CENTERS AND PERIPHERIES: THE GLOBAL PREMODERN CALL FOR PAPERS AND SESSIONS April 20-22, 2023

EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 14, 2022

Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas

Featuring Keynote Speakers: Jonathan Hsy, George Washington University and Ulinka Rublack, University of Cambridge 

Jonathan Hsy will be speaking on “Crafty Mobilities: Disabled Travel Writing and a Global Middle Ages”

Ulinka Rublack will be speaking on "The Triumph of Fashion in the Early Modern World"

The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at Texas Tech University invites proposals for papers and sessions for our international conference “Centers and Peripheries: The Global Premodern.” Recent decades have seen the study of the premodern past expand to include diverse geographies, peoples, objects, and texts, revealing parallels and interconnections across the globe, and challenging people to re-think how the more distant past continues to inform the present. These developments have challenged the assumed centrality of Europe and Western cultural norms in narratives of the premodern past by foregrounding interconnection and exchange with constituencies historically viewed as peripheral or subaltern. 

This conference forms part of the Centenary celebration of Texas Tech University. Our goal is to gather scholars in person from across disciplines and across the world to reconsider the spatial and temporal borders of the premodern past (here understood broadly as the period before approximately 1800 CE). The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center encourages scholars working on premodern topics in any geographical domain, from any disciplinary perspective, to submit proposals for full panels or individual papers. 

Please note: If the organizers judge the risk for an in-person event to be too high, the conference will be held virtually instead of in person. 

Papers are invited on topics including but not limited to: 

• •the movement of people, things, and ideasacross premodern spaces
• •intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, anddis/ability
• •race and religions
• •health and the human body
• •borders & border-crossings
• •materiality & material culture
• •travel: pilgrimages or crusades in literatureand/or history
• •environmental & animal studies
• •translation studies
• •manuscript studies
• •mapping
• •public premodern studies: making thedistant past speak to the present

For individual papers, please submit a 200-word abstract with name and professional affiliation. For full panels, please submit a 300-word abstract that describes the scope and aims of the complete panel and identifies the titles of the individual papers that constitute the panel, along with names and professional affiliations for each panel participant. Full panel submissions must include at least three papers and no more than four. Panels with four papers must limit papers to 15-minutes. 

Submissions should be directed to: mrsc@ttu.edu. We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students, early career scholars, and postgraduate students, as well as collaborative abstract submissions. Please direct any questions to Jacob Baum, Interim Director, TTU Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center [email: jacob.m.baum@ttu.edu.] 

The deadline for submissions is October 14, 2022. Acceptance notices will be sent no later than 15 November 2022. 

Sponsored by TTU Humanities Center