Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages
38th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Fordham University, New York
24-25 March, 2018

Dress was a primary expression of identity in the European middle ages, when individuals made strategic choices about clothing and bodily adornment (including hairstyle, jewelry, and other accessories) in order to communicate gender, ethnicity, status, occupation, and other personal and group identities. Because outward appearances were often interpreted as a reliable reflection of inner selves, medieval dress, in its material embodiment as well as in literary and artistic representations, carried extraordinary moral and social meaning, as well as offering seductive possibilities for self-presentation.

This conference aims to bring together recent research on the material culture and social meanings of dress in the Middle Ages to explore the following or related questions:

• Given that very little actual clothing survives from the Middle Ages, how does our reliance on artistic, documentary, and literary representations affect the study of dress and its meaning?
• What aspects of medieval dress were most effective in communicating identity and what messages did they send? What strategies were served by dress, either embodied or in representation?
• How did religious, cultural, and economic factors, such as cross-cultural contact and trade and/or technology influence dress and its uses?
• Did ‘fashion’ or the so-called ‘Western fashion system’ actually begin in the Middle Ages? If so, what social and cultural changes did it inspire or reflect?

Please submit an abstract and cover letter with contact information by September 15, 2017 to Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405B, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, or by email to medievals@fordham.edu, or by fax to 718-817-3987

Charlemagne’s Ghost: Legacies, Leftovers, and Legends of the Carolingian Empire
44th Annual New England Medieval Conference
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
October 7, 2017

Keynote Speaker: Simon MacLean, University of St. Andrews, “What Was Post-Carolingian about Post-Carolingian Europe?”

It is well known that the Frankish emperor Charlemagne (768-814) and his dynasty – the Carolingians – played an important role in the formation of Europe. Yet scholars still debate the long-term consequences of the collapse of the Carolingian empire in 888 and the diverse ways in which Charlemagne’s family shaped subsequent medieval civilization. This conference invites medievalists of all disciplines and specializations to investigate the legacies, leftovers, and legends of the Carolingian empire in the central and later Middle Ages. We welcome papers that consider a wide array of Carolingian legacies in the realms of kingship and political culture, literature and art, manuscripts and material artifacts, the Church and monasticism, as well as Europe’s relations with the wider world. We urge participants to reflect on the ways in which later medieval rulers, writers, artists, and communities remembered Charlemagne and the Frankish empire and adapted Carolingian inheritances to fit new circumstances. In short, this conference will explore the ways in which Charlemagne’s ghost haunted the medieval world.

Please send an abstract of 250 words and a CV to Eric Goldberg (egoldber@mit.edu) via email attachment. On your abstract provide your name, institution, the title of your proposal, and email address. Abstracts are due July 1, 2017.