62nd International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 13 - 15, 2027)

Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Hybrid Session (Virtual and In-person session)

Medieval monks cultivated gender-segregated networks which supported their own learning, dialogues, and customs, which meant people assigned female at birth were essentially locked out of much of intellectual life. Eve Sedgewicks work on homosociality has described "the continuum between 'men loving men' and 'men promoting the interests of other men'." This panel invites work which interrogates the ways in which the patriarchal system of monasticism created structures of male bonding and loyalty which excluded women except for utility, and examines the limits of those structures: questions of resistance and reinvention, male exclusion from policed masculinity, and women's own complicity.

If you are interested, please apply by September 15, 2026. If you have any questions, feel free to contact panel organizers:

Lindsay Gill (Ig8@iu.edu) and Zac Engledow (zacclift@iu.edu).