Meeting Day 2: Friday, March 21

33. Working Across Institutional and Disciplinary Boundaries (Roundtable)
Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee (GSC)
Emerson Hall 305

Organizers: Loren Lee (University of Virginia), Rebekkah Hart (Case Western Reserve University), and Camila Marcone (Yale University)
Chair: Rebekkah Hart
Participants: Musa Kazim Azimli (University of Virginia), Rachel Brody (Boston College), Maria Carriere (Fordham University), Blake De Luca (University of California Berkeley), Curtis Rager (Fordham University), and Wendy Vencel (North Carolina State University).

34. New Perspectives on Medieval Scandinavia
Sever Hall 203

Chair: Craig Davis (Smith College)
Annie C. Humphrey (Kean University), “Stíga: Old Norse Gender Beyond the Binary”
Hunter Morgan (Western Michigan University), “Becoming Parceval: How Parcevals saga ‘Translates’ Chrétien’s Hero for a Norse Audience”
Cecily Hughes (Case Western Reserve University), “A Place to Shine: Darkness and Light in a Medieval Swedish Sacrament Niche”
Gert Tinggaard Svendsen (Aarhus University), “Forging Trusting Nordic Nations: Security, Trade, and Social Trust in the Viking Age”


35. Economies of Violence at Sea
Emerson Hall 101

Organizer and chair: Emily Sohmer Tai (CUNY Queensborough)
Kathryn L. Reyerson (University of Minnesota), “The Piracy of Kings and Popes in the 1380s”
Travis Bruce (McGill University), “Ransoming Captives for Spiritual Capital in the Medieval Mediterranean”
Philipp Höhn (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), “Follow the Money: The Economics of Maritime Violence in Late Medieval England”
Emily Sohmer Tai, “Economies of Restraint”


36. Bringing the Global Middle Ages to K-12 Classrooms
Sever Hall 306

Organizer: Courtney Luckhardt (University of Southern Mississippi)
Chair: Scott Bruce (Fordham University)
Bradley Phillis (Appalachian State University), “Curricular Teleologies: The Middle Ages in K-12 History Classrooms”
Julianne Bruneau (Wakonse Foundation), “Barbarians and Gatekeepers: Studying the Global Middle Ages in High School Literature Classrooms”
Jeremy Stitts (Princeton University), “Innovate, Communicate, Elevate: Harnessing Content Creation for Secondary Education”
Courtney Luckhardt, “Global Medieval Studies for All: Bridging the Gap between Town and Gown in the Twenty-First Century”


37. Class, Affiliation, and Supportive Communities
Emerson Hall 104

Chair: Deeana Klepper (Boston University)
Lucia Waldschuetz (Princeton University), “Quid pro quo: Relationships of Dependence within Estate Communities of Early Medieval Egypt”
Judah D. Galinsky (Bar-Ilan University), “Models of Communal Charity in the Jewish Communities of France and Iberia”
Julianna Visco (Princeton University), “Hidden Handiwork: Textile Labor in the Decameron”


38. The Politics of Memory of the Medieval Celtic World I: Ireland
Sever Hall 206

Organizer: Colin Brady (Harvard University)
Chair: Nicholas Thyr (Queen’s University Belfast)
Jo Wolf (Virginia Tech), “Remembering the Yellow Death: The Justinianic Pandemic and its Impact on Law and Legal Process in Early Medieval Ireland”
Colin Brady, “Consent, Consultation, and Cultural Memory in the Revival of the Óenach Tailten: 1007-1166”
Ciaran Fiona McDonough (University of Iceland), “’The Real State of this Country at a Remote Period of its History’: Medieval Irish Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Antiquarianism”


39. Digital Medieval Studies
Sever Hall 102

Chair: Laura Morreale (Middle Ages for Educators, Princeton University)
Daniel O’Donnell (Humanities Innovation Lab, University of Lethbridge), “The Distributed Digital Edition and Open Science Infrastructure: Building the Visionary Cross Edition”
Marija Blašković (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), “Visualized Ancestry: Portuguese Nobility According to the Livro de Linhagens do Deão”
Ian Cornelius (Loyola University Chicago), “The Digital Index of Middle English Verse in 2025”
Andrea Nanetti (Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts), “Integrating Traditional Scholarship and Generative AI for Visual Knowledge Discovery: Marco Polo’s ‘Description of the World’ as a Showcase”


