Hello, 

I am looking for 2-3 papers to sit on a special session for the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo 2017). The session will consider textual instances of cross-cultural contact between the Latin Christian West and "Eastern" worlds. If interested, please send short abstracts (250 words) to the listed email address. For further detail, please see the below description of the panel:

This proposed session of papers will explore later medieval (twelfth-fifteenth century) texts of transmission; that is, those texts that function as religious, ethnic, and/or regional instances of cross-cultural contact. The session will focus on texts that figure contact--whether coded or explicit--between the Latin Christian West and “Eastern” worlds. This broad topic aims to build upon recent critical work that has turned to place as a methodological approach. Scholars of the medieval Mediterranean, for example, have compellingly demonstrated how the geographic and psychic (imagined representations) study of place can expand and enrich our understanding of medieval networks. Our aim for this session is to showcase papers that consider an East-West geographic axis in relation to works of cultural transmission. Eastern worlds may include, but are not limited to, those of Islamic, Slavic, and Mongol affiliation. 

-Misho Ishikawa, UCLA