Paper and poster submissions are invited for the Gender and Medieval Studies 2019 conference, to be held at Durham University, 7-10 January 2019. The conference theme is ‘Gender and Aliens’.
In recent years discourse around ‘aliens’, as migrants living in modern nation-states, has been highly polarised, and the status of people who are technically termed legal or illegal aliens by the governments of those states has often been hotly contested. It is evident from studies of the past, however, that the movement of people is not a recent phenomenon: in the medieval west, one of the Latin terms applied to such people was alieni (‘foreigners’, or ‘strangers’), and it is clear from the surviving evidence that there were many people in the Middle Ages who could be, and indeed were, identified as aliens. This conference aims to stimulate debate about the ways in which gender intersected with and related to the idea of such aliens – and, more broadly, alienation – in the whole medieval world from c. 400 to c. 1500. The organisers welcome proposals for papers on any topic related to gender and aliens or alienation, broadly construed, and encourage submissions relating to the world beyond Europe. Papers might consider topics such as:
- refugees, immigrants, emigrants
- inclusion and exclusion
- alterity and difference
- outlaws, the law, legality
- marginalised or disenfranchised groups
- non-normative bodies, illness, disability
- acculturation
- imagined geographies
- borders and frontiers
- ethnicity and identity
- slavery and slaves
In addition to sessions of papers, the conference will also include a poster session. Proposals for a 20-minute paper or for a poster can be submitted at https://tinyurl.com/
The conference organisers are also happy to consider proposals for other kinds of presentation. Please contact the organisers at gmsconference2019@gmail.com to discuss these.
Some travel bursaries will be available for students and unwaged delegates to attend this conference. Please see http://medievalgender.co.uk/ for details.