40. Musical Lives in the Mediterranean, 1100-1300: A Proposal for Song-Centered History
Sever Hall 214

Organizer and chair: Emma Dillon (King’s College London)
Alice Hicklin (King’s College London), “Of Fields, Fishponds, and Fiefs: Documentary Evidence for Trouvères, c. 1175-1250″
Betty Rosen (King’s College London), “‘This Calls for a Poem’: Friendly Poetizing in Ayyubid Syria and Egypt”
Geneviève Young (King’s College London), “Who Listens When the (Un)named Trouvère Sings?”
Emma Dillon, “Listening in/to the Inventory of Eudes de Nevers (d. Acre, 1266)”


41. Sine quo non: Manuscript Medium and (Con)Textual Meaning
Sever Hall 202

Organizer: Beatrice Kitzinger (Princeton University)
Chair: Joshua O’Driscoll (The Morgan Library and Museum)
Beatrice Kitzinger (Princeton University) and Jamie Reuland (Princeton University), “An Angel Descends on Princeton Fragment 32-13: Image, Music, and Manuscript for an Unknown Easter”
Elaine Treharne (Stanford University), “Presens scriptum: The Present Writing of Prayers in a Thirteenth-Century Mortuary Roll”
Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton University), “Fragmentary Studies: The Decontextualisation of Palimpsests”


42. Medieval Climate, Environment, and Ecology
Sever Hall 106

Chair: Michael McCormick (Harvard University, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past)
Christopher Flynn (Minnesota State University), “Weather and Warfare in the Ninth-Century Carolingian World”
Alice Wolff (Cornell University), “A Matter of Thorns and Thistles”
Dane Smith (University of Wisconsin Madison), “Know Your Enemy: Climate and Difference in the Taktika of Leo the Wise”
Sara Torres (University of New Mexico), “Insular Desire, Climate, and Empire in the Premodern Atlantic”


43. The “Clerics’ Craft” 800 Years On: Definitions, Hallmarks, and Heterodoxy in Castile’s “Mester de Clerecía”
Sever Hall 308

Organizer: Peter Mahoney (Stonehill College)
Chair: Alison Carberry (Boston University)
Matthew V. Desing (University of Minnesota), “The Utility of the Term ‘Mester de Clerecía’: The State of the Question”
Robin Bower (Pennsylvania State University), “Making Space for Fear: Horror Stories in the Mester de Clerecía”
Peter Mahoney, “’They Are Acting like Women’: Masculinity and Heroism in the Poema de Fernán González”


44. Contact and Exchange from England to Indonesia
Sever Hall 210

Chair: Eurydice Georganteli (Harvard University)
Edith Lagarde Babich (University of Notre Dame), “Sons of the Apostolic See? The Question of Union in Innocent III’s Letters to the Armenian Church”
Amanda Luyster (College of the Holy Cross), “Seeing English Gothic Anew: Recognizing the Role of Byzantine and Islamic Textiles in England”
Jonathan Morton (Tulane University), “Flying Horses and Golden Robots: Arab Automata and Astral Magic in French Romance and Latin Science”
Tori Nuariza Sutanto (Sultanate Institute), “Islamic Material Cultures on the West Coast of Sumatra: A Study of the Bongal Archaeological Site, Indonesia”


45. Contending with Crises: Jews Navigating Space and Social Stratifications
Sever Hall 110

Organizer: Elisheva Baumgarten (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chair: Eyal Levinson (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Savoy Curry (Northwestern University), “Crises in Public: Navigating Shared Spaces in the Fourteenth Century”
Shlomo Walfish (Ben Gurion University), “The Relationship between Queen Sibila of Aragon and Local Jews in the Fourteenth Century: Official Documents and Responsa Literature”
Ron Lasri (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Approaching Wider Audiences: Introductions and their Readerships in Fourteenth-Century Spain”


46. Community, Resistance, and Subversion
Sever Hall 103

Chair: Angela Zhang (Independent Scholar)
Thomas O’Donnell (Fordham University), “If You Can’t Say Something Nice: Encounters with and in the Central Medieval Monastic Community”
Samantha Seal (University of New Hampshire), “The Rebellion of 1381: A Nexus of Racial Conflict?”
Eric Nemarich (Maynooth University), “How to Resist Autocracy in a Fourteenth-Century City: Lucca, 1334-5”
Giulia Giamboni (University of California Santa Barbara), “Subverting Patterns of Remembrance: Domestic Servants and Their Last Wills in the Late Medieval Mediterranean”


