The EDID (Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization) Committee of the CSM/SCM invites papers for a session on queer world-making in medieval studies. This session takes as its starting point the idea that queerness is not only an identity category or critical lens, but also a mode of imagining, creating, and inhabiting other worlds. We are interested in how medieval texts envision alternatives to normative ideals, and in how queer approaches to these texts might open transformative possibilities.

This panel invites work that embraces queerness as expansive, intersectional, and intertwined with other modes of resistance and re-worlding. We especially welcome papers that engage the intersections of queerness and race, disability, trans studies, postcolonial critique, Indigeneity, and class.

Papers might consider:

•Queer spatialities, utopias, and/or ecologies in medieval literature and art

•Queer desire and embodiment in practices of world-making

•The politics of imagining otherwise: resistance, refusal, and possibility

•World-building and/or world-making in adaptation (fantasy, games, fandom, etc.)

•Queer pedagogy as institutional or epistemological world-making

Presentations may be in either English or French and should be 15- 20 minutes in length. Please submit proposals by email by January 5, 2026. Please note that while this is an in-person conference, the EDID committee can try to arrange some Zoom participation as needed for accessibility reasons within the parameters of what is possible at St Francis Xavier University. For Inquiries or Proposal Submissions, please contact Gavin Foster at gavin.foster@dal.ca.

Proposal Submission Details: Paper proposals must include a document giving the title plus a one-page abstract (without identifying the author). A separate document should consist of a one-page curriculum vitae which includes the paper’s title at the top.

**Scholars need not be members of the Canadian Society of Medievalists to submit proposals but, by the time of the conference, must be members in good standing and are expected to pay their 2025-26 annual membership fees to CSM / SCM by March 15, 2026 if they are not already members.