2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

August 24, 2025 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Announcements, Business Meeting, Call for Papers, Conference, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

RGME Activities
at the
2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Report

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

[Posted on 20 August 2025]

Vista at the 2025 ICMS. Photograph by David W. Sorenson.

With the successful completion of our RGME activities at the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies, we offer a Report. For information about the Congress more generally:

About the Congress itself, see International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS).
About the 2025 Congress overall, see its website.

Building Blocks

The RGME activities at the 2025 Congress came into being in stages, according with the timetable for preparations for the annual ICMS from one year to the next.

1) First, as an Annual Congress takes place (for example, see our 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report), we begin to confer about plans for the next year. We do so among ourselves and with current or potential co-sponsoring organizations who also make plans. At each Congress, our Open Business Meeting provides a gathering point to confer, share ideas, and spread the word to generate interest and find collaborators.

2) After designing the proposed sessions, we submit them by 30 May to the Congress Committee for approval, and then issue the Call for Papers, with the deadline of 15 September.

3) After the close of the CFP, selecting among the proposals received, we design the Program for each Session, with its Organizer or Co-Organizers, Presider, Speakers, and perhaps also a Respondent. In some years, as with 2025, our initial proposal can identify a subject for two sessions, Parts I and II. In some years, as with 2025, the strength and number of responses to the Call for Papers can lead us to seek, in some cases, two sessions (Parts I and II) in place of the one which we had proposed.

4) When ready, the Programs for our Sessions — presenters, sequence of papers, response(s) if included — are sent to the Congress Committee by 15 October for review and approval. That is the time also for booking our Open Business Meeting at the Congress and, in some years, a Reception.

5) In due course, the program of the Congress in full is set into place, as the Committee determines its order to announce it. Thus we can learn the date-, time-, and room-assignments of our set of activities.

6) Our custom is to announce our activities for a given Congress on our website, in a HomePage of its own, like the one for the 2025 Congress. The HomePage serves as an information center, with updates as appropriate, such as when the Congress approaches and there might be changes such as in the room assignment or details of the program for a given session.

7) From the HomePage are launched the Abstracts for Papers, as the speakers might allow. Note that the Abstracts are indexed, for convenience, in two ways:

By Year
By Author (Surname)

Venue at the 2025 ICMS. Photograph by David W. Sorenson.

8) On site, as the Congress takes place, our activities unfold in their sequence as listed in the Program or adapted through changes. For 2025, our activities comprised the sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions of Papers; and our Annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress. The line-up by the time of the Congress:

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies.

All these events were successfully accomplished, with some adaptations within them as required. Hybrid sessions recorded by the Congress were available for viewing afterward by Congress registrants, for an assigned period.

9) Afterward, comparing notes and gathering photographs taken at the time, we produce the Report.

********************

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Scipio and Guillaume de Loris Lying in Their Beds Dreaming. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Building upon our successful activities at the 2024 ICMS (see our 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report), we prepared for the 2025 ICMS. First we proposed a set of sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored. Then, when they had been accepted by the Congress Committee, we issued the Call for Papers (CFP) for our proposed Sessions. The strength and number of the responses by the due date (15 September 2024) led us to seek, in some cases, two sessions in place of the one which we had proposed.

With the Congress Program set into place or revised, we presented the Program of our activities, both sponsored and co-sponsored. We give thanks to our organizers, co-organizers, presenters, respondents, advisors, co-sponsors, participants, and audience both in-person and online, and to the Congress, its staff, and its co-ordination.

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Tags: Manuscript studies, Medieval Studies
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2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 2, 2025 in Announcements, Bāḥra ḥassāb: Knowledge Transmission in Ethiopia and Eritrea From Antiquity to Modern Times, Call for Papers, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Koller-Collins Center for English Studies, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Princeton Bibliophiles and Book-Collectors, Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Waterloo, Societas Magica

Call for Papers

Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME
at the
61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 14–16, 2026

(Sessions variously online, in-person, and hybrid)

Proposals due by 15 September 2025

[Posted on 1 July 2025, with updates]

Sounding the Call

View from Fetzer Lounge at the 2017 Congress. Photography © Mildred Budny.

We announce the Call for Papers for the Sessions (Panels of Papers) co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence at the 2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS). We describe the sessions one by one below, with direct links for you to submit proposals for each of our sessions.

The general Call for Papers appears on the Congress website.

Call for Papers

To find our Sessions there, search under Sponsoring Organization

Sponsor List

Search for the RGME (or our Co-Sponsor for the given session). In the Sponsors’ list, you will find our sessions as a group:

Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Please submit your proposals for papers through the Congress Confex system through its Call for Papers, as described there. The deadline is 15 September 2025.

The participation by the RGME at the Annual ICMS over the years is chronicled in our blog.

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Tags: Bāḥra ḥassāb at the University of Hamburg, Divination, Grimoires, History of Alchemy, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Material Culture, Medieval Studies, Medieval Writing Materials, Pedagogy, Postal History, Rossell Hope Robbins Library, Solomonic Magic
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2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

April 16, 2025 in Conference, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

[Posted on 16 January 2025, with updates]

With the shaping of the Program as a whole for the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we announce the Program for the Activities sponsored and co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. They comprise sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions of Papers; and our Annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress.

For information about the 2025 Congress overall, see its website.

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Scipio and Guillaume de Loris Lying in Their Beds Dreaming. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Now that the Congress Program itself has been scheduled, we can present the Program of our activities, both sponsored and co-sponsored.

We give thanks to our organizers, co-organizers, presenters, respondents, advisors, and the Congress.

