Medieval Round Table Silver Anniversary Symposium

University of Melbourne, 4-5 June

Call for Papers

This year we celebrate the silver anniversary of the Medieval Round Table discussion group, which has been meeting monthly for 25 years!  To commemorate this anniversary, we are holding a small symposium on June 4 and 5 at the University of Melbourne.  Papers are welcome on any aspect of medieval or medievalism studies.

We are keen to reflect on teaching as well as research, and the future of our disciplines, both within and beyond the university sector.  Since we share a commitment to thinking about the past and its manifest impacts on the present, we invite reflection on how our disciplines have developed: what have been the vital and emergent ideas and modes of critique that shape our thinking?  Environmentalism, climate change, perceptions of country and their globalized effects is only one cluster in the front of public attention now. Elsewhere our local and global colleagues have stepped up to the imperative of thinking about how and why and to what ends Medieval Studies conducts its public engagement.  Social media platforms, face-to-face meetings of all kinds, online discussions have been leading charges in critical analysis and subsequent changes in social policy and institutional formations around race, diversity, inclusion, gender.  At the same time, colleagues in the history of the book, traditional author study, ethnomusicology, patristic studies, early English studies, natural philosophy and more continue to produce work that will always matter to our disciplines.  Over the last twenty-five years, the Medieval Round Table has hosted papers and presentations from all these scholarly fields: it's this diversity and range that keeps us all coming back each month to listen and learn and share the knowledge, as well as the jokes.

So, we're inviting abstracts for papers, panels, lightning panels, responses: the format can be shaped by the kind of contributions you and your colleagues would like to make. The Medieval Round Table has been dedicated to responding to the needs of its participants.  Since this is not a lavish or elaborate symposium, we have some real flexibility in responding to offers of papers and/or panels.

Abstracts in a Word document are invited to Anne McKendry - annelmk@unimelb.edu.au - by Tuesday 31 March 2020.   Please include information about any digital requirements and thoughts about format.