Our recent ISSM conference

Some conferences are memorable because of the papers. Others stay with us because of the people who made the exchange possible. The International Conference on Medievalisms, held October 9-10, belonges in both categories.

I want to offer my sincere thanks to Luiz Guerra, who organized the conference with care, vision, and a clear sense of why medievalism studies needs shared spaces, generous questions, and open and global intellectual exchange. I am also grateful to the participants, keynoters and other speakers, who gave their time, energy, research, and attention across the two days. A conference becomes meaningful only when participants listen carefully, and this event offered that kind of attentive and supportive scholarly community. I am especially happy about the inclusion of colleagues who are not full-time academics because medievalism studies should always have spaces for these practitioners.

Thanks also to Anita Obermeier, who was a great chair for the session on "Medievalisms a State and Story of the Field," which included: "Medieval as a bad word (again)," Jose Luis Camacho (Mexico); "In Search of Marion Facinger: The Misidentification of an Historian of Medieval Queenship," Michael Evans (USA); and "Populism, and the Practitioners of Medievalism Studies," Richard Utz (USA). And finally a "gramercy" to Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand (USA), Daniele Gallindo (Brazil), and Detlef Goller (Germany), the participants of the roundtable on "Nibelung Medievalism" I had the pleasure to moderate.