CEMERS Conference

Always Here: Non-Binary Gender, Trans Identities, and Queerness in the Global Middle Ages (c. 250鈥1650)

Date: October 24 鈥 25, 2025
Location: 黑料视频 | Binghamton, NY

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: APRIL 15, 2025

Muhammad Qasim, Portrait of Shah Abbas I
Muhammad Qasim, Portrait of Shah Abbas I and his page. Isfahan (?), 1627. Mus茅e du Louvre, Paris. 漏 2019 GrandPalaisRmn (mus茅e du Louvre) / Mathieu Rabeau.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Queer, trans, intersex, non-binary, genderfluid, and gender-nonconforming people and sources are abundant in the premodern textual, artistic, and artifactual record, and studies of gender and sexuality in the medieval period are flourishing as never before. Yet, work on the LGBTQIA+ Middle Ages remains limited鈥攅specially in our classrooms and in sharing our work with nonacademic queer and trans communities. Many important sources remain out of reach for students, and an alarming amount of queer and trans medieval and early-modern history is not available鈥攁nd its existence routinely denied鈥攖o LGBTQIA+ people beyond academia. Even researchers and teachers dedicated to pre- and early-modern gender and sexuality frequently remain siloed according to language and region: Latinists speak primarily to Latinists, Arabists to Arabists, and so on, while scholars of the Americas are often absent from conversations among scholars of premodern Africa and Eurasia. Thus, despite recent growth and successes, the study of the queer and trans pre- and early modern remains disturbingly fragmented and vital sources inaccessible to many.

In our own historical moment, members of the LGBTQIA+ community face frightening and rising levels of violence and oppression. So what are we, as scholars of the medieval and early- modern periods, to do? 黑料视频鈥檚 Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) seeks to bring together researchers dedicated to the study of non-binary gender, trans identities, and queerness during the premodern period broadly defined, to share research and discuss the challenges of LGBTQIA+ scholarship. We invite proposals for papers and panels for CEMERS鈥 2025 conference, Always Here: Non-Binary Gender, Trans Identities, and Queerness in the Global Middle Ages (c. 250鈥1650). The conference will include plenary lectures by Leah DeVun (Rutgers University) and Pernilla Myrne (University of Gothenburg), as well as plenary roundtables dedicated to translation and pedagogy. We hope to facilitate conversations between scholars across disciplines and geographic and linguistic boundaries, with the purpose of moving beyond academic silos to build a broad, truly global, and ideally collaborative textual and theoretical basis for future research. We are particularly eager for papers that examine regions beyond Western Europe, but Europeanists are welcome and encouraged to submit proposals.

We invite proposals for papers and panels related to LGBTQIA+ scholarship on the premodern world, including:

  • Significant, overlooked sources that deserve more attention
  • Errors in editions and proposed corrections, including presentations of new translations of previously untranslated (or poorly translated) sources
  • Materiality, manuscript studies, and queer and trans codicology
  • Cohabitation, cultural exchange, and cross-cultural engagement with issues of queer desires, gender fluidity, and gender multiplicity
  • Provincializing Western European medieval responses to 鈥渟odomy鈥 and shifting definitions of 鈥渘ature鈥 and what is 鈥渦nnatural鈥
  • The afterlives of medieval European homophobia and transphobia, and their role as weapons in early-modern coloniality and gendercide
  • How oppressive political regimes, historic and modern, have used, abused, and distorted queer and trans medieval texts and history, from Nazi academia to contemporary pinkwashing
  • Responses to cultural appropriation in white LGBTQ Studies, and the tensions between regional and cultural specificity and a global approach to queer and trans medieval history
  • White supremacy in academic seniority and/as the narrowing and distortion of the queer and trans Middle Ages
  • Hagiography, holiness, embodiment, and gender fluidity
  • Cisgender as an anachronism
  • Integrating LGBTQIA+ medieval sources into undergraduate curricula
  • Artistic and creative responses to and adaptations of queer and trans medieval sources
  • The purpose of studying queer and trans medieval history, literature, art, and people in the face of ongoing and intensifying modern oppression
  • Digitization, queer and trans metadata, and best methods for making the queer and trans Middle Ages more broadly available

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

April 15, 2025 Abstracts (350鈥500 words) for individual papers and for sessions are invited. Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Send abstracts, along with a CV, to cemers@binghamton.edu. For information, contact Bridget Whearty at bwhearty@binghamton.edu.

