The Medieval Academy Blog

Medieval History Seminar
6–8 October 2027

The German Historical Institutes in London and Washington, D.C., are pleased to announce the fifteenth Medieval History Seminar, to be held in London from Wednesday, 6 October, to Friday, 8 October 2027.

The seminar will bring together Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D. recipients (2026/2027) in medieval history from universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany for three days of scholarly discussion and collaboration. Participants will have the opportunity to present their work to their peers and to distinguished scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. The conveners of the 2027 seminar will be Fiona Griffiths (Stanford University), Michael Grünbart (Universität Münster), and David Ditchburn (Trinity College Dublin).

The Medieval History Seminar invites proposals from all areas and periods of medieval history. Applications are not limited to historians working on German history or German-speaking regions of Europe. All methodological approaches are welcome. Applications from neighbouring disciplines are also welcome, provided that the proposed project has a distinct historical focus.

The seminar is bilingual. Participants may submit their papers in either German or English, depending on which language they are most comfortable using. Accordingly, participants are expected to be able to engage with contributions in both languages.

Successful applicants will be required to submit a paper of approximately 5,000 words by 15 August 2027. Each participant will also be required to serve as a commentator on another participant’s paper. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered.

Applications

Applications may be submitted in German or English and should include:

• a CV, including institutional affiliation, postal address, and email address;
• a description of the proposed paper (4–5 pages, double-spaced); and
• one letter of recommendation.

Please submit a single PDF file containing all application materials by email to: events@ghil.ac.uk

The deadline for the submission of applications is 31 January 2027.

For further information, please contact:

Thomas H. Kaal
Research Fellow in Medieval History
Email: t.kaal@ghil.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7309 2032

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 22nd annual Marco Manuscript Workshop, which will take place January 29-30, 2027, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The Workshop is organized by Duncan Hardy (History), Charles Kuper (Classics), and R. D. Perry (English) and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Following last year’s theme, “Destruction & Preservation,” which focused on the damage that occurs as manuscripts pass through history and what might be done about it, this year’s theme, “What’s Missing?,” considers what was never there in the first place but might have been. We are accustomed to considering manuscript fragmentation and miscellaneity. Even given the ubiquity of those conditions, though, one often comes to expect certain material to circulate with other material. Sometimes that expectation comes from internal evidence within the works themselves, as when one would expect entire literary works to remain whole in different manuscript contexts. Sometimes that expectation comes from habit or tradition, the tendency of certain works to circulate alongside other works. These expectations are as often frustrated as they are fulfilled: rather than an illumination program, one finds empty space; rather than a full quire, one finds something ripped out; rather than all of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, one finds a tale or two; rather than a continuation of Chretien de Troyes’s Perceval, one finds it ending abruptly; rather than a moralization of an allegory, one finds just another story; rather than another year in an annal, one finds blank space, or perhaps even more distressingly, a poem. This workshop focuses on how we understand these lacunae as they exist materially. What’s missing? How do our expectations develop and how can we manage them? What do we make of earlier responses to these missing materials? Examples might include books that have sustained damage and have lost what they once had, and books that never had that material in the first place, or even books that we would expect to have one thing but instead have something else; responses, both medieval and modern, that in some way try to get a handle on our frustrated expectations on what could or should be in a text; the expectations, again both medieval and modern, that are developed by working with manuscripts, the conditions that produce these expectations and how we become attached to them. As always, we welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined, or on any other aspect of manuscripts, epigraphy, and the history of writing.

The workshop is open to scholars and students in any field who are engaged in manuscript studies, textual editing, or epigraphy. Individual sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text(s) and context(s), discuss their approach to working with their material, and exchange ideas and information with other participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to be more like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer practical advice and theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We particularly invite the presentation of works in progress, unusual problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation. This year, we’re also pleased to welcome Jessica Brantley (Yale) as our respondent.

The deadline for applications is November 1, 2026. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page abstract of their project via email to the Marco Institute at marco@utk.edu.

The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. Further details will be available later in the year; please visit tiny.utk.edu/msw27 or contact the Marco Institute at marco@utk.edu for more information.

Confound the Time welcomes papers that investigate the ways in which texts, objects, and images from the medieval and early modern periods re-envision and reconstruct the past or imagine and anticipate the future. We also welcome papers that explore the ways in which medieval and early modern artifacts, history, and culture are reimagined and reconstructed in later periods.

As part of our commitment to accessibility, Confound the Time will be entirely virtual and have no registration fee. Graduate students and early career scholars are especially encouraged to submit.

Topics for individual papers may include:

• Medieval and early modern reception of classical mythology/culture
• Early modern reception of medieval literature/culture
• The Pre-Raphaelites and other neo-medievalist movements
• Contemporary video games, graphic novels, television shows, and/or films with medieval or early modern settings, characters, and cultures
• Dungeons and Dragons and/or other role-playing or tabletop games
• Manuscript Studies/Book History
• Time/The Times
• Gender and Sexuality
• Nationalism and Race

Papers that address these subjects are encouraged, but any paper that centers on medieval or early modern studies will be considered. Please fill out this form to the best of your ability in order to submit: https://forms.gle/B8YhxejNzQHGsfcV8

The deadline for all abstract submissions is November 7th, 2026. The virtual conference will be held from February 6th-February 7th 2027.

Questions can be directed to Drs. Audrey Gradzewicz (U of Wisconsin-Madison) and Audrey Saxton (Bethany College, KS) at confoundthetime@gmail.com