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Tags: Almandal, Apocalypse Commentaries, Authorship, Beatus Manuscripts, Beatus of Saint-Sever, Divination, Dream Books, Grimoires, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Lapidario, Ludic Marginalia, Magic, Mail Delivery Networks, Manuscript studies, Old English Psychomacnia, Papal Prophecies, Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, Picatrix, Postal History, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Psychomachia, René d'Anjou, Sanas Cormaic, Societas Magica, Solomonic Magic, Women in Manuscripts
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2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 14, 2024 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Societas Magica

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Call for Papers

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

[Posted on 14 July 2024]

Building upon the successful completion of our activities at the 2024 ICMS (see our 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report), we announce the Call for Papers (CFP) for next year’s Congress. For the CFP for all Sessions for the 2025 Congress, see its Confex Portal.

Here, first comes general information for your consideration, then we present our curated offerings of Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions for your choice of proposals. Links for each Session show the direct lines to the Congress’s Confex System for your proposals for specific Sessions.

Process and Timetable for Proposals

For information about the Congress, see its official website. There you can also find information and instructions about submitting your proposals. See especially Submissions. Your proposals for papers are due by 15 September 2024.

After the close of the Call For Papers, we will select the accepted papers and design the Programs for the Sessions, with the Papers placed in order and Presiders assigned. Some Sessions may also have Respondents. Notifying you of the decisions about your proposals will come before the deadline for us to submit the Programs for our Sessions to the Congress Committee is 15 October 2024.

Then What?

Next, normally by the turn of the year toward the year of the Congress, on our website we publish the selected Programs for our Sessions and announce our other Activities, while we await the promulgation of the official Schedule for the 2025 Congress. The Abstracts for the Papers accompany our announced Programs. Then, with the publication of the Congress Program (or its traditional preliminary ‘Sneak Peek’), we can add the times and venues for our Sessions. As the 2025 Congress approaches, new, unfolding, and revised information will guide announcements and updates on our website and social media.

RGME @ 2025 ICMS

For 2025, we prepare:

four Sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored
a customary Open Business Meeting at the Congress
and perhaps a Reception.

Four Sessions are our own (Item I). Our co-sponsors for ICMS Sessions in 2025 are:

Societas Magica (with two co-sponsored Sessions)
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)
Postal History at Kalamazoo

Among our co-sponsorships for the Congress over the years, 2025 marks Year 21 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica, Year 4 with P.O.M.o.N.A., and Year 2 with Postal History at Kalamazoo.

The Session co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo continues the tradition of our long-term series of RGME Sessions at the ICMS on “Medieval Writing Materials”, which began in 2014. (See, for example, our Congress Activities and 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program.)

Our 2025 Sessions

The RGME announces its proposed Sessions for the 2024 Congress and invites your proposals for papers.

Proposals should be made through the Congress’s Confex System. Here we provide session-specific links for each session. The deadline for your proposals is by 15 September 2024.

The Sessions are designed variously as in-person, online, and hybrid. In the case of an In-Person Session, Congress directions state that “only people who plan to attend the Congress in person next May should submit proposals to it. If there is sufficient interest in this topic to support a corresponding virtual session, please fill out the webform to request an additional session.”

The official call for papers will be posted on the Congress website in early July, with links to submit proposals through the Confex system.

RGME Logo in Color.

I. Sessions Sponsored by the RGME

1. “Deviant Images: Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts” (ID: 5977)

In-Person Session

Organizer: Cortney Anne Berg (CUNY Graduate Center)

Aim

This panel provides a space to examine the ways that images and texts work together (or against each other) in medieval manuscripts. Scholars who study manuscripts often treat the images and the texts as separate phenomena without considering how a medieval reader would have interacted with the holistic object. Many studies of manuscripts treat the images as mere illustrations of the text, and this panel invites all scholars of manuscripts to explore the ways in which images work or do not work with the accompanying text.

Very rarely do images and texts provide the same information, and very rarely are images just illustrations to the text they accompany. Therefore, how can contemporary viewers understand the relationship between medieval images and the texts they accompany?

This panel invites papers that explore medieval manuscripts and how their images deviate from or conform to the text. We encourage inquiries that describe the important intersections between text and image, and attempt to reconstruct the relationship between the two, particularly as these relationships may or may not map to lived conditions. We also encourage inquiries that reveal interesting information about manuscript culture writ large. Although this panel seeks papers that deal directly with images not just as aids to the text or reading, any methodological approach from literature, anthropology, history, religious studies, art history, or any other discipline that can make interesting connections between text and image would be a welcome addition to this panel.

Keywords: Manuscript studies, art history, literature, medieval manuscripts, medieval studies

Proposals

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:

https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=5977

London, British Library, Add. MS 62925, fol. 83r detail. Rutland Psalter in Latin, circa 1260, England (London?). Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/05/marginali-yeah-the-fantastical-creatures-of-the-rutland-psalter.html

2. “Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

In-Person Session

Organizers:
Mildred Budny (RGME)
Zoey Kambour (CUNY Graduate Center and RGME Intern Executive Assistant)
Vajra Regan (Centre for Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto)

Aim

This session explores the various discontinuities between images and texts in illustrated Apocalypse commentaries from the Middle Ages. These differences can manifest in several ways. For instance, an illustration might align more closely with the commentary rather than the biblical text. Additionally, variations can arise from established, highly localized traditions or contemporary innovations. Investigating these differences, whether within a single manuscript or across a complete cycle of illustrations, provides valuable insights into the institutional, political, and intellectual contexts of the manuscript’s production.

