Call for Papers: Britain and Ireland before the Vikings: Intercultural Interactions (In Person)
61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan), May 14–16, 2026
Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
The formative years between the Roman withdrawal from Britain and the first Viking incursions into Britain and Ireland have proved some of the most fertile for the medieval and modern imagination, but part of the allure of this period is the big questions it leaves imperfectly—or even completely—unanswered. This session aims to bring together the perspectives of scholars working in diverse fields to deepen our understanding of literary, political, religious, and educational cultures of early medieval Britain and Ireland, particularly by focusing on interactions—such as contacts, exchanges, collaborations, and influences—between said cultures.
Possible topics for consideration include but are by no means limited to:
- Particular individuals, places, or people-groups as focuses of intercultural interactivity
- Literary interactions and cross-cultural literary legacies
- Historical and artistic representations of intercultural interactions
- The emergence and disappearance of polities and alliances
- Rome’s imperial legacy in Britain
- Warfare, fianna
- The church in Britain and Ireland and the Roman church
- Peregrinatioand eremetism abroad
- Education and exile in Ireland
- Colonization and its impacts on ethnicity
- Trade between cultures
- Loan-words, onomastics, and epigraphy as evidence of interactions
Please submit your paper proposal to the ICMS Confex site by Friday, September 15, 2025: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7403.
Proposals must include a title and an abstract of 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, and contact information.
If you have any questions, please contact Matthew Coker (mc271@uark.edu).
