IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1625: Apocalyptic Alterity: Otherness and the End Times

Thursday 6 July 2017, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:	Brett E. Whalen, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Moderator/Chair:	Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Respondent:	James Palmer, School of History, University of Nottingham
Paper 1625-a	Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Crusading Soldiers of Christ at the End of Time (Language: English) Matthew Gabriele, Department of Religion & Culture, Virginia Tech Index terms: Crusades, Historiography - Medieval, Theology
Paper 1625-b	Church, Empire, and Apocalypse in the 13th Century (Language: English) Brett E. Whalen, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval, Political Thought
Paper 1625-c	Heavenly Hermaphrodites: Sexual Difference and the End of Time (Language: English) Leah DeVun, Department of History, Rutgers University, New Jersey Index terms: Gender Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Sexuality
Abstract	Medieval Europe's apocalyptic imagination provided a compelling field of ideas, texts, and images for Christians to project and contest the norms of their society, framed by the envisioned progress of time from its beginning to its end. This proposed panel will explore some of the ways that apocalyptic and eschatological views of salvation history informed attitudes towards the 'self' and 'others', past, present, and future, shaping religious, political, and sexual identities. The papers and commentary will also suggest some of the ways that studies of apocalypticism during the Middle Ages have changed over recent years, looking past long-standing debates and issues in the field (e.g. the year 1000, the radical nature of millennialism) to embrace new questions and problems relating to the significance of the apocalypse for medieval intellectual life, society, and spirituality.