47. The Middle Ages and Modern Education
Sever Hall 213

Chair: Kisha Tracy (Fitchburg State University)
Chad Krouse (Independent Scholar), “From Battlefields to Beer Steins: Devising Heraldic Identity for Select U.S. Academic Institutions”
Sarah B. Lynch (Bates College), “Why Do You Do That? Being a Historian of Medieval Education in a Time of Educational Skepticism”
Edward Holt (Grambling State University): “The Past and Future Place of Medieval Studies at HBCUs”


48. To Govern is To . . . ? New Approaches to Medieval Representative Governance, I
Emerson Hall 108

Organizer: Sean Field (University of Vermont)
Chair: Melissa Vise (University of Virginia)
Anne E. Lester (Johns Hopkins University), “A State of Compassion: The Carta Caritatis and Ideals of Governance”
William Chester Jordan (Princeton University), “Ordo and Reversal”
Neslihan Senocak (Columbia University), “A Critique of Foucault’s Pastorate”
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth College), “The Meaning of Service: Medieval and Modern”
Response: Jacques Dalarun (Institut de France)

Robinson Hall 125
1015-1045
Drop by to build community, discuss projects-in-progress, and share feedback with the committee about what the Medieval Academy can do to support digital humanities work for pedagogy, research, and public engagement.

Sanders Theater, Memorial Hall

Presiding: Lauren Mancia (Brooklyn College), CARA Chair

Presentation of the CARA Teaching Prize:
Sarah Ann Knutson (University of British Columbia)
Christopher W. Platts (University of Cincinnati)

Presentation of the Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies:
Stephanie Batkie (The University of the South)

CARA Plenary Roundtable

Sharing Struggles, Successes, and Solutions:
Working Together To Support Medieval Programs at Our Universities

Kathryn Salzer (Pennsylvania State University), “Making Medieval Visible through General Education”
Wendy Matlock (Kansas State University), “Making Medieval Visible through Microcredentials”
Sarah B. Lynch (Bates College), “Changing Medieval Curricular Offerings”
Martina Saltamacchia (University of Nebraska Omaha), “Creating Public, Community Programming”
Emily Thornbury (Yale University), “Seeking Partners To Create Post-Baccalaureate Programs”

Medieval Academy of America Business Meeting
12:15-1:30, Emerson Hall 105. Open to all MAA members.

CARA Luncheon
Join us for a discussion of the CARA Plenary and the administrative challenges facing medieval programs. Lunch provided by CARA and the MAA; registrants must participate for the entire lunch period. Moderated by Kisha Tracy (Fitchburg State University), CARA Executive Board member.
12:00-1:30, Memorial Hall transept
Space for this event is limited; please click here to register.

Making Money in the Medieval World
A hands-on workshop about medieval coin and medal production with Dr. Francesca Bewer, Research Curator for conservation and technical study programs at the Strauss Center for Conservation, and Dr. Eurydice Georganteli, Lecturer on Medieval Art and Archeology at Harvard University.
These 45-minute workshops will take place at 11:15, 12:00, and 12:45 in the Harvard Art Museum’s Material Lab (32 Quincy Street, lower level). Space in the workshops is limited; please click here to register [Sign up link].

Kenneth Conant: Envisioning Cluny
A study session with Reed Johnston Morgan, Ph.D. candidate in medieval history and archeology at Harvard University, focused on rarely-seen photos, paintings, and prints from the collections of the Harvard Art Museum pertaining to Kenneth Conant’s excavations and studies of Cluny Abbey from 1928 to 1950.
12:00-1:30, Harvard Art Museum Art Study Center (32 Quincy Street, third floor)
Space in this workshop is limited; please click here to register [Sign up link].

