Please share the following Call For Papers with interested colleagues.

We invite submissions of 15-20 minute papers treating the widely conceived theme of “enemies” for the Hortulus sponsored session titled “Of whom shall I be afraid: Enemies in the Medieval Period” at the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 8-11, 2014.

We welcome paper topics ranging from explorations of enemies in literature, history, and visual studies to more focused interpretations of the notion of enmity in the medieval period. We encourage submissions from many disciplinary angles, welcoming textual, artistic, and historical interpretations from scholars of literature, history, philosophy, musicology, archaeology, art history, and other fields. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary work.

Some questions this session seeks to pose and answer are the following:
• How are enemies identified, constructed, and described?
• What were the ramifications of enmity among individuals or within and between groups?
• How, if possible, could enmity be overcome?
• Were enemies always characterized as the "other"?
• How were non-human enemies treated?

The topic of “enemies” was selected by popular vote by the Hortulus community of graduate students and will also be the theme of the 2014 issue of the journal.


Please e-mail a one-page abstract (300 words maximum) to Emerson Richards (Dept. of Comparative Literature, Indiana University) at kalamazoo@hortulus-journal.com by or before September 15, 2011. Feel free to contact Emerson with questions about the session.

For general information about the 2014 Medieval Congress, visit: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/