Call for Papers and Proposals
Sponsor: Medieval and Early Modern Field Committee, University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The Medieval and Early Modern Field Committee at the University of Maryland, College Park invites paper, workshop, and session proposals for the 2010-2011 academic year on the theme of “Racial Consciousness in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds.” The committee desires to support inquiry into the complex, stratified, and still unsatisfactorily articulated constructions of racial “difference” that existed in the medieval and early-modern periods.
Among the questions presenters may want to consider: In what ways and to what extent do medieval and early-modern perceptions of racial difference continue to inform the assumptions, perceptions and consciousness of modern societies? In what form and to what extent did the heritage of ancient Greek and Roman ideas about race survive or change in these periods? How is the construction of racial categories reflected in the literary and artistic products of the Middle Ages and early modernity? How were the first encounters of pre-modern Europeans with Asians, Africans, or indigenous American peoples shaped by prior assumptions and constructions of race and in what ways did these encounters affect the development of subsequent racial ideas and ideologies? And how did notions of race relate to notions of ethnic difference among the Caucasian populations of the European continent and the Mediterranean littoral?
As a university initiative designed to foster exchange and contact among scholars of the medieval and early-modern periods on the College Park campus, and to publicize the wealth of scholarship in these fields, the committee is especially interested in supporting interdisciplinary proposals
that foster graduate student and faculty dialogue across disciplines. Further preference will also be given to proposals that have the potential to engage active participation from scholars from the broader Washington, DC region. Consideration will be given not only to traditional conference sessions and key-note lectures but also to less conventional symposia, workshops, and “teach-ins.”
Prospective presenters and conveners should submit a short outline and description of the event for consideration by
October 15, 2010 to the committee at
cconnoll@umd.edu.
