Call for Papers for Session: A Sensory History of Devotion in the Late Medieval Meditteranean World, ICMS Kalamazoo, 14-16 May 2026, Due by 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

A Sensory History of Devotion in the Late Medieval Meditteranean World

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

14-16 May 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

This panel invites papers on Christian devotional practices in the late medieval Mediterranean that foreground the senses. How did touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste shape how people encountered the divine? We welcome papers on themes such as material culture, gendered piety, cross-cultural devotional exchange, institutional attempts to regulate sensory worship, and the politics of embodied spirituality. Scholars working with diverse Christian communities and sources—from relics to processions, from tears to incense—are encouraged to apply. Together, we aim to explore how sensory experience made the sacred tangible between 1300 and 1550.

This session is organised by Clair Becker (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Emmarae Stein (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Vittoria Magnoler (PhD Student, University of Genoa, EHESS), and sponsored by Hagiography Society.

This session is hybrid. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex proposal portal by 15 September 2025. Organizers will not be able to add abstracts to their sessions manually. If you have any technical questions about using Confex, please contact icms@confex.com. Apply via the International Congress on Medieval Studies website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call

New Exhibition Talk: The Spectrum of Desire: Medieval Art, Eroticism, and the Museum, Melanie Holcomb, The MET Cloisters, 6 Nov. 2025

New Exhibition

The Spectrum of Desire: Medieval Art, Eroticism, and the Museum

Melanie Holcomb, Curator

The Met Cloisters, New York, NY

October 17, 2025–March 29, 2026

Thursday, November 6, 2025

Aquamanile in the Form of Phyllis and Aristotle, Netherlandish, late 14th or early 15th century. Copper alloy, 12 ¾ x 7 x 15½ in. (32.5 x 17.9 x 39.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.1416)

On October 16, 2025, a landmark exhibition called The Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages will open at The Met Cloisters. Visitors to this institution, or to the medieval galleries of museums in general, tend to associate the Middle Ages with images that uphold traditional beliefs and hierarchies – paintings and sculptures celebrating Christ and the Virgin, tapestries and other precious objects exalting royal authority, for instance. The Spectrum of Desire will upend such expectations. The exhibition will explore how medieval objects reveal and structure the performance of gender, understandings of the body, and erotic encounters, both physical and spiritual. Featuring approximately fifty objects, most of which are from the museum’s permanent collection, it will offer new readings of otherwise familiar objects in which gender, sexuality, relationships, and bodies are central themes. Although firmly grounded in the Middle Ages, the exhibition will also encourage modern audiences to reflect on the ways that gender, sex, and desire structure their own lives and identities today. In this talk, Curator Melanie Holcomb will speak on the goals of the exhibition and discuss specific works in the show, demonstrating how asking new questions about the past can reveal sometimes surprising answers about the present.

For more information about the exhibition, visit https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/spectrum-of-desire-love-sex-and-gender-in-the-middle-ages

Call for Papers for Session(s): Session in Honor of William “Bill” Clark, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Session(s)

Session in Honor of William “Bill” Clark

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan - May 14-16, 2026

Due 15 September 2025

AVISTA invites paper proposals for Session(s) in Honor of William “Bill” Clark, which will be in-person sessions at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 14-16, 2026). Paper proposals will be accepted through the Confex proposal portal through September 15, 2025.

We invite papers celebrating the life and work of William “Bill” Clark, Gothic architectural historian and founding member of AVISTA. In addition to his significant contributions on the historiography and methodology for medieval art history, Bill Clark wrote extensively on twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture and sculpture at sites including the Abbey of Saint Denis, Notre Dame in Paris, and the cathedrals of Laon and Reims. Papers responding to Bill’s research or reflecting on Bill’s legacy as mentor, professor, and collaborator are welcome.

For more information, visit https://www.avista.org/opportunities-cfp.

Call for Papers: Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 12 Sept. 2026

Call for Papers

Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures

Leeds International Medieval Congress, 6–9 July 2026

Due by 12 September 2026

Organisers: Yorgos Makris (University of British Columbia), Maroula Perisanidi (University of Leeds), and Maria Alessia Rossi (Princeton University)

Disability Studies offers powerful tools for interrogating embodiment, normativity and lived experience, all of which can be traced in the textual, material and visual record of Byzantium. Despite this potential, the field has only just begun to be explored. This panel seeks to highlight the richness of Byzantine evidence and to showcase how productive disability-focused approaches can be.

Disability in Byzantium was neither fixed nor uniform. This panel foregrounds the historical and cultural specificity of how disabled bodies were perceived, represented, and regulated across time. By tracing these shifting understandings—in texts, art, and archaeology—we also engage the broader theme of temporality, asking how disability in Byzantium shaped and was shaped by change over time, whether at the scale of history or individual lives.

