Details
Date: 02 July - 05 July 2025
Venue: Canterbury Christ Church University
Gender: Charity & Care
Celebrate GMS’s great reputation for kindness, inclusivity and friendliness at next year’s conference with the theme of Gender: charity and care in the global Middle Ages. Be inspired by love, charity and care to consider gendered literary, political/historical, and theological texts and responses, all forms of religious belief and none, and social/socio-economic, and environmental explorations of the subject from caring to apocalyptic climate emergency.
Topics might include:
- Religious devotion and almsgiving globally (including generosity in Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism (d̄āna),
- Jewish philanthropy (tzedakah) and Islamic charitable giving (sadaqa)
- Gift-giving and donations in texts, documents, material culture, drama and depictions (e.g., Master of Alkmaar, fl. 1504, Seven Works of Mercy, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, above), from saints to chuggers, lay piety, and non-normative medieval beliefs, including the opposites of charity and care – cupidity and neglect.
- Charitable locations: leperhouses, hospices and hospitals, and the care of the sick and dying, childbirth and childcare.
- Charity in urban and rural domestic settings and gardens, guilds, church ales and help ales.
- Charity and care for bodies, feelings and nature: emotions, senses, sensualities, sex, chastity, and inclusive genderings.
Call for papers
Convenor: Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, Centre for Kent History & Heritage, Canterbury Christ Church University.
Kindly email abstracts and questions to GMS 2025 Liaison Dr Diane Heath, Diane.Heath@ScienceMuseum.ac.uk
Abstract Deadline: Monday 31 March 2025
Please put "GMS 2025 ABSTRACT" in the subject line of your email.
Abstracts 200 words max (+ bio) for papers (20 mins); panels, poetry, performance, posters and art also welcome.
Other details
- ECR travel bursary aid available on receipt of tickets (post attendance) via the Kate Westoby Fund.
- GMS website: Gender and Medieval Studies (medievalgender.co.uk)
- Location: Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU
- Conference begins Wednesday 2 July; Conference Dinner on Thursday; Conference ends Saturday am.
- Extra Special Afternoon: Saturday 5 July: Canterbury Medieval Pageant and Family Heritage Trail 11-5,
- Medieval Pageant and Trail 2024 - Canterbury Bid Free visits to 20+ medieval heritage sites.