49. To Govern is To…? New Approaches to Medieval Representative Governance, II
Emerson Hall 108

Organizer: Melissa Vise (University of Virginia)
Chair: Maureen C. Miller (University of California Berkeley)
CJ Jones (University of Notre Dame), “The Unrepresented in Representative Governance: The Case of Dominican Sisters”
Duncan Hardy (University of Central Florida), “The Prince-Electors of the Holy Roman Empire as Custodians of Christendom, 1220-1519”
Melissa Vise, “Representing before Representation: Extra-Institutional Talk and the Salt of the Earth in Medieval Italy”


50. Going to Court in Medieval England
Emerson Hall 104

Chair: Charles Donahue (Harvard Law School)
Adrienne Williams Boyarin (University of Victoria), “Rex Saul … salvus fuit: A Jewish Murder Trial in Thirteenth-Century Gloucester”
Kevin Wang (Yale Law School), “Social Trust and Laesio Fidei in the Late Medieval English Church Courts”
Ryan Rowberry (Georgia State University), “Judicial Writs and Court Sealing Practices, 1272-1327”


51. Performative Medievalism: The View from California
Sever Hall 106

Organizer and chair: Roland Betancourt (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art)
Alison Locke Perchuk (California State University Channel Islands), “Italia Pacifica: Grand Tour Medievalism and American California”
Wallace Cleaves (University of California Riverside), “Locus and Lacunae: Temporal and Spatial Relationality Between Medieval Collections and Indigenous Sites in California”
Shannon McHugh (Huntington Library), “Walt Disney’s Medieval Holdings”
Larisa Grollemond (Getty Museum) and Bryan C. Keene (Riverside City College), “Haute Medieval: The Fashion of Pop Music and the Future of Medieval Studies”


52. The Middle Ages in the Modern Classroom
Sever Hall 306

Chair: Dana Polanichka (Wheaton College)
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz (University of Leeds), “Manuscripts in the Classroom: Past, Present and Future”
Marie Grogan (Chestnut Hill College), “Lectio divina Redux: The Possibilities and Pitfalls of Re-purposing Medieval Reading Practices in Contemporary Classroom Settings”
Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University), “Global Translations in the Medieval Literature Classroom”
Angana Moitra (Jindal Global University), “From Dame Tryamour to Sonpari: Medieval Studies in the Indian Classroom”


53. Iterative Temporalities I: Patterns and Knowledge Production
Sever Hall 213

Organizer and chair: Bernardo Hinojosa (Stanford University)
Chen Cui (Université de Lausanne/Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), “Multifaceted Temporalities in Mandeville’s Travels”
Rana Bayram (Central European University), “Ikhwan al Safa’s Discussion of Time in the Rasā’il: Theories of Time in a Medieval Islamic Encyclopedia”
Tekla Bude (Oregon State University), “Personification Allegory as Actuarial Form”
Catherine Sanok (University of Michigan), “The Day’s Eye: Circadian Forms and Secular Futurity”


54. Christian-Muslim Encounters and Identities
Sever Hall 203

Chair: Anita Savo (Boston University)
Amanda Valdés Sanchéz (Brown University), “Mary’s Grandsons: Marian Devotion and “Morisco” Identity between the Middle Ages and the Modern Early Era”
Francisco Cintron Mattei (University of Notre Dame), “A Christian Imamate in Al-Andalus: Reconsidering the Mozarabs through the Arabic Collectio Hispana”
Tirumular Narayanan (University of Wisconsin Madison), ”’Is that Burning Love or is it Hellfire?’: Sultan, Saint, Race and Conversion in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century ‘Trial by Fire’ Scenes”
Jason Welle (Boston College), “Rules to Avoid: Theology of Religions in Late Medieval Franciscan Crusade Preaching”


55. Known and Unknown Worlds
Sever Hall 210

Organizer: Michelle Karnes (University of Notre Dame)
Chair: Elly Truitt (University of Pennsylvania)
Jack Chen (University of Virginia), “Reading Categorically: Ghostly Knowledge”
Vivek Gupta (University College London), “Vernacular Microcosms and Qazwini’s Wonders of Creation between South and West Asia”
Michelle Karnes, “The World of the Sea”
Emily Steiner (University of Pennsylvania), “Forms of Knowledge”


56. Medieval Antisemitism and the Appropriation of Jewish Culture
Sever Hall 214

Chair: Sara Lipton (Stony Brook University)
Alexander Marx (Austrian Academy of Sciences), “Preaching against Jews in the Carolingian Period: The Case of MS Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 698”
Emilie Amar-Zifkin (McGill University), “Confusing Jews: Mockery as Polemic in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles”
Sarah Bromberg (Fitchburg State University), “Jewish Art and Exegesis for Christian Eyes: Nicholas of Lyra’s Postilla Goes into Print”


