CALL FOR PAPERS 2026!

OUR UPCOMING CALL FOR PAPERS - ICMS 2027!

SAVE THE DATE! 

PAST CONFERENCE ARCHIVE

Medieval Monsters + 

MAM KALAMAZOO 2025 

 DUE: Sunday Sept. 15     Submit to ICMS (link here)

The Natural World in Medieval Thought

• In the fifteenth-century encyclopedia Sidrak and Bokkus, a translation into English from the popular thirteenth-century French Livre de la fontaine de toutes sciences, questions are asked as to why God created stinging, biting animals and why Noah allowed on board the ark poisonous snakes and scorpions. Clearly then, medieval people thought about the natural world and how it related to them in terms that were not always positive or economic. This session centers on how global medieval people perceived the natural world. Papers can vary, and include animal studies, art/architecture, comparative source studies, ecocriticism, environmental studies, history, literature, and philosophy.
  

The Medieval End/Medieval Ends/End of the Medieval?

• Medieval literature overflows with representations of “the end”—apocalypses, visions of the afterlife, descriptions of wars and natural disasters. But today we also face changes in the field of medieval studies itself: waning enrollments, erasure from curricular requirements, and loss of faculty in programs world-wide. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of medieval studies? This session invites papers from all disciplines that address any aspect of “the end” in medieval art and culture or in medieval studies more broadly. Papers might consider eschatological theology, ecological or environmental ends, millenarianism, social change, medievalism, or the future of academia.
  

Medieval Monsters and Monstrosity

• Medieval literature plays host to a broad spectrum of monstrous figures ranging from the more familiar dragons, monsters, dwarves, and trolls to the rather obscure. Early twentieth-century scholars often interpreted these figures, with varying degrees of conviction, as the ostracized “other” in Old Norse-Icelandic, Old English, and Middle English literature. Since 1996, however, a growing body of work argues that such interpretations form the beginning of the discourse on teratology rather than its end. The aim of this session, then, is further to explore the narrative, cultural, religious, philosophical, and political functions that monstrous figures serve in medieval literature.

Deconstructing Queer Vikings

• Queer- and gender-theoretical approaches to Viking Age literary and cultural production have undoubtedly born fruit in recent years, with publications on these topics increasing exponentially each decade since 1994. This production has provided scholars with a vocabulary and framework to explore Old Norse literature and culture in ways that were not previously possible, yet some would argue that the benefits come with the risk of imposing over-theorized and anachronistic assessments of Old Norse culture and literature. This session therefore aims to explore the boundaries, limitations, and possibilities of theoretical approaches to queer and gendered cultural phenomena in the medieval North.
  

Mysticism and the Twenty-First Century (A Roundtable)

• Mysticism can be viewed as a path toward spirituality in which one seeks a direct and personal experience with a divine presence. Enhanced by ontological phenomenology, the removal of intermediaries fosters methods of inclusion in which marginalized individuals are generally excluded from traditional venues of theological practice. This session will explore the mystic global Middle Ages and discuss their impact on contemporary audiences. For this roundtable discussion, we invite speakers to prepare a six to ten-minute presentation and approach the topic from various angles, including new research, non-traditional venues for practice or exposure, museum exhibitions, and the visual arts.
  

The Future of the Medieval Past: AI and the Digital Humanities (Virtual)

•  A glance at the Chronicle will convince any sceptic that AI & the Digital Humanities are necessary for medievalists to secure the rare unicorn of a job & to be best prepared for the classroom. Students & businesses incorporate AI into their work practices and yet many faculty have not intentionally engaged with what they make possible. We need to educate students on how to work with AI and be ethical in their use of it. This round table seeks faculty/graduate students who incorporate AI & DH into their classroom practices to share the best of what they do.   

Co

Co-Hosted with Pearl-Poet Society: Navigating Archival Research as a Graduate Student: A Roundtable:CFP for the session (Navigating Archival Research as a Graduate Student: A Roundtabl

We invite proposals from first-year graduate students to post-graduate researchers on conducting archival research during graduate school. We seek to hear from graduate students on how you navigate archival research, from planning and locating appropriate archival resources to best practices when consulting primary materials to how to find and apply for fellowships and grants. We are particularly interested in hearing archival success stories that display the affordances of archival research for graduate study.

MAMA 47 2024 cfp.pdf

MAMA, MAM, MMHC 2024:

MAMA