Medieval Association of the Midwest

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PLANS for 2023 & 2024

MAM will be asking for session proposals at our Business meeting this year.  Please join us in person or online - we would love to hear your thoughts or come ready with a session to propose.


58th International Congress on Medieval Studies MAM sessions 2023

The Medieval Association of the Midwest is pleased to announce five sponsored sessions that cover a breadth of topics (4 in person, 1 virtual) at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11–May 13, 2023. MAM supports scholars at all stages in their careers and greatly values your contribution. For any questions feel free to reach out to Dr. Stephen Yandell yandell@xavier.edu.  

1. Wanted Dead and Alive: Schrödinger’s Cat and the Middle Ages

This session invites contributors to explore ways that conceptions of death and understandings of what it means to live interweave in all aspects of medieval life. Where does one find life and death intersecting in and across medieval fields? What appears simultaneously alive and dead in medieval scholarship today? 

2. Vikings and Medieval Violence in the Modern Mind

This session invites scholars to consider the popular depiction of Vikings as simultaneously adventurous and threatening. Papers are encouraged to explore any number of questions: what is the history of the romanticization of Vikings and medieval violence? What differences exist between medieval and modern cultural memories of Vikings and violence? How should medievalists as public intellectuals represent and respond to Vikings and medieval violence? 

3. Conspicuous Consumption: Feasting, Fighting, and Tomfoolery (co-sponsored with the Pearl-Poet Society).

VIRTUAL session

In this panel papers will consider ways that indulgence and gluttony are portrayed in medieval literary works (in the Pearl-Poet and beyond): how feasting and fighting can indicate the values of a medieval audience, and why authors like the Pearl-Poet condemned such excess, whether in the church or court, in nobility or commoner.

4. Teaching the Medieval in the Midwest

This session seeks papers that explore the particular challenges and opportunities that arise when one teaches medieval topics in Midwestern classrooms. We are particularly interested in contributions from graduate students who have navigated medieval teaching experiences in the Midwest at the university level, including pedagogical practices, course development, and student engagement. The top graduate-paper submission will be awarded mentorship for preparing the piece to be published in the journal Enarratio.

5. Second Helping: Reading between the lines of celebration and heartbreak in Chaucer's feasts

This session invites scholars to explore Chaucer's deliberate pairings of feasting and celebration with characters who are exposed at key moments in the Chaucerian corpus. The Prioress's genuine emotion for animals over innocent people says much about the preoccupations of her “kind,” for example. Papers are invited to explore this topic from any number of perspectives. What might Chaucer have intended by exposure of his characters specifically in food settings?


PLANS FOR @2024

Please join us for a joint meeting of

The Mid-America Medieval Association & the Medieval Association of the Midwest

The Medieval Out of Time & Place


Plenary: Dr. Elizabeth K. Hebbard of the Peripheral Manuscripts Project

French & Italian, Indiana University – Bloomington


CFP to follow 

Sample topics The Medieval Out of Time & Place

  • *medieval objects in new locales or contexts

  • *the reuse or recycling of the medieval in the modern age

  • *medieval saints celebrated in alternate geographies and temporalities

  • *medievalism as a framework for imagining the past

  • *the European past in the American/Midwestern present

  • *the Midwestern medieval, neo-gothic space and architecture

  • *monasticism in the Midwest

  • *medieval archives in the Midwest

  • *medieval objects in a digital world

  • *the digital medieval in the Midwest

  • *teaching the future, using the past

  • *the future for Medieval Studies in the Midwest

    A limited number of bursaries are available for graduate student travel, courtesy of CARA and The Medieval Academy of America.


58th International Congress on Medieval Studies

The Medieval Association of the Midwest is pleased to announce five sponsored sessions that cover a breadth of topics (4 in person, 1 virtual) at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 11–May 13, 2023. MAM supports scholars at all stages in their careers and greatly values your contribution. For any questions feel free to reach out to Dr. Stephen Yandell yandell@xavier.edu.  

1. Wanted Dead and Alive: Schrödinger’s Cat and the Middle Ages

This session invites contributors to explore ways that conceptions of death and understandings of what it means to live interweave in all aspects of medieval life. Where does one find life and death intersecting in and across medieval fields? What appears simultaneously alive and dead in medieval scholarship today? 

2. Vikings and Medieval Violence in the Modern Mind

This session invites scholars to consider the popular depiction of Vikings as simultaneously adventurous and threatening. Papers are encouraged to explore any number of questions: what is the history of the romanticization of Vikings and medieval violence? What differences exist between medieval and modern cultural memories of Vikings and violence? How should medievalists as public intellectuals represent and respond to Vikings and medieval violence? 

3. Conspicuous Consumption: Feasting, Fighting, and Tomfoolery (co-sponsored with the Pearl-Poet Society).

VIRTUAL session

In this panel papers will consider ways that indulgence and gluttony are portrayed in medieval literary works (in the Pearl-Poet and beyond): how feasting and fighting can indicate the values of a medieval audience, and why authors like the Pearl-Poet condemned such excess, whether in the church or court, in nobility or commoner.

4. Teaching the Medieval in the Midwest

This session seeks papers that explore the particular challenges and opportunities that arise when one teaches medieval topics in Midwestern classrooms. We are particularly interested in contributions from graduate students who have navigated medieval teaching experiences in the Midwest at the university level, including pedagogical practices, course development, and student engagement. The top graduate-paper submission will be awarded mentorship for preparing the piece to be published in the journal Enarratio.

5. Second Helping: Reading between the lines of celebration and heartbreak in Chaucer's feasts

This session invites scholars to explore Chaucer's deliberate pairings of feasting and celebration with characters who are exposed at key moments in the Chaucerian corpus. The Prioress's genuine emotion for animals over innocent people says much about the preoccupations of her “kind,” for example. Papers are invited to explore this topic from any number of perspectives. What might Chaucer have intended by exposure of his characters specifically in food settings?


The Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM) is a non-profit association of scholars devoted to the study of the Middle Ages. For more information, contact the website editor, Mickey Sweeney (msweeney@dom.edu).

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