CFP: Bad Bodies: Materiality and Performativity in the Medieval Mediterranean

Please consider submitting an abstract to the following panel at the International Congress on Medieval Studies sponsored by Italian Studies@Kalamazoo. The deadline for submissions is September 15, and the conference will take place from May 8-10, 2025 on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Please note that this panel is a traditional in-person session.

Session #5940

Bad Bodies: Materiality and Performativity in the Medieval Mediterranean

Organizers: Catherine Bloomer and Anna Dini

This session looks to interrogate the body that is marked or performed as a cipher for a lack or the sign of lack, of a failure of signification or index to something beyond customary signification. We invite papers that dialogue with a material or performative understanding of the body in the medieval Mediterranean. We also invite interdisciplinary work that reframes and discusses the body outside of ethnocentric systems. By emphasizing the transgressive body through a critical material and performative approach, this panel urges new ways to read Mediterranean bodies that can extend outward to medieval literature, art, and history.

To submit an abstract to be considered for this panel, navigate to this link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=5940&…