopening: Arms and Armor Galleries, Worcester Art Museum, MA, 22 November 2025

Gallery Reopening

Arms and Armor Galleries

Worcester Art Museum, MA

Opens 22 November 2025

Image: Concept design rendering for the forthcoming arms and armor galleries. Courtesy TSKP x IKD.

Building a new home for a beloved collection

Work is currently underway on the Worcester Art Museum’s new Arms and Armor Galleries, opening on November 22, 2025. Through innovative design solutions and immersive displays, the new 5,000-square-foot galleries will allow visitors to explore more than 1,000 objects from the Museum’s Higgins Armory Collection, the second largest of its kind in the country. 

For more information about the opening, visit https://www.worcesterart.org/about/campus-transformation/arms-and-armor-gallery/

For more information about the Arms and Armor Galleries, visit https://www.worcesterart.org/exhibitions/arms-and-armor/

Call for Submissions: Season 5 of The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast (MMA), Due by 15 Oct. 2025

Call for Submissions

Season 5 of

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast (MMA)

Due By 15 October 2025

After four successful seasons, The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast (MMA) will return for its fifth in 2026. Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America, MMA is an anthology-style podcast that seeks to continue conversations and generate new avenues of inquiry related to the Middle Ages that emphasize the period’s diversity and the scholarship related to it. We highlight thoughtful reflections on culturally responsible approaches to the study of the Middle Ages (expansive beyond western Europe) and its afterlives.

We invite proposals from individuals and collaborators of all ranks and disciplines, especially graduate students, for single podcast episodes aimed at fellow medievalists and the wider public.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• innovative methodological/disciplinary approaches to the Middle Ages

• the future of medieval studies

• research on the multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic Middle Ages

• discussions of recent scholarship

• archival discoveries

• academic activism and responses to misappropriations of the Middle Ages

• pedagogical approaches

• medievalisms

• medieval culture in contemporary political and public discourse

• cultural heritage and approaches to curating exhibitions of the Middle Ages

Possible formats may include narrative expositions, interviews, textual analysis, visual analysis, oral performances, and panel discussions.

No previous experience with podcasting is required. The Graduate Student Committee of the MAA has hosted several podcasting workshops, which are now available on the MAA YouTube channel. If accepted, an MMA team member will support you through the episode development process and post- production.

To help us assess the project’s potential, your submission should include a brief description (500 words) of your proposed episode, noting the following:

• the chosen topic and its relevance

• the plan for adapting the topic to a podcast medium (we encourage 35–45 min. episodes but also welcome proposals for shorter or longer episodes)

• the episode format (interview, narrative, etc.) with an outline of its structure

• if you require technical assistance to realize the episode (by facilitating an interview, helping record the episode, or taking care of the audio editing)

Please also include each author’s name and CV.

Submit your proposals and any questions to mmapodcast1@gmail.com and Loren Cantrell (lorenlee325@gmail.com) by October 15, 2025.

Full call available on the website: https://www.multiculturalmiddleages.com/

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast Production Team

Will Beattie | wbeattie@nd.edu

Jonathan Correa Reyes | jonatcr@clemson.edu

Loren Easterday Lee Cantrell | lorenlee325@gmail.com

Reed O’Mara | reed.omara@gmail.com

Logan Quigley | quigleylogan@gmail.com

Online Event: Index of Medieval Art: Database Training Session, 7 Oct. 2025 10:00-11:00AM EST

Online Event

Index of Medieval Art

Database Training Session

October 7, 2025, 10:00 – 11:00 am EST

Musician playing bagpipe, manuscript miniature, Cantigas de Santa María, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, MS B.I.2, fol. 313v (Seville, 1280-1300). Photo: RBME. Patrimonio Nacional (Index system no. pap20250730036)

We are pleased to announce that the Index will be holding an online training session for anyone interested in learning more about the database! It will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, October 7, 2025 from 10:00 – 11:00 am EST.
This session, led by Index specialists Maria Alessia Rossi and Jessica Savage, will demonstrate how the database can be used with advanced search options, filters, and browse tools to locate works of medieval art. There will be a Q&A period at the end of the session, so please bring any questions you might have about your research!

Please note that this session will not be recorded.

