Movement: Medieval Studies Student Colloquium 2021, Cornell University via Zoom, March 26–27, 2021

The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its thirty-first annual graduate student colloquium (MSSC). The conference will take place on the 26th and the 27th of March, to be held virtually over Zoom.

This year’s colloquium focuses on the theme of movement. Movement denotes the movement of peoples, cultures, thoughts and goods, the migration of plants and of animals. What happens to movement when it is frozen in stone (the swoop of hair across a person’s face in a marble statue)? How does an idea change when it is translated from one language to another? We are interested in movement defined broadly and represented across a range of disciplines.

We invite 20-minute papers that investigate movement in the Middle Ages as defined by/within a range of different disciplines and perspectives. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• The migration of people, animals, and plants;
• Cultures of movement;
• Translation and adaptation (of cultures, languages, etc.);
• Traditions that involve physical or spiritual movement;
• Cosmology and the movement of celestial bodies;
• Trade and movement in economics;
• The stagnation or absence of “movement;”
• Detainment;
• The representation of “movement;”
• Displacement, dispersal, or diaspora;
• Moving into the “unknown;”
• Temporal movement;
• Effects of movement;
• Ethics of movement.

Preference will be given to papers from underrepresented backgrounds and disciplines. We strongly encourage submissions that expand these themes and categories of inquiry beyond Christian, Western European contexts. We invite submissions in all disciplines allied to Medieval Studies, including Asian Studies, Africana Studies, Critical Race Studies, Near Eastern Studies, literature, history, the history of art, archaeology, philosophy, classics, theology, and others.