57. Celebrating New Scholarship for a New Century I (Lightning Session)
Emerson Hall 101

Organizer: Fiona Griffiths (Stanford University)
Chair: Amanda Luyster (College of the Holy Cross)
Participants: Walid Akef (Harvard University), Monica Brinzei (IRHT-CNRS, Paris), Esther Liberman Cuenca (University of Houston Victoria), Marcel Elias (Yale University), Denva Gallant (Rice University), Georgia Henley (St. Anselm College), Joëlle Rollo-Koster (University of Rhode Island), and Alice Isabella Sullivan (Tufts University)


58. Medieval Chronicles: From Tapestry of the Past to Didactic Compendium in the Twenty-First Century
Sever Hall 102

Organizer: Amélia Hutchinson (NOVA University of Lisbon/University of Georgia)
Chair: Peter Mahoney (Stonehill College)
Amélia Hutchinson, “Translating an Iberian Chronicle for a Twenty-First-Century Audience”
João R. Nisa (Universidade de Coimbra), “A Medieval Chronicler between Past and Future: The Importance of Fernão Lopes for a Multilayered Understanding of the Alentejo Region (Portugal)”
Rita Costa-Gomes (Towson University), “Teaching about History Writing with a Medieval Historian: The Example of Fernão Lopes”
Tiago Viúla de Faria (NOVA University of Lisbon), “600 Years Apart: How is a Medieval Chronicle Relevant to the Contemporary Schoolroom?”


59. Adaptation, Translation, and Beyond
Sever Hall 202

Chair: Hannah Weaver (Columbia University)
Davide Pafumi (University of Lethbridge), “Translating Translation: A Computational-Linguistic Analysis of Modern English Translations of the Beowulf Tradition”
Nilakshi Goswami (Girijananda Chowdhury University), “A Warrior Queen’s Place in Medieval India: Amar Chitra Katha’s Visualisation of Feminine Ideals”
Fernanda García-Oteyza (Harvard University), “Why Were We Writing Like This?: Fiction and Meaning in Chaucer’s House of Fame and Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This”


60. How to Globalize Medieval Studies Through Comparisons? Modelling Political, Ritual, and Diplomatic Institutions in Asian Contact Zones
Sever Hall 107

Organizer: Christopher Elford (Washington and Lee University)
Chair: Wiebke Denecke (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Shoufu Yin (University of British Columbia), “The Global Network of Liberty”
Christopher Elford, “Steppe or Palace?: Transcultural Notions of ‘Kingship’ and ‘Heaven’ in the Ceremonial Hymns of the Särbi Northern Zhou Dynasty (557-581 CE)”
Wiebke Denecke, “The Art of Inequality: Conceptualizing ‘Diplomacy’ in the Age of East Asia’s Emergence”
Respondent: Laura Ashe (Oxford University)


61. Medievalism in the Long Nineteenth Century
Emerson Hall 305

Chair: Adam Franklin-Lyons (Emerson College)
William Quinn (University of Arkansas), “The Medievalism of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”
Suzanne LaVere (Purdue University Fort Wayne),“‘To Emulate Her Deeds of Valor’: Joan of Arc, the American Civil War, and Female Celebrity”
Katherine Rush (Savannah College of Art and Design), “Gothic Ivories at the Intersection of Medieval Revivalism and British Colonialism”


62. Applied Middle Ages in Central Europe
Sever Hall 308

Organizer: Gábor Klaniczay (Central European University)
Chair and respondent: Patrick Geary (Institute for Advanced Study)
Katalin Szende (Central European University), “Modern Urbanism on Medieval Ground: A Curse or a Blessing?”
Lucie Doležalová (Charles University, Prague), “The Argument over Manuscripts”
József Laszlovszky (Central European University), “Invented Heritage: Reconstructions and the Middle Ages as Heritage in Central Europe”
Gábor Klaniczay (Central European University), “The Debate on Hun-Hungarian Kinship”


