Crossing Boundaries: Towards an Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies

Date: May 3, 2019

Location: The Graduate Center, CUNY

Keynote Speaker: Shirin Khanmohamadi, San Francisco State University

The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study’s 14th annual conference in May will showcase a variety of scholarship with interdisciplinary or intersectional approaches. It will also consider the field of medieval studies in light of recent conversations such as those about Eurocentrism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia at Leeds and Kalamazoo. It will specifically seek to open spaces for graduate students and other potentially vulnerable members of academia to engage with the recent debates and other complicated and controversial topics.

The 2018 PKMS conference explored the relationship between French and English departments, literatures, and cultures. The 2017-2018 workshop series focused on decentralizing Europe in medieval studies in our research and teaching. Medieval scholars often work across disciplines, but the institutional lack of communication across disciplinary borders has become more apparent recently, and the need to collapse those borders more urgent. The 2019 PKMS conference will expand those conversations beyond England and France, bringing together medieval scholars who work in various disciplines and with various methodologies for this day-long conversation, as the culmination of a year of graduate-student workshops on interdisciplinarity and intersectionality in medieval studies.

We invite proposals for intersectional and/or interdisciplinary papers in medieval studies from all disciplines, regions, languages, methodologies, theoretical approaches, etc. We also welcome proposals for papers on the practical aspects, challenges, and benefits of interdisciplinary and intersectional work in medieval studies. Submit 250-word abstracts to medieval.study@gmail.com by December 31, 2018 JANUARY 31, 2019.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Spatial, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries in medieval studies
• The history of medieval studies
• The “Global Middle Ages”
• Global views of the European Middle Ages
• Working with multiple languages
• Working with translations and editions
• Medieval translations and adaptations of texts
• Studies in comparative religion
• The politics of medievalism
• Legal status of women in various regions, religions, etc.
• Representations of women across multiple contexts
• Medieval studies and a method of colonization
• Similar traditions in Western and non-Western contexts
• Digital Humanities in medieval studies
• Medievalists and medicine / medieval medicine
• Dis/ability in the Middle Ages
• Medievalists teaching non-medieval topics and texts
• Later uses of medieval music, art, and motifs
• Medieval ideologies and constructions of identity surrounding gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, and social class