We welcome proposals from all disciplines within Byzantine studies, including but not limited to history, art history, theology, archaeology, philology, and manuscript studies.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
● Disability and social status
● Disability and gender
● Disability and the lifecycle
● Disability, pain, suffering, and violence
● Disability, gain, pleasure, and aesthetics

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (in English), including a title, an abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 2 pages) to marossi@princeton.edu by September 12, 2025. Include “Disability Studies in Byzantium: Proposal” in the email subject line.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

Call for Papers for the Session: Troubling Desires: Queer and Trans Approaches to Medieval Art, 6th Swiss Congress for Art History (Geneva, 7-9 Sept. 2026), Due 12 Sept. 2025

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE SESSION

Troubling Desires: Queer and Trans Approaches to Medieval Art

6th SWISS CONGRESS FOR ART HISTORY
7 – 9 SEPTEMBER 2026, UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA, UNI MAIL

Due: 12 September 2025

Over the past several years, gender and sexuality studies have been casting new light on the history of medieval art. Madeline Caviness has shown that medieval theories of gender and sexuality have the potential to reconfigure the modern linking of (binary) gender and (homo/hetero) sexuality, paving the way for a recognition of the fluidity of identities across time. Robert Mills has identified and studied a visual culture of the medieval concept of “sodomy” (Mills 2015). Roland Betancourt has considered the ways that several Byzantine manuscripts demand an intersectional approach through the lens of trans and queer theories (Betancourt 2020). Leah DeVun has in turn analyzed images of animals that question the binarity of gender in medieval thought (DeVun 2020). Ostensibly well-known images have been enriched with new interpretations, and previously unpublished sources have been brought to light. In response to and as a continuation of this research, various exhibition projects on these topics and methods are emerging, including Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages (The Met Cloisters, October 2025 – March 2026).

This session aims to foster exchanges between those who work on gender and sexuality in the field of medieval art history. It is premised on the idea that the tools required to study premodern sexuality and gender in and as related to the visual arts are not necessarily those that have been so central to modern and contemporary histories of these topics. As such, this session aims to present a series of case studies that offer new approaches to works of art and explore medieval configurations of sexuality and gender that are distinct from and complementary to contemporary studies in this field.

Head of section : Clovis Maillet, HEAD – Genève ; Nancy Thebaut, University of Oxford ; Pauline Guex, Centre Maurice Chalumeau en sciences des sexualités de l’Université de Genève (CMCSS)

Congress details & practical information: https://www.vkks.ch/fr/activites/congres

For more information: https://rmblf.be/2025/07/30/appel-a-contribution-desirer-et-troubler-approches-queer-et-trans-en-art-medieval-troubling-desires-queer-and-trans-approaches-to-medieval-art/


APPEL À COMMUNICATIONS POUR LA SECTION

Désirer et troubler : approches queer et trans en art médiéval

6e CONGRÈS SUISSE EN HISTOIRE DE L’ART
7 – 9 SEPTEMBRE 2026, UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE, UNI MAIL

Délai de soumission des propositions : 12 septembre 2025

Depuis plusieurs années, les études sur les sexualités et le genre posent un nouveau regard sur l’histoire de l’art médiéval. Madeline Caviness a montré que les spécificités des agencements du genre et des sexualités dans les théories médiévales ont le potentiel de reconfigurer la construction moderne de l’entrelacement entre genre (binaire) et sexualité (homo/hetero), en ouvrant la voie à des fluidités et pénétrabilités complexes. Robert Mills a donné au concept médiéval de « sodomie » une véritable culture visuelle (Mills 2015). Sous la plume de Roland Betancourt, plusieurs manuscrits byzantins ont pu dévoiler ce qu’ils apportent à la conceptualisation de l’intersectionnalité trans (Betancourt 2020). Analysées par Leah DeVun, certaines pages des bestiaires médiévaux interrogent la non-binarité des genres dans la pensée médiévale (DeVun 2020). Des corpus connus s’enrichissent de nouvelles interprétations, et des sources inédites s’en trouvent révélées. À la lumière de ces recherches, des projets d’exposition voient le jour, tels que Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages (The Met Cloisters, cur. Melanie Holcomb et Nancy Thebaut, oct. 2025 – mars 2026).

Cette section vise à créer des échanges au sein des recherches sur les sexualités et le genre dans le domaine de l’histoire de l’art médiéval. Elle se fonde sur l’idée que l’étude des agencements prémodernes en termes de sexualité et de genre n’est pas un décalque de ce que les études contemporaines ont produit comme élaboration théorique. De ce fait, cette section tend à présenter des dossiers singuliers qui permettent de renouveler l’approche des oeuvres, ainsi qu’à penser et explorer des configurations originales de l’articulation sexualité/genre, distinctes et complémentaires des études contemporaines en la matière.