Methodologies

This session seeks to explore illustrated Apocalypse commentaries from the Middle Ages through an interdisciplinary lens; therefore, we are open to the methodologies of diverse disciplines including, but not limited to, art history/iconography, manuscript studies, religious studies, and digital humanities. By embracing a wide array of perspectives and analytical frameworks, we hope to foster a holistic understanding of medieval apocalyptic imagery and its multifaceted interpretations.

Keywords: Apocalypse, Beatus, Material Culture, Art History, Literature, Medieval, Manuscript Studies, Religious Studies, Digital Humanities, Manuscript Production

Proposals

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:
https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6459

New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.644, fol. 222v-223r. Beatus, Saint, Presbyter of Liebana, -798. Commentary on the Apocalypse (MS M.644). Spain, San Salvador de Tábara, ca. 945. Image via https://www.themorgan.org/manuscript/110807.

3. “Women and Manuscripts:
Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

Hybrid Session

Co-Organizers:
Jaclyn A. Reed (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Mildred Budny (RGME)

Aim

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Français 835, fol. 1r, detail. Frontispiece illustration of the scribal author for collection of texts by Christine de Pizan. Image via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449047c/f9.item.

Women as authors of manuscripts do not always receive adequate attention or study. This past year, the Research Group on Manuscript [and Other] Evidence held an informal, virtual discussion session as part of its “Research Group Speaks” series (Episode 15) focusing on research of manuscripts or texts authored by women and found that the reception and interest were very high both among those wanting to participate and those wanting to attend. Building upon this momentum, we propose further explorations in a panel for the 2025 Congress.

This session will examine women’s relationships with and representations in manuscripts and other evidence, especially those that they personally authored or created. Authorship has sometimes been limited in scope to literary or narrative texts, which can leave out the types of manuscripts that women were more likely to produce such as commonplace books or other collections of receipts, medical treatments, or a variety of other household notations. We welcome methodological approaches that consider manuscripts or other evidence authored by women including, but not limited to, philology, manuscript studies, material culture, and history of the book.

Keywords: History of the book, Manuscript Studies, Material Culture, Representations of Women, Women’s Authorship, Women’s Literature

Proposals

For this Hybrid Session, we solicit participants who plan to attend the Congress in person, as well as participants who plan to attend virtually.

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:
https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6310

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Français 835, fol. 1r. Opening of collection of texts by Christine de Pizan. Image via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449047c/f9.item.

II. Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME

4. Moving the Mail: Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices in the Medieval World (ID: 6312)

In-person Session

Co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo

Organizer: David W. Sorenson (Allan Berman, Numismatist)

Aim

In a world in which communication was necessarily through the written word, getting it from sender to recipient could be a complicated process. While important correspondence could be sent quickly, ordinary letters might be less speedy, and while royal letters might be sent by an efficient official system, ordinary letters between, say, merchants or clergy, might be much less so. This session is intended as a means of examining the ways in which mail moved, whether in Europe or elsewhere.

Keywords: couriers, letters, correspondence, mail, post office, postal, medieval studies

Proposals

Link to submit proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:

https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6312

A courier stands before a figure receiving a letter, with a landscape in the background.

Private Collection, Courier delivering letter. German translation of Petrarch (1559).

Societas Magica logo

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic:
The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

In-person Session

Co-sponsored with the Societas Magica

Organizers:
Vajra Regan (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto)
>vajra.regan@mail.utoronto.ca
Gal Sofer (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Matthew Melvin-Koushki (University of South Carolina)

Aim

The Almandal and Almadel of Solomon were among the most influential books of ritual magic in the late Middle Ages. These texts survive in multiple versions that intersect with different cultures and knowledge disciplines. The Almandal was adapted into Latin, most likely in the twelfth century, from one or more lost Arabic exemplars. The fragmentary state of the oldest extant version raises several questions. The text seems to present a work of ritual magic, but certain elements point to an astral magic component. The composite nature of the text has prompted researchers to inquire about the form of the archetype, the role of the Christian translator/editor, and whether the “Almandal” as we know it ever existed in Arabic.

The Almadel first emerged in the fifteenth century and represents a significant Christian revision of the earlier Almandal. Scholars have shown considerable interest in the Almadel for at least two reasons: first, it accrued a complex angelic cosmology that appears to have its origins in the Jewish tradition of the Liber Razielis (The Book of the Angel Raziel or The Book of the Mysteries); second, it exhibits a new, spiritual orientation, absent in the Almandal, thus providing a unique window into the early formation of what many now refer to as “Christian Theurgy.”

To date, scholarly attention has focused predominately on the Latin Almadel and its various vernacular translations (English, German, Italian). This imbalance may be attributed partly to gaps in the manuscript tradition that have isolated the Almandal and obscured its connection with the Almadel. However, over the last fifteen years, the discovery of several Latin and Hebrew manuscripts has helped to clarify the early tradition of the Almandal/Almadel while at the same time complicating previous assumptions about its origins.

This session seeks to reevaluate the history of the Almandal/Almadel in light of these and other discoveries. We invite papers on topics including, but not limited to:

The history of the text
Its Christian and Jewish reception
Connections to traditions such as the Liber Razielis, the Ars notoria, and Berengar Ganell’s Summa sacre magice
The role of these texts in the universities and their adoption and use by lay readers

We welcome papers that explore these themes and contribute to a deeper understanding of the Almandal and Almadel and their place in the history of ritual magic and religious practice.

Keywords: Manuscript Studies, Almandal, Magic, Societas Magica, History of the Book, Multicultural, Solomon, History of Magic

Proposals

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by 15 September 2024. All paper proposals must be submitted via the official Confex proposal portal.

