It is with great pleasure that we issue a call for papers for the graduate conference in Medieval Studies to take place on Friday, March 22, 2019 at Princeton University: FAILURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Deeana Klepper of Boston University will be our keynote speaker.
Those historical events and actions that are widely considered ‘successful’ tend to receive the most scholarly attention. But alongside success always lurks its counterpart, failure. From disastrous crusades to bad harvests, people in the Middle Ages failed—a lot. Yet, failure is seldom treated as a standalone subject of study.
Broadly speaking, we are interested in endeavors that failed as well as in analysis of what it means to study failure. How did medieval individuals construe failure as a concept? How did they respond to their own failures? We invite considerations of this theme from numerous angles – unintended consequences, contingency, loss, and more are all acceptable aspects of this theme.
We encourage submissions from all disciplines by graduate students who study Late Antiquity or the Global Middle Ages.
Please submit abstracts of 250-750 words (or other inquiries) to Joe Snyder at [email protected] or Ariana Natalie Myers at [email protected] with the subject line PRINCETON GRAD CONFERENCE 2019 by January 22, 2019. We will notify submittors of our decision by February 22.
