Codes of Conduct: How to Behave in the Middle Ages, Princeton University, April 22, 2016

The Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University invites submissions for its twenty-third annual graduate conference in Princeton, New Jersey.

In the Middle Ages, a kaleidoscope of communities produced overlapping and sometimes contradictory sets of expectations covering every facet of life from the top to the very bottom of society. On the most exalted level, kings and bishops performed their roles before the eyes of lesser men with sideways glances at their domestic and foreign rivals, and upward glances toward the heavens themselves. Peasants, priests, and burghers jostled for control of their local communities according to traditions that they passed on to posterity. The clergy, both regular and secular, sought to prescribe norms and values, roles and functions, for the proper ordering of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities.

Who determined these expectations? How did people balance conformity and contravention in their strategies of power? How were “codes of conduct” codified, conferred, and controlled? What roles did art –literary, visual, theatrical and musical—play in the conveyance of such prescriptions?

We invite papers that consider the part that codes of conduct played in medieval life. Proposals are welcome from the whole variety of disciplines, time periods, geographical areas, and methodologies that encompass the medieval world. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Prescriptive texts and the relationship between text and reality
• The norms of sainthood and canonization
• Catechesis and popular religion in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions
• Monastic rules and other rules for religious communities
• Justice, jurisdiction and law, both secular and ecclesiastical
• Chivalry as a social ethic and a rulebook for war
• The court, both actual and imagined
• Social and political thought in the middle ages
• Conventions of peace and diplomacy
• Gender and sex in medieval society
• Spielregeln: ‘the rules of the game’ in medieval politics and society