Link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6392

Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, 14 B 36, fol. 243r: Image image of the almadel or “table of spirits”. Astro-magical texts on paper, circa 1400. Image C.C. BY 4.0, via http://dx.doi.org/10.25673/33754.

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream:
Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Online Session

Co-sponsored with the Societas Magica
and
Polytheist-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)

Organizers:
Phillip Bernhardt-House (Independent Scholar)
Claire Fanger (Department of Religion, Rice University)

Aim

From ancient Mesopotamian cultures, dreams are associated with divine encounters and intervention, particularly with foretelling future events directly or symbolically. Dream interpretation literature is rife with these understandings. Magical operations eliciting divinatory dreams are widely encountered. Particular sacred locations specializing in cultivating divinatory sleep for healing and other purposes, known as “dream incubation,” offered interpreters to assist those who sought such dreams. This session will explore many examples of dreams in/as divination, the outcome of spells, and through particular practices of incubation, as well as their interpretations and practices related to them in manuscript and other sources of various periods.

Keywords: Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Spells, Divination, Manuscript Studies, Magic, Societas Magica, Dream Incubation

Proposals

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by 15 September 2024. All paper proposals must be submitted via the official Confex proposal portal.

Link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6171

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 7. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentum Macrobii Ambrosii in somnium Scipionis. Dated 1469 Feb. 7. Image Public Domain via https://houghtonlib.tumblr.com/post/146944005911/macrobius-ambrosius-aurelius-theodosius-comentum.

Note on the Image
Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on The Dream of Scipio), by Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (fl. c. AD 400) for a portion of De Re Republica by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC).

Image Public Domain via https://houghtonlib.tumblr.com/post/146944005911/macrobius-ambrosius-aurelius-theodosius-comentum.

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Note on the Image

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1.

Scipio and Guillaume de Lorris Lying in their Beds Dreaming

More information: SEE HERE.

*****

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Attend our next Events if your timetable allows. Our next Events:

Episode 17. RGME Retrospect and Prospects (Saturday 21 September 2024 online)
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Consider making a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

Remember to send your Proposals for Papers for RGME Sessions at the 2025 ICMS by 15 September 2024. See the instructions above.

We look forward to hearing from you and welcoming you to our events.

*****

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Scipio and Guillaume de Loris Lying in Their Beds Dreaming. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: Almadel, Almandel, Apocalypse, Art History, Beatus, Correspondence, Couriers, Digital Humanities, Divination, Dream Incubation, dream interpretation, Dreams, Grimoires, History of Magic, History of the Book, Letters, Literature, Magic, Mail, Manuscript Production, Manuscript studies, Material Culture, Medieval manuscripts, Medieval Studies, Multicultural, Post Office, Postal, Religious Studies, Representations of Women, Solomon, Women's Authorship, Women's Literature
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

May 15, 2024 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Anniversary, Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, ICMS, Illustrated Handlist, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell:
Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants,
Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

[Posted on 14 May 2024]

Western Michigan University, Valley III from the side. Photograph: David W. Sorenson.

After the successful completion of all our activities at the 59th Annual 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we report our accomplishments and give updates about changes to the Program which we announced (with updates as appropriate) for its items. See the full ICMS Program issued by its organizing Committee:

2024 Congress Program, with Corrigenda.

The Journey

Already from our first preparations toward the 2024 Congress,

starting with the 2023 Congress and our Open Business Meeting there to invite proposals,
moving on to our proposals for Sessions for 2024 submitted to the Congress Committee by 1 June 2023,
progressing with the approved Call for Papers for the 2024 ICMS,
reaching the firm conclusion of that Call on 15 September 2024, and
selecting the Program for our Sessions according to responses to that Call and related developments,

we have made revisions and provided updates for our plan.

They gave rise to our announcement for our own (and co-sponsored) Program (including the details of Sessions, their speakers, titles of papers, order of presentation, and so on; as well as ancillary events such as the Anniversary Reception), its updates throughout the months from October to May and the start of the Congress. Now we follow up with the Report.

The proposals received not only yielded Programs for which the order of Papers and the follow-up invitation to Presiders and Panelists, but also encouraged us to combine resources within the Research Group, with our frequent co-sponsor, the Societas Magica, and with others. Thus we collaboratively created a strong program of activities for the 2024 Congress.

Along the way, between

the submission of our selected Program to the Congress Committee by 15 October 2023,
its acceptance,
the assignment of dates, times, and venues for the individual activities for the 2024 Congress Program as officially published (with a series of Corrigenda, not affecting us, as the date of the Congress approached), and
the start of the Congress itself on Thursday 9 May 2024, with events variously in online and/or in-person formats,

our own 2024 Congress Program has had a few minor revisions, as people and technological arrangements permitted.

These changes did not interfere with the overall success of our activities. Our 2024 Congress Program reported various changes up to the Congress; this Report describes those effected at or around the Congress.

Access Included

As in 2023, the RGME responded to the partly ‘hybrid’ conditions of the Congress by providing its Zoom Meetings for two scheduled solely ‘In Person’ Sessions, as well as for our In-Person catered lunchtime Open Business Meeting, and by reserving an onsite Remote Participation Room on campus for those participants for a scheduled ‘Virtual’ Session who were present at the Congress to be able to gather to sign on to the online Session hosted by the Congress Confex Portal. The RGME managed all these extra Zoom provisions and reservations, as part of its contribution to sponsoring or co-sponsoring Sessions at the ICMS over the years.

