96th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Indiana University Bloomington, April 15–18, 2021
The 96th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and the Medieval Studies Institute of the Indiana University. The conference program will feature a diverse range of sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies.
The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration will be given to individuals whose field would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.
The program committee encourages medievalists of all professional standing to submit abstracts. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions, including independent scholars, emeritus or adjunct faculty, university administrators, those working in academic-adjacent institutions (libraries, archives, museums, scholarly societies, or cultural research centers), editors and publishers, and other fellow medievalists.
Rather than a single overarching theme, the 2021 Program Committee has put together a set of themes (listed below), and hopes to put in conversation papers that approach each theme from diverse chronological, geographical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives. We also welcome innovative sessions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries or that use various disciplinary approaches to examine an individual topic. The themes listed below have been proposed by the Program Committee but the list is not meant to be exhaustive or exclusive.
- After Dante, 1321-2021
- Approaching the Middle Ages with Modern Science
- Appropriation of the Middle Ages
- Commemoration
- Connections and Networks in Medieval Social Life
- Digital Humanities
- Form and Genre
- Humans and the Natural Environment
- Identity, Race, and Ethnicity
- Manuscripts and Book History
- Migration, Immigration, and Exile
- Moments of Intercultural Interaction
- Multilingualism and Diglossia
- Natural Philosophy and its Applications
- Objects and Material Culture
- Performance from Sacred to Secular
- Playfulness
Individuals may propose to offer a paper in one of the themes, a full panel of papers and speakers for a listed theme, a full panel of papers and speakers for a session they wish to create, or a single paper not designated for a specific theme.