UCSB Medieval Studies Conference 2016:
Gender and Religious Practice in the Middle Ages
May 7, 2016: CFP
Monks, rabbis, abbesses, imams—when we think of religious practice in the Middle Ages, we often think about offices or organizations such as these that fall along clearly gendered lines. But these delimited categories belie complexities and nuance in how medieval people understood, constructed, and enacted gender in specific religious contexts. We are seeking papers that explore these complexities. Papers that engage with gender and religious practice from any discipline are welcome, and can include a diverse set of approaches, including but not limited to:
- Men and women interacting in religious spaces
- Same-sex interactions in religious spaces
- The gendering of religious space
- The construction or self-fashioning of masculinities/femininities in religious contexts
- The gendering of different religious groups or practices by outsiders
- Gendering of heterodoxy/orthodoxy
- Gendered patterns of devotion
Topics are not limited to the European/Western contexts; examinations of gender and religious
practice in any medieval geographical or religious context are encouraged. Paper submissions are due by February 26, 2016, and should include your name, email, university, and departmental affiliation with an abstract of 250-300 words.
The conference will feature a keynote talk by Fiona Griffiths, Associate Professor of History at Stanford, who will be presenting “Men in Women’s Monasteries: Nuns’ Priests in the Central Middle Ages”
