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The Monstrous, the Marvelous, and the Miraculous (Kalamazoo 2010)
full name / name of organization:
MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application)
CALL FOR PAPERS:
MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application) is sponsoring two sessions at the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 13–16, 2010). The call for papers and the contact details for the first session are below. All abstracts will also be made available for viewing on the MEARCSTAPA blog (http://medievalmonsters.blogspot.com/).
1. The Monstrous, the Marvelous, and the Miraculous
Much critical attention is currently being directed at the monstrous in the Middle Ages, but the category is, by its very nature, difficult to define. It bleeds at the edges into other fundamental categories, most notably the marvelous and the miraculous. On one end of this spectrum, we find horrifying, homophagic nightmares and, on the other, direct evidence for the power and mercy of God.
While these two extremes seem, at a glance, to have little in common, they both were marvelous, deserving and inspiring our wonder on account of lying outside of the realm of the everyday. Both were therefore viewed as signs of God's divinity and divine plan for the universe. In this session, we will interrogate the blurred boundaries between these richly ambiguous epistemological categories, not striving to artificially sharpen their boundaries but rather, seeking greater nuance in our understandings of all three.
Please send abstracts of 300 words, along with a completed Participant Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper), to Melissa Ridley-Elmes at firstname.lastname@example.org by 1 September 2009.