  • Past CEMERS Conferences
    • 2023: Pliny the Elder and Traditions of Natural Histories
    • 2021: Medieval Cultural Heritage Around the Globe: Monuments, Literature, and the Arts, Then and Now, Roberta Strippoli and Olivia Holmes, organizers
    • 2018: Medieval Unfreedoms: Slavery, Servitude, and Trafficking in Humans before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Elizabeth Casteen, organizer
    • 2016: The Pre-Modern Book in a Global Context: Materiality and Visuality, Marilynn Desmond, organizer
    • 2015: Authority and Materiality in the Italian Songbook: from the Medieval Lyrical to the Early-Modern Madrigal, Olivia Holmes and Paul Schleuse, organizers
    • 2014: Boccaccio at 700: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts, Olivia Holmes and Dana Stewart, organizers
    • 2011: Trans-Regional Trade and Sartorial Culture: Cartographies of Textiles and Clothing in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
    • 2010: Negotiating Trade, Nancy Um, organizer
    • 2010 Underpinnings: The Evolution of Underwear from the Middle Ages through Early Modernity, student organized
    • 2009 In Vino Veritas: A Symposium on Wine and the Influence of Bacchus from Classical Antiquity through the Eighteenth Century, Karen-edis Barzman, organizer
    • 2008 Venus and the Venereal: Interpretations and Representations from Late Antiquity through the Eighteenth Century, Mary Ellen Faughnam-Kenien and Karen-edis Barzman, organizers
    • 2007 Accademia Dempsiana: Papers in Early Modern Italian Studies in Honor of Charles Dempsey, Karen-edis Barzman, organizer
    • 2006 Theater and the Visual Arts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Aspects of Representation, Sandro Sticca, organizer
    • 2004 Public Life and Private Conduct: Changing Historical Perspectives across the Early Modern World. A Symposium in Honor of Richard C.Trexler, Karen-edis Barzman, organizer
    • 2004 Science, Literature, and the Arts in the Medieval and Early Modern World, Dana Stewart, organizer
    • 2002 Recovery: Pre modern Responses to Catastrophe and Convulsion, Charles Burroughs, organizer
    • 1999 The Crusades: Other Experiences, Alternate Perspectives, Khalil I. Semaan, organizer
    • 1997 Comparative Colonialism: PreIndustrial Colonial Intersection in Global Perspectives, Charles Burroughs, organizer
    • 1996 Writing Cultures/Making Cultures: Sites, Scenes, and Scenarios of Medieval Studies, Charles Burroughs, organizer
    • 1995 Christine de Pizan: Texts/Intertexts/Contexts, Marilynn Desmond, organizer
    • 1994 Contextualizing the Renaissance, Albert Tricomi, organizer
    • 1993 On the Margins, Robin Oggins, organizer
    • 1992 The Roles of Women in the Middle Ages, Rosmarie Morewedge, organizer
    • 1991 Gendering Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in Human History, Richard C. Trexler, organizer
    • 1989 The Cult of Saints in the Middle Ages & Early Renaissance:Formation and Transformation, Sandro Sticca, organizer
    • 1988 Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages, Wilhelm Nicolaisen, organizer
    • 1987 The Renaissance, Mario DiCesare, organizer
    • 1986 The Classics in the Middle Ages, Aldo Bernardo and Saul Levin, organizers
    • 1985 The Bible in the Middle Ages, Bernard S. Levy, organizer
    • 1984 Medievalism in American Culture, Paul E. Szarmach, organizer
    • 1983 Medieval Archaeology, Charles L. Redman, organizer
    • 1982 Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity, Richard C. Trexler, organizer
    • 1981 Social Unrest in the Later Middle Ages, Francis X. Newman, organizer
    • 1980 The Crusades, Robin S. Oggins, organizer
    • 1979 Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, Mario DiCesare, organizer
    • 1978 Byzantium in the West: Image and Impact, Saul Levin, organizer
    • 1977 The Black Death, Daniel Williman, organizer
    • 1976 Nature in the Middle Ages, Lawrence Roberts, organizer
    • 1975 Islam and the Medieval West, Kalil I. Semaan, organizer
    • 1974 Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages, Paul E. Szarmach, organizer
    • 1973 Witchcraft and the Occult in the Middle Ages, Gayle Whittier, organizer
    • 1972 The Role of the Woman in the Middle Ages, Rosmarie Morewedge, organizer
    • 1971 The Concept of the Hero in the Renaissance, Bernard S. Levy, organizer
    • 1970 The Development of the Medieval Concept, Christopher Reagan, organizer
    • 1969 The Medieval Drama, Sandro Sticca, organizer
    • 1968 Developments in the Early Renaissance, Bernard S. Levy, organizer
    • 1967 The Meaning of Courtly Love, Francis X. Newman, organizer