Identity in Flux: the Making and Unmaking of Medieval Social Categories
Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2023
Date of conference: October 20, 2023
Invitation: This virtual conference invites papers to consider medieval practices of identity formation and representations of identity. Examples of possible topics to consider include: How might medieval models of consciously constructed literary character illuminate the constructedness of identity and/or textual representations of identity? How do medieval notions of identity help us to understand it as unstable, contextually contingent, and its categories as mutually constitutive— as a species of performative participation rather than a static possession? Conversely, how might medieval texts work to stabilize or mystify the mutability of identity? We welcome papers that come to these and related questions from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Considerations of national, racial, religious, and gender/trans identity are welcome, as are papers concerned with kinship and familial affiliation, class/estate, and the intersections of these forms of identity.
Instructions for submission: Please send an abstract of no more than 150 words to hcush@email.unc.edu and mariah_min@brown.edu before the deadline. Include your name, affiliation, email, and pronouns. Please indicate in your submission whether you would like your essay to be considered for inclusion in a possible forum of published essays.