Call for Papers
49th International Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Conference (PMR) Conference
Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Tensions of Tradition and Mission
The Inn at Villanova University, November 1-3, 2024
Due 31 July 2024
As always, the PMR makes an OPEN CALL to scholars, institutions, and societies to propose Papers, Panels, or Sponsored Sessions in all areas and topics in late antiquity/patristics, Byzantine Studies, Medieval Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, and Renaissance & Reformation Studies.
The PMR committee this year makes a special invitation to scholars from all disciplines in these fields to address our plenary theme:
Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Tensions of Tradition and Mission
Featuring: Han-Luen Kantzer Komline the Marvin and Jerene DeWitte Professor of Theology and Church History at Western Theological Seminary, author of Augustine on the Will (OUP 2020)
And Neslihan Șenocak an Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, author of The Poor and the Perfect (Cornell, 2019)
The year 2024 marks the 750th anniversary of the passing of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoreggio. Both were part of the mendicant movement that sought to live the vita apostolica in the cities and towns of a flourishing European culture suspended between an aristocratic past and a mercantile future. Both were educated at the University of Paris, and both taught there, mastering the tools of scholastic inquiry to try to bring classical and patristic texts into the dialectical engagement of an authoritative tradition. The PMR commemorates their death this year, not by focusing on their individual contributions alone, but on the animating tensions between tradition and mission that lay at the heart of the mendicant orders and of the university. What is the relationship between tradition and mission? Between the old and the new? Between the institutions of learning and the pastoral and practical need that summons scholars from the studia into the streets? These questions are not only for Paris in the 13th century. They are questions that animate Christian and, mutatis mutandis, Jewish and Islamic discourse throughout the Mediterranean world. This year’s plenary theme will explore these questions across the horizon of the Common Era from its early days to early modernity.
As is our custom, the call for papers will be open beyond our plenary theme, and scholars are encouraged to propose papers and panels on all aspects of the premodern Mediterranean and European cultures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Deadline for submission July 31, 2024
Notification by August 15, 2024
To submit an abstract or for more information, please visit https://www1.villanova.edu/university/liberal-arts-sciences/programs/theology/events/pmr.html
Call: 610.519.4728 | Email: pmr.conference@villanova.edu