University of Virginia, Charlottesville
9-13 March, 2022
Call for Papers
The 97th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Virginia, with the generous support and collaboration of colleagues from Virginia Tech, the College of William & Mary, and Washington and Lee 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 and medievalism 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. 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.
Plenary addresses will be delivered by Roland Betancourt, Professor of Art History, University of California, Irvine; Seeta Chaganti, Professor of English, University of California, Davis; and Thomas E. A. Dale, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and incoming president of the Academy.
Location: Charlottesville is a diverse and historic city in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site including the campus of the University of Virginia as well as Monticello. The local airport, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport, has routine service to several major airline hubs, and is complemented by nearby service to Richmond International (RIC) and Dulles International (IAD) airports. For those along the eastern corridor, Amtrak supplies an alternative (CVS). Registration, book exhibits, and other events will take place on the campus of the University of Virginia within easy walking distance of conference hotels and numerous downtown restaurants. More specific information on venues, accommodations, and MAA student bursaries and travel grants will be made available next fall.
Theme(s): The Program Committee is committed to fostering conversation around the fifth-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. Several panels and a plenary session will explore the effects and implications of this moment and its aftermath, including but not limited to the history and theory of race and racism, the appropriation and study of the past, and the future of medieval studies inside and outside the academy. The Program Committee offers the additional 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 here have been proposed by the Program Committee; the list is not meant to be exhaustive or exclusive.
Proposals: Individuals may propose to offer a paper addressing one of the themes below, 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. Sessions usually consist of three 25-minute papers, and proposals should be geared to that length, although the committee is interested in other formats as well (roundtables, poster sessions, digital experiences, etc.). The Program Committee may choose a different format for some sessions after the proposals have been reviewed.
Submissions:
The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2021. All proposals, for individual papers, sessions, or special formats, should include the following information:
- Proposer's name (in format for the program)
- Statement of Medieval Academy membership (or statement that the individual’s specialty would not normally involve membership in the Academy)
- professional status/affiliation, if relevant (in format for the program)
- email address
- postal address
- telephone number(s)
- paper title
- theme for which the paper should be considered (or “general session”)
- abstract (maximum 200 words)
- audio-visual equipment requirements
-accessibility requirements
If a full panel is being proposed, the above information will be required for each paper, as well as for the session as a whole. For alternative format session proposal submissions, also a description of the alternative format (maximum 200 words).
Proposals must be submitted as a single PDF identified by the name of the submitter:
LASTNAME.FIRSTNAME.MAA2022 (example: GOWER.JOHN.MAA2022)
Please e-mail all submissions to
maa2022@collab.its.virginia.edu Selection Procedure
Paper and panel proposals will be reviewed for their quality, the significance of their topics, and their relevance to the conference themes. The Program Committee will evaluate proposals during the summer of 2021 and the Committee will inform all of acceptance or rejection by 1 September 2021.
Professional Behavior
All participants in the Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting are expected to read and adhere to our
Professional Behavior Policy.
ADA Accommodations
The 2022 meeting is committed to ensuring equal access to all conference events and activities, in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as amended, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), as well as other applicable state and local laws and University policy. The program committee has designated an Accessibility Chair (see below) who will serve as point of contact prior to the meeting for any participants requiring accommodations.
Themes and threads
- Race and its intersections
- Political medievalism
- Tyranny and resistance
- Rethinking the global medieval
- Boundaries and limits
- Vulnerability and the ethics of care
- Medieval disability/disabilities
- Gender and identities
- Queering the medieval
- Apocalypse and paradise
- Inter-religious coexistence and conflict
- Diplomacy and ambassadorial practices
- Comparative foodways and cuisines
- Trade and cultural exchange
- Environment and ecology
- Pedagogies: material, digital, embodied
- Medieval materialisms
- Restoration, preservation, looting
- Passions and emotions
- Transhistorical poetics
- Comparative text technologies
- Plague and pandemic
- Revelation and reason in medieval science
Program Committee for the 2022 Meeting (UVA faculty unless otherwise indicated):
Conference co-chairs:
Deborah McGrady, French, Director of Program in Medieval Studies
Bruce Holsinger, English, conference accessibility chair
Eric Ramírez-Weaver, Art
Committee members:
Ahmed H. al-Rahim, Religious Studies
Peter Baker, English
Courtney Barajas, English, Whitworth University, Medievalists of Color representative
Charlene Eska, English, Virginia Tech
Elizabeth Fowler, English
Matthew Gabriele, Religion and Culture, Virginia Tech
Elizabeth Harper, MAA Graduate Student Liaison
Nizar Hermes, Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures
Wan-Chuan Kao, English, Washington and Lee University
Jordan Love, Curator, Fralin Museum
Amy Ogden, French
Deborah Parker, Italian
Amanda Phillips, Art
Peter Potter, Virginia Tech Publishing
Lisa Reilly, Art and Architecture
Karl Shuve, Religious Studies
Julia Verkholantsev, Univ. of Pennsylvania, MAA representative
Dorothy Wong, Art and East Asia Center
