International Congress of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University

We are getting ready for Kalamazoo, May 11-13, 2023!
Vintage poscard "Greetings from KALAMAZOO, Michigan with images of buildings in the letters of Kalamazoo.

The International Congress of Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo) will take place May 11-13, 2023 on the campus of Western Michigan University. The Center for Premodern Studies (CPS) regularly sponsors a van to provide free transportation for graduate students to and from the conference. If you are interested in riding with us, please email the Center at premodstudies@umn.edu.

CPS will sponsor four panels this year at Kalamazoo. Click the drop-down menu to learn more. 

 

Mediterranean Studies is helping the field think more comparatively and bring into dialogue scholars working in many fields from Spanish, French, Arabic, and Italian. Piracy and captivity affected the global Mediterranean in a way that linked multiple cultures and linguistic traditions through raiding, sea voyages, and the slave trade. This panel aims to explore how medieval Mediterranean authors crafted the image of the pirate—as well as the journey of their captives—and made sense of this dangerous and ubiquitous enterprise.

Presenters:

Travis Bruce (McGill University): "Medieval Muslim Maritime Violence and the Christian Spiritual Economy"

Laurin Günther Herberich (Ruprecht-Karls-Universitát Heidelberg): "Out and Proud: The "Pirata publicus" in Venetian Archival Records"

Ana Belén Cano-Carrillo (Universidad de Granada): "Piracy and the Debate about Slavery and Captivity in Situations in the Medieval Mediterranean"

Moderator: Alex Korte (PhD candidate, University of Minnesota Department of Spanish & Portuguese) 

Panel Organizers: Alex Korte, Sara Gardner, Michelle Hamilton

Presenters: David Terry (Bismarck State College): "Jewish Victims of Piracy: The Exploitation of a Medieval Identity"

Christopher Flynn (MN State University Mankato): "Pirate, Privateer, Prisoner: The Case of Reynald de Châtillon"

Christopher Herde (University of Wisconsin Madison): "Towers, Pits, and Harbors: Structures of Enslavement in Frankish Acre"

Emily Sohmer Tai (Queensborough Community College, CUNY): "The Captive as Ethnographer Piracy and Captivity in the Medieval Travel Narrative"

Moderator: Alex Korte (PhD candidate, University of Minnesota Department of Spanish & Portuguese)

Panel Organizers: Alex Korte, Sara Gardner, Michelle Hamilton

This panel explores how medieval Mediterranean authors relied on prevailing notions of feeling (broadly defined) to craft their work and codify into letters the multifaceted experience of their contemporary world.  

Presenters: Adam Mahler (PhD candidate, Harvard): "The Leixa-pren, Recursive Poetics, and the Environment in the Galician-Portuguese Cantigas de amigo." 

Jason David Busic (Denison University): "And so God revealed it full of sweetness": Orality, Interiority, and Beauty in Hafs Ibn Albar's Translation of the Psalms (889)"

Noah Cole (PhD candidate, Florida State): "Political Emotions: St. Bernardino, Factions, and the Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion" 

Núria Silleras-Fernández (Colorado Boulder): "Beatriz de Silva: Feelings Rewritten and a Sainthood Constructed"

Moderator: Sara Gardner (PhD candidate, University of Minnesota Department of Spanish & Portuguese)

Panel Organizers: Alex Korte, Sara Gardner, Michelle Hamilton

Presenters: Darren Henry-Noel (Queen's Univ. Kingston): The Most Crusading Kings? Outremer, Crusading, and the Mediterranean Dimensions of Capetian Sacral Kingship

Stephan Knott (University of Minnesota): Imagining a New Society: Frankish Greece after the Fourth Crusade

Leland Renato Grigoli (American Historical Association): I Didn’t Do It! The Capetian Conquest of Toulouse and the Written Record 

Elizabeth Quillen (University of Minnesota): Gascons in Les grandes chroniques 

Moderator: Elijah T. Wallace

Panel Organizers: Stephan Knott, Elizabeth Quillen

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