The special thematic strand of the next International Medieval Congress, ‘Otherness’, provides an excellent opportunity to organize a session on the Christianity of the Islamic world. Each year the IMC holds, on top of its core sessions on western Middle Ages, sessions on Islam, Byzantium and the Crusades, but Christians under Muslim rule hardly ever appear in the program. To fill this void, I plan to propose a session on the Christianity of the Islamic world for the next IMC, to be held 3-6 July 2017.
I hope that this session will help raise awareness among medievalists of the rich Christian heritage beyond the political boundaries of Christendom. One could hardly find larger audience for all things medieval than at the International Medieval Congress. The IMC is Europe’s largest annual event in the humanities: it draws more than two thousand participants from all over the world and features several hundred sessions on a wide variety of topics. For more information, please find the latest IMC newsletter attached; see also the IMC website athttp://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125137/international_medieval_congress.
Papers on any topic concerning the medieval Christianity of the Islamic world are welcome. The chronological limits are roughly the Arab conquest and the Ottoman conquest of Arab lands. No linguistic restrictions apply: papers based on sources written in Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Greek, Latin, etc. are all suitable. At the same time, in line with the IMC 2017 thematic strand, I would like to encourage papers that explicitly consider Christian experiences and perceptions of otherness under Muslim rule. Such papers could examine, for example, the experiences of Christian individuals, social groups, or confessional communities, Christian views of Muslims, Jews, or other Christian communities, Christian perceptions of themselves as others in an Islamic society, or Christian definitions of ‘self’ in opposition to the Muslim, Jewish, etc. ‘other’. See the IMC call for papers below for details of the thematic strand.
Please send abstracts of up to 200 words to ks591@cam.ac.uk until 27 September. Some financial assistance to attend the Congress is available from the IMC; to those ineligible for the IMC bursary I may be able to secure assistance.
Best wishes,
Dr Krisztina Szilágyi
Research Associate
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
University of Cambridge
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge
CB3 9DA
U.K.
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