To register, visit https://ima.princeton.edu/index_training/

Workshop: Books for the Soul: Personal Devotion in the Middle Ages, Denva Gallant, at Harvard University, 16 Oct. 2025 at 10:30am-12:30pm AND 3:00-5:00pm

Houghton-Medieval Studies Workshop on Early Book History

Books for the Soul: Personal Devotion in the Middle Ages

Denva Gallant (Rice University)

Hofer Classroom, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

October 16, 2025, 10:30AM - 12:30PM ET and 3:00PM - 5:00 PM ET

Space in this hands-on workshop with Denva Gallant (Rice University) is limited. To register for the 10:30am-12:30pm workshop, please click here, and to register for the 3:00-5:00pm workshop, please click here.

Medieval readers turned to books not only for knowledge, but also for the nourishment of their spiritual lives. In this workshop, we will explore manuscripts from Houghton Library that reveal the many ways books shaped practices of prayer, meditation, and moral reflection. Together, we will consider these manuscripts as artefacts of personal devotion: how their texts, images, and physical features reflect the intentions of scribes and patrons; how signs of use capture the habits of readers; and how such books created spaces for private piety while also connecting to wider devotional communities. By situating them in their artistic and historical contexts, we will gain insight into the lived experience of devotion in the later Middle Ages.

Books for the Soul: Personal Devotion in the Middle Ages will be offered once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and space is limited. Please register for one session only.

For more information on the morning workshop, click here.

For more information on the afternoon workshop, click here.

Lecture: Considering Withdrawal in Images of the Vitae patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers), Denva Gallant, at Harvard University, 13 Oct. 2025 5:30-7:00PM

Houghton-Medieval Studies Lecture on Early Book History

Considering Withdrawal in Images of the Vitae patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers)

Denva Gallant (Rice University)

Edison & Newman Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

October 13, 2025, 5:30- 7:00PM ET

Co-sponsored by Houghton Library and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers defined their lives through acts of withdrawal. Anthony the Abbot’s withdrawal from the fringes of his village to the desert inspired a generation of ascetics and gave rise to an entire genre of hagiography, the vita. Through a close analysis of the lives of Onuphrius and Marina the Virgin, this talk by Denva Gallant explores how Morgan Library MS. M.626 teaches the fourteenth-century viewer to cultivate a rich inner life. Produced at a moment when lay Christians, like Giordano’s audience on the first Sunday of Lent, were being invited to withdraw to private “deserts” in their own homes, the illuminations in this manuscript promote the virtue of total reliance on God—a posture that is essential if withdrawal is to lead to salvation. 

For more information, visit https://medieval.fas.harvard.edu/event/houghton-medieval-studies-lecture-early-book-history-12

Lecture: The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript, Lisa Fagin Davis, at University of Toronto, 26 Sept. 2025 2:30-4:30PM

Lecture

The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript

Lisa Fagin Davis

3rd Floor, Lillian Massey Building, 125 Queen's Park, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 2C7

Friday, September 26, 2025 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Voynich Manuscript f. 71r Photo credit: Beinecke

The Centre for Medieval Studies welcomes Lisa Fagin Davis (Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America) to present "The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript", a talk on her recent work using forensic evidence to hypothesize the original sequence of bifolia in the codex. Register for either in-person or virtual attendance.

For more information and to register, visit https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events/lisa-fagin-davis-materiality-voynich-manuscript

Lisa Fagin Davis received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 1993. She has catalogued medieval manuscript collections at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Walters Art Museum, Wellesley College, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Boston Public Library, and several private collections. Her publications include: the Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Vol. IV (with R. G. Babcock and P. Rusche, Tempe, 2004); The Gottschalk Antiphonary (Cambridge University Press, 2000); numerous articles in the fields of manuscript studies and codicology; and the monograph, La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France (a translation, critical edition and detailed study of a fifteenth-century French world chronicle, published by Brepols Publishers in 2015). Dr. Davis was a member of the EAMMS working group that established initial standards for electronic cataloguing of pre-1600 manuscript material and is currently serving on the Advisory Boards of Digital Scriptorium and of the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts. With Melissa Conway, Davis is co-author of the Directory of Pre-1600 Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, published online by the Bibliographical Society of America and as Volume 109:3 of the Papers of the BSA. She regularly teaches an introduction to manuscript studies at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science and is the author of "The Manuscript Road Trip," a blog devoted to promoting collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in North America. In 2016, she co-curated the major exhibition "Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections" at the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Dr. Davis is currently serving as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America.