It can be worth noting that those donations — at the cost of the RGME, are made possible by donations to enable its Zoom Subscription, by our own provisions for technical backup, and principally by the many pro-bono donations by its Director as overall organizer and co-ordinator of the RGME activities at the Congress and elsewhere — are not covered within the costs to produce the Congress, which registration fees by attendees online and in-person work to subsidize. The extra efforts by the RGME to provide features or facilities for the contributors, participants, and attendees of its activities at the Congress, whether online or onsite, correspond with our approach to our activities of many kinds.

In this spirit, the RGME has consistently stepped up to the plate in response to changes in the facilities for the ICMS before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the Congress was successively

1) cancelled outright (2020),
2) rescheduled in online format only (2021), and
3) re-introduced in a partly in-person, partly virtual, ‘hybrid’ format (2022, 2o23, 2024, and more).

Throughout these developments, responding to their changing requirements, the RGME has continued to seek, insofar as possible with our own limited resources, to provide access to our sponsored and co-sponsored Congress activities to as wide an audience as possible, including those with disablilities, health issues, and difficulties in finding resources to travel and cover expenses to attend the Congress in person.

These ‘extras’ which we provide stand alongside the RGME tradition for many years of promoting our authors and the contributions of their work to our Congress Programs (see our Congress Activities) by the series of RGME promotional notices for the year’s Congress (with updates):

on our official Website (You are Here),
on our Social Media (listed Below),
in the Posters for each of our Congress activities, and
in the Congress Abstracts which we publish for the Authors’ presentations.

The Posters normally are displayed in printed form at the Congress — where permitted, such as on cork boards in the different buildings and in the rooms where our events take place — and on the RGME website, with printed copies also sent to presenters as souvenirs to display in their offices or studies and to give to their mothers. For example for the 2015 Congress:

Derek Shank stands beside the RGME Poster Display for the 2025 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The Abstracts appear in their own individual webpages — which can 1) extend for a longer span than the assigned limit (100 words) for the submission of a proposal for a Congress Paper; 2) add notes, links, and bibliography; and 3) include images — as publications in their own right.

Moreover, we take care to index all the Authors’ Abstracts for a given Congress to grant wider access both:

Alphabetically by Author’s Surname and
Chronologically by Year of Author’s Presentation.

The Arrival

After the Journey to arrive, there remained some bumps in the road at the destination. The RGME Director was unable to travel for health reasons, and so had to attend online.

Program

One person on the Program for one Session decided not to attend. Technical issues with one Speaker’s PowerPoint Presentation and its Zoom projection interrupted a short span of the flow of slides in an expertly crafted presentation in another Session, but this interruption could smoothly be kept to a brief minimum through co-ordination prepared ahead of time between the Speaker and the RGME Zoom Host, together with the Session Organizer. The prepared co-ordination ahead of time for hybrid access dropped the ball between one scheduled in-person Session and the RGME-hosted Zoom online facility, required, it turned out, not as an extra, but as an essential, so as to enable the Presider and two of the Speakers unable to travel to the Congress to participate in the Session.

Audience Participation

At the last minute, an audience member generously offered to lend his computer so that the Organizer / Second Speaker could connect the Zoom Meeting for the Session and the In-Person Room. We give thanks to collegiality and generous resourcefulness.

Posters

Another surprise came for the RGME Posters for our Congress Activities when the eve of the Congress arrived and participants came on site. We suddenly discovered that the 2024 Congress prohibited the display of posters anywhere in a printed form, apart from selected tables requiring horizontal piles, rather than enabling vertical display for which our Posters are designed.

This change meant that the extra efforts by our Trustee and Co-Organizer David Porreca in the days before the Congress to produced printed Posters for display and distribution there — while our Director could not travel to the Congress to bring them as usual — were thwarted. Henceforth, we will plan accordingly and distribute our Posters outside the Congress walls, both in digital and printed formats.

By fortunate choice, without knowing about the Congress’s redirections, the Director had posted the newly-designed Posters in a Web Gallery of their own on our website just a couple of days before the Congress, in a new departure for our tradition of sponsorship and co-sponsorship. Customarily, she would post them in the RGME webpost for the year’s Congress shortly after it had been accomplished, as part of its Report. (See 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report.)

Now, see the special Pop-Up Exhibition!

RGME Pop-Up Poster Exhibition for the 2024 ICMS

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 2

The Program as Accomplished

Our Program comprised:

three Co-sponsored Sessions
our Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Anniversary Reception.

In stages, first (in November 2023) we announced the Sessions, and reported the sequence of papers for them. Next (January 2024), with information from the ICMS, we could report their assigned times, days, and locations on campus in cases of the in-person events, along with our other activities at the Congress. Then we began to publish the abstracts for them; that process is now completed. Soon we will complete the Indexes for them.

For the In-Person Sessions and the Open Business Meeting, the RGME provided an online option for Congress Registrants through our Zoom Subscription and our Eventbrite Registration Portal:

Eventbrite: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

Like last year (see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), the RGME offered Registration (without charge) for Online access through our Zoom Subscription to some of our In-Person events this year. Likewise we offered registration for our two In-Person events to help us to learn how many to expect to attend for our planning and the catering for our Open Business Meeting and Co-Sponsored Reception.

For one Online Session, a remote-participation conference room was reserved so that participants and attendees on campus for the Congress might gather to join the online format while in company.

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

In 2024, the RGME celebrates its Anniversary Year to mark 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey, and 25 years as an international scholarly society founded out of a major research project at Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge.

For our Anniversary Year, the theme is “Bridges”.

