Peregrinatio pro amore Dei: Aspects of Pilgrimage
in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
June 12-14, 2014
Denver, Colorado
The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association invites panel and paper proposals on the conference theme, “Peregrinatio pro amore Dei: Aspects of Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” The conference dates are June 12-14, 2014, and venue is SpringHill Suites Marriott in downtown Denver, CO, adjacent to the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Pilgrimage to Christian holy sites and shrines was a mainstay of western European life throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods, and the journeys to places such as Canterbury, Santiago de Compostela, Assisi, Rome, and Jerusalem informed a devotional tradition that encouraged participation from all social classes, evoked commentary by chroniclers, playwrights, and poets, and inspired artistic, iconographic, and literary expressions. Even when the faith-based culture of the Middle Ages began to transform into the more empirical (and experiential) centuries of the Renaissance and Protestant Reformations, pilgrimages were still very much on the minds of writers and geographers as a source of both inspiration and criticism (Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, Hakluyt, and Raleigh).
The RMMRA Program Committee welcomes individual paper and panel proposals that address the conference theme from disciplines within the late antique, medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation periods (c. 4th to 17th Centuries). We invite all approaches, but special consideration will be given to those papers that attempt historical, literary, scientific, archaeological, and anthropological inquiries of pilgrimage, especially in the following subject areas: holy sites & shrines; cults of relics and saints; salvific aspects (healing, science, medicine); gender studies; geographical reckoning (faith-based vs. empirical); theological promotion, dissuasion, and contestation; mystical and philosophical beliefs (and criticism); internationality; secular vs. clerical approaches; considerations about (and representations of) space; relevant aspects of communitas and liminality; travel and communication; and, finally, intellectual history.
AS ALWAYS, ALL PAPER AND SESSION PROPOSALS RELATED TO MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES ARE WELCOME! (THEME NOT REQUIRED.)
Proposals for panels or abstracts for individual papers should be directed via email (Word, .pdf, or Rich Text) to one of the conference’s co-organizers: Kim Klimek (klimekk@msudenver.edu) and Todd Upton (tj_upton@icloud.com). Abstracts are due December 31, 2013.