63. Medieval Worlds, Modern Frameworks
Sever Hall 206

Chair: Ibtissam Bouachrine (Smith College)
Ashby Kinch (University of New Hampshire), “Re-Imagining Death: Medieval and Contemporary Arts of Dying”
Danielle Allor (Haverford College), “The Old Dendrochronology of Universal History”
Finlay Darlington-Bell (Harvard University), “Sovereign Transgressions: The Balia in Medieval Italian City-States”
Winston Black (St. Francis Xavier University), “Plague Science and Plague Science Fiction: Time-Travelling Medievalists, 1990s-2020s”


64. Liminal Figures: Non-Cloistered Religious Women and Medieval Canon Law
Sever Hall 103

Organizer: Meghan Lescault (University of Toronto)
Chair and respondent: Anne E. Lester (Johns Hopkins University)
John H. Van Engen (University of Notre Dame), “Women Hearth-Mates, Master Geert Grote, and Canon Law”
Tanya Stabler Miller (Loyola University Chicago), “‘By No Means Considered Religious’: Beguines, Canons, and Canon Law”
Meghan Lescault, “Canon-ess Law: Secular Canonesses and Legal Status”


65. Contending with Crises: Jewish Negotiations within the Family, with Neighbors, and with Rulers
Sever Hall 110

Organizer: Elisheva Baumgarten (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chair: Savoy Curry (Northwestern University)
Elisheva Baumgarten, “Contending with Crises: The Jews in Fourteenth Century Europe”
Eyal Levinson (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Contending with Familial Crises: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Ashkenaz in the Long Fourteenth Century.”
Morgane Fortin (Université Paris Nanterre/Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Who Will Defend the Jews? Justice and Mass Murders of Jews during the Shepherds Crusade in Southern France (1320)”
Hannah Teddy Schachter (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “The Queen and her Jewish Subjects: Power, Local Lordship, and Conflict Resolution in Medieval France”

66. Locating Enslaved Women: Gender, Family, and Freedom in the Middle Ages
Emerson Hall 305

Organizer: Stacey Murrell (Amherst College)
Chair: Daniel Lord Smail (Harvard University)
Sarah Christensen (Brown University), “The ‘Myth of Maternal Return’ in Early Medieval European Narratives of Slavery”
Stacey Murrell, “‘This Belly Must Be Made Pregnant by a Caliph’: Excavating Enslaved Matrilines in Medieval Al-Andalus”
Imen Boussayoud (Brown University), “In Search of Beatriz Gomeira: The Fifteenth-Century Trade in Enslaved Women from the Canary Islands”


67. Transposing and Transforming the Middle Ages
Sever Hall 103

Chair: Jonathan F. Correa Reyes (Clemson University)
Emily Sun (Harvard University), “Stories of Coming and Going: Receiving Old English Literature as World Literature in Meghan Purvis’ Beowulf”
Adrian McClure (University of Wisconsin Madison), “From Le Roman de Silence to The Shining Knight: Trans Thinking across Medieval and Modern Arthurian Multiverses”
Sofía Carbonell Realme (Harvard University), “Ghoulish Delights: Medieval Manuscripts and their Dismembering”
Martha Easton (St. Joseph’s University), “Authenticity and Ethics: Medieval Architectural Salvage in America”


68. The Burdens of Carolingian Historiography: Nationalism and Racism, Identity and Truth
Sever Hall 214

Organizer and chair: Courtney Booker (University of British Columbia)
Meg Leja (Binghamton University), “‘Little-Known but with a Long History’: Sedechias and the Historiography of the Jewish Doctor”
Karl Ubl (University of Cologne), “Free and White: Sedulius Scottus and Ideas of Frankishness in the Ninth Century”
Matthew Gabriele (Virginia Tech), “The Poet Angelbert at Fontenoy and His Historiography: Wailing and Howling for Empire in the Ninth and Nineteenth Centuries”
Courtney Booker, “Lost Cause: Forgetting, Remembering, and Stealing Nithard’s Historiae”


69. How Drawings and Photographs Influence Ideas about Architecture Past, Present, and Future
Sever Hall 206

Organizer and chair: Janet T. Marquardt ( Eastern Illinois University/Mount Holyoke College)
D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign), “Topographical Erasures”
Tadhg O’Keeffe (University College Dublin), “Mellifont Abbey: The Round Plan as Simulacrum”
Kirk Ambrose (University of Colorado Boulder), “Drawing Conclusions at Vézelay”
C. Edson Armi (University of California Santa Barbara), “New Perceptions of the Abbey Church at Cluny as Seen through Contemporary Photographs”