“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Ada Bridge pylon, Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph Petar Milošević (1 August 2021). Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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Tags: Abstracts of Congress Papers, Bridges, Early Printed Books, History of Alchemy, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Manuscript studies, P.-O.M.o.N.A., Postal History at Kalamazoo, RGME Anniversary, RGME Anniversary Reception, RGME Business Meeting, RGME Posters, Societas Magica
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

November 24, 2023 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Announcements, Business Meeting, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Reception, Societas Magica

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

To be held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

[Posted on 23 November 2023, with updates]

Ravenna, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Mosaic. Artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by The Yorck Project / Wikimedia Commons (GFDL).

After the successful completion of our Call for Papers for the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we announce the Program for our activities, with:

three Co-sponsored Sessions
our Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Anniversary Reception.

In stages, first (in November 2023) we announced the Sessions. Next (4 January 2024), with information from the ICMS, we could report their assigned times, days, and locations on campus in cases of the in-person events, along with our other activities at the Congress.

Now we can report the sequence of papers for the sessions; we also begin to publish the abstracts for them.

Note that for the In-Person Sessions and the Open Business Meeting, the RGME provides an online option for Congress Registrants through our Zoom Subscription and our Eventbrite Registration Portal. See below and

Eventbrite: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Congress Information

2024 Congress Program for the full ICMS

Registration (required) for the Congress has opened in February:

Registration via ICMS website

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

Like last year (see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), the RGME offers Registration (without charge) for Online access through our Zoom Subscription to some of our In-Person events this year. Likewise we offer registration for two of our In-Person events to help us to learn how many to expect to attend for our planning and the catering:

Open Business Meeting (In Person)
and
Co-Sponsored Reception (In Person)

For an Online Session, a remote-participation conference room has been reserved so that participants and attendees on campus for the Congress might gather to join the online format while in company.

(For information, see below.)

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

For our Anniversary Year, the theme is “Bridges”.

“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Ada Bridge pylon, Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph Petar Milošević (1 August 2021). Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

RGME Sessions (1–3) at the 2024 ICMS

For the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2024, with responses to our Call for Papers, the RGME co-sponsors these three Sessions. Two of three are scheduled to take place in person, with the other online.

Arrangements have been made so that all three can be accessed both in person (whether as scheduled in the Congress Program or as arranged by especially reserving a room on campus) and online (whether as scheduled or as arranged for a Zoom Meeting hosted by the RGME). Thus their access can constitute a truly hybrid approach to the conference.

We begin (2 May) to post the Abstracts of the Papers for the Sessions.

Locations on Campus

For the locations on campus, see these campus maps:

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Tags: Alchemical Books, Curtains, Early Printed Books, Hermes Trismegistus, Hieronmus Brunschwig, History of Magic, Manuscript studies, Medieval History, Medieval Studiies, Merchant Letters, Postal Couriers, Postal History, Postal History at Kalamazoo, RGME Anniversary Reception, RGME Open Business Meeting, Societas Magica
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2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

October 23, 2023 in Events, ICMS, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, POMONA, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception

[Posted on 22 October 2023]

After the successful completion of our activities at the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we offer a Report about them. For their programs and the abstracts of their presentations, see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program.

Note that Abstracts for Papers published on our website appear in the Indexes of the Abstracts for Papers, listed both by Alphabetical order of Author’s Surname and by Year.

Logistics

2023 ICMS: Pedagogy II viewed online. Michael Allman presents. Photography by Mildred Budny.

This year’s Congress presented more logistical challenges than ever before, in our experience of attending the annual ICMS. They were due to the complex and incompletely or perplexingly described conditions for holding the Congress in a nominal ‘hybrid’ format, with few fully hybrid events and the necessity for organizers mostly to choose either in-person or online formats — or to provide the alternative through their own resources.

In that way, for example, once the rules were clarified (within only a fortnight of the Congress), the RGME was able resourcefully to provide (through its own Zoom subscription) for online access to events assigned as in-person and to arrange (sometimes with payment) for a room to be made available for registrants on site at the Congress to gather for participating in sessions assigned as online. We thank the Congress staff for enabling those arrangements once we learned that they might be permitted.

Our activities comprised five co-sponsored scholarly Sessions, our annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress, and a co-sponsored Reception.

The extra arrangements for in-person facilities for the online sessions and online access for in-person sessions were designed also for the convenience of participants for our events on the first day of the Congress, which had a consecutive series of Morning Session / Lunchtime Business Meeting / two Afternoon Sessions / Reception. With the Morning Session in a nearby building, the other events that day, by design, took place on one building.

Co-Sponsorship

Societas Magica: 2 Sessions and the Reception
Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS): 2 Sessions
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.): 1 Session
Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University: Reception

This year marked Year 19 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica; the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with POMONA, the third of co-sponsorship with the Index of Medieval Art, and the first year of co-sponsorship with SIMS.

As always, we thank the host, organizers, co-sponsors, presiders, speakers, respondents, advisers, and participants for our activities at the Congress, along with the Congress staff and support staff.

The Sequence of Events

Day 1 of the Congress (Thursday 11 May) had a full set of events. They opened with the Morning Session, led to the RGME Open Business Meeting (with lunch provided), followed with a pair of Afternoon Sessions, and rounded out with the co-hosted Reception.

Day 3 (Saturday 13 May) had a pair of Afternoon Sessions.

The shortness of the notice and the complexity of the RGME’s extra preparations for an ad-hoc fully hybrid format imposed further problems in communicating updated information which, in the rush of last-minute preparations and conflicting information, meant that not all participants received the relevant information in time. Notably this affected the extra online arrangements for the in-person sessions on Saturday afternoon, so that the first one did not have an on-site log-in for the online component.

Informal “Evening Sessions”. Outside the Program, a set of traditional informal gatherings offered the occasion to revive the in-person tradition of meetings in an ad-hoc ‘Board Room’ where board games, brought to the table for the occasion, formed a focus of activity and conversation. As usual, they included some elements of RGME planning. This year, they included an ad-hoc hybrid component for participation at a distance as well.