Dir. de section : Clovis Maillet, HEAD – Genève ; Nancy Thebaut, University of Oxford ; Pauline Guex, Centre Maurice Chalumeau en sciences des sexualités de l’Université de Genève (CMCSS)

Détails du congrès & informations pratiques: https://www.vkks.ch/fr/activites/congres

Pour plus d’information: https://rmblf.be/2025/07/30/appel-a-contribution-desirer-et-troubler-approches-queer-et-trans-en-art-medieval-troubling-desires-queer-and-trans-approaches-to-medieval-art/

ICMA News, Summer 2025 now available online

ICMA News               

summer 2025
Melanie Hanan, Editor

Click
here to read.
Also available on
www.medievalart.org


INSIDE

SPECIAL FEATURES

Report and Resource
Medieval Art Embodied: Performing the York Mystery Cycle at Brooklyn College, The Met Cloisters, and the University of Toronto
, By Lauren Mancia

Research and Teaching Tools from the Making and Knowing Project, By Pamela H. Smith


Exhibition Reports 
Medieval Women: In Their Own Words
, By Gabriela Chitwood

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 (National Gallery, London), By Judith Steinhoff


EVENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES


The deadline for the next issue of ICMA News is 15 October 2025. Please send information to newsletter@medievalart.org 

If you would like your upcoming conference, CFP, or exhibition included in the newsletter please email the information to EventsExhibitions@medievalart.org.

Call for Papers for Panel: Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 10 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

Société Rencesvals - American-Canadian Branch

Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances

International Congress on Medieval Studies

Kalamazoo, May 14-16, 2026

Due by 10 September 2025

The Société Rencesvals (American-Canadian Branch) is pleased to offer a sponsored session titled "Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances." We are particularly interested in papers that explore how such texts present the practices and ideas of medieval religion across a wide and interdisciplinary spectrum.

Romance-epics and chivalric romances not only shed light on the societies (local, regional, and global) in which they were produced, also inform us of those who kept them at the forefront of their national backbone. These texts are sites of religious performance in which devotional prayers and rituals, as well as discussions of spiritual matters (like conversion and apostasy), are brought to the forefront. This session aims to consider how these poets understood and presented the performance of their faith-and of the non-Catholic faiths that their subjects (and perhaps they themselves) encountered.

We invite submissions that explore the representation of performed religion in Romance language epics, especially papers that examine the theme from a non-Catholic perspective or that reflect interdisciplinary and comparative approaches including (but certainly not limited to) history, art history, literature, and material culture in relation to the study of epics and chivalric romances in Romance languages.

Please, submit your 250-word abstract to this link by September 10, 2025. Scholars interested in participating, especially those who may not benefit from standard forms of academic funding, are welcome to apply to our grant program. See our webpage for further information.

Call for Papers for Panel: NEW APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL OFFICE LITURGY, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 31 Aug. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

NEW APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL OFFICE LITURGY

Leeds International Medieval Congress (6-9 July 2026)

Thematic Focus: ‘Temporalities’

Due by 31 August 2025

The past decades have seen exciting developments in medieval liturgical scholarship, moving beyond analysis of texts to examining liturgical practices as diverse, lived, localised, and contested devotional frameworks. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the study of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours: the cycle of daily prayers structured around the eight canonical hours (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) central to the spiritual, intellectual, temporal and communal life of the medieval Christian world.

This panel invites proposals for 15-20 minute papers on any aspect of Medieval Office Liturgy, especially those that address new perspectives, methodologies, or understudied sources.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Office Manuscripts

  • Intersections with visual and material culture

  • Lay experiences of the Divine Office

  • Liturgical Reform

  • Performance Practices and/or Prescriptions

  • The Liturgy of the Hours in Medieval Literature

  • Temporality and the Canonical Hours

  • Saints lives, cults and offices

Please send an abstract of up to 250 words and short biography including your affiliation(s) to Rhiannon Warren (rlow2@cam.ac.uk) by the 31st of August 2025

Call for Papers for Panel: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Roofing Systems from Europe to the Christian East, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 14 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Roofing Systems from Europe to the Christian East

INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL CONGRESS (IMC)

Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Due by 14 September 2025

Sponsor: @ Archaeological Research Unit, UCY - Ερευνητική Μονάδα Αρχαιολογίας, ΠΚ of the Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου | University Of Cyprus

Organizers: Angelo Passuello and Michalis Olympios (Univ. of Cyprus)

One of the most important structural elements in the formulation of the architectural language of sacred space in the Middle Ages was the creation of varied roofing systems (wooden roofs, stone vaults, domes). It is the roofs that decisively conditioned the internal spatiality and assumed a primary importance also in formulating the external form of the churches, because the entire construction is based on the shape that the roof will have.

