IMC 2022: Sessions

Speaker: Carol Symes, Department of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Introduction: Jitske Jasperse, Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Within the past decade, the impacts of new technologies, methods, and perspectives have been reshaping the scope and aims of medieval studies. The traditional geographical terrain of our field is breaking up all around us, exposing frontiers that stretch to the horizons of the globe. Archaeological advances, ancient DNA evidence, and collaborations with colleagues in the sciences have radically changed what we can study, and how we study it. Digital tools and resources have increased our access to manuscripts and artifacts in unprecedented ways. And yet there are strong epistemological, structural, and institutional frameworks (temporal, nationalist, generic) that will hinder us from realising the promise of these and other trends unless we make a collective effort to surmount conventional boundaries. This talk will consider some of the shifts we could make at multiple scales: the conceptual level at which we delineate our field, the mechanisms through which we create and share knowledge, and the ways we think about the parameters of medieval sources and the contexts of their production.

The Medieval Academy is pleased once again to host the Annual Medieval Academy Lecture, an opportunity for the Academy to showcase some of the important work being done by scholars in North America. We hope you will join us for a reception immediately following the lecture, where members of the Medieval Academy staff will be available to answer questions about the Academy and its work. For more information about the Academy, please see www.medievalacademy.org. All those attending are warmly invited to join members of the Medieval Academy after the lecture for a glass of wine.

Please note that admission to this event will be on a first-come, first-served basis as there will be no tickets. Please ensure that you arrive as early as possible to avoid disappointment.