Shifting Paradigms: Women, Rhetoric, and Power c.700–1300 CE, London, February 22–23, 2024

This conference aims to recalibrate how we study women in western Europe, the Islamic worlds, and
Byzantium across the Middle Ages, revealing the manifold ways women shaped and were shaped by overlapping discourses of power. The intention is to contest and challenge singular perspectives on power as the ability to enact change, while also reassessing present concentration on gendered analysis as the primary way of understanding women’s actions in the past.

For the conference, we invite papers that broadly explore the question ‘What was power for medieval women?’ through the lens of exemplarity and exempla, that is the framing of individuals in the past as models for the behaviour of men and women in the present. Proposals from postgraduate students and early career scholars will be prioritised.

We are especially eager to receive proposals from those working on Byzantium, the Islamic worlds, or Jewish women, as well as papers that look across geographical, chronological, or disciplinary boundaries. This will be an exploratory conference, so work-in-progress papers are very much encouraged!