Roofing systems, therefore, have an enormous potential for the study of sacred spaces: if these structures are studied with an interdisciplinary approach they can be compared, contextualised and better understood

The aim of this session is to delve deeper into some case studies from Europe to the Christian East in a multidisciplinary perspective, integrating seamlessly elements of the history of architecture and restorations, archaeometry, archaeology, and art history. Although these methods are native to different disciplines, they constitute indispensable and complementary approaches for a holistic analysis of medieval roofing systems.

Potential topics include, but need not be limited to, the following:

  • The structure of roofing systems and the construction phases of individual buildings

  • Analysis of groups of buildings: contextualization and regional or international comparison of building ensembles

  • Dating and structural analysis of timber roof frameworks

  • Stereotomy and construction techniques of vaulted stone structures

  • Nineteenth- and twentieth century restoration campaigns

This session forms part of the activities of the CaMeRoofs (Cataloguing Medieval Roofs) project, coordinated by the University of Cyprus and funded by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.

If you are interested in participating, please send an abstract of max. 200 words, 2-4 relevant index terms (https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-index-terms/), a short bio with full affiliation details (department, institution, email address) to: passuello.angelo@ucy.ac.cy

Deadline: 14 September 2025

This is planned as a hybrid session. Please make sure to indicate whether you intend to participate in person or online

Call for Papers for Panel: Moving in the Medieval Apse, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 12 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

Moving in the Medieval Apse

International Medieval Congress (IMC 2026)

University of Leeds, July 6-9, 2026

Due by 12 September 2025

The medieval apse – adorned with its altar/piece, reliquaries, liturgical objects, or religious scenes – becomes a place of permanent movement(s) by bridging the spiritual to the corporal, the immaterial to the material, and the divine to the mortal. As these movements occur in time, one’s relation with the divine is changed, shaped, or negotiated.

The proposed session focuses on movements of devotional objects, images, and texts in the medieval apse. Suggested topics on movements in the medieval apse, from any geographic area or time period ,(between 300-1500), may include, but are not limited to:

  • Altarpieces: change in iconography, composition, materials

  • Reliquaries: multiplication of, change in materials, form or function

  • Liturgical objects: crosses, books, votive offerings

  • Frescoes, paintings, statues: composition, iconography, materials

  • Liturgy, feasts, music cultures, ritual in relation to objects

Submissions from a variety of disciplines are accepted including but not limited to: history, art history, visual culture, social history, cultural history, hagiography, religious studies, cultural studies, textual studies in a transdisciplinary perspective.

Please submit a 250- 400 word proposal (in English) for a 15-20 minute paper. Proposals should have an abstract format and be accompanied by a short CV, of no more than 800 words, including e-mail, institution, and profession. The session is planned to be in-presence. Please submit all relevant documents by 12 September 2025, to the e-mail address: andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat

Contact information: Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain (andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat)

Call for Papers for Panel: Across Seas, Across Cultures: The Transmission of Female Saint Cults from East to West, Renaissance Society of America Conference 2026 (San Francisco), Due by 10 Aug. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

 Across Seas, Across Cultures: The Transmission of Female Saint Cults from East to West

72nd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America Conference

San Francisco, 19-21 August 2026

Due by 10 August 2025

Organizer

Ioanna Christoforaki, Academy of Athens

Abstract Submission

Please submit paper title, abstract and CV to ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk

Session Proposal

This panel invites papers that explore the cross-cultural transmission, reception, and reinvention of female saint cults from the Christian East to the Latin West in the centuries leading up to and following the Crusades, with particular attention to their resonance during the Renaissance (1300-1500 C.E.). During this period of intensified contact between East and West—through crusades, pilgrimage, trade, and manuscript circulation—the cults of women, such as Catherine of Alexandria, Thecla, Barbara, Pelagia, Marina/Margaret of Antioch and others, were reimagined to suit the spiritual, political, and cultural needs of Latin Christendom.

The panel seeks to explore how these Eastern-origin saints were integrated into the devotional, artistic, and intellectual frameworks of Renaissance Europe, and how their stories were reshaped through translation, visual culture, and localized liturgical practice. We are particularly interested in papers that interrogate the interplay between gender, sanctity, and cross-cultural exchange in the construction of saintly authority during this transformative period. We seek contributions that examine how these cults were transmitted, adapted, and appropriated across cultural, linguistic, and theological divides. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The role of the Crusades, pilgrimage and holy sites in the movement of relics and saint cults from East to West

  • The role of Crusader memory and pilgrimage in sustaining or reshaping devotion

  • Visual representations of these saints in Renaissance Italy, Iberia, or Northern Europe

  • Theological or political uses of female saintly models in the context of ecclesiastical reform or royal patronage

  • Gendered readings of martyrdom, asceticism, and virginity across cultures

  • Monastic, mendicant, or courtly promotion of Eastern female saints

  • Gender, virginity, and martyrdom in cross-cultural saint narratives

  • Eastern case studies of individual saints and their cultic journeys

  • Political and theological motivations behind the promotion of Eastern female saints

  • Comparative East–West perspectives on virginity, martyrdom, and asceticism

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should include:

  • Paper Title (15-word maximum)

  • Abstract (150–200 words)

  • Curriculum Vitae (in .pdf or .doc format, maximum 2 pages)

  • PhD or other terminal degree completion date (past or expected)

  • Primary discipline

Please send submissions to ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk or christof@academyofathens.gr by August 10, 2025. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes and must be delivered in English. Presenters must be RSA members at the time of the conference.