70. Imagining New Pasts and Futures
Sever Hall 102

Chair: Nicholas Watson (Harvard University)
E.M. Rose (Oxford University), “Medievalism in the Middle Ages: Eleanor and Edward as the Heroes of Arthurian Romance”
Ryanne Berry (Cornell University), “Hadewijch’s Radical Hope: The Apocalypse Then and Now”
Kathryn Brush (University of Western Ontario), “Arthur Kingsley Porter, Romanesque Art, and Actionable Medievalism a Century Ago”
Chad White (University of Louisville), “The Architect of the Past: Heinrich Himmler’s Remaking of Germany’s History”


71. Women’s Religious Communities: A Roundtable Discussion of Past Scholarship and New Directions
Emerson Hall 101

Organizer: Margot Fassler (University of Notre Dame)
Chair: Fiona Griffiths (Stanford University)
Participants: Margot Fassler, Eva Schlotheuber (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), Susan Boynton (Columbia University), Isabelle Cochelin (University of Toronto), and Joshua O’Driscoll (Morgan Library and Museum)


72. Medieval Orality and the Written Word
Emerson Hall 108

Chair: Stephen Mitchell (Harvard University)
Timothy Bourns (University of Washington), “Lessons from First Contact: Creating a Dialogue Between Old Norse-Icelandic Sagas and Greenlandic Inuit Oral Tradition”
Andrew Taylor (University of Ottawa), “Ecce warrentum meum: Medieval Aristocratic Oral Culture in the Light of Delgamuukw”
Ashley Barros (Texas A&M University), “‘I Heard, O Happy King’: How a Reading vs Listening Audience Tracks Narrative Levels in Thousand Nights and a Night”


73. Iterative Temporalities II: Premodern Aesthetic Forms
Sever Hall 213

Organizer and chair: Catherine Sanok (University of Michigan)
Amy Clark (Wake Forest University), “Once More, with Feeling: The Reiterative Literary Aesthetics of the Boniface Circle”
Alejandro Cuadrado (Bowdoin College), “Dantean Shapes of History”
Bernardo Hinojosa (Stanford University), “Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the Art of Lively Description”


74. Law in the Medieval Islamic World
Emerson Hall 104

Chair: Shady Nasser (Harvard University)
Tobias Scheunchen (Yale University/University of Chicago), “Written Arabic Legal Documents on Papyrus from the First and Second Century Hijra”
Felicitas Opwis (Georgetown University), “Conceptions of the Divine in Ethico-Legal Norm Construction of Eleventh Century CE Muslim Scholars”
Ali Ekber Cinar (McGill University Faculty of Law), “Putting Hartian Legal Theory into Dialogue with a Medieval Legal System: A Critical Objection to Hart’s Concept of Law in the Context of the Islamic Legal Tradition”


75. Roman Religion, Gender, and Power without Byzantium
Sever Hall 110

Organizer: Leonora Neville (University of Wisconsin Madison)
Chair: Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University)
Leonora Neville, “Inauguration Ceremonies, Divine Support, and the Roman State”
Tiffany VanWinkoop (University of Wisconsin Madison), “Same-Sex Desire Among Roman Rulers”
Rachel Andrews (University of Wisconsin Madison), “Queens of Ambiguity: Political Power in Roman Coinage”


76. “Medieval Studies” Reexamined
Sever Hall 306

Chair: Cord Whitaker (Wellesley College)
Landon Reitz (University of Toronto), “Medieval Studies as Futures Studies”
Megan Maldonado (Columbia University), “Mixed Feelings: Critical Mixed Race Studies and the Future of Medievalist Scholarship”
Eric Weiskott (Boston College), “Periodization and Disciplinarity: On ‘Medieval Studies’”


77. Locating the Indian Ocean World in Global Middle Ages Studies
Sever Hall 210

Organizer: Anwesha Das (Emory University)
Chair: Roxani Eleni Margariti (Emory University)
Mikael Muehlbauer (Metropolitan Museum of Art), “The Late Fatimid ‘Indian Ocean Style’ in Monumental Decoration”
Alan Elbaum (Princeton University), “Script Choice and Religious Identity among Arabic-Speaking Traders in the Medieval Indian Ocean”
Anwesha Das, “Gujarati Cotton for Yemeni Madder: Tracing the Textile Trade in the Medieval Indian Ocean (Eleventh-Fifteenth Century CE)”
Johanna Rozakis-Siu (Princeton University), “Between Emerging Empires: Trade, Diplomacy, and Conflict in Gujarat (1500-1540)”