Our Report of all our activities at the 2023 Congress relates their accomplishment, celebrates the presentations, praises the work of organization, notes a few changes in the program and accessibility for the sessions, displays the full set of posters for our events, and illustrates some memorable moments.

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Tags: Albert the Great, Binding Archaeology, Binding Spines and Fastenings, Board Games, Board Room, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 286, Datini Collection, Ephesia Grammata, Gospels of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Gutenberg Biblt, History of Bindings, History of Pedagogy, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studiesieval Studies, Islamic Bookbindings, Manuscript studies, Open Business Meeting, Otto Ege Fragments, Reception, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Societas Magica, William Fulke, Words as Agents
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 8, 2023 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)
To occur in ‘hybrid’ form
(with some Sessions in Person, some Online)

[Posted on 7 July 2023, with updates]

Façade of the Celsus library , in Ephesus, near Selçuk, west Turkey. Photograph (1910): Benh LIEU SONG, via Creative Commons.

Building upon the successful completion of our activities at the 2023 ICMS (see our 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program and 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), we announce the Call for Proposals (CFP) for next year’s Congress, which will take place in a modified hybrid format from Thursday to Saturday 9–11 May 2024.

For information about the Congress, see its website. There you can also find information and instructions about submitting your proposals. See especially Submissions. Your proposals for papers are due by 15 September 2023.

After the close of the CFP, we will select the accepted papers and design the programs for the Sessions. Notifying you of the decisions about your proposals will come before the deadline for us to submit the Programs for our Sessions to the Congress Committee is 15 October 2023.

Next, normally by the turn of the year toward the year of the Congress, we publish the selected Programs for our Sessions and announce our other Activities, while we await the promulgation of the official Schedule for the 2023 Congress as a whole. Accompanying our announced Programs are the Abstracts for the Papers. Then, with the publication of the Congress Program (or its traditional ‘Sneak Peek’), we can add the times and venues for our Sessions. As the 2024 Congress approaches, new information can guide announcements and updates on our website and social media.

For 2024, with some Sessions on line and some in person in a transitional ICMS, we prepare:

four Sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored
a customary Open Business Meeting at the Congress
and perhaps a Reception.

In 2024, the RGME celebrates an Anniversary Year, for which the chosen Theme is “Bridges”.

One Session is our own (Item I). With one session each, our co-sponsors for ICMS Sessions in 2024 are:

Societas Magica
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)
Postal History at Kalamazoo

This year marks Year 20 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica, Year 3 of co-sponsorship with P.O.M.o.N.A., and the first year of co-sponsorship with the newly founded Postal History at Kalamazoo.

Both our own RGME Session (Item I here) and the Session co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo (Item IV) are designed to continue the tradition of our long-term series of RGME Sessions at the ICMS on “Medieval Writing Materials”, which began in 2014. (See, for example, our Congress Activities and 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program.)

The Organizers and Co-Organizer of the two Sessions this year include all three founders of that series. It was proposed to the RGME Director Mildred Budny in 2013 by Eleanor A. Congdon and David W. Sorenson.

Here we announce the subjects of the Sessions and invite your Proposals for Presentations.

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Tags: Blood in Books, Book History, Classical & Medieval Studies, Datini Archives, Fugger Archives, History of Commerce, History of Correspondence, History of Curtains, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Medici Archives, Medieval Sources for Pre-Christian Practices, Paston Letters, Postal History, Powers of Blood
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2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

November 23, 2021 in Ibero-Medieval Association of North America, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2022 Congress Activities
Sponsored and Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Online
Monday, May 9 – Saturday, May 14, 2022

Private Collection, Le Parc Abbey, Theological Volume, Part B: Detail of Vellum Leaf. Photography Mildred Budny.

Posted on 22 November 2021, with updates

Following the close of the 2022 Congress Preparations: Call for Papers, then the selection of proposals and arrangement of sequence of papers within the sessions, for the submission of their programs to the Congress Committee, we announce the Programs for our Sessions at the 2022 ICMS online in May 2021. As in previous years, we plan to hold a Business Meeting at the Congress.

All activities are to take place online, like 2021. See our 2021 Congress Report.

When appropriate, we can report the assignment of the scheduling of Sessions within the Congress Program overall. Meanwhile, we publish the Abstracts of the Papers and Responses, as the authors might be willing. Note that the Abstracts for Congress Sessions are Indexed on our website by Author (in progress for 2022) and by Year (2022 included).

Now that [4 February 2022] the Congress Program has become available (see its website), we can post the assigned days and times for our activities, along with the assigned Numbers for the Sessions. All our activities are scheduled for Wednesday and Friday, 11 and 13 May 2022. Times are in Eastern Daylight Time.

Wednesday 11 May 2022

Session 173 (1 pm). Medieval Writing Materials: Processes, Products, and Case-Studies
Open Business Meeting (3 pm). All are welcome.
Session 193 (7 pm). Alter(n)ative Alphabets in the Iberian Middle Ages (co-sponsored with IMANA)|

Friday 13 May 2022

Session 310 (1 pm). The Iconography of Medieval Magic (co-sponsored with the Societas Magica)
Session 324 (3 pm). Pressing Politics:
Interactions between Authors and Printers in the 15th and 16th Centuries

In due course, sometime in March, registration for the online Congress will commence. After the close of the Congress, recorded content will be available to registrants from Monday, May 16, through Saturday, May 28.