For questions or informal inquiries, please contact the panel organizer at ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk or christof@academyofathens.gr.

We welcome proposals from scholars across disciplines focused but not limited to art history, history, literary studies, theology, and manuscript studies. Graduate students and early-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply.

Note

Speakers must be RSA members at the time of the conference.

Call for Papers Extended: Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities, Madrid (7-8 Oct. 2025), Due by 1 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers Extended

XVIII Jornadas Internacionales Complutenses de Arte Medieval

Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities

7-8 October 2025 Madrid, Spain

Due by 1 September 2025

Places:

  • Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Geografía e Historia

  • Museo Arqueológico Nacional

  • Casa Árabe

Architecture, objects, and material culture, as structuring agents of human relationships, play a key role in discovering the potential of understanding medieval art through the paradigm of transculturality. This method examines the negotiation of fluid artistic identities shaped by the mobility of people, circulation of objects, and transmission of ideas across diverse social, geographical, and religious contexts. The materiality of transcultural objects has rendered them repositories of memory, bearing witness to historical encounters across cultures. Their various recontextualization, restaging, and differing forms of appreciation have made them subject to manipulation, reuse, and re-signification, even after their integration into private collections or museums. Addressing these themes allows for a broader reflection from educational and museum studies. By examining intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity, the eighteenth edition of the Complutense International Conference on Medieval Art aims to uncover microhistories that offer a more nuanced understanding of otherness in the Middle Ages.

Invited speakers: María Elena Díez Jorge (UGR), Manuel Castiñeiras González (UAB), Beatriz Campderá Gutiérrez (MAN), Licia Buttà (URV), Raúl Estangüi Gómez (CSIC), Elvira Martín Contreras (CSIC), Alicia Miguélez Cavero (UNL), Theodora Konstantellou (DOaks), Ravinder Binning (DOaks), Julie Marquer (UdL), Herbert González Zymla (UCM), Víctor Rabasco García (ULE), María Puértolas Clavero (Museo Diocesano BarbastroMonzón), Julia Perratore (MMA), Helena Lahoz Kopiske (MAN)

Themes may include, but are not limited to: Transcultural narratives and artistic exchanges at historical or historiographical margins Processes shaping perceptions of otherness Itinerancy, performativity, and gendered dimensions of objects Ambivalence of terminology and problems of approaching sources and documents New museum narratives The relationship between art historical knowledge and tourism Proposals for papers up to 15 minutes in duration and posters should be send by 1 September 2025. Send title, abstract of not more than 250 words, and short author bio (not more than 10 lines) to: jornadas.transculturalidad@ucm.es.

Papers should be in Spanish, English, French or Italian. Decisions on acceptance will be made by the End of July. Papers, communications, and posters will be presented during the conference sessions. Posters would be printed by the conference organizers and displayed in the Facultad de Geografía e Historia and the Facultad de Comercio y Turismo of the UCM. After peer review, the various contributions will be published in a monograph.

For more information, visit https://www.ucm.es/intersections/jornadas-transculturalidad

Call for Papers: Timely Tusks: New Approaches to Global Medieval Ivories, ICMS Kalamazoo (14-16 May 2025), Due by 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

Timely Tusks: New Approaches to Global Medieval Ivories

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (May 14 - 16, 2026)

Due by 15 September 2025

1997 was a landmark year for the study of Gothic ivories, with the exhibition Images in Ivory at the Detroit Museum of Art and a plenary talk and two sessions at Kalamazoo. Thirty years later, the field has seen an explosion of scholarship and approaches, making for a timely revisit. The proposed session welcomes papers that examine ivory from 500-1500 - from anywhere and of any type. Topics might include the trade and market in raw materials, the organization and processes of production, the use and handling of various object types, issues of iconography, and post-medieval collecting, reception and treatment.

