CALL FOR PAPERS: Medieval and Early Modern Studies Symposium ‘Sex and Gender Politics’

Venue: Northumbria University, Newcastle

Date: 9 October 2019

Keynote speaker: Dr Elena Woodacre (University of Winchester), author of The Queens Regnant of Navarre: succession, politics and partnership, 1274-1512, lead editor of the Routledge History of Monarchy, founder of the Royal Studies Network

This one-day event hosted by the Medieval and Early Modern Studies research group at Northumbria University, Newcastle, brings together academics, early career researchers, and PhD students for an interdisciplinary symposium linking new and more traditional approaches to medieval and early modern gender studies broadly defined.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of approaches to gender studies to include, for example, incorporation of LGBTQ and challenging heteronormativity, history of emotions, and the recognition that to understand gender relations, we must equally study both femininity and masculinity. At the same time, interdisciplinary approaches, from literature, archaeology, music, history, linguistics, art and performance, continue to provide us with new and exciting ways of unlocking experiences of the past as both physical and sexual, as well as structured by gendered social norms.

We invite 250-word proposals for 20-minute papers on the theme of ‘Sex and Gender Politics’ but are also open to other formats (roundtable discussions, shorter work-in-progress papers, performances, reconstructions, posters etc). We hope that the informal atmosphere of a symposium will provide a friendly forum for both developed work as well as work-in-progress and trying out new ideas.

We welcome proposals relating to gender, sex and politics in their broadest senses. Moreover, we understand the term ‘politics’ broadly, as incorporating both governance and power relations between individuals and groups, therefore relating to court and diplomacy, local, family, and religious politics.

Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• Expressions of identity
• Mistresses and favourites
• Cross-dressing on stage and beyond
• Sexual violence and harassment 
• Representation and iconography
• Sexuality and eroticism
• Authority and power
• History of emotions
• Consumerism and material culture
• Work and leisure
• Boundaries, restrictions, limitations, and resistance

Please email your proposals to Katarzyna Kosior by 8 July 2019.

ALL FOR PAPE

CALL FOR ARTICLES: Public Medievalist Special Series—Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages

If 2017 has taught us anything, it’s that sexism remains rampant in our society. In a year that began with the Women’s March and ended with #metoo, grappling with the way that our society defines and treats people based upon their gender is more relevant than ever. And just as with race, many of our present perceptions of gender have been shaped by both medieval history and contemporary fantasies about the medieval past.

A New Special Series
Beginning in 2018, The Public Medievalist will launch a new special series: Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages. Like our ongoing Race, Racism and the Middle Ages series, our gender series will explore the complex and fascinating ways that medieval people understood and performed their genders, will disrupt myths about gender binaries in the past, and will examine how myths about medieval gender shape masculinity and femininity in the present. We’re soliciting articles on any and all aspects of medieval gender, or on gender and medievalism in the modern world. We will be accepting submissions on a rolling basis.

We’re interested both in fresh ideas and in adaptations of your existing work or work-in-progress. The only critical element is that they be geared toward a public audience, which the TPM editors are happy to help you with. Appropriate topics might include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Debunking myths about medieval gender and gender roles (both male and female)
• Gender non-conformists
• Women in the medieval workforce
• “Chivalry”
• Queenship and kingship
• Gender in neomedieval entertainment (games, film, television, fiction)
• Gender and medieval literature
• Medieval people who were transgender, genderqueer, or nonbinary
• Intersectional identities (gender and faith, gender and race, gender and class, etc.)

We encourage submissions from scholars at any point in their career, as well as medievalists outside the traditional boundaries of the academy. And, we are particularly interested in submissions about medieval gender outside of the confines of Western Europe.

Feel free to pitch us an idea or send a full submission to editor@publicmedievalist.com, and be sure to consult our guidelines for prospective authors before submitting.