This panel will discuss how the conception and operation of “crisis” intersect with issues of gender and the cultural codes of society. Assuming a broad temporal scope for the Middle Ages (c.500 CE–c.1500 CE), the panel is interested in examining how societal constructions of gender triggered and were, in turn, shaped and reshaped by disruptions and upheavals in religious life, literary culture, economic structure, and political organization. With its capacity to span the distance between private and public realms, can gender mediate the conceptualization of internal and subjective crises as well as large-scale social tensions and changes? Possible topics for papers include, but are not limited to:• Constructions of gender in military, legal, and economic crises: how wars shaped definitions of masculinity and femininity; women’s ownership and possession of land; women as heads of households; ideals of king- and queenship; gender in political decision-making.• Gender in personal, sexual, and domestic crises: marital strife, extra-marital/illicit affairs, transgressive relationships, and their representation in literature.• (Mis)gendering the causes and consequences of crises: scapegoating members of a particular gender, accusations of witchcraft, attempts to enforce gender binaries and roles. In religious contexts: clerical misogyny; conflicts generated by the spiritual ambitions of women, especially laywomen; clashes between the Church and female religious communities; the rejection of normative masculine and feminine ideals by monks/nuns.• Crisis and queerness: the dissolution of binaries and linearities in individual identity, temporality, and space to reflect as well as engender crises.• Gender in symbolic representations of crisis, such as allegorical figures of Death, Hunger, etc.Interdisciplinary approaches and papers which look at medieval cultures beyond Europe are particularly welcome. Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short bio to Angana Moitra (O.P. Jindal Global University, angana.moitra@jgu.edu.in) and Aparna Chaudhuri (Ashoka University, aparna.chaudhuri@ashoka.edu.in) by 4 September 2023.