For more information and to submit, visit: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call

Call for Papers: Buboes, Orificies, and Horns: Non-Normative Bodies, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 15 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

Buboes, Orificies, and Horns: Non-Normative Bodies

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, May 14-16, 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

This panel examines medieval conceptualisations and representations of (non-)normative bodies, and aims to better understand the demarcations between the human and non-human, the abled and disabled, the white and non-white/racialised, the gender conforming and gender non-conforming body. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, including art history, literary criticism, disability studies, critical race studies, and gender studies. We adopt a broad definition of the ‘medieval world,’ and invite contributions on material from all geographic regions and time periods between ca. 500-1500, as well as the later re-appropriation of medieval material. Contributions that study the intersection of two or more bodily markers are encouraged.

We welcome papers from researchers, curators, conservators, librarians, and graduate students working on medieval bodies. This session will be held in person. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex proposal portal by 15 September 2025.

For more information or questions, please contact the organisers, Imke Vet (imke.vet@yale.edu) and Se Jin Park (sejin.park@yale.edu).

Call for Papers: Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 13 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Special Session

Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, May 14-16, 2026

Online Event

Due by 13 September 2025

This session investigates the complex dynamics involving sacred images and relics in the medieval period, focusing on profanation, theft, and disputes over ownership that reshaped their spiritual, social, and cultural significance. It examines acts of contestation that challenged established hierarchies and redefined sacrality. The panel will explore how medieval communities negotiated power, devotion, and identity through their relationships with sacred objects, with particular emphasis on the intertwined role of images and relics in religious life and social contexts.

Interdisciplinary contributions are encouraged, particularly in art history and anthropology. Through in-depth case studies covering various media, geographic areas, and historical periods, participants will analyze both symbolic meanings and practical implications of possession and contestation. The session will explore the social, legal, and theological frameworks that shaped late medieval perceptions of ownership, sacrality, and profanation, highlighting their role in conflicts and negotiations surrounding sacred objects.

This session aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how medieval societies engaged with sacred images and relics beyond veneration. It will highlight the cultural, devotional, and political tensions underpinning these interactions, offering new perspectives on authority, piety, and subversion within the medieval religious landscape.

Scholars are invited to submit a 300-word abstract, excluding references. Proposals should also include name, affiliation, email address, the title of the presentation, 6 keywords, a selective bibliography, and a short CV. Please send the documents to kalamazoocallforpapers@gmail.com by September 13, 2025.

Call for Papers: Leeds 2026: Funerary Art, Memory, and Contexts in Medieval Iberia: Bishops and Cathedrals, Due By 20 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

IMC Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Funerary Art, Memory, and Contexts in Medieval Iberia: Bishops and Cathedrals

Due by 20 September 2025

Studies on cultural memory are revolutionising ongoing scholarly debates in Premodern art history and heritage. The Middle Ages in Spain offer countless examples of overlooked figures, settings, and sources barely studied from this point of view in the country. Bishops were at the centre of this phenomenon. They were prolific patrons of the arts, and many cathedrals were prime settings and unparalleled repositories of both written testimony and spaces of belief and performance. The death of a famed bishop became a window into a carefully conceptualised world of ritual, visual, and textual remembrance, planned often years in advance and with implications far beyond this individual figure.

This IMC panel, part of the project FUNART (University of León / PIs: Prof. María Dolores Teijeira Marcos & Prof. Jose Alberto Morais Morán), aims to bring together scholars from all different career stages to analyse the intrinsic relationship between art and memory in regards to bishops, their patronage, and cathedrals in Iberia, c. 1000-1500.

Please, send a paper proposal of no more than 500 words, alongside a short bio, to Dr. Jesús Rodríguez Viejo (j.rodriguez.viejo@rug.nl) before September 20, 2025.

ICMA at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds 2025: Sponsored Sessions + Reception, Wednesday 9 July 2025

ICMA at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds 

ICMA Sponsored Session
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West, I & II
I: Wednesday 9 July 2025, 14.15-15.45
II: Wednesday 9 July 2025, 16.30-18.00
Esther Simpson Building, Room 2.12


ICMA Reception 
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
The Dry Dock
Wednesday 9 July 2025, 19:30-21:30
Student Meet and Greet at 19:00
All are welcome! Invite a colleague! 

Register
HERE to help us know how many to expect at the reception.

Dream of Constantine and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge

ICMA Sponsored Session
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West I

Wednesday 9 July 2025, 14.15-15.45
Esther Simpson Building, Room 2.12
Session 1202


Organiser & Moderator: Ioanna Christoforaki, Research Centre for Byzantine & Post-Byzantine Art, Academy of Athens
 
Multi-Sensory Experiences of Water and Water Motifs in Early Byzantium
Evan Freeman, Department of Global Humanities / Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

Liturgical Visions in the Life of Nephon (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca 1371z)
Vasileios Marinis, Yale Divinity School, Yale University

Looking at Relics, Seeking the Sacred
Cynthia Hahn, Department of Art & Art History, Hunter College, New York