Lecture: Beyond Text: Objects and Manuscripts in Sacred Storerooms across Medieval Africa, Dr. Ariel Fein, at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 6 Nov. 2025 7:00-8:30PM

Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History

Beyond Text: Objects and Manuscripts in Sacred Storerooms across Medieval Africa

Dr. Ariel Fein

1210 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave S, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Thursday 6 November 2025 | 7 - 8:30 PM

The Cairo Geniza has long been celebrated as an accidental archive of “sacred trash”—a repository where medieval Jews deposited worn texts bearing God’s name. But what if this narrative of passive preservation of manuscripts obscures a more dynamic reality? Alongside manuscripts, the Geniza also preserved Torah ark doors, dedicatory panels, and carved inscriptions that moved between the synagogue’s walls and the storage chamber across centuries. This material reality—long overlooked in favor of textual treasures—reveals a broader phenomenon across medieval Africa. From the Great Mosque of Kairouan, where precious Qur’ans shared space with chandeliers, woodcarvings, armor, and manuscript chests, to Ethiopian monasteries preserving textiles beneath parchment deposits, to Coptic churches assembling new sanctuary screens from centuries-old wooden fragments, religious communities across the Mediterranean world stored objects and texts together in sacred repositories. Drawing on new evidence from Jewish, Islamic, and Christian sites, this lecture reveals how the medieval Mediterranean and Africa were connected through unexpected practices of material preservation—and what these practices tell us about memory, devotion, and the very nature of the sacred in the medieval world.

Ariel Fein is an art historian specializing in the visual cultures of Byzantium and the Islamic world, with a particular focus on intercultural and interreligious relationships across the Mediterranean. Her forthcoming book, Refugee to Kingmaker: George of Antioch and the Shaping of Norman Sicilian Visual Culture, examines how a twelfth-century Arab-Christian refugee rose from displacement to become Norman Sicily’s most influential administrator and cultural innovator. Her current project, Medieval Wood Networks, investigates the circulation, consumption, and preservation of decorated wooden objects across the Mediterranean, including extensive research on the carved furnishings of Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue. Her research has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bard Graduate Center, the Medieval Academy of America, and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture. Dr. Fein received her PhD from Yale University and holds degrees from the Courtauld Institute of Art and Barnard College.

The Carl Sheppard Lecture is an annual lecture in honor of the late Carl Sheppard, former University of Minnesota professor of medieval European art history. Begun in 2012 and held every fall, the Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History celebrates the richness and diversity of global medieval art by inviting an internationally-renowned scholar to the University of Minnesota. The event is open to the University community and the general public.

If you would like to make a gift, you can contribute to the Carl Sheppard Memorial Fund through the University of Minnesota Foundation. 

This event is cosponsored by the James Ford Bell Library and the Center for Jewish Studies.

For more information and to register, visit https://cla.umn.edu/premodern/news-events/events/beyond-text-objects-and-manuscripts-sacred-storerooms-across-medieval-africa

Curator Roundtable: Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life, The Morgan Library & Museum, 17 Sept. 2025 6-7 PM

Curator Roundtable

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life

Gilder Lehrman Hall, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY

Wednesday, 17 September 2025, 6–7 PM

Chanting Clerics, from the Windmill Psalter, England, London, late thirteenth century. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.102, fol. 100r (det).

Tickets: Free; advance registration is required.

Join curators Roger Wieck, Deirdre Jackson, Joshua O’Driscoll, and Frederica Law-Turner to explore the exhibition’s themes and objects. Moderated by art historian Lucy Freeman Sandler, the discussion will delve into the Psalms’ origins, the uses of Psalters in daily life, and the curatorial process.

The Hebrew Book of Psalms is a collection of sacred poems that constitute the longest and most popular book of the Bible. These poems include expressions of lament and loss, petitions and confessions, as well as exclamations of joy and thanksgiving— universal themes that speak to what it means to be human. The exhibition Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life traces the impact of the Psalms on men and women in medieval Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century.

The program takes place in Gilder Lehrman Hall on the Ground Floor. Doors to the Hall will open 30 minutes before the program begins. Attendees are invited to view Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life from 5:30-6 PM.

