The Medieval Academy of America invites proposals for sessions at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New Orleans, January 6-9, 2022.

Each year the Medieval Academy co-sponsors sessions at this meeting with the AHA. This year, we aim to sponsor sessions that address an overarching theme of interest both to MAA members and broader audiences: “Medieval Perspectives on Modern Crises.” We envision a wide range of topics that might address this theme, from race and political violence to climate change and pandemic, and everything in between. Given the location of the meeting in New Orleans, we would also be interested in sponsoring sessions focused on this historic city through the lens of medieval studies or medievalism, ritual and performance traditions, and/or the multiple, overlapping colonial legacies that perdure in south Louisiana. We invite all manner of session programming, and strongly encourage MAA members to think beyond traditional paper panels. Roundtables, lightning talks, interviews, field conversations, performances, working sessions, and any other experimental and inclusive forms of knowledge-sharing you might propose will be received with enthusiasm.

We especially encourage session proposals from scholars representing a variety of identity positions and academic ranks and affiliations, including graduate students and independent scholars. We also encourage session proposals from scholars whose work features sources, geographies, and populations that are under-represented in traditional reckonings of “the medieval.”