Smelling the Divine: Multi-Sensory Devotion within the Cult of St Demetrios
Lucie Schwarz, Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania

ICMA Sponsored Session
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West II

Wednesday 9 July 2025, 16.30-18.00
Esther Simpson Building, Room 2.12
Session 1302


Organiser & Moderator: Ioanna Christoforaki, Research Centre for Byzantine & Post-Byzantine Art, Academy of Athens
 
Hierotopy and Singers 'on the Step': The Effect of Greek Liturgical Singing on Siculo-Norman Domes Joseph Williams, School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation,University of Maryland

Beyond Vision: Christians, Muslims, and Miracles at the Monastery of Our Lady of Saydnaya, 12th-13th Centuries
Pelia Werth, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

Unveiling the Sacred: The Late Medieval Practice of Covering Altarpieces and Devotional Images
Ralf van Bühren, Facoltà di Comunicazione Sociale Istituzionale,Pontificia Università della Santa Croce, Roma

 


ICMA Reception 
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
The Dry Dock
Wednesday 9 July 2025, 19:30-21:30

Student Meet and Greet, 19:00
Reception, 19:30


All are welcome! Invite a colleague! 
Please register HERE, to help us know how many to expect (non-committal)


Join fellow ICMA members for a special off-site reception at The Dry Dock on Wednesday 9 July 2025 from 19:30-21:30. Students are invited to join early at 19:00 to meet other student colleagues. Complimentary drinks and small bites will be provided. Food is available for purchase.

The Dry Dock is about a 10 minute walk from the University of Leeds campus, en route to central Leeds. 

The Dry Dock
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds LS2 3AX


https://www.socialpubandkitchen.co.uk/dry-dock-leeds

Conference: Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, 21-25 July 2025

Conference

Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art

Monday 21 July to Friday 25 July 2025

In 2025, the BAA will hold its summer conference in Leicester, which it last visited in 1900. While the built city has experienced great and destructive change since the turn of the twentieth century, there remains a lot of interesting Roman and medieval material to explore. The hinterland of Leicestershire, with south Derbyshire, also preserves a distinctive and fascinating architectural inheritance, particularly in its medieval churches. There are nationally important survivals from all artistic periods, from the collection of Anglo-Saxon sculpture at Breedon on the Hill to the Decorated Gothic style. Timber building is represented along with stone. Leicester itself has significant Roman remains. City and country alike were rich in religious houses. There are also significant survivals in stained glass, wall painting and other arts.

For more information about the conference, click here for the conference website.

Conference: Good Governance and the Built Environment of Late Medieval Cities (ca. 1200–1700), Royal Library of Belgium, 3-5 September 2025

Conference

Good Governance and the Built Environment of Late Medieval Cities (ca. 1200–1700)

Royal Library of Belgium, Kunstberg (Monts des arts) 28, 1000 Brussel (Salle Panorama)

3-5 September 2025

Join the Royal Library of Brussels to discuss and explore how the built environment of late medieval cities was conceptualized and physically shaped in relation to ideals of good governance. The conference covers a broad historical period (1200–1700) and includes urban centers ranging from Northwestern Europe to the Middle East.

Attendance is free of charge, but registration is required. Please register via this form.

Find out more information on the Governing and Building website.

Conference Programme

Wednesday 3 September 2025

13:00 Welcome

13:30-15:15 Session 1: Governing and Building the City: An Introduction (Session chair: Jan Dumolyn)

  • Nele De Raedt (UCLouvain) – Good Governance and the Built Environment: Central Themes and Questions

  • Philip Muijtjens (UCLouvain) – A Curriculum for a City? The Library in the Palazzo Comunale of Pistoia (1458-1461)

  • Minne De Boodt (KU Leuven/UCLouvain) – Building Brussels in Time of Political Transformation: Dialogues on Good Governance and the Built Environment (1400-1466)

15:45-17:00 Session 2: Governing Ideals and the Built Environment (Session chair : Jelle Haemers)

  • Niklas Groschinski (Oxford University) – Leisure Spaces, Sensorial Pleasure, and Public Health in Premodern City Planning

  • Julien Régibeau (ULiège) – Order and Architecture: Policing the City of Liège during the Chiroux–Grignoux Conflict

Thursday 4 September 2025

09:00-10:15 Session 3: Municipal Authorities and the Design, Instrumentalization and Regulation of the Built Environment (Session chair: Chris Fletcher)

  • Frans Camphuijsen & Nathan van Kleij (Amsterdam University) – A Matter of Morals: Stone Fines, Good Governance and the Urban Fabric in Late Medieval Towns

  • Anna Pomierny-Wąsińska (University of Warsaw) – Just Measures: Surveyors, Space, and Urban (Good) Governance in Late Medieval Florence

10:45-12:30 Session 4: The Endowment of Semi-Public Organisations (Session chair: David Napolitano)

