Deadline Extended for Conference for Medieval Studies

Deadline Extended

The seventh annual Conference for Medieval Studies, a graduate student conference sponsored by Comitatus (the Purdue Medieval Studies student organization) will be held at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana on February 20-21, 2009. The theme for this year’s conference will be "Saints and Sinners of the Middle Ages."

Ann W. Astell, Professor of Theology at Notre Dame University and author of The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (1990), Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (1994), Chaucer and the Universe of Learning (1996), and Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (2006) will be the keynote speaker for this year’s conference.

Our theme looks at the various roles of saints and sinners throughout the Middle Ages. The literary and historical texts surrounding these medieval figures are multilingual, fantastic, and spiritually rich—fitting well into the interdisciplinary approach of our conference. Because saintliness and sinfulness could be idiosyncratic, they were often expressed in different and interesting ways in the texts of the Middle Ages. What is more, saintliness and sinfulness extend beyond words on a page to other areas such as scribal practices, manuscript creation, art, architecture, and many other facets of medieval life.

We are inviting both 250-word abstracts for papers and panel proposals from graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Individual papers should be kept to 15-20 minutes in length. Possible topics might include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

- The lives of saints in vernaculars and their dependence upon the Latin tradition.

- The occurrence of marginalia in manuscripts depicting both the sacred and the sordid.

- The role of saintliness or sinfulness in everyday medieval life.

- The commodification of relics in the Middle Ages.

- Saintliness and sinfulness in detailed illuminations, wall paintings, architectural reliefs, etc.

- The experiences of holy women and holy men.

Due Date for Abstracts: November 21st, 2008

Please send all abstracts to:
Jack R. Baker
jackrbaker@purdue.edu (preferred method)
Purdue University
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038