Banff Centre
Banff, Alberta, Canada
April 21-24, 2022
Paper and session proposals from all areas of medieval studies, including overlapping areas of early modern studies and late antique studies, are most welcome, as are faculty, students, and independent scholars.
Proposals are due 31 October 2021. Individual proposals should include an abstract of approximately 500 words with the author's name, discipline, and contact information, including any institutional affiliation, and e-mail address. Session proposals should include abstracts for the three papers as well as the contact information for each participant and session organizer. Please email all proposals by 31 October 2021, attached as .doc or .pdf files with “MAP 2022” in the subject line to kolsen@mtroyal.ca.
MAP will be meeting in the stunning Alberta Rockies, and in a distinctly non-urban centre. Located in the Town of Banff on the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples, MAP 2022 at the Banff Centre also seeks paper and session proposals interested in the intersections between the medieval and the natural world, and between European and Indigenous perspectives, to form a thematic thread within the conference. (As is the MAP tradition, papers do not need to relate to the thematic thread announced below to gain acceptance.)
The natural world has long interested scholars of the Medieval and Early Modern periods and their associated fields. Medieval and Early Modern authors, thinkers, and artists, produced a vast and influential corpus inspired by their environments, both natural (non-urban) and urban, and scholars of these periods have recently been stimulated by the theory and practice of environmental, Indigenous, and place studies in all their diversity. This thematic focus will discover and query concepts, theories, literatures, the arts, Indigenous perspectives, ecologies, and knowledge creation, that are rooted in relationship to the environment, climate consciousness, the wild or wilderness, and landscapes.
Themes might include, but are not limited to:
- The Natural and Un(non)Natural
- The Wild and Wilderness in Literary Texts, Law, Politics, and Life
- Desert Christianity and Desert Saints
- Spaces and Locations, Urban or Wild
- Natural or Unnatural Materialities
- Epistemologies or Ontologies of the Environment
- The Self in Space or Nature
- Nature and Identities
- Indigenous Voices
- The Natural and Unnatural Mind
- Climate Consciousness
- Boundaries Between and In Between
Indigenous Lands Acknowledgement
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is located on the traditional lands of Treaty 7 Territory, comprised of the Stoney Nakoda Nations of Wesley, Chiniki, and Bearspaw; three Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy: the Piikani, Kainai, and Siksika; and the Tsuu T'ina of the Dene people. Treaty 7 territory is also shared with the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. Before the signing of Treaty 7, and prior to the establishment of provincial boundaries, this region was also used by the Ktunaxa and the Maskwacis people. We acknowledge the past, present, and future generations of these Nations who help us steward this land, as well as honour and celebrate this place.