The Midwest MLA will hold its annual convention 11/12-11/15 in Columbus, OH, with the theme "arts and sciences." In keeping with that theme, and inspired by the affective turn in literary studies, this Special Session invites papers on the art and science of medieval emotions.

Medieval texts often fuse artistic and scientific approaches to understanding and representing emotion, feeling, and affect. Witness, for example, the fact that we find texts as diverse as romances and sermons drawing on optical theory to explain how feelings like love and lust are transmitted: these texts explicate medieval science, but at the same time use artistic strategies to visualize invisible processes.

Contributors are invited to address the fusion of art and science in medieval discussions of emotion, but are also welcome to engage the art or the science of emotion separately.

Papers might address questions including, but not limited to, the following: How do medieval sciences inform literary representations of affect? How do medieval texts use metaphor, analogy, or allegory to concretize feelings which are so often experienced as ineffable? To what extent do discussions of emotion inform medieval perceptions of contemporary political or religious developments and controversies? How can medieval texts help present-day readers to see our own cultural conceptions of emotion in a new light?

Please submit 250-word abstracts by 5 April 2015 to Bonnie Erwin, bonnie_erwin@wilmington.edu.