Kalamazoo, May 14 - 16, 2026
Please see the ICMS Confex proposal portal to submit proposals or use the direct link to TEAMS sponsored sessions both listed below.
Ugly Is as Ugly Does: Physiognomy as Signifier in Medieval Literature and Culture
Session #7277
Physical ugliness in the Middle Ages could be a reflection of internal evil or of sin. It could mask internal perfection as a test or as a result of a curse (e.g., Dame Ragnell, Medusa). Sometimes associated with old age, disease, disfigurement, physical size, race, divine retribution, or poverty, ugliness of face and body isolated literary characters and living humans from society-at-large. Eventually, judgment based on appearances became evidentiary in the courts.
This session invites papers on how physical appearances operated as signifiers in literature, law, and history, and how understanding these signifiers helps students in medieval studies.
If We Ever Get out of Here: Teaching Medieval Studies in a Shifting Political Landscape (ID: 7283)
Since January 2025, academia in general and US higher education in particular have faced sudden changes to what was once normal. Grants cut; students deported; DEI eliminated, and medieval tropes [re-]invoked to justify a political world view. Repurposed medieval imagery supporting racism and totalitarianism resembles 1930s-1940s propaganda.
This session invites faculty across disciplines to share how their teaching of medieval studies and medievalism has changed in recent years and/or how their departments and administrations have responded to these on-going changes -- stipulating that by May 2026, the world will have changed in ways we can't yet imagine.
Christine de Pizan on the Seductions of Chivalry in the Dit de Poissy and Epistre Othea: The TEAMS / Bonnie Wheeler Session:
(ID: 7459)
Christine de Pizan's very dissimilar works, the Dit de Poissy, (on its surface, a courtly love debate poem), and the Epistre Othea, (a relentlessly didactic work outlining the moral virtues which le bon chevalier needed to cultivate, are both, for all their generic and formal differences, fundamentally commentaries on the moral and intellectual failings of chivalric values as espoused by much of the French royal court in the late fourteenth-century. This session seeks to outline the seductions of a misunderstood chivalry in both works and their differing rhetorical strategies. That chivalry is currently of wide (misconstrued) interest is not irrelevant.
Ludic Lessons
Session #7532
Tabletop board games offer a unique opportunity for cultural analysis of historical and topical content in popular media. As a rhetorical device, the board game differs significantly from the video game: players actively interpret and apply rules. The ludic experience relies upon local interaction between human agents. Yet educators frequently comment that the use of games in classrooms poses significant risks, in terms of time spent and objectives achieved. Pragmatic conversation sometimes takes a backseat to idealistic exploration. This panel offers an opportunity to share approaches that have worked – and not worked – in view of future lesson designs.
Although educators increasingly recognize the pedagogical value of games and play in the classroom, designing effective lesson plans around games requires significant time and attention. Few resources exist for modifying and comparing successful strategies. Moreover, homebrew and ad hocimplementations of game-based learning risk gamification – a form of proceduralizing experience only loosely related to investigations of topical substance.
This roundtable invites proposals for presentations that outline the pragmatic pedagogical use of games. Where in the lesson planning stage do you implement and execute the ludic? What materials support your approach? How do you evaluate the success of the activity?
Or download the entire CfP below – and please share widely. Feel free to post to any scholarly groups you belong to and also share with local colleagues.