78. Literary and Ethical Communities
Sever Hall 203

Chair: Wesley Yu (Mount Holyoke College)
Russell Stone (Boston University), “Re-assessing the Medieval Alexander”
Samantha Stringer (University of California Santa Cruz), “Fashioning a Literary Orphan: The Right to Represent Vis in Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin”
Dylan Cooper (Harvard University), “Cwrrach memrwn, wefldwn waith: The Pragmatics of Metaphor as Insult in Welsh Ymrysonau”
Saagar Asnani (University of California Berkeley), “Ke disoit li renarts? Dialect and Non-Human Sound in Manuscripts of Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’Amour”


79. Moving Earth, Rivers, and Waves: Medieval Archaeology in Japan
Sever Hall 308

Organizer and chair: Jonathan Thumas (Harvard University)
Jonathan Thumas, “The Shagūji Stupa and Provincial Society in Early Medieval Japan”
Michelle Damian (University of Wisconsin Whitewater), “Maritime Shipping Routes in Japan’s Late Medieval Seto Inland Sea”
Morgan Pitelka (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill), “Hegemonic Walls: The Archaeology of Late Medieval Kyoto”


80. Cities and Shrines
Sever Hall 106

Chair: Alexander Brey (Wellesley College)
Catherine McNally (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “Bayt al-Maqdis Restored: An Islamic Topology of Late Antique Jerusalem”
Dilrabo Tosheva (Harvard University), “From Foundation to Function: Reevaluating the Samanid Tomb through New Evidence”
Aseel Najib (Dartmouth College), “Caliphal Courts and Sacred Cities: Gendered Mobility in the Early Abbasid Period”
Karen Rose Mathews (University of Miami), “Ceremonial, Architectural Theatricality, and the Multisensory Cityscape in the Medieval Mediterranean”


81. The Shape of Time: Idiom, Form, and Matter in Medieval Prediction
Sever Hall 202

Organizers: Jennifer Jahner (Caltech) and Megan McNamee (University of Edinburgh)
Chair: Megan McNamee
Margaret Gaida (Independent Scholar), “Astrological Novelty and Prognosticatory Instruments in MS Bodl. 464: Some Preliminary Remarks”
Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas (Hamburg University), “In the Dots We Trust: Navigating Uncertainty with Jewish Geomancy”
Anne-Laurence Caudano (University of Winnipeg), “Tokens of Divine Providence: Reading Earth and Sky in Byzantine Books of Prognostication”
Jennifer Jahner, “Mortality from Sphere to Table: A Visual History of Conjecture”

Wonders of Creation Reception and Gallery Visit
6:00-8:00 pm
Boston College McMullen Museum of Art, 2101 Commonwealth Avenue. Buses depart at 5:30 pm from the Sever Quadrangle entrance on Quincy Street, returning to Harvard Yard between 7:30 and 8:00 pm.

A gala reception and special viewing of the exhibition Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World, organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art. Using wonder as a vehicle, Wonders of Creation illuminates the global impact of science and artistic production in the Islamic world and its diverse geographies and multifaceted visual cultures from the seventh century CE to the present day. Over 170 works, including illustrated manuscripts and paintings, maps, scientific instruments, magic bowls, luster dishes, architectural elements, and contemporary art, evoke wonder through a visual journey. This event is open to all MAA 2025 attendees, but pre-registration on the MAA meeting registration page is required.

Le Roman de la Rose: A Musical Dream with Guillaume de Lorris (C. 1200- C. 1240)
8:00- 10:00 pm
First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden Street

Join director Anne Azéma and members of the renowned early music ensemble The Boston Camerata for a musical fantasy, weaving together excerpts from Guillaume de Lorris’s transformative thirteenth-century love poem Le Roman de la Rose with musical punctuations from parallel, similar, geographically or textually twin sources, evoking the powerful emotional journey that leads Guillaume’s protagonist to la Rose. Featuring Anne Azéma (voice, hurdy-gurdy, harp), Susanne Ansorg (vielles, guiterre), Jimmy Dransack (vielle), and Mara Winter (flutes). Open to all MAA 2025 attendees.