CARA (the MAA Committee on Centers and Regional Associations) invites proposals for its two sponsored sessions at next year’s meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, which will take place from 11-13 May 2023:
I. Cold Comforts: Fantasies and Fictions of the Medieval North
Scholars long have focused upon “the East” as a focus of the medieval European imaginary, and as the locus for various practices of Othering and exoticization. Such practices, however, were just as likely to be dis-oriented in the wider medieval world. We invite scholars of medieval Africa, Iberia, the Islamicate, as well as Byzantine and Latin Christendom to explore how the North served as what Le Goff has described as an “oneiric horizon” in the Middle Ages—a site of fantasy, fiction, and imagination—in historical, ethnographic, literary, and artistic discourses.
II. Making Medieval: The Potential and Pitfalls of Experiential Pedagogy in Medieval Studies (co-sponsored with TEAMS)
Moving beyond the traditional media of lectio and lectura, medievalists in a wide range of disciplines have integrated making, doing, and performance into their classroom practice and curricula. This roundtable invites colleagues working in K—12 as well as university settings to share their innovations, experiences, and insights about the role of “hands-on” activities and lesson plans in promoting and advancing their students’ engagement with and understanding of the Middle Ages, including (but not limited to) musical and dramatic performance, artistic and craft production, and experimental archeology.
We are pleased that both CARA-sponsored sessions will take place in a blended format, making it possible to participate either in person or virtually. Paper proposals, which are due by 15 September, may be submitted through the Congress’s website at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions. If you have any questions, please contact CARA’s Chair, Sean Gilsdorf (gilsdorf@fas.harvard.edu).
