Call for Papers

Sessions Sponsored
by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
at the 2026 International Medieval Congress
(In person or Hybrid)
6–9 July 2026

“Manuscripts at Play and as Play:
Temporalities and (Re)Configurations
as Reading Methods”

Organisers:
Michael Allman Conrad
and Mildred Budny

Name of the Game

For 2026 the RGME proposes to explore the nature of play in manuscripts across time and place.  We think of manuscripts at play, as play, and in play.

With the success of our activities at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in 2024 and 2025, we prepare for another year responding to the “Special Thematic Strand” selected for the 2026 IMC. Thus, we announce our Call for Papers here and now.

For information about the IMC and its plans for 2026, see:

• International Medieval Congress at Leeds
• Call for Papers for the 2026 IMC, with the Special Thematic Strand of “Temporalities”.
• IMC 2026 Padlet, with poster-like announcements of Calls for Papers

Locating Manuscripts in Their (Mobile) Temporalities

For the 2026 IMC and its Special Theme, we will consider manuscripts in terms of the essence of their ‘temporalities’ (also see Temporalities) — that is, in a nutshell, “the state of existing within or having some relationship with time”, which pertains intrinsically to any physical object, just like its “spatial position”. That essence or condition, combining location with points in time, forms both centerpiece and focus-point going forward in our continuing studies of Manuscript Evidence.

Building upon the success of our activities at the annual IMC in 2024 and 2025, we propose to extend the subject of one of our Sessions at the 2025 Congress:

• “Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”, organised by Michael Allman Conrad (see RGME @ 2025 IMC: Program)

2025 Leeds: “Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge” Poster 1. Set in RGME Bembino.

Next, we seek to examine games and playful approaches of multiple kinds with regard to manuscripts. The opportunities across time range from the creation of a book to its use in the world. We observe, for example, habits of entering scribbles and sketches as spontaneous or imaginative playtime on the one hand to creating and transmitting texts about games or gaming strategies.

Aims

By their nature, whether text or image, the planarity of manuscript surfaces offers invitations for readers to engage with them playfully. This play entails a process of temporalisation, of setting manuscript elements into motion, resulting in configurations and re-configurations that are keys for deciphering hidden — or less apparent — meanings. While carmina figurata or picture poems may range among the most obvious examples, they are by no means limited to them. Such elements can include scribbles and sketches, diagrams (including game diagrams specifically), material extensions (such as volvelles and other pop-up features), acrostics, and other puzzles. We consider the performativity and dynamics at work, or play, on the pages.

We invite contributions on a wide range of materials and genres and from a variety of perspectives and any discipline, to consider case-studies, work-in-progress, or research results celebrating the roles of play in which manuscripts engage, and which they might inspire in us as readers, scholars, and beholders. Want to play? Are you game?

Papers might address, but are not limited to the following questions:

• Are there any contemporary reflections on time and motion as keys for interpreting the playful elements of manuscripts, e.g., acrostics, scientific diagrams, or game diagrams (or others)? What can they tell us about the relationship of readers/spectators with time and across time?
• As they are artworks and semantic devices at the same time, what may playful components tell us about how the similarities as well as differences between art and writing/reading were perceived at points of creation and use?
• How did readers know how to decipher these playful elements? What part may contemporary game culture take in this understanding? What could the presence of playful elements in manuscripts indicate about the position of play and games within the broader scope of their culture?
• What are possible reasons why scribes decided to include these elements exactly at this position within a manuscript? What strategies (be it either aesthetic, religious, cultural, or otherwise) may their application serve?
• How does a preference for a playful element, its style and form, possibly tie into idiosyncrasies of the period?
• What relationship between what can or cannot be known is expressed in the interplay between the visually hidden and virtually absent?

Proposals, Please

Please submit a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a short bio by 15 September 2025 to

• rgme.imc.sessions@gmail.com

We particularly welcome proposals for individual papers and panels from postgraduate and early career scholars. We look forward to your responses.

Images

Examples of dynamic constructions involving word-play upon the page include the elaborate, intricate, and beautiful picture-poems favoured among some authors, not least at in the early medieval period. We display specimens by the Carolingian author Hrabanus (or Rabanus) Maurus Magnentius (circa 780 – 856), Archbishop of Mainz (from 847). His poem De laudibus sanctae crucis (“In Praise of the Holy Cross”), which survives in multiple copies, contains a series of poems laid out as rectangular constructions in which each line contains the same number of letters as any other.

Their patterns make it possible to lay out the letters not only in horizontal lines but also in vertical rows, strictly in line with each other. Moreover, it is possible to read key portions vertically as well as horizontally. Reading vertically in a line using the initial, medial, or final letter of each line yields an acrostic, mesostic, or telestic. Such forms of cross-word puzzles can produce wonders of legibility, requiring the attention in steps of time to gain comprehension of the message as a whole. Adding images to the ensemble increases the layering of meanings, and the possibilities of wonderment through resonance.

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 652, fol. 20v (scan 50 of 109). Hrabanus Maurus, De laude sanctae crucibus. Mainz or Fulda, 9th century (circa 830-840). Carmen figuratum with four Evangelist symbols surrounding the Lamb of God. Image via https://viewer.onb.ac.at/10048D05/.

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 652, fol.
Image https://viewer.onb.ac.at/10048D05/.

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