Watch this space for updates. Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Aljamiado, Business Meeting, Divinatory Games, Hernán Núñez, History of Divination, History of Documents, History of Magic, History of Paper, Ibero-Medieval Association of North America, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Italian Paper, Libro del juego delas suertes, Manuscript studies, Marsilio Ficino, Medieval Writing Materials, Merchants of Venice, Morisco Manuscripts, Morisco Spells, Polish Coronation Sword, Societas Magica, Szczerbiec, The Lay of the Mantle, Venetian Documents
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2022 Congress Preparations

July 16, 2021 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Ibero-Medieval Association of North America, IMANA, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

Call for Papers (CFP) for Sessions
Sponsored or Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Online)
Monday, May 9, through Saturday, May 14, 2022

CFP Deadline: 15 September 2021
[Deadline for Session Programs: 1 October 2021]

Private Collection, Le Parc Abbey, Theological Volume, Part B: Detail of Vellum Leaf. Photography Mildred Budny.

[Update on 22 September 2021:
Following the close of the CFP on 15 September, we can welcome the received proposals for papers, observe their strength and range, and prepare the programs for each session. With the selection of proposed papers accomplished, it comes time to arrange their sequence within the given Sessions, assign the Presiders for them, and submit the programs to the Congress Committee by 1 October 2021.

When appropriate, we can announce the Programs, report the assignment of their scheduling within the Congress Program overall, and publish the Abstracts of the Papers and Responses, as the authors might be willing. The Congress Program will become available in due course, and registration for the online Congress might commence.

Update on 1 October 2021:
At the close of the deadline for submission of the programs to the Congress, we report that each of our Sessions has three or four Papers; three sessions also have Responses; and we plan to hold a Business Meeting at the Congress, as in previous years. All these activities are to take place online.]

[Posted on 15 July 2021]

After accomplishing the 2021 ICMS Online, with 5 Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions, plus our Open Business Meeting, we produced the 2021 Congress Report, as we turned to preparations for the 2022 Congress. We proposed Sessions, and received answers in stages.

Through the Confex system for the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies, we have learned that all but one of our proposed sessions have been accepted.

One of the accepted sessions resumes a series (“Medieval Writing Materials”) which a rejection for the 2015 Congress disrupted. That rejection interfered with the momentum of our series of sessions on the subject at the 2011–2016 Congresses. (See Sponsored Sessions.) The interval between then and now is a long time to wait. We had to turn to other subjects, as the momentum for their own action not only gathered to produce the proposals to sponsor or co-sponsor them, but also found favor by the Congress Committee, so that it could become possible to move to the phase of the Call for Papers for them. With the Pre-Congress Business Meeting in May 2021, as we prepared for this year’s Congress, we aimed to resume that series, as well as to explore other sessions as their subjects and proponents might direct.

So, we can resume the series on Medieval Writing Materials for 2022. But a new rejection of another subject for the Congress leads us to reconsider our approach to its current momentum. This time, learning from experience, we could choose what to do, but elsewhere, before long, with the subject not accepted this time around, rather than waiting for some other year — or decade — at the Congress.

And so, now, we announce the Call for Papers for the 2022 Congress.

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Tags: Ars Notaria, History of Alphabets, History of Magic, History of Paper, History of Paper Manufacture, History of Watermarks, Manuscript studies, Medieval Studies, Medieval Writing Materials
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Featured Posts

RGME Activities at the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

Building Blocks

Call for Papers

Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies May 14–16, 2026

(Sessions variously online, in-person, and hybrid)

Proposals due by 15 September 2025

Sounding the Call

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

Process and Timetable for Proposals

Then What?

RGME @ 2025 ICMS

Our 2025 Sessions

I. Sessions Sponsored by the RGME

1. “Deviant Images: Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts” (ID: 5977)

In-Person Session

Aim

Proposals

2. “Rending the Veil: The Rupture of Image and Text in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

In-Person Session

Aim

Methodologies

Proposals

3. “Women and Manuscripts: Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

Hybrid Session

Aim

Proposals

II. Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME

4. Moving the Mail: Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices in the Medieval World (ID: 6312)

In-person Session

Aim

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic: The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

In-person Session

Aim

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream: Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Online Session

Aim

Questions? Suggestions?

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions, an Open Business Meeting, and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell: Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants, Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

The Journey

Access Included

The Arrival

Program

Audience Participation

Posters

The Program as Accomplished

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

To be held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions, an Open Business Meeting, and Co-Sponsored Reception

Congress Information

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

RGME Sessions (1–3) at the 2024 ICMS

Locations on Campus

2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions an Open Business Meeting and Co-Sponsored Reception

Logistics

Co-Sponsorship

The Sequence of Events

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024) To occur in ‘hybrid’ form (with some Sessions in Person, some Online)

2022 Congress Activities Sponsored and Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies Online Monday, May 9 – Saturday, May 14, 2022

Call for Papers (CFP) for Sessions Sponsored or Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Online) Monday, May 9, through Saturday, May 14, 2022

CFP Deadline: 15 September 2021 [Deadline for Session Programs: 1 October 2021]

RGME Activities
at the
2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Report

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME
at the
61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 14–16, 2026

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Call for Papers

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2. “Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

3. “Women and Manuscripts:
Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic:
The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream:
Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell:
Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants,
Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

To be held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)
To occur in ‘hybrid’ form
(with some Sessions in Person, some Online)

2022 Congress Activities
Sponsored and Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Online
Monday, May 9 – Saturday, May 14, 2022

Call for Papers (CFP) for Sessions
Sponsored or Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Online)
Monday, May 9, through Saturday, May 14, 2022

CFP Deadline: 15 September 2021
[Deadline for Session Programs: 1 October 2021]