ISSM will be sponsoring four online sessions during the 61st ICMS (May 14-16, 2026). Submissions for possible inclusion on one of our panels listed below need to be made in ICMS’s Confex System by Friday, September 15. For questions on any of the topics, please email the contact person listed after the session description. And feel free to share widely with anyone who might be interested in these topics!
1: Political Medievalisms (Michael Evans: michaelevans@delta.edu )
Medievalism continues to play a significant role in the world of politics. This session seeks to reach beyond the many discussions of the Alt-Right to consider other forms of medievalisms in politics, including modern monarchies, real or imagined; the use of medievalism, new feudalism, and historical claims in labor and worker’s rights movements; the Papal Conclave and election of Pope Leo XIV; medieval imagery, language, or claims in political campaigns; recollections of the medieval past in government’s self-constructions or as justifications for actions, etc.
II: Medievalisms in Space (Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu for now)
Building on several successful sessions on Science Fiction Medievalisms, this session seeks to consider specifically what happens when the Middle Ages turns up in Outer Space. How is the past created in the future, and to what end? How is the Middle Ages imagined disconnected from the planet on which it took place? How does Medieval space get negotiated in Outer Space?
III: Global Medievalisms (Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu)
This session seeks to consider medievalisms outside of Europe and North America. We are particularly interested in papers on medievalism in the Global South and how European implanted cultures have left their medieval mark far from home, as well as how these non-European cultures make use of, understand, and imagine their own pasts to contrast, combat, or reject colonial medievalisms. We are also particularly interested in how Catholic medievalisms function and create continuity (or discontinuity) in places where the Church has played an instrumental part of colonial implantation of Western culture, and what about its current function might reflect its medieval past.
IV: Medievalism and Costume (Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu )
This session seeks to investigate the medieval in clothing, costume, and ritual. How does the medieval influence fashion? What is the rhetoric of clothing at Renaissance Fairs? In LARPing and Reenactment? In Academic Regalia? Papers might consider popular figures, such as Chappell Roan, who inflect the medieval in their costuming, and what it says about how they understand themselves and their public position.