Please e-mail public_programs@themorgan.org with questions about accessibility.

For more information and to register, visit https://www.themorgan.org/programs/curator-roundtable-sing-new-song-psalms-medieval-art-and-life

Lecture: Mirror of Eternity: The Croce Dipinta and the Franciscans Between Medieval and Renaissance, Holly Flora, at Boston College, 23 Sept. 2025 6-7pm and reception

The Annual Josephine von Henneberg Lecture in Italian Art

Mirror of Eternity: The Croce Dipinta and the Franciscans Between Medieval and Renaissance

Professor Holly Flora

Tuesday, September 23

6:00–7:00 pm, with reception to follow

McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

Free; Open to the public; McMullen Museum of Art, 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 111

The McMullen Museum and the Art, Art History & Film Department welcome Holly Flora, Professor of Art History at Tulane University, whose work sheds new light on the legendary artist Cimabue, revealing his sophisticated engagement with complicated intellectual and theological ideas about materials, memory, beauty, and experience. 

Holly Flora's scholarly work explores the themes of narrative, imagination, materiality, and gender in the devotional art of late medieval and early Renaissance Italy. Flora authored The Devout Belief of the Imagination: the Paris Meditationes Vitae Christi and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Brepols, 2009) and was recently awarded the Premio San Francesco from the Pontifical University of Saint Anthony (Antonianum) in Rome for her book Cimabue and the Franciscans (Brepols, 2018). She is also co-editor, along with Sarah S. Wilkins, of Art and Experience in Trecento Italy: Studies from the Andrew Ladis Memorial Conference in New Orleans, and is co-editor of the book series Trecento Forum. She is also co-editor with Peter Toth of The Meditationes Vitae Christi Recosidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image (Brepols, 2021). Her articles have appeared in a number of journals, including Gesta, Ikon, Studies in Iconography, Art History, and I Tatti Studies, as well as several edited volumes of essays. She has received a number of research fellowships, including awards from the American Association of University Women, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, the Samuel Kress Foundation, and the International Center of Medieval Art. In 2010-11 she was appointed the Millicent Mercer Johnsen Rome Prize Fellow in Medieval Studies at the American Academy in Rome and in 2015-16 she was the Jean-Francois Malle Fellow at the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence.

Co-sponsored by the Art, Art History, & Film Department and the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College

For more information, click here.

Lecture: Extracting the Past: How the ‘AI’ Industry Exploits Art History and What We Can Do to Stop It, Sonja Drimmer, at Wesleyan University (CT), 16 Sept. 2025 4:30 pm

Lecture

Extracting the Past: How the ‘AI’ Industry Exploits Art History and What We Can Do to Stop It

Sonja Drimmer

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at 4:30pm

Boger Hall, Room 112, 41 Wyllys Avenue, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut

Free and open to the public.

Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will discuss the relationship between artificial intelligence and the practice of art history in the lecture “Extracting the Past: How the ‘AI’ Industry Exploits Art History and What We Can Do to Stop It.”

Over the last several years, universities and museums have partnered with commercial technology firms like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, who have promised that their AI products will enhance both historical research and accessibility to historical collections. These promises, however, are not supported by the reality of what computer vision—the branch of AI most relevant to the history of art—can achieve. So why have major institutions in education and the arts been so quick to take up these firms' offers?

This talk responds to this question by providing an introduction to computer vision’s origins in military surveillance, an overview of its development under late capitalist regimes of exploitative micro-labor, and an orientation to how computer vision works. However, the main focus of this talk is not what computer vision does. Rather, Drimmer considers the culture of the AI industry, its main objectives, and the dangerous vision for the future that it promises—and whether those promises are credible or even in good faith. This vision for the future has relied on extracting history, and art history in particular, and Drimmer argues that it is our responsibility as art historians to be knowledgeable about the forms this extraction takes. Drimmer concludes with suggestions about what we can do to protect the subjects and practitioners of our discipline, as well as education in the humanities more broadly, against this incursion. Drimmer does not intend an intransigent rejection of a given technology; rather this talk articulates a challenge that is grounded in knowledge of the historical origins and corporate practices of the AI industry today.

