We are seeking submissions for the following session at the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 10-13, 2018. These sessions are sponsored by the  Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with the Centre for Medieval Literature at the University of Southern Denmark and the University of York.

Session #1. Boundaries of Negotiations in Later Medieval Europe: political, cultural, economic

Recent research has demonstrated an increased interest in the various forms of negotiating in the Middle Ages. In late medieval Europe, in particular, amid political, social and religious conflicts, to negotiate is a prominent practice at different levels of society. A whole set of vocabulary in vernacular languages is used, for instance, to describe occurrences of transactions, diplomatic talks, social or even religious claims. This session welcomes papers using any disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches  that consider aspects of negotiating that may take place in, but not limited to, political, cultural, or economical contexts in later medieval Europe, including papers that consider the role of emotion in a negotiation. The aim of this session is to bring together scholars from different fields in order to examine aspects of intercommunication during that time period. 

Session #2. Interpreting unfinished later medieval manuscripts: Interdisciplinary Approaches

In this session, we would like to address from an interdisciplinary standpoint questions regarding unfinished manuscripts in later medieval Europe. Were image programs planned and never finished? Was the text altered in a significant form? What can an informed understanding of the text/image relationship in a given case of an unfinished manuscript reveal? Are there extant sources of any unfinished manuscripts that might reveal how a later patron or artist/ script may envision adapting a work to suit his or her current needs? Why were specific manuscripts/versions of manuscripts never finished? This session will include visual elements such as images and marginalia, the physical layout of text and image, spaces for images that never got executed, and the codicological structure of the manuscripts themselves. 

Abstracts for papers of 15-20 minutes or any questions should be sent to Anne-Hélène Miller (ahm@utk.edu).  The deadline for submissions is September 15 2017. The submission guidelines and the required Participant Information Form are available at wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions.

The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

601 Greve Hall

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Phone: 865-974-1859

Fax: 865-974-3655

Mailing Address:

915 Volunteer Blvd.

Dunford Hall, Sixth Floor

Knoxville, TN 37996-4065