CFP: ‘A Sensory History of Devotion in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World’ (ICMS, Kalamazoo 2026), deadline 15 September 2025

This panel invites papers on Christian devotional practices in the late medieval Mediterranean that foreground the senses. How did touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste shape how people encountered the divine? We welcome papers on themes such as material culture, gendered piety, cross-cultural devotional exchange, institutional attempts to regulate sensory worship, and the politics of embodied spirituality. Scholars working with diverse Christian communities and sources—from relics to processions, from tears to incense—are encouraged to apply. Together, we aim to explore how sensory experience made the sacred tangible between 1300 and 1550.

This session is organised by Clair Becker (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Emmarae Stein (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Vittoria Magnoler (PhD Student, University of Genoa, EHESS), and sponsored by Hagiography Society.

This session is hybrid. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex proposal portal by 15 September 2025. Organizers will not be able to add abstracts to their sessions manually. If you have any technical questions about using Confex, please contact icms@confex.com. Apply via the International Congress on Medieval Studies website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call