  • Angela Isoldi (Radboud University) – Spatial and Social Networks: Endowments Shaping the Urban Fabric in Mamlūk Cairo (1250-1517)

  • Theodora Giovanazzi (Swiss Federal Technology Institute Lausanne) – Governing through Housing: The Scuole Grandi and Urban Welfare in 16th-Century Venice

  • Emine Öztaner (Ibn Haldun University) – Nurbanu Sultan’s “Waqf Neighborhood” in Üsküdar: Constructing, Populating and Governing Ma‘mûre (16th and 17thCenturies)

13:30-15:00 Visit to collections of the KBR

15:00-16:45 Session 5: Collaborating Social Groups (Session chair: Minne De Boodt)

  • Merlijn Hurx (KU Leuven) – “Civic” and “Royal” Meat Halls in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th Century

  • Emmanuel Joly (UCLouvain/IRPA) – The Prince and the Canons: Collaboration and Decision-Making in the remodelling of Liège’s Built Environment in the First Half of the 16th Century

  • Giuliana Mosca (Independent Scholar) – “In grande honore de la cità”: Government, Urban Space, and Architecture in 15th-century Perugia

Friday 5 September 2025

09:00-10:15 Session 6: The Representation of Governance (Session chair: Philip Muijtjens)

  • Elizabeth Den Hartog (Leiden University) – Local Lords on the Façade of Veere’s Town Hall (Netherlands). The Lords of Veere and their Relations with the Habsburg Regime in the Late 15th and Early 16th Centuries

  • Susan Tipton (Independent Scholar) – Good governance and the Built Environment: The Great Map of Augsburg (1626) and the Renewal of Civic Architecture in the Imperial City around 1600

10:45-12:00 Session 7: Ideal of Good Governance and Architectural Theory (Session chair: Nele De Raedt)

  • Miara Fraikin (KU Leuven) – “Building on the Foundations of Piety”: Architecture and Female Governance in 16th-Century France and the Low Countries.

  • Mats Dijkdrent (UCLouvain) – Engelbert of Admont as an Architectural Theorist: Ideas on Morally Good Architecture in 14th-Century Mirror Literature

13:30-15:00 Final discussion

Call for Papers: Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800, Leiden University (1-3 July 2026), Due by 1 October 2025

Call for Papers

Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800

Leiden University, Netherlands

1-3 July 2026

Due By 1 October 2025

Detail from Getijden van onser liever vrouwen (Paris: Wolfgang Hopyl, 10 September 1500), Brussels, KBR, INC A 2.188 (RP)

Prayer was central to religious life in the late medieval and early modern period. Despite growing scholarly interest in religious texts, devotional practices, and spirituality, prayer and prayer books remain comparatively understudied. Prayer could take on a multitude of forms and occur in a range of spaces, from public to secluded and private; from monastic, liturgical prayer to short, indulgenced invocations and meditative prayers that evoked a rich scala of emotions and mental images.

To pray, devotees – whether clerical or lay – often took a book to hand. Prayer books played a vital role during many moments in a person’s life in the performance of prayer and prayer-related practices. While the act of prayer is inherently transient, the books held or touched by late medieval and early modern devotees form codified and material evidence of the practices in which they engaged. Still extant in large numbers and containing a vast variety of textual and visual materials, these books – through both content and appearance – reflect the diversity of prayer practices as well as developments in book production. Taking the book as the central artefact for the study of prayer allows for an analysis that encompasses all aspects and components of prayer books, along with the actors involved in their production and use. This, in turn, enables us to chart the ‘cultural ecosystem’ in which prayer books were produced, circulated, and used.

This three-day international conference, hosted at Leiden University by the PRAYER project (ERC Starting Grant), with keynotes by Walter S. Melion (Emory University) and Kathryn M. Rudy (University of St Andrews), aims to bring together researchers working on books that were (intended to be) used in any form of prayer practice in the late medieval and early modern era (up to the eighteenth century). This conference aims to shed new light on prayer across late medieval and early modern Europe by exploring the broader ecosystem of prayer books. This includes a wide range of interactions between the material book, texts and images disseminated through it (and their connections to other types of objects, such as rosaries, small pipe clay figures, and single-sheet prints), the devotions inspired by these texts and images, the producers and buyers/readers of the books, and the communities they belonged to.


For further information on possible formats and topics for proposals, click here for a PDF of the entire Call for Papers.

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and short biography (max. 100 words) to prayer@hum.leidenuniv.nl by 1 October 2025. We aim to inform our speakers by 1 November 2025.

A selection of revised contributions, pending double peer-review, will be published in an edited volume in Brill’s series 'Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture' (https://brill.com/display/serial/INTE).

Organizing Committee: Anna Dlabačová, Irene Van Eldere, Susanne de Jong, and Lieke Smits