Drimmer is Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A scholar of medieval European art with expertise in illuminated manuscripts and early print, Drimmer's longstanding interests in premodern notions of reproduction, replication, and media theory have led her to move beyond the medieval world and focus on the relationship between modern technology--from photography to artificial intelligence--and the history of art. Her first book, The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403–1476 (UPenn, 2018) is the first study devoted to the origins of the English literary canon as an illustrated corpus, and it received High Commendation for Exemplary Scholarship from the Historians of British Art. She is currently completing a monograph titled Impressive Politics: Print before the Press in Late Medieval England. Her writing on AI has appeared in both public and academic venues, including Artforum, The International Journal for Digital Art History, The Conversation, Art in America, and Art News.

Sponsored by the Samuel Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitors Fund, Department of Art and Art History, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and the Medieval Studies Program.

For more information, visit https://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa/events/2025/09-2025/09162025-sonja-drimmer.html

Call for Papers: Journeys — Borders — Encounters, SASMARS Biennial International Conference (2-6 Sept. 2026, Stellenbosch, South Africa), Due by 31 Dec. 2025

Call for Papers

The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) Biennial International Conference

Journeys — Borders — Encounters

Mont Fleur Conference Venue, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2-6 September 2026

Due by 31 December 2025

We are pleased to announce that the 27th Biennial International SASMARS Conference will be held from 3 to 6 September 2026 at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Papers for this interdisciplinary conference may cover any period within the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in any geographical space, and deal with any area of interest or discipline that could be relevant to the topic “Journeys — Borders — Encounters”.

Ideas to consider could include, but need not be limited to:

• Travel and migration

• Spiritual journeys and pilgrimage

• Trade routes, trade, and trade goods

• Encounters between cultures, peoples, religions, and the like

• Physical or metaphorical boundaries

• Maps and map-making

• Evirnoments and ecology

• Medicine and medical knowledge exchange

• Intellectual and textual encounters and exchanges

• War and campaigning

Proposals should consist of a title and abstract of up to 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, contact details, and a brief biography of no more than 100 words. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes when read (approximately 2,500 words) and will be followed by a Q and A.

Please submit proposals to Carin Marais (samedrensociety@gmail.com) by 31 December 2025. Any enquiries can be sent to the same email address.

Our keynote speaker for the 2026 conference will be Professor Jordi Sánchez-Martí of the University of Alicante, Spain.

Professor Sánchez-Martí, B.A. (Jaume I), M.A. (Bristol), Ph.D. (Cornell) is a professor in English Literature and a Partner Principal Investigator on Re-mediating the Early Book: Pasts and Futures (REBPAF). Professor Sánchez-Martí has a particular interest in Middle English romances and their transmission, as well as Iberian books of chivalry in English translation and their circulation.

Please click for the conference details. More information and contact details on the SASMARS Facebook page and website.

Call for Papers for Special Session: Queer(ing) Medieval Art (2): New Queer Notations: Glimpses, Sketches, Fledgling Ideas, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 15 Sept. 2025

call for Papers for Special Session

Queer(ing) Medieval Art (2)

New Queer Notations: Glimpses, Sketches, Fledgling Ideas

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

May 14-16, 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

Fledgling ideas and reflections on queer(ing) medieval art often begin as glimpses and sketches. Scholars regularly set these “small” discoveries or field notes aside in the hopes of returning to them later or building them into larger, more formalized projects. This exploratory session invites speakers to share in-progress research or potential new approaches to queer medieval studies, with the aim of fostering generative conversations and collaborations. Following five to six lightning papers (max. 10–12 minutes), the session organizers will act as respondents and discussion facilitators. We invite participants to return to those provocative, marginal, or fugitive pieces of visual and material culture they have yet to “solve,” and to expand the possibilities and directions of the field.

To reduce barriers, this session is being offered in a hybrid format. Speakers are welcome to present virtually or in person.

Please submit proposals, including an abstract of no more than 100 words, via the ICMS-Kalamazoo Confex website by September 15, 2025: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7381

Questions? Contact Kris Racaniello (kris.racaniello@gmail.com) or Erika Loic (eloic@fsu.edu).

Call for Papers for Session: Queer(ing) Medieval Art (1): Queer Spatiality, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

Queer(ing) Medieval Art (1)

Queer Spatiality

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

May 14-16, 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

De balneis Puteolanis, Italy, ca. 1400 (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, detail of MS G.74 fol. 19r)

Centering the relational as subject, this session defines spatiality through the interpersonal and intermedial, seeking papers addressing queer places and spaces. Although typically evocative of architectural studies, we envision "Queer Spatiality" as an expansive category, encompassing a variety of subfields, including performance studies, sensory studies, and textual studies. This session seeks papers addressing the places and spaces where queer people moved, lived, died, bathed, and made. Where was medieval queerness practiced, resisted, felt out, negotiated, managed, materialized, forbidden, or visualized?

Presenters might address how liquid waterworks or textile architectures shaped queer medieval identities and communities, discussing, for example, caravansaries or bathhouses, or soundscapes generated by itinerant sexworkers' pavilions. How did class factor into making and archiving queer space? Other subjects might include the production of queer olfactory zones, "unsettled" living or settlement rejection (broadly defined, from migration to enslavement), burial settings as utopian community building, explorations of the materials, construction methods, and iconographies that characterized or archived these spaces and architectures, etc. We particularly welcome papers with a secular/non-Christian medieval queer or Trans* focus and especially papers on lesbians/wlw.

*The ICMA is able to offer Kress Foundation reimbursements for this session for domestic travel up to $600; overseas travel up to $1200: https://www.medievalart.org/kress-travel-grant

Please submit proposals, including an abstract of no more than 100 words, via the ICMS-Kalamazoo Confex website by September 15, 2025: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7380

Questions? Contact Kris Racaniello (kris.racaniello@gmail.com) or Erika Loic (eloic@fsu.edu).

Please consider submitting to one of two Queer(ing) Medieval Art sessions at Kalamazoo! This IN-PERSON session is sponsored by the ICMA (reimbursements for domestic travel up to $600; overseas travel up to $1200).

Call for Papers for Special Session: Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Online Event, Due by 13 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Special Session

Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

May 14-16, 2026

Online Event

Due by 13 September 2025

This session investigates the complex dynamics involving sacred images and relics in the medieval period, focusing on profanation, theft, and disputes over ownership that reshaped their spiritual, social, and cultural significance. It examines acts of contestation that challenged established hierarchies and redefined sacrality. The panel will explore how medieval communities negotiated power, devotion, and identity through their relationships with sacred objects, with particular emphasis on the intertwined role of images and relics in religious life and social contexts.

Interdisciplinary contributions are encouraged, particularly in art history and anthropology. Through in-depth case studies covering various media, geographic areas, and historical periods, participants will analyze both symbolic meanings and practical implications of possession and contestation. The session will explore the social, legal, and theological frameworks that shaped late medieval perceptions of ownership, sacrality, and profanation, highlighting their role in conflicts and negotiations surrounding sacred objects.

This session aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how medieval societies engaged with sacred images and relics beyond veneration. It will highlight the cultural, devotional, and political tensions underpinning these interactions, offering new perspectives on authority, piety, and subversion within the medieval religious landscape.

Scholars are invited to submit a 300-word abstract, excluding references. Proposals should also include name, affiliation, email address, the title of the presentation, 6 keywords, a selective bibliography, and a short CV. Please send the documents to kalamazoocallforpapers@gmail.com by September 13, 2025.

NEW AVISTA Book: American Gothic: Reflections on Gothic Scholarship in America 1925–2025

NEW AVISTA Book

American Gothic: Reflections on Gothic Scholarship in America 1925–2025

Edited by Robert Bork

The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Technology, Science, and Art (AVISTA) are excited to announce the publication of the 18th volume in our Brill series, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, with "American Gothic: Reflections on Gothic Scholarship in America 1925–2025," edited by Robert Bork.

Use code DGBCONFC for 35% off the list price through October 31st, 2025, here: https://brill.com/display/title/72359

This book chronicles the contributions of American scholars to the study of European Gothic architecture. It traces this history through a series of biographical case studies of major figures ranging from Arthur Kingsley Porter to Robert Branner and Jean Bony to Caroline Bruzelius, calling attention to their influence as mentors and to the character of their professional networks. These biographical chapters are supplemented by thematic essays and a roundtable discussion of current issues in the field. Altogether, the book explains how working from overseas presents both significant challenges and valuable perspectives, allowing American scholars to enrich dialog in the field.

Call for Papers: Medievalism in Time and Space, The International Society for the Study of Medievalism Annual Conference (Nov. 14-15, 2025), Online, Due by 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

The International Society for the Study of Medievalism Annual Conference

Medievalism in Time and Space

Fully Online

November 14-15, 2025

Due by 15 September 2025

Hosted by Anita Obermeier and the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico

Medievalism is the reception of the Middle Ages in postmedieval times—as well as the ongoing invention, reinvention, construction, and reconstruction of the global medieval past, broadly defined.

Just as Arthurian legend, Beowulf, Norse/Viking myth, and The Thousand and One Nights are continually reinvented, so too are Arabic sīras, Indian epics and Bhakti/Sufi traditions, and Chinese classical novels and poetry—each reshaped to meet modern cultural, national, and global needs.

We welcome proposals that explore:

• Medievalisms in Time and Space: temporalities and their relations; interior/psychic spaces, contested spaces, real and imagined geographies, Outer Space, and trans-temporalities.

• Trans-Medievalisms (broadly conceived): e.g., transgender medievalisms, transformative medievalisms, transgressive medievalisms, and other “trans-” crossings of period, genre, medium, and place.

While we encourage work engaging these themes, papers on any aspect of medievalism are welcome.

Submission: Please submit your proposal via the Google Form below by September 15, 2025.
Queries: Angela Weisl (angela.weisl@shu.edu) or Michael Evans (michaelevans@delta.edu)
Submission Form: We may charge a nominal fee of $30 to faculty, but we will not charge international participants with undervalued currencies. For folks outside of the USA, Canada, and Europe, participation is for free.

Call for Papers for Session: Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures, IMC Leeds 2026, Due By 12 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures

Leeds International Medieval Congress, 6-9 July 2026

Due by 12 September 2025

Disability Studies offers powerful tools for interrogating embodiment, normativity and lived experience, all of which can be traced in the textual, material and visual record of Byzantium.

Despite this potential, the field has only just begun to be explored. This panel seeks to highlight the richness of Byzantine evidence and to showcase how productive disability-focused approaches can be.

Disability in Byzantium was neither fixed nor uniform. This panel foregrounds the historical and cultural specificity of how disabled bodies were perceived, represented, and regulated across time. By tracing these shifting understandings in texts, art, and archaeology-we also engage the broader theme of temporality, asking how disability in Byzantium shaped and was shaped by change over time, whether at the scale of history or individual lives.

We welcome proposals from all disciplines within Byzantine studies, including but not limited to history, art history, theology, archaeology, philology, and manuscript studies.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Disability and social status

• Disability and gender

• Disability and the lifecycle

• Disability, pain, suffering, and violence

• Disability, gain, pleasure, and aesthetics

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (in English), including a title, an abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 2 pages) to marossi@princeton.edu by September 12, 2025. Include "Disability Studies in Byzantium: Proposal" in the email subject line.

Organisers: Yorgos Makris (University of British Columbia), Maroula Perisanidi (University of Leeds), and Maria Alessia Rossi (Princeton University)

Call for Papers for Session: Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy, IMC Leeds (6-9 July 2026), Due By 14 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK

6 July 2026 - 9 July 2026

Due by 14 September 2025

Revelationes caelestes, Lübeck: Bartholomaeus Ghotan, before 1492, f. 288v (München, BSB, 2 Inc.c.a. 2689)

No medieval conference without Birgitta, right? For International Medieval Congress - University of Leeds, we invite papers investigating all aspects of time in the life, works, and afterlife of Birgitta of Sweden, as well as the history of the Birgittine Order.

Possible themes:

• Times in Birgitta's works (depictions of past and contemporary historical events, sacred history, or visions)

• Birgittine piety in connection with time

• The novelty of Birgitta's work and teaching

• The afterlife of Birgitta (canonisation, veneration, criticism, or postmedieval representations)

• Innovations and changes in the Birgittine monasteries

• Relationships of Birgittine monasteries to Birgitta

We are deliberately aiming broadly now and will narrow the session(s) depending on your suggestions.

Please send an abstract of around 200 words and a brief biography by 14 September 2025 to Iliana Kandzha (ilk@hum.ku.dk) and Barbara Müller (barbara.mueller@uni-hamburg.de). We will let you know by the end of September; if relevant